Citizens Oak Ridge

OAK RIDGE - In the biggest controversy in years, proposed city funding to help pay for site work for an upscale shopping center has sharply divided Atomic City residents.
The issue spawned a successful petition drive for a referendum on a bond issue to help pay for that site work.

BOB FOWLER NEWS SENTINE A sign posted by Future of Oak Ridge, or FOR, stands at the entrance to Pine Ridge off Illinois Avenue in Oak Ridge.

While there are hotly contested races for City Council and school board, that referendum question headlines Oak Ridge's municipal elections Tuesday.

With that decision looming, feuding grassroots groups have held rallies, purchased newspaper ads and erected competing yard signs urging "FOR'' and "NO'' votes in an ongoing publicity blitz.

Dozens of frequently passionate letters to the editor about the hot-button issue have been published.

City Council candidates are divided on the matter, with three favoring the bond issue, three opposing it and one straddling the fence.

Voters Tuesday are being asked if they approve of the city issuing up to $6 million in general obligation bonds to help with retail development.

The issue has sparked a perfect storm of controversy on several levels that began in earnest last January.

That's when officials with GBT Realty Corp. in an Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce meeting unveiled their $65 million shopping center proposal that they've named Crestpointe of Oak Ridge.

That Brentwood, Tenn., development firm, with a long-established track record of opening upscale shopping centers, had been looking at potential sites in Oak Ridge for such a center for more than a year.

GBT executives said the only large tract suitable to national retailers for such a development with the requisite traffic flow is the 60-acre site atop Pine Ridge, a leveled-off mesa overlooking Illinois Avenue at the city's premier southern gateway.

The developers said a 175,000-square-foot SuperTarget would anchor the project and that it would lure some 250,000 square feet of other national stores and eateries that normally follow Target openings.

There was one major problem: Because of unique topography of the Pine Ridge site, the city was being asked to transfer $10.5 million to its industrial development board for use in site-preparation costs, pegged at a total of $20.5 million.

A new access road would have to be built, a vast amount of grading was necessary, and huge retaining walls, some 50 feet high, would have to be erected.

"This is an opportunity,'' Mayor David Bradshaw said during that January announcement. "We've got to decide as a community if we want to do this.''

Making that decision has been an often painful, always public process. It's focused on the proposed location in particular and, in general, on the city's proper role in retail development.

Council in February voted 7-0 to authorize a bond issue to pay for part of the city's share of the project, with the balance coming from debt reserves and the city's economic development fund.

That move triggered a petition drive launched by Bill Schramm, a Roane State Community College economics professor, to put the bond issue to a referendum vote by the citizens.

Schramm six years earlier mounted another petition drive in a bid to stop former professional football player Nat Revis from continuing with his plan to level off Pine Ridge for development.

While that petition move ultimately fizzled, it drew attention to questions about Revis' controversial purchase in 1999 of the 71 acres of Pine Ridge for $2,250 an acre and his plan to chop off 70 feet of ridgetop elevation for development.

Since then, only a building for storing old records from the nearby Y-12 National Security Complex has been built atop Pine Ridge.

In mid-March, Schramm and other members of the fledgling Citizens Oak Ridge group turned in the names of more than 3,600 voters who petitioned for a referendum. The names of only some 1,950 registered Oak Ridge voters were needed to call for that special vote.

Friends and foes of the project refined their arguments for and against it, and the debate was on.

According to those in favor, Crestpointe would:

Replenish the city's dwindling sales tax stream and provide an infusion of new revenue for local schools.
Reduce upward pressure on the city's property tax rate.
Generate at least $60 million a year in new sales, with the developer forecasting $142 million more in sales annually.
Address citizens' gripes about a lack of local shopping opportunities and reverse an exodus of Oak Ridge shoppers heading toward Knox County's West Town Mall and Turkey Creek.
Create nearly 800 new full- and part-time jobs, with many of those new workers likely shopping in Oak Ridge, if not living in the city.
Repay the city's investment in less than 15 years through property tax revenue and in-lieu-of-tax payments from the center's occupants.
Those who favor the center say the city has set in place a set of safeguards that would assure that the city's investment would be secure.

Under those guidelines, GBT would have to:

Meet a strict development timetable.
Invest at least $50 million in the center.
Have at least 300,000 square feet leased up front.
Have Crestpointe at least 80 percent complete within two years.
The window of opportunity for such a shopping center in Oak Ridge is rapidly closing, those in favor of the project say, because of competing shopping opportunities that are taking shape in Lenoir City and Clinton and already in West Knoxville.

The grassroots group endorsing the bond issue is titled Future of Oak Ridge, or FOR. Contributions to that effort totaled $27,285 by Thursday's reporting deadline, including a $10,000 donation from Franklin Land Associates, an affiliate of GBT.

Opponents of the bond issue have a long list of concerns about the plan, particularly in view of what they consider Oak Ridge's dubious track record in previous public-private endeavors.

"The city, through a series of ill-conceived deals, has lost the confidence of its own citizens,'' Schramm said during a recent public forum on the controversy.

The city-owned Centennial Golf Course and a promised residential development around it have been marred by delays and funding questions, opponents say.

They also point to the planned city partnership with the new owners of the almost-empty Oak Ridge Mall that unraveled when voters in 2002 rejected a $23.2 million bond issue in a similar referendum vote.

According to opponents:

The Pine Ridge site is the wrong location because it's outside of the center of town, and a shopping center there would create a traffic nightmare, even with two access points.
It's a public subsidy of a private venture that would be detrimental to existing retailers. "Sustainable retail development in the rest of the city may be stifled,'' City Council candidate Fred Childress said during the public forum.
Studies of likely sales and shopping visits are overly optimistic.
City support for Crestpointe means Oak Ridge is giving up on any plan to convert the old Oak Ridge Mall into a downtown village of shops and eateries.
The city at first had a hurry-up schedule for approval, saying a decision must be reached by mid-April to mesh with Target's construction timetable. "Many citizens are very uncomfortable with the fast-tracking of a major public expenditure,'' Schramm said in one news release. That deadline was pushed back once the petition triggered the referendum.
The Pine Ridge location would be unsightly, with residents afforded views of huge retaining walls and the backs of stores.
The city's funding formula has changed, with officials first saying that up to $6 million on bonds would be issued, and later saying only $2.5 million in bonds would be needed.
Schramm said Citizens Oak Ridge, composed of some 40-50 residents, received $2,680 in contributions during the initial reporting period.

Voting in Tuesday's election will be 9 a.m.-7 p.m.

Bob Fowler, News Sentinel Anderson County editor, may be reached at 865-481-3625.

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