Chattanooga City Council member Carol BerzIt’s time to banish duplexes to the dustbin of history, Hilltop Neighborhood homeowners argued on Monday.
More than two dozen neighbors, along with City Councilwoman Carol Berz, successfully fought an effort by Energy Way Corp. to win an exception to the community’s single-family zoning at a meeting of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission.
The vote against the duplex was unanimous.
“This is a neighborhood who worked long and hard to become what they are, and that’s lots of single-family dwellings,” Berz said.
To hear neighbors tell it, the duplex experiment nearly destroyed their community, and they’ve just now clawed their way back from the precipice. Homebuyers won’t purchase homes in a neighborhood with duplexes, especially those with absentee corporate owners who don’t maintain the property, said homeowner Bob Mitchell.