Red Bank Planning Commission members unanimously recommended approval for a controversial proposed housing complex on Stringer’s Ridge Thursday evening.
But given the current depressed real estate market, it could take 10 years to complete the complex now known simply as Stringers Ridge, developer Mike Cooke of Greensboro, S.C., said.
“We’re not speculative builders,” he said. “We won’t build unless we have sales . . . It’s a market-driven process.”
Although the proposal drew numerous opponents at earlier public meetings, nobody appeared at the Red Bank meeting to object to the development.
Mr. Cooke and his business partner, Chris Anderson of Charleston, S.C., want to build a planned unit development containing a total of 504 residential units – condominiums and townhouses – on a 98-acre site off Pine Ridge, Lakeview and High Roads, and Sawyer and Merrian Streets.
Of those, 131 units will be located on about 23.8 acres of land in Red Bank, Mr. Cooke said Thursday evening.
The remaining 373 units will be in Chattanooga.
Planning commission members first approved rezoning the tract of land from R-1 to R-2, and then gave their blessing to the PUD.
Planning Commissioner David Hafley suggested that the rezoning be made conditional, so that if the PUD is not built the land will revert to R-1. But Red Bank City Planner Bryan Shults said state law mandates that R-2 zoning, once approved, remains in effect unless and until changed by the appropriate legislative body.
There is no access to the site from Red Bank - only through the Chattanooga side of Stringer's Ridge.
In other action, planning commission members were informed that the city currently has $50,000 in state funding – obtained with the help of members of the local legislative delegation – which it plans to use to enclose the existing open pavilion in Morrison Springs Park.
Work on the project should be completed in about six months, officials said, and Erlanger Medical Center representatives already have indicated interest in holding health fairs there once it is enclosed.