Developer withdraws Family Dollar plan

Green-shirted protesters showed up en masse to a zoning panel Monday in a continuing objection to developer Ed Cagle’s proposed Family Dollar at an entrance to the Glenwood neighborhood.

In response to the outcry, Mike Price, president of MAP Engineers and spokesman for the applicant, withdrew the zoning request and announced that the developer would seek to build the store elsewhere.

“We don’t want to go through a contentious process. We want it to be an easy process,” he told sign-carrying members of the neighborhood association before the meeting of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission. “I don’t want to see anything that will cause problems.”

Ed Cagle, who congratulated protesters on their effort, said he was just ready to move on.

“I think if they worked that hard, and if they felt that strongly, I was happy to withdraw the application,” Cagle said.

But the neighbors won’t be satisfied until a permanent solution is found to what they see as developmental encroachment on their historic neighborhood, according to neighborhood association President Tommy Diller.

He asked the zoning panel if there was a permanent way to prevent developers from trying to build in and around the neighborhood, but was rebuffed by Dale Mabee, chairman of the panel.

“We don’t have the legal right to do that,” Mabee said.

Ricardo Morris, who lives next door to where the store was to be built, agreed with Diller that a permanent solution must be found to “keep this from coming back.”

“We need a moratorium on encroachment,” he said. “We need to find some way to stop this so we don’t have to keep mobilizing every six months.”

Meanwhile, Cagle said he would proceed with development at another location on Third Street, and he expected a deal for the land to go through within days.