MICHELLE WILLARD, Post Staff Writer
Posted: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 3:28 pm

Managing growth and protecting Rutherford County’s resources top the list of issues from, Parsons Brinkerhoff, consultants behind a comprehensive plan’s development.

Parsons Brinkerhoff presented its Existing Conditions Report to Rutherford County Comprehensive Plan’s Steering Committee on Monday night.

The report outlines where the county stands now and the trends that brought it to this point, as well as important issues that need to be addressed when the comprehensive land-use plan is developed.

The main issue the county needs to address is the exponential growth it has experienced in the past three decades.

“Rutherford County has experience over 300 percent growth since 1970, more than five times the growth rate of the State of Tennessee,” the Parsons Brinkerhoff report said.

It also points out the county is the second largest in Middle Tennessee, but has 12.6 percent of the population living below the poverty line, second only to Montgomery County.

One reason the county has grown so swiftly is the relative ease for developers to build residential developments.

“While many parcels of land are still vacant, the current zoning structure allows for, and even encourages, future residential development,” the report said. Land in the county is, by default, zoned residential, but can be rezoned with a joint rezoning/conditional-use permit.

Because of the ease with which houses are built, in the mid-1990s 60 acres per day were being developed from open space to mostly residential tracts.

“Many of the older communities that formed Rutherford County have either disappeared of lost their distinguishing characteristics, also altering the cultural and physical landscape of the county,” the report said.

All the development and affordable housing has also brought in commuters from surrounding counties with most commuters headed into Davidson County daily.

“Rutherford County send 2.65 workers to other counties for every worker who commutes into Rutherford County,” the report said.

Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com.