May 15, 2001

By Bob Fowler and Frank Munger, Oak Ridge Bureau

OAK RIDGE -- The developer of a residential tract announced Monday he plans to donate to the city of Oak Ridge a large chunk of the Clinch River floodplain that the U.S. Department of Energy sold him for $54 an acre.

Mike Ross, president of Rarity Communities Inc., said he's going to give about 100 acres of the 182-acre floodplain to Oak Ridge for a public greenbelt that will include walking, bike and nature trails, and picnic areas.

Ross said he is in talks with Oak Ridge officials and representatives of the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee to develop a "major greenway initiative" for West Oak Ridge.

DOE, meanwhile, continues to draw criticism for the controversial sale of federal land. A new audit from the Inspector General said the land transaction was an inappropriate use of the agency's special authority under the Atomic Energy Act.

"By invoking these special authorities, the department was not required to follow the standard federal practices for property sales, such as advertising, seeking competitive bids, and obtaining independent appraisals to establish the property's fair-market value," the IG report said.

While acknowledging DOE's legal authority to sell the land, the audit found that it was an inappropriate use of this authority.

"Further, the department sought to facilitate the sale to the 'preferred' purchaser," the report said. "As a result, there was no assurance that the land was sold at a fair-market value and in the best interests of the government."

Conservationists who opposed the land sale all along were outraged when they learned the floodplain had been sold for $54 an acre.

Based on the tentative plans announced Monday, the public greenbelt would start on the 1,216-acre tract that Ross and partner Charlie Hicks bought from the Boeing Co. and eventually link up to another greenway and walking trail at Horizon Center.

Horizon Center is a high-tech industrial park along Highway 95 in West Oak Ridge that has been developed on land that DOE is leasing to CROET, a nonprofit organization given the task of finding new uses for underutilized DOE properties.

Ross said the floodplain greenbelt will be left mostly intact, and he is offering the services of his landscaping team to help CROET and Oak Ridge in designing a "cohesive landscaping concept for the area."

"The goal of the initiative is to create an overall landscaping design and signage plan for the west end of Oak Ridge," said Ross.

"The concept sounds good," said Dev Joslin, president of Advocates for the Oak Ridge Reservation, one of several environmental groups that have expressed concern about DOE's sale of the floodplain.

Joslin said that if two large tracts of wetlands conveyed by DOE to Ross and Hicks are left untouched, "we would be particularly pleased."

"We'll certainly make a sincere attempt to be as gentle on the wetlands as we can possibly be," Ross said.

He and Hicks last year announced plans to convert the former Boeing property, once eyed by that company as a missile-testing site, into a planned community of more than 1,000 residences.

Commercial sites and some industrial development are also envisioned. Ross said Monday the first marketing stage of the development will begin next year.

Rarity Communities is completing Rarity Bay on Tellico Lake in Loudon County and is developing Rarity Mountain near Jellico.

Bob Fowler may be reached at 481-3625 or bfowler@knoxnews.infi.net. Frank Munger may be reached at 482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.