‘Unbelievably busy’
Ooltewah housing projects spark concerns about growing pains
Anytime there’s an accident on Highway 58 or Interstate 75, traffic tends to pile up on Hunter Road, and the stationary cars remind long-time resident Tammy Dana of a parking lot.
“It is unbelievably busy,” Dana, who has lived in the Ooltewah area for about 20 years, said about Hunter Road. “Dangerous.”
With available land making Ooltewah a lucrative place to build, Hamilton County commissioners frequently hear concerns from residents about traffic and growth. County numbers show Hunter Road has a crash rate nine times higher than the state average.
“The shoulders in a lot of areas are just not there,” Dana said in a phone call. “If you get one tire off, you are going to wreck because there’s nowhere to go. Wrecks happen all the time.”
GreenTech Homes is building about 200 homes near Dana’s house on Bell Mill Road, which she said is too narrow to handle the influx of traffic she expects to come to her neighborhood. On Wednesday, the County Commission will take up a rezoning along Snow Hill Road that would enable the construction of a 447-unit senior living community, which has also attracted criticism from nearby residents. Data from the Tennessee Department of Transportation indicates that section of Snow Hill Road, which is near Ooltewah High School, sees 10,422 vehicle trips per day.
In July, Commissioner Steve Highlander, R-Ooltewah, asked his colleagues to consider a moratorium on rezoning requests in the vicinity of Hunter Road, but he ultimately pulled that resolution after he sensed it didn’t have support from the board. Mayor Weston Wamp formed a road task force to evaluate infrastructure needs in outlying parts of the county. Highlander is a member and has met with the group three times.
As tax money comes in from new developments, Highlander said, it needs to be invested in outdated roads, many of which were constructed 50 years ago and have seen no major changes other than new pavement. With few exits and no shoulders, wrecks in the Ooltewah area can result in a two- or threehour wait for other motorists.
“We talk about having kicked the can down the road on school improvements,” Highlander said in a
phone call. “We have kicked the can down the road on roads.”
Commission Chair Jeff Eversole, R-Ooltewah, said staff members at the Hamilton County-Chattanooga Regional Planning Agency have been working on ways to slow down development in areas where there are infrastructure issues. Eversole said he would prefer to see officials hit pause in overdeveloped areas while they come up with a longterm, sustainable strategy.
Chattanooga and Hamilton County leaders recently approved a new funding plan to cover cost overages
for a $115 million minor league baseball stadium in the city’s South Broad District, which officials expect will spur commercial and residential projects in an area that has historically lacked investment. Eversole hopes the project will also alleviate some of his district’s growing pains.
“It’s not about the baseball stadium,” he said. “It’s about 900 more homes — townhomes and apartments there — and that helps take the pressure off Ooltewah.”
Nathan Janeway, Hamilton County’s director of development services, said in a phone interview that Volkswagen, which has a production facility in Chattanooga, is a primary driver behind the push for housing in Ooltewah. The area also has plenty of available property, and it’s close to amenities in Collegedale and at the Hamilton Place mall.
Much of the farmland in Ooltewah has been inactive or underused for quite some time, he said, and many families sat on those properties knowing they would be a good investment for their children. Even if the land is zoned for agriculture, it’s still possible to fit two houses per acre on many of those parcels, he noted, which can be impactful across a 50- to 100-acre property.
Today, it’s difficult for families in Hamilton County to sustain a 150-acre dairy farm, Eversole noted. It’s not cost-effective, and it becomes less lucrative as future generations inherit that land, making it more likely for them to sell it to a developer.
“Farmers don’t have a 401(k),” Eversole said. “When you pass it down, generation to generation, that becomes someone’s 401(k).”
As part of the county’s area regional planning process, officials put together a list of transportation project recommendations for Hamilton County’s more problematic roads. Several projects around Hunter Road are high priority, including intersection improvements at Lebron Sterchi Drive and safety upgrades at a curve near Crooked Creek Drive. Those two projects could cost a combined $3 million to $5 million.
County numbers indicate there were 238 crashes on Hunter Road during an approximately two-year period, Janeway said, one of which was fatal. Janeway said there’s a quick change in elevation at Hunter Road’s intersection with Lebron Sterchi Drive, which provides access to Wallace A. Smith Elementary School and Hunter Middle School. There’s also a sharp turn near Crooked Creek Drive.
County officials have a number of options in their toolbox for improving road conditions, Janeway said, which can include widening streets, changing speed limits and installing traffic lights or roundabouts at intersections. Any elected official, however, would be hesitant to condemn property to create more rightof-way to widen a road, he said, and county government has frequently been on the side of landowners when those questions arise.
“We want to try to balance the need for better infrastructure with property rights, and a lot of those owners out on Hunter Road have owned those properties for 50-plus years — sometimes generations,” Janeway said. “I think historically we’ve tried to err on the side of property rights over everything else, but at some point, when you have a crash rate nine times the state average, something has to be done, right? So we’re looking at our options.”
In some cases, that could involve adding rumble strips or changing stripes to help drivers as they navigate curves, Janeway said.
Dan Reuter, the regional planning agency’s executive director, said a large share of Hamilton County’s growth during the past 10 years has occurred in Ooltewah. Snow Hill Road and Hunter Road are safe if motorists drive the speed limit, he said.
“But, having said that, I don’t see a need … to increase the density and try to develop as much as we possibly can along two-lane roads that we already know are overcapacity or unsafe,” Reuter said in a phone call. “I think it’s a sign we need to be really smart and give good recommendations to the County Commission.”
Gary Boles, an Ooltewah resident who makes regular appearances at Hamilton County Commission meetings, said traffic on Hunter Road has become progressively worse in the more than 10 years he’s lived in the area. Although there is developable land, he said, much of it is too steep or sits in a flood plain.
Boles said county commissioners who don’t represent the Ooltewah area tend to be more apt to support housing projects because they boost overall property taxes — revenues that he said officials then spend on initiatives throughout the county.
“They don’t care about us,” Boles said in a phone call. “All they want is to see more tax money come in. … They always say, ‘Oh, well you have to build first before you can do the infrastructure.’ Well, how long and how much building is it going to take before you say, ‘Stop, we haven’t done anything’?”
Dana said she and her neighbors are not completely against growth — property owners have rights — but Hamilton County officials need to slow it down.
“They don’t worry about the infrastructure,” Dana said. “They’re not worried about the schools. They’re not worried about anything. They want a house built so they can get the tax dollars is what it boils down to. They don’t care if the citizens are happy or unhappy.”