There’s a lake where a ravine used to be between the Coffey Hill and Tuck A Way neighborhoods in Nashville.
Three new roads have been built, too, and a sewer main has been put in. Next come water, electric and fiber optic lines. By the end of the month, the developers of the new Woods Lane neighborhood plan to have the place looking good enough to show home lots to potential buyers.
“But people are coming now, and we’ve already sold one,” said Steve Miller, the architect and one of the owners behind the project. He knows of five or six more people who are “really interested” as well.
Miller partnered with Brown County resident Scott Mills a little over a year ago to roll out plans for Woods Lane, a 15-lot neighborhood encircling a 1.5-acre lake just a half-mile from downtown Nashville. They purchased 11.2 wooded acres in the fall of 2019 and received approvals from the Brown County Area Plan Commission in June and September last year to proceed with their site plans.
This is the first major subdivision to be built in Nashville in more than a decade.
This also could be the first area in Brown County where tax-increment financing, or TIF, could be captured from a residential project.
On April 1, the Brown County Schools Board of Trustees approved the concept of creating a TIF district to encompass the Woods Lane properties. It was an idea brought to them by Ed Curtin, adviser to the Nashville Redevelopment Commission.
School board approval is required when a community creates a residential TIF district, but it is not required when creating commercial TIF districts. Nashville has one commercial TIF district now and is in the process of converting it to two districts.
School board members supported the residential TIF concept for Woods Lane in part because they wanted a way to increase connectivity between the schools campus and that end of town. One thing TIF could do is help build a sidewalk along Old State Road 46 up to the homes in the Coffey Hill/Tuck A Way/Woods Lane neighborhoods, Curtin said. Now, students and adults who walk it have to hug the side of the winding, hilly town road with a blind curve.
Before the TIF district is actually created — a multi-step and multi-board process estimated to last four or five months — the school board will need to review and approve the economic plan for the TIF money. The Nashville Town Council, the Nashville Redevelopment Commission, the Brown County Area Plan Commission and the public also will need to weigh in.
How TIF works
TIF stands for tax-increment financing. It’s a way that a redevelopment commission can capture property tax money and place it in a fund to help pay for various projects of public benefit.
When a TIF district is created, a base year is set for tax assessment purposes. Any development on the land which occurs after that base year is likely to result in the owner paying higher property taxes. If that land is in a TIF district, the value of those higher taxes — anything over and above the base year assessment — goes into the TIF fund for at least 25 years. The TIF area could last for than 25 years if no debt has been bonded to be paid off by TIF money.
If the land where development occurs is not in a TIF district, and that development results in higher property taxes, that higher tax amount would automatically flow to government units such as the town, county, schools and township instead of having to wait until the TIF area is dissolved. So, in other communities where TIF has been used as an economic development tool in the past, the public benefit of making a TIF capture versus not using TIF has been debated.
The Nashville Redevelopment Commission is responsible for managing the TIF fund and directing how it is used, working from an economic plan document.
The economic plan for the Nashville residential TIF hasn’t been created yet, so it hasn’t been decided how this TIF money would be used. A series of public meetings will start in late spring to talk through ideas.
Walking the subdivision building site on April 1, Miller said he had not been contacted about his project being put in a TIF area but he’d read about the possibility. He said he’d be interested in talking to the redevelopment commission about how they could help each other.
He wasn’t sure yet what the options could be for using that TIF money, but he knows that the project has cost him and Mills more than they expected so far due to COVID-induced price changes.
He also sees a need to make this neighborhood more walkable to town, to Hard Truth Hills, to the Brown County Music Center and the Brown County Playhouse — all the amenities that will attract people to want to live there.
“We’re interested,” Miller said, “if we can help each other some way. (But) we’re not going to be selfish and want some money that could have gone to something more critical.”
About the neighborhood
The 15 Woods Lane lots are all different sizes, ranging from about a third of an acre to nearly 2 acres. All are wooded, and the developers plan for them to stay that way as much as possible.
Owners will have to agree to neighborhood covenants which are posted on the project website, woodslanebrowncounty.com. They include an expectation that homes be “designed in concert with the terrain and constructed with a minimum disruption of the forest.” An Architectural/Ecological Review Board will be formed before any homes are built which will review lot improvements, construction, additions and changes such as color schemes to make sure they’re consistent with the covenants.
The covenants also include rules against parked RVs, boats and trailers; restrictions on other motorized vehicles like ATVs, motorcycles and dirt bikes; and other points. “All are consistent with environmentally sound living and are designed to ensure that residents will be similarly vested in preserving an atmosphere in which to enjoy nature,” the agreement reads.
A homeowners’ association will be formed with annual fees of $400 to help pay for road, pond and utility maintenance, landscaping and lighting. The Town of Nashville will maintain the main road, Woods Lane; the HOA will maintain the offshoot roads, Woods Trail and Woods Pond.
Because of the way the land is and the way the developers desire the neighborhood to feel, these likely aren’t going to be entry-level homes. It costs more to build on a rolling-hills piece of land than it does on flat land, Mills and Miller explained last spring.
Miller predicted that to build a good home from scratch with energy efficiencies, an attractive design and quality materials, it’ll run in the $350,000 to $400,000 range. Some homes on the prime lots might end up being closer to $500,000.
He’s confident they can convert the interest they’re already seeing into sales, because for people coming from other states and metro areas, that sounds cheap. Plus, they’d be only about a mile’s bike ride away from the extensive trail system in the state park.
The only lot that’s sold so far was to a man who lives in the Carolinas and wants to be closer to his daughter, who lives here.
He’s also fielded inquires from young professionals who love all the outdoor recreation opportunities and the local arts, entertainment and food scene. Since more people worked from home during the pandemic and found they can work from anywhere with high-speed internet, Miller said they’re interested in choosing a place they want to actually be.
“We’re seeing these 40- and 50-year-old people that are saying: How much are these lots? $60,000? Wow. We checked the taxes and the insurance and whatnot, and this is going to be a lot less than where we’re coming from, and it’s going to be quiet and we’re going to have night sounds and geese and frogs and blue herons.”
