Thompson's Station experiments with planned growth

On cool, clear nights, the stars above Thompson’s Station are the kind they write songs about.

Pinpricks of light pierce an inky sky over the handful of low-slung buildings that passes for a downtown. In the darkness, the rolling fields and houses nearby are nothing more than shadowy outlines.

It’s easy to imagine how living there might have felt more than a century ago, when the train depot — rebuilt in 1993 to house town hall — was a hub for livestock and dry goods.

Residents say they like it that way.

They like driving past farmland dotted with cows on their way home. They like grabbing weeknight dinners at Circa, one of the town’s two restaurants.

The problem is, of course, that there’s no shortage of people who want to feel like they’re living in a pastoral oasis untouched by time, all within a short drive of the modern conveniences that come with an exploding metropolitan area.

Which means that although Thompson's Station's population has more than doubled since 2000, when about 1,283 people called the hamlet home, the town is going to continue to grow. A lot.

And as a historic population boom washes over Middle Tennessee, observers say the town is serving as a kind of petri dish for the region by working to preserve its open space while accommodating all those new residents.

Main Streets, not strip malls

According to projections from the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, the 10-county region the agency covers is expected to surpass the Denver metro area, with a population of about 2.6 million by 2035. Williamson County’s population is projected to increase by about 70 percent in the next two decades, the MPO data show.

While Middle Tennessee's swelling population isn't new, Thompson’s Station is well positioned to implement some of the buzzier urban growth principles reshaping cities around the country, without having to contend with existing development, town officials and urban planning experts say.

The town is nestled in some of the most rapidly developing territory in Williamson County, south of Franklin and north of Spring Hill with access to Interstate 65 and State Route 840.

The town, with a population of about 3,100, is one of the fastest growing in the state by percentage, but it still has acres of open space, unlike its largely built-out neighbors.

Town officials have responded with what they say is a novel approach to planning — one that puts a premium on preserving open space and developing denser urban districts close to major transportation corridors.

To achieve this, officials enlisted the help of national consulting firm PlaceMakers LLC, which hosted a series of community meetings, where residents helped envision what they wanted to see in the town. The result was a new land development ordinance, which officials say will serve as a long-range plan for the town.

On a basic level, it encourages the development of projects according to what is known as form-based coding, which prioritizes regulation of how a development looks. In other words, it's a zoning law designed to shape growth into Main Streets, not strip malls.

Ideally, experts say, the new ordinance will help attract developers by giving a clearer sense of what kinds of projects can go where, thus eliminating some of the bureaucratic piece-by-piece wrangling that often accompanies major development proposals.

The approach is one that’s gaining traction around the country as conventional suburban sprawl becomes a relic of a time when roads weren’t clogged and crumbling.

Hazel Borys, managing director of PlaceMakers, said Thompson’s Station is “definitely on the leading edge.”

Mayor Corey Napier, who talks about the new land development ordinance with the zeal of an optimistic urban planning professor, said he campaigned for re-election on a platform of "growth without regret."

Now, he said, Thompson’s Station has the chance to become the kind of walkable, inviting community where generations of families want to live.

“For our town, well you’re going to have big acre lots, you can live on a farm, you can live in a new urbanism community … if we have this continuum of housing, it’s going to allow anybody to live here,” Napier said in a recent interview. “After 20 years or 100 years will Thompson’s Station one day be 200,000 people and have high-rise buildings? Well I don’t know.

“But if in 2015, we did a good job with our code, there are places where that might be a possibility.”

Still, Napier said, he knows the planning overhaul is an experiment.

Its first big test? A nearly 2,000-acre golf community that a Dallas-based developer hopes to build on the northern edge of town.

Milking a different cow

The project, known as the Farms at Thompson’s Station, is slated to include a mix of 800 homes, a town center and a golf course that may be designed by Tiger Woods.

Beacon Land Development President Michael Abbott said that Thompson’s Station stood out as a community that was tackling its growth thoughtfully — though its approach falls in line with cities around the country.

“If you’re in charge of the town, you control the architectural style. That’s far more important than whether you can have one house per acre,” he said. “It’s the next wave of the future — people are building smaller houses anyway, more efficient houses that they can enjoy.”

But some are viewing the plans with skepticism.

At a recent meeting where the Thompson’s Station Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted to annex the land for the Farms development, residents of neighboring properties said they were concerned about the hundreds of pricey new homes, as well the location of a new wastewater treatment plant that the developer will be required to build.

“All these people are farmers and mechanics, people who have lived here their whole lives,” Michelle Mullins said, gesturing to her neighbors, who sat on folding chairs in the sparse town community center. “They’ll be playing golf, while we get their crap in our backyard.”

Abbott said the plans his firm presented at the meeting were preliminary and that Beacon Land planned to work with residents to ensure that the plant was in an acceptable spot.

For Greg Langeliers, who retired last year as Thompson’s Station’s town administrator, it wasn’t the location of the plant that struck him. It was the fact that it was in the works at all in a town that, until recently, struggled with its existing wastewater treatment infrastructure.

Traditionally, Langeliers said, cities approve development outward from a central area, where sewer systems and other infrastructure are already in place.

And growth has worked that way for a reason: It’s less risky in the long run.

That's not what’s happening here, Langeliers said, where a developer is building almost an entirely new community far away from a town center.

“It’s just sort of a rule of thumb: If you can get what you’ve got as shiny and nice as you can get it, it’s going to make all the stuff that comes later work better," he said.

Langeliers recalled the way Thompson’s Station’s Tollgate Village progressed. Early on, there were plans for retail, as well as a range of homes.

Years later, Tollgate has a medical building, offices and homes, but no shops or restaurants. That’s because there haven’t been enough residents buying homes to make it worthwhile for potential commercial tenants, Langeliers said.

“That’s the cow I’d be milking,” he said.

In any case, former Mayor Cherry Jackson said, the town shouldn't turn its back on a major investment — it can't afford to.

Guiding the inevitable

Jackson, Thompson’s Station’s mayor from 1995 to 2006, said that she hadn’t followed the new zoning process closely.

But when the town incorporated in 1990, she said leaders had no choice but to embrace growth. Without tax revenue from new development, the town would wither and die.

She said the decision to incorporate came as the town looked for ways to preserve its rural identity and history. But in the process, it meant that the town would need to spend money on its own services and infrastructure.

At the time, Jackson said, it was a careful balancing act, one that’s still in flux.

“There was a misconception that we incorporated so we wouldn’t become Spring Hill, so we wouldn’t grow,” she said. “My own feelings were that I knew we had to grow. … I wanted us to retain our identity.”

She said she sees her town as trying to move in the right direction.

“If you are on Williamson County dirt anywhere, there’s going to be growth,” she said. “Each municipality is going to work diligently to plan to the best of their ability what their residents want to see in their area.”

A quarter of a century later, residents are coming around to what officials have long predicted.

Robynne Napier, who co-owns Circa and is married to the mayor, said she’s heard casual chatter shift over the years.

“I don’t think a halt of growth is going to happen, and I think that most people are pretty aware of that,” she said. “A lot of the business owners, they see what’s happening.”

Still, none of that talk has taken cars off the roads and traffic is still often residents' only gripe.

Shelley Redmon, 41, said she understands that growth is inevitable, but there should be a ceiling. The 41-year-old mother of four (soon to be five) spoke at the Mars Petcare dog park on a recent sunny afternoon.

"I think people come here for the beauty of the landscape," she said. "And I think it should be left alone."

Her golden retriever, Moxie, sprinted around the grass — nearly 4 acres, almost entirely to herself.

Reach Jill Cowan at 615-664-2150 and on Twitter @jillcowan.

About Thompson's Station

Estimated population, according to a U.S. Census estimate: 3,180

Location: South of Franklin and north of Spring Hill

Size: Roughly 18 square miles. (Franklin, by comparison, covers about 41 square miles.)

About Williamson County

Estimated population: 229,052

Estimated population by 2035: 387,970

Size: 583 square miles