Sumner County, Tennessee

Sumner County Zoning and Development Code

Sumner County is a largely rural, but rapidly suburbanizing, county located northeast of Nashville. Hemmed in by a half dozen communities on its periphery, the county has several roads having the potential to gradually transition into strip commercial corridors. Many “cookie-cutter” residential subdivisions are also spouting up along the corridors, such as Long Hollow Pike, and long-time residents are alarmed over the loss of the area’s rural character.

To help the county deal with these serious challenges, TWC was first hired to lead a multidisciplinary team to rewrite a plan for the Long Hollow Area.

As a critical followup, TWC was hired to completely rewrite the existing zoning and development code, subdivision regulations, and related policies for the entire county. To supplement the portions of existing code focused on land uses and densities, new districts were introduced based upon “place types” that consider development forms and character. The new code also features an overhaul of road/street types, avoids a linear pattern of strip commercial development to be replaced by a nodal approach, seeks to expand the housing types, and preserves the area’s rural character. Following TWC’s drafting of the code, the County made revisions in-house to stretch their budget and adopted it in 2020.