Oak Ridge presents draft comprehensive plan, aims for planning commission review in January

City planning staff on Tuesday presented a draft comprehensive land use plan that lays out a 10–20 year vision for Oak Ridge, including a future land use map, five small‑area plans and an implementation schedule. The council heard a roughly hour‑long presentation and asked detailed questions about map clarity, DOE‑owned lands and next steps for zoning and code updates.

“It's a 60,000‑foot view,” said Jennifer Williams, who introduced the document and explained it is a draft intended to guide later zoning map amendments and code revisions. Williams said staff and the consultant team conducted extensive outreach — more than 600 survey responses, 18 stakeholder meetings and a local ambassador program — and that the plan intentionally builds on the City Blueprint process rather than replacing it.

Alexis Garcia, a consultant on the project, walked council through the plan’s elements: a community snapshot, engagement findings, the future land use map, community elements (transportation, housing, environment, parks) and implementation. Garcia noted the map is not zoning: “What this map shows is a vision for future land use for the community,” she said, adding that the plan includes dashboards that describe preferred uses, density and building character for each designation.

Council members pressed staff on several specifics. Councilman Hensley said the large, largely DOE‑owned area on the west end merits more visionary planning for waterfront and open‑space uses, calling the contiguous shoreline “one of the greatest resources this city has.” Williams replied that staff had assigned future land use classifications to some DOE parcels to show potential uses but would not rezoning DOE property until transfer occurs.

Other questions covered the five small‑area studies, map legibility across formats and the rails‑to‑trails schedule. Planning staff said the next formal steps are to post a revised draft online after incorporating council and planning commission comments, return the plan to the planning commission in January and bring it back to the council for consideration in February 2026.

The public will have an opportunity to review the online materials before planning commission action, staff said. A member of the public asked whether the plan’s maps could be updated to indicate which portions of the former DOE site officials and regulators have declared ‘‘no further action’’; staff agreed to consider adding such a layer or a separate map.