The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission is scheduled to vote May 8 on the rezoning of property on Walden's Ridge, where a developer plans to put a boat and RV storage facility that has drawn opposition from neighbors.
The property at 2001 Hollister Road, which is owned by former Walden Mayor Peter Hetzler and located behind the Mapco at 3720 Taft Highway, is now zoned for rural residential and office use.
Planning staff recommended the planning board deny the request to rezone the entire 4.7-acre parcel as a commercial general business district for RV and boat storage and approve rezoning the office district portion of the property as a commercial general business district while leaving the remainder of the parcel zoned as a rural residential district.
The rural residential district portion of the property would serve as a buffer between the proposed RV storage facility and the property to the north of 2001 Hollister Road, which is a zoned residential district, Bryan Shults, the planning agency's director of development services, told the Planning Commission at its April meeting.
Staff recommended the office district portion of the property be rezoned commercial with the condition that uses are limited to office, single-family and two-family dwellings, barber and beauty shops, and RV and boat storage only, with sales and services of boats and RVs prohibited.
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The commission deferred action on the rezoning request for 30 days in order for the developer to meet with the residents in opposition to the rezoning of the property, and the request goes back before the commission on Monday.
"We were a little bit surprised with the amount of opposition on it," rezoning applicant Colin Johnson, of engineering and consulting firm Ragan-Smith Associates, said of the rezoning request at the Planning Commission's April meeting.
Johnson told commissioners the planned access point to the property from Hollister Road would be removed to alleviate concerns about additional traffic, adding that the property would be accessed from Taft Highway through an existing storage facility on a neighboring property. That property is already commercially zoned.
"Part of this land also includes the existing storage that's pretty dilapidated in its current condition," Johnson said. "My client's going to come in and remediate that site, upgrade the building, upgrade the storage facilities and hopefully make that less of an eyesore on Taft Highway and then allow access from that front facility back into the rest of our area."
The developer plans to "set aside as stormwater" most of the portion of the property zoned rural residential district, considering an expanded buffer zone as a self-imposed condition, he said.
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Hollister Road resident Rachel Troute gathered the signatures of 68 nearby residents who are opposed to the rezoning, she said at the April meeting.
In contrast to an office district, rezoning the property to a commercial general business district would extend the hours a business could operate, use lighting and bring in traffic, and would also increase permitted uses of the property to include light manufacturing, Troute said.
The developer and engineer who applied for the rezoning met last week with nearby residents, Hamilton County Commissioner Chip Baker, R-Signal Mountain, who represents the area, said by phone. Baker has not received any positive or negative feedback since the meeting, he said.
"It seemed to go well," Baker said. "They spent a lot of time with the community, which I appreciated."
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Troute, who attended the meeting last week, said by phone that she and other residents still feel that commercial zoning is inappropriate for the property.
"That does seem like a minimal impact type use, if it's commercial," she said of the storage facility. "But that property isn't zoned commercial, and it brings absolutely no community benefit to the residents here."
The County Commission will eventually vote on the rezoning, but no date has been set.
Contact Emily Crisman at ecrisman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6508.