Players at Jackson County’s community development table are showing their cards as transportation planning discussions get under way.

First to ante up have been the Town of Sylva and Southwestern Community College, the only two participants to turn in development plans to date. These plans will give way to a larger land-use and development map to be used in conjunction with the N.C. Department of Transportation’s long-range planning process. All of this came about over heated disputes regarding the potential construction of a southern bypass connecting U.S. 441 with U.S. 19-23.

“We’re hoping that this will be used for more than just the DOT,” said Jackson County Commission Chairman Brian McMahan.

Rather than construct a bypass, many Jackson County residents support alternate transportation development, such as access management, which would control the number of curb cuts and provide for business-to-business driveway connectivity. Access management is one of the key components to Sylva’s development plan, which was adopted Oct. 6.

Goals include creating alternate routes to alleviate traffic on heavily traveled roadways such as N.C. 107 — the primary artery through town leading to Western Carolina University and the main commercial strip. There are also plans to set up greenways and bike paths.

In discussing Sylva’s plan at the transportation planning panel’s last meeting, Town Planner Jim Aust said that access management is something the state’s Department of Transportation cannot mandate. The DOT must allow access to each parcel of land and only the town can choose to further restrict access by forcing adjoining tracts to interconnect.

“We didn’t get on the stick when Wal-Mart came to town, so it’s our fault,” Aust said.

Over the past five years, 57 percent of the new development in Sylva has been retail or business related; 36 percent has been residential development; and 7 percent has been institutional or government related, according to Sylva’s town development plan. As these areas continue to grow, so does the demand for related needs such as water and sewer services, schools, police and fire protection and so forth.

“We start seeing how inter-related any type of growth is,” said Gerald Green, a consultant and facilitator working with the planning group.

For example, Western Carolina University plans to grow to accommodate 10,000 students on campus in 10 years’ time, according to Troy Barksdale, director of University Planning. Along with those new students comes a demand for affordable housing, both for students and new faculty. The university cannot meet this need on its own, and consequently students and faculty will look to the private sector in the form of apartment rentals and new home construction, Barksdale said.

At SCC, growth has come at a much slower pace. Faculty has grown 5.7 percent annually since 1995, and student enrollment increased by only 241 students from 1993-94 to 2003-04. However, this tepid growth rate could mean there’s a stable local economy, according to SCC’s draft plan. A community college’s core function is to meet the needs of its service area.

“For example,” the plan states, “community colleges must respond to retraining needs when a major employer closes and individuals need retraining to change careers or to gain new skills making them more employable. Also, community colleges are expected to provide training for new employees when a new industry arrives, SCC’s draft plan states. Consequently, many North Carolina community colleges have experienced unexpected enrollment increases of 30 to 50 percent over a period of only two or three years due to economic events in their service area.”

According to projections, SCC should continue growing at 3 to 5 percent a year. The campus, which covers more than 70 acres, can’t expand any further unless it acquires property, and mountainous land makes that a challenge. Nevertheless, an additional 13 acres were recently acquired. Negotiations are under way to acquire 9 acres from the U.S. Forest Service and the Jackson County public school system’s bus garage site, both located adjacent to the campus.

“Acquisition of both of these sites is critical to the ability of the Jackson Campus to grow,” SCC’s draft plan states. “Both of these sites contain buildable property and, if obtained, would enable the college to utilize its bond dollars to build the much needed library/classroom building. In addition, the acquisition of these properties would enable the college to complete a loop road through the campus, greatly enhancing the traffic flow.”

The transportation planning group’s next meeting will be held at noon, Oct. 19, at the Jackson County Justice and Administration Center.