Chattanooga planners have agreed to rezone a tract of land not far from the Volkswagen Drive exit at Interstate-75 to make room for a 300-unit apartment complex.
But the move to rezone property at 8007 and 8009 Bork Memorial Drive and Old Lee Highway drew opposition from some neighbors, who said the proposed apartments and a possible new hotel nearby could overpower the street system and neighborhood.
The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission on Monday recommended rezoning one tract that will hold some of the apartments from an A-1 agricultural zone to an R-3 multi-family housing district. The panel agreed to rezone an adjacent parcel from A-1 to R-1, or single-family residential.
Mike Price of MAP Engineers, representing developer Ardmore Partners LLC, said that the property was to be joined with another site already zoned R-3 to originally build 408 apartments.
But after a neighborhood meeting, the developer is proposing to build just 300 apartments, he said. While the rezoning case Monday involved a 13-acre parcel, that was scaled back to 5.8 acres for the apartments. The other property would be rezoned R-1 under the new proposal, Price said.