In 2020, a developer purchased 122 acres of land surrounding Tracie and Scott Sutton’s home on Ooltewah-Georgetown Road, where they had lived for more than 30 years.
Now the Suttons’ home sits on a peninsula, surrounded by exposed dirt and a deep hole covering more than an acre and partially filled with muddy water.
Tracie Sutton’s mother-in-law, Glenna Brogan, and the owners of a neighboring property combined their land and sold it to developer Marshall Berry of JMB Construction for $1.5 million in December 2020.
The same month, the Hamilton County Commission voted unanimously to approve the rezoning of the property from agricultural to single-family residential district for a proposed subdivision of 200 homes. Real estate agent Sabrena Smedley, who was on the commission at the time, said during the meeting that she would recuse herself from the vote because she had listed the property.
Smedley said by phone that she had listed the property before voting in 2018 against a wastewater treatment plant planned in the Ooltewah area, which she represented on the commission.