Residents get a look at potential plans for Hub City’s future
JACKSON, Tenn. — Hub City residents were invited to City Hall Tuesday evening to learn more about the future of Jackson.
This event allowed members of the community to get up close and personal with future development plans in four sub areas of Jackson.
Tuesday marked the last public open house for the master planning series the City of Jackson has been doing with architectural firms to update the Civic Master Plan from 2015. In this plan, they will make updates to four sub areas of Jackson: West, Old Hickory, Downtown, and the area near the Oman Arena.
“So Downtown is more focused on being urban core, adding more variety of businesses, more residential, Oman Arena we’re going to look at again, more residential infill around all the school development we’ve seen over there, maybe some redevelopment of public housing,” said Lauren Kirk, City of Jackson’s Chief Innovation Officer. “Out west we’re planning for future growth, so again residential is the theme right now.”
The last of the four sub areas is the Jackson Plaza, and the city’s plans to build a large event center in the place of the former Service Merchandise building. This new event center would feature an arena, hotels, retail, and a convention center.
A common theme amongst all the sub areas is the interest of the city in residential housing.
“Cause we’re already seeing so much growth with so many industries that we’ve had coming to our area and our region over the last few years, and then of course the BlueOval effect,” Kirk said. “We just want to make sure we have adequate housing for all of our population, for people of every income bracket, every family size, everything that people need. So, that’s a big part of this planning process.”
The open house gave residents a chance to come to City Hall, look at the design proposals, and even leave feedback.
“As city planners, we could sit around all day in our closed offices and make plans for our city, but it’s not really feasible and it’s not really going to come to fruition until the communities bought into, until people see a vision, and they feel like they’ve contributed to it, and they’re ready to invest alongside the city, that’s when we see growth, that’s when we see change, so we’re super proud to have the public engaged in every part of the process,” Kirk said.
After going over the feedback from the public, the plans will then be presented to the Planning Commission in March, then the Jackson City Council in April.
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