Longtime Big Cove resident Waymon Burke believes the proposed mixed-use development being compared to the Village of Providence could be one of the best things to happen to his community, which sits east of the mountain from downtown Huntsville.

“This has got to be an A project,” he said of the project that is being called Big Cove Village, which would be a mixture of restaurants, shops, event space, parks, hiking trails, single family homes, townhomes and apartments.

The 92 acres in question at the intersection of Old Big Cove Road and Cecil Ashburn Drive have belonged to the Drake family as a working farm for generations,just outside the city limits near Owens Cross Roads. But if all goes as planned, it would become a thriving part of a growing Huntsville.

But Mark Ratliff is a bit more skeptical.

“This is a recipe for disaster simply because we are already over-populated with our schools,” he said. “Traffic is already a challenge at that particular intersection. The intersection was just widened to accept the traffic we have here now. And now we’re talking about putting in a thousand units of housing, more stoplights and pedestrian crosswalks at an intersection of a major freeway where people travel for work.”