The vacant downtown Chattanooga lot where the Cheeburger Cheeburger restaurant building collapsed in March apparently won't be used for surface parking, after all.
After questions were raised whether that was the "highest and best use" for the prime property at 138 Market St. near the riverfront and the Tennessee Aquarium, the application that sought variances from the city was withdrawn by Kevin Boehm, a local real estate broker who represents the property's owner, George W. Walls Jr.
"There's a lot of misunderstanding to the variances we were looking at," Boehm said Friday.
He sought a reduction from the city's form-based code committee in the number of required trees from 12 to six, asked that no landscape islands be required and wanted smaller parking setbacks from the street, including no setback in some spots along Aquarium Way where a 30-foot setback ordinarily would be required.
The proposal led to criticisms from Kim White, the president and CEO of the River City Co., a private nonprofit group that advocates for downtown, and from civic activist Helen Burns Sharp in a Times Free Press article Thursday.
"The goal seems to be to cram as many cars in as possible with the minimal amount of landscaping," Sharp said.
Boehm said, "When I saw the article, I thought this was a big misunderstanding, and I don't want to be part of it."
He declined further comment.
The 141-year-old brick building originally was built as the Shelton Flour Mill. The front of the building collapsed in a few seconds on the afternoon of March 29.
Walls blamed his tenant, Charlie Eich, the owner of Cheeburger Cheeburger, for the collapse, saying it was Eich's obligation to fix the exterior walls. Walls filed a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages.
Eich countersued for $1.5 million in Hamilton County Circuit Court, arguing that the old building collapsed because Walls let a concrete floor be poured upstairs in the Vaudeville Cafe, a separate business that closed in 2015.
No one was hurt when the building collapsed because Eich had closed Cheeburger Cheeburger the night before as a precaution. The front exterior wall was leaning, and a building inspector had warned of structural problems a few days before.
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com,www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness, on Twitter @meetforbusiness or at 423-757-6651.