HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Alleviating pressure is just one phrase Dennis Madsen with the City of Huntsville used in a conversation about how the city goes into the new year planning for growth. "I think we're lucky in that you're seeing development happening really in all four cardinal directions within the city," Madsen shares. "So that means there's no area that's under kind of particularly heavy pressure."
The city has worked hard in 2023 to keep developing the infrastructure needed for a growing city. "We are seeing areas in the west that because of industrial growth there, there's maybe a little bit more pressure on supportive development, like a commercial development and residential development to kind of take shape around that.," Madsen explains. "But we really try to be aggressive in understanding what kind of zoning we need to have on the ground, what kind of regulations we need to have to shape that supportive growth."
One key to a successful growth project, having the roads that support the capacity. " A really good example of that is Greenbrier Parkway, which if you drive along very, very open, there's not a lot of development on it. it's a very kind of high-capacity road," Madsen shares. "It can carry a lot of traffic that was done in advance in anticipation of a lot of the development that's going to occur around there."
That's not the only area city planners are thinking about. "The Northern Bypass getting that one kicked off, that'll be a really great tool for supporting development in the northern half of the city," Madsen shares. "I think that you know, some of the improvements to 565, the ongoing discussions about widening 72, the aforementioned greenbrier parkway, a lot of those will help us continue to manage growth and encourage growth in the right areas."