McAfee Road in Tusculum will be closed to through traffic beginning April 6 Tusculum Mayor Alan Corley said during a Tusculum Board of Mayor and Commissioners meeting Monday night.
The Tusculum board unanimously approved a resolution in February that would close McAfee Road in Tusculum to through traffic, and convert the road to two dead-end streets for safety reasons.
McAfee Road is a narrow street making it difficult for cars to pass in opposite directions, and even more difficult for larger vehicles such as trucks to traverse, particularly on the western section of the street, which is completely residential in nature.
The eastern section of the road has no residences or businesses that connect to the street, and is located entirely on a portion of the former Greene Valley Developmental Center property owned by the Tusculum-Greeneville-Greene County Tennessee Industrial Development Board.
Some residents expressed concerns about potentially hazardous truck traffic on the residential road in March 2025 to the Greene Valley IDB, due to a new 120,000 square-foot Eternal Water bottling facility being placed in the now dubbed “Greene Valley Business Park.
Corley noted in February that residents on the street supported its closure to through traffic.
The action taken by the Tusculum Board essentially makes the road a dead end street once it meets the IDB-owned property, and was aimed at preventing heavy truck traffic in the residential section of the street.
Traffic going to Greene Valley Business Park will be directed to use Edens Road for access. Vehicles will not be able to access the Greene Valley Business Park from McAfee Road, neither will vehicles be able to exit the business park using McAfee Road due to the closure.
Corley said Monday night that dead end signs had already been put up at each end of McAfee Road, and that electronic signs facing each direction had been placed at the area where the road is going to be blocked. The large electronic signs will warn motorists that the street is blocked and they will have to turn around.
The signs have been up for three weeks already according to Corley.
In accordance with the February resolution, McAfee Road is to be barricaded or blocked at a point near the property boundary of the Greene Valley Business Park, thus preventing through traffic and creating a dead-end on both the eastern and western sections of the street.
An appropriate turn-around space will be provided on both sides of the street blockage. On the residential side of blockage, the turn around will be large enough for a school bus to use.
Two projects, including the bottling facility, are under construction on the locally owned property. Another part of the property will soon be the home of the new Greene County Health Department. Construction on the 12,000 square-foot facility, built with over $8 million of grant funding by Greene County, is set to be completed by the beginning of May. Officials expect the new Health Department to open not long after construction is complete.
The water bottling plant, which will employ about 45 people, is also expected to open by the end of June.
A total of 335 acres of undeveloped land south of Edens Road at the former developmental center site is now under the control of the local IDB.
The front of the property, which runs along U.S. Highway 11E is still under the control of the state of Tennessee. A new regional Department of Disability and Aging headquarters and a Tennessee College of Applied Technology are being constructed on the state-owned property. Those facilities are also slated to be completed this summer, with the TCAT planning to accept students this fall.
In other business Monday night, the board heard a presentation on AEDs (automated external defibrillators) from Amy Parker of Cardiac Solutions.
Tusculum Police Chief Danny Greene said the Tusculum Police Department was looking to have an AED in each of the department’s five patrol vehicles. Additional AEDs would be placed in the city’s public works building and city hall.
Currently, there are no AEDs in the police department’s vehicles.
Tusculum Mayor Alan Corley said officials would look at its current fiscal year budget and determine if AEDs could be purchased, or if funding for AEDs needed to be placed in the budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
In addition, Mickey Ellis presented Tusculum’s audit report for fiscal year 2024. He noted the town’s finances were in good order, and presented a mostly clean opinion except for a couple housekeeping measures.
Ellis said the city needed to adopt a cyber security policy for its sewer system, and that the city needed to conduct a condition assessment on its sewer system. A condition assessment is supposed to be done every three years.
Corley said that the city would complete both tasks by the end of June.
On April 1, the Tusculum Board of Mayor and Commissioners will hold a strategic planning workshop from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Meen Center on the campus of Tusculum University. The workshop is open to the public.
