Cookeville To Consider Amendment For Food City Infrastructure Agreement

Cookeville City Council will consider an amended agreement with Food City Thursday night allowing the company to open before the original infrastructure work is complete.

City Manager James Mills said that the company wants to open April 6th. He said Food City has been a good corporate partner.

“But this is not an ideal situation this is not the way we want to see developments proceed,” Mills said. “they’re not supposed to be open until all these things are completed. We do have financial guarantees and will continue to have financial guarantees to make sure these things happen.”

Planning Director Jon Ward said the agreement would allow Food City to open while they finish all infrastructure improvements. He said pending weather all they need to do is get curbing down on the south side of the development. He said developers would then turn their focus to the north side, where multiple pieces of infrastructure need to be compelted.

Mills said that the amendment would put Food City into the agreement, which they were not included before. He said that this gives them more skin in the game to get this done as quickly as possible.

“Food City is the one requesting this,” Mills said. “They’ve hired people, and they’ll already be on payroll. The longer they go past this date, because this is the date that I believe the developers would indicate it would happen, we can hold them to that. But it punishes Food City.”

Mills said that he does not believe this would set a precedent for other developments down the road. City Attorney Dan Rader the amendment would not allow a certificate of occupancy for another property until agreements are met for that property.