30,000-square-foot indoor soccer complex approved for Nolensville

February 14, 2017

Brentwood Home Page
by Landon Woodroof

A site plan for a 30,000-square-foot indoor soccer complex in Nolensville was approved Tuesday night at the city’s Planning Commission meeting.

The complex would be built at the end of Haley Industrial Drive on the north side of town, and would be the first privately owned space of its kind in Williamson County, developer Ryan Taylor, of Taylor Made Construction, said.

Although some concerns were voiced by commissioners about potential traffic impacts from this and other developments in that area of Nolensville, the plan passed unanimously at the meeting.

Three-quarters of the complex would be devoted to soccer, including a turf field, a sitting area for spectators and locker rooms. Taylor plans to move he and his wife’s business headquarters from its current location in Memphis to the other quarter of the building.

Travis Todd, of Littlejohn Engineering Associates, said the complex would be used primarily by local soccer organization Aris FC, which, according to its website, is a “premier youth soccer organization … dedicated to the development of a player’s skills, sportsmanship, and commitment to compete at the highest level of desired play.”

Taylor said the complex would be used by the club mostly on weekends and afternoons during the school year.

Planning Commissioner Larry Gardner asked Todd and Taylor if they had an idea of how much traffic the development would bring to the area.

Taylor said he had not undertaken a traffic study, but that the most people who would be in the facility at any time would be 150.

“We’re overloading that intersection there on Nolensville Road,” Gardner worried. “I wonder if it’s time that we do a traffic study on that before we approve anything else down there.”

Planning Commissioner Jason Patrick shared some of Gardner’s concerns with the traffic situation near Nolensville Road and Haley Industrial Drive.

“I’m hearing commentary pretty regularly from people in that area,” he said. “Because you’ve got the dentist’s office and other offices there. You’ve got Brittain Lane coming out. You’ve got the gas station there, the daycare there. This has gotta be the third or fourth or fifth new development that we’ve considered in this area.”

The situation did not seem as troubling to Town Engineer Don Swartz, who said the diversity of businesses’ operating times in the area actually helping to alleviate most traffic concerns.

“I do not think we are experiencing anything near a capacity problem on that intersection,” Swartz said. “If you look at these various uses we’re proposing there, the interesting thing is they all seem to peak at different times and days of the week. The church (Southpointe Community Church) is gonna be on Sunday, while this use is gonna be on Saturdays. The daycare’s (Ms. Nichole’s Inc.) are a.m., p.m. peak hours, whereas the industrial work tends to take place all day. It can sound like a lot when you talk about it individually or aggregate it altogether, but the fact of the matter is the capacity of that intersection is actually quite a bit larger than one might think.”

Commissioner Patrick asked Taylor if there was a chance other sports would have a place at the complex, or if the focus was always going to be only on soccer.

Taylor said other sports were possible at some point, but for now and foreseeable future the emphasis was going to be on soccer.

“I think it’d be a good fit for Nolensville,” Mayor Jimmy Alexander said as the discussion wound down.

“It’s something that’s not around here. Brentwood and Franklin both have one,” Taylor said, referring to two indoor arenas operated by Williamson County Parks & Recreation.

After the meeting, Taylor was pleased with the unanimous approval his project had received.

“Right now we’re just glad it’s approved,” he said. “We’re gonna start getting to work on it.”

Swartz said construction could commence on the project as soon as Taylor got a grading permit and a construction permit from the city.