Officials are pursuing new uses for the Tellico Corporate Peninsula that has largely gone underutilized after Tellico Reservoir Development Agency took ownership in the early 1980s.
The 1,200 acres in Greenback only house a 450,000-square-foot Christensen Shipyards facility, which for years has been dormant after the economy declined and demand for yachts dwindled.
“We expect it to be viable at some point,” Ron Hammontree, TRDA executive director, said. “I talk regularly with the person who owns that property and the last conversations I’ve had with him are all indicating that he intends to go forward with it when the demand for those size 200-foot yachts kind of comes back around. He currently is building up to 164-footers in Vancouver, Wash., and his plan basically is when he gets the first order for a big one he’ll fire up there and start manufacturing.”
But with Christensen being the only company on the peninsula, Hammontree and others have started looking to utilize the land through project Timberlake.
“We have shown it to several industries and the comment’s always been made, ‘Well, this is too pretty for an industrial park,’ and we understand that aspect of it,” Hammontree said. “However, the other part of it falls into this. There’s a great number of people that use the public use areas in that area and we want to maintain that for trails and so forth and so on, but also by being able to establish this land that’s not really usable for industry, like on the south side of the peninsula would allow us to have more investment in the area and support the tax base in jobs and so forth.”
Thoughts are the land could be a mixed use community. TRDA is working with Tennessee Valley Authority on land designations, Hammontree said.
“Better use for the area is essentially what this would mean,” Jack Qualls, Loudon County Economic Development Agency executive director, said. “Looking at what would be built out in the next 20-30 years. Opportunities for businesses, residential, commercial. Also protecting viewsheds for the existing Rarity Bay and those areas.”
Land use could be part residential, part industrial and part public use recreation, including the possibility of a marina, Hammontree said.
“In the plans as they stand right now there’s going to be an equestrian park,” Loudon County Mayor Rollen “Buddy” Bradshaw, who also serves as TRDA board vice chairman, said. “There’s going to be some trails there that people can enjoy, and that’s really the way things for communities are going. They’re going more toward healthy lifestyles and outside activities. I think trails — you look at the walking trails we have here in Loudon County and even in the area specifically, I think that’s just a draw.
“... Loudon County as a whole is just about out of flat property to build on, and so right now something that’s being looked as the Timberlake project that would ultimately be kind of a golf cart-type community,” he added. “Have the condominiums or townhouses or however you want out there, as well as stores.”
Hammontree emphasized officials are thinking long term, potentially 25-30 years, and noted at this point “it’s all a community plan that we’re trying to put together.”
“We’ve got some things on paper but we also realize that when people start developing that will totally change,” Hammontree said. “It will be within the concepts of the land use areas. What we’ve drawn is streets and things like that that are just hypothetical kind of things so people can visualize a little bit better about what we’re talking about. It’s kind of hard just to draw a picture with words when a lot of people have never even been on that site or walked it or anything like that.”
A public hearing will take place 6-8 p.m. Thursday at the Greenback Community Center. Hopes are to listen for better ways to use the land, Hammontree said. Negotiations will continue with TVA afterward.
“I think the public hearing will take a lot of as far which way the direction goes,” Bradshaw said. “If there’s support there then I think it may get underway even quicker than we imagined. If there’s a lot of opposition, we may be back to the drawing boards.”
