Gretchen Knode remembers the first time she looked out across East Knox County from the top of House Mountain.

Proposed changes would need to be approved by County Commission, City Council and the Farragut Board of Mayor and Aldermen.

“It used to look like the Shire from Lord of the Rings,” Knode told members of the county’s Growth Policy Coordinating Committee on Tuesday. “There are more and more subdivisions, more and more houses.”

The encroaching development is destroying the view, she said — but more significantly, it’s destroying the “unique nature” of East Knox County, with its rolling hills and prime agricultural land.

Knode — who with her husband operates Five Stones Farm — was one of 14 people who spoke during public forum at the committee meeting, all of them raising concerns about proposed changes to the county’s Growth Policy Plan.

The plan, mandated by state law, designates different areas of the county for different levels of future growth. The most restrictive is land classified as “Rural.”

An amendment to the growth plan proposed by County Mayor Glenn Jacobs would designate about 17.5 square miles of currently rural land for “Planned Growth,” including what local farmers say is some of the county’s best farmland. (You can see an interactive map of the changes here.)

Jacobs convened the Growth Policy Coordinating Committee to consider the proposed amendment. It includes Jacobs, Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon, Town of Farragut Administrator David Smoak, and representatives from the school board, local utilities and assorted other organizations.

The proposal comes at the end of the nearly two-year Advance Knox planning process, which gathered public input on priorities for future growth and development. But critics say the changes reflect Jacobs’ priorities more than the community’s. The mayor has made no secret that he believes the county needs to allow more development in rural areas to accommodate future growth and alleviate the current housing crunch.

And those critics are growing in number. Tuesday was the third public meeting since the committee formed in October, and each one has drawn larger crowds. Dozens of people turned out last night, less than a week before Christmas. Several were carrying signs that said “Change the plan. Protect farms and rural areas,” and directed people to a new website — knoxgrowth.org — with information about the proposed changes.

The website lists its supporters as a broad coalition of farms and farmers, conservation and agricultural groups, and community organizations led by the Knox County Planning Alliance. 

Many of them spoke Tuesday and urged the committee to limit the expansion of the planned growth areas into the rural landscape.

“We are not anti-growth,” said Mary Long, a resident of the Ritta community along Washington Pike. “We love that people want to move to our town, and we hope that they love it as much as we do. However, we also want to continue loving it ourselves in the process. Can we find a happy medium there?”

Lisa Starbuck, an East Knox County resident who has been active for years in efforts to preserve the area’s rural character, told committee members that the proposed changes do not accurately reflect community input in the Advance Knox process. Community members consistently ranked persevering rural land as a top priority, alongside the need for more housing.

“The Ritta community is expected to absorb 6,000 acres of the Planned Growth area,” Starbuck said. “But in the master parks plan that was just adopted by County Commission (Monday) night, not a single new park has been proposed.”

A group of neighbors from South Knox County had a specific concern. They have been fighting a proposed development by an out-of-state company called Thunder Mountain. The company has asked to have its properties, some of which are currently designated as rural, moved into the planned growth areas, which could allow for more density.

“We as a community participated in the Advance Knox process,” said Dawn Close, one of the residents of the Dry Hollow community. “And we were very clear that we want to keep farmland farmland, we want the rural character of our area to stay that way. Adding all these additional homes to the edge of the county, literally two miles from the county line, we think is really not the way to go.”

Jim Snowden, the county’s senior director of engineering and public works, confirmed that Thunder Mountain had requested to have its properties designated for planned growth. He said it would be up to the coordinating committee whether to adopt that or any other requested changes.

The committee itself does not have final say. It can recommend or refuse to recommend the proposed amendment. But the decisions will come from County Commission, Knoxville City Council and the Farragut Board of Mayor and Aldermen. All three will have to separately approve modifications to the growth plan. If any one of those bodies rejects the changes, that would block the effort (as happened when Farragut refused to go along with an earlier set of revisions sought by Jacobs in 2020). 

The committee will gather again on Jan. 10, where there could be a vote on its recommendation. The opponents seem likely to return, perhaps in greater force still. They said they are driven by a sense of urgency.

As Knode said, “When prime farmland is turned into subdivisions, it does not ever become prime farmland again.”