Eliciting applause from residents in the audience, Hamilton County commissioners voted 8-0 Wednesday to deny a rezoning request that would enable construction of a 708-unit apartment complex at 8699 N. Hickory Valley Road.
"I want to thank my fellow commissioners for listening to constituents," Commissioner Steve Highlander, R-Ooltewah, said after the vote. "We all want growth. We all want progress. We want to ensure it's responsible."
Developer RM Investments LLC was asking the County Commission to rezone the almost 54-acre property from rural residential to multi-family residential.
Neighbors had expressed a series of concerns about the project, questioning the effect it would have on emergency services, school capacity, traffic and the ease with which residents would be able to escape in the event of a crisis, citing a gas pipeline that runs through the property. An online petition opposing the project, posted at 58neighbors.com, had garnered 1,091 signatures by Wednesday afternoon.
The Regional Planning Agency has estimated the development would generate 5,182 additional vehicle trips per day on North Hickory Valley Road.
Highlander told the Chattanooga Times Free Press after the vote that the project would produce a bottleneck for several thousand citizens living on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Tennessee River. Highlander added residents also have to get off the peninsula to reach the evacuation route for the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant.
"It's not a traffic issue as much as it's a safety issue," he said about the project. "There's a main gas line under it. There's also electric power lines under it. I am all for growth, and if they want to put 150 or 160 single family homes in there that's fine with me, but I think 708 apartments was just too much."
There are only two roads that access Highway 58 out of that peninsula, Highlander said: Champion Road and North Hickory Valley Road.
"There have been a lot of accidents on those intersections with (Highway 58), and there would be infinite more," he said. "I've got a 16-year-old grandson who started driving, and I think about young people and the dangers of that."
Highlander credits residents with convincing commissioners to deny the project, adding that members of the panel had received hundreds of personally written emails.
"I think that was what impacted the commissioners was the outcry from the general public," he said.
Michael Price, the owner of MAP Engineers, is working with the developer and said there are still plans to pursue a project on the property.
"We recognize and understand that there are traffic concerns out that way, and we certainly look to do our part to try to ameliorate those conditions," he said in a phone call, "but at the end of the day, there will be some development of some kind happening out that way."
Concerns raised about the gas pipeline and the ease of evacuation would impede any future development in the vicinity of Highway 58, he said.
"I do not believe that was why the commission voted to turn this down," he said. "Otherwise, they would see no new developments occurring in this area from now on."
He stated that traffic is the only primary issue that needs to be addressed in that area.
Contact David Floyd at dfloyd@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6249. Follow him on Twitter @flavid_doyd.