Next Stop: Thompson's Station!

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Next Stop: Thompson's Station is the tag line for the Town's vision for future development and our new Land Development Ordinance that was officially approved by the Mayor and Town Aldermen in September 2015.  With the region's population expected to nearly double in the next few decades (Vital Signs 2014), an overhaul of the zoning ordinance was key to Thompson's Station's future. Town elected officials and staff partnered with Placemakers, LLC to help the Town through the public input, writing, and adoption process.  The kickoff began with a Charrette designed to obtain a large amount of input from town residents through a week-long dialogue where citizens were asked to join in the conversation with officials and professionals on what the future of our Town would be.  

[Wikipedia: A charrette (pronounced [shuh-ret]) . . . is an intense period of design or planning activity.]

Placemakers, professionals in architecture, storytelling, city planning, and economic development led by Susan Henderson, helped show the ways in which the Town could be developed in a sustainable way based on citizen input. The week long process was chronicled online with daily posts about the progress with comments from citizens. After the week was finished, Susan and her team collected all the data and began working on the new Land Development Ordinance.
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After initial public input was obtained during workshops on Monday, March 9th and Tuesday, March 10th, Placemakers drafted consensus points of view of citizens concerning local  Neighborhood goals and Economic Development. After discussions with elected and appointed officials, town staff, and citizens, Placemakers created a Charrette Report to showcase the entire process and introduce character-based zoning.

Placemakers developed a hybrid form(or character)-based and traditional based zoning solution to address our issues and goals.  This style of zoning will allow for the preservation of rural land while allowing dense mixed use development in order to create a sustainable tax base. Preservation of rural land and small town culture arose as the overarching desire for citizens that attended the charrette, meshing well with the administration's desire for a "green oasis" in middle Tennessee's increasingly urban environment.
The process ended in September 2015, when the Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted unanimously to approve the final draft of the Town's Land Development Ordinance.

If you want to know how it all began, be sure to check out Thompson's Stations original RFQ (Request for Qualifications) and the Placemakers response.
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Links to news articles
Regional Growth Information from Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization 

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LDO Recognized with Awards

In 2016, the Town of Thompson's Station won two awards for the new Land Development Ordinance that was enacted the previous year.

Alderman Brandon Bell said that he represented the Town of Thompson’s Station . . . at the Tennessee Municipal League’s annual conference in Gatlinburg, where the town received the Small Town Progress Award for the work done on the new Land Development Ordinance.

“My understanding is that’s a state award,” said Mayor Corey Napier. “It represents the collaborative and consensus-building process we went through last year to look at our Land Development Ordinance and the intended code that went with it.”

The Town also received a national award, the Driehaus Award, national recognition from the Form-Based Codes Institute located in Detroit.  “What they were patting us on the back for is we’re looking out 20, 30, 40 years down the road and saying, ‘We know growth is going to happen here, and this is how we are going to address it,'” Napier said. “What this was acknowledging was that we are still considered a somewhat rural, agrarian area, but we know that’s changing with 840 and with the popularity of Williamson County and Middle Tennessee.” 

Find out more about the Awards on the Land Development Ordinance Webpage.

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Next Stop - Thompson's Station Submission

Below is a slideshow of the Town's submission for the Driehaus Award which explains the project, workshop results, and previous framework with illustrative plans.  (Next Stop Submission - PDF)

Next Stop - Thompson's Station Award Submission

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