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- An ordinance to amend Chattanooga City Code Part II, Chapter 38, Zoning Ordinance.

So as a rezone property located at 2700 Oak Street from R-1 Residential Zone to O-1 Office Zone, subject to certain conditions.

- Case 2021-0224.

- All right, Councilwoman Coonrod, I am seeing an applicant with some opposition present.

Would you like a presentation?

- Yes Chair, please.

- This is a request to rezone property at 2700 Oak Street from R-1 Residential Zone to R-4 Special Zone.

The proposed use is conform to the current use of the property.

The 2700 Oak Street is Oak Street's just parallel to the north parallels McCallie Avenue, just as you come through the tunnels.

So McCallie School is to the south of McCallie Avenue, and then there's the property fronting on Oak Street.

There is a kind of a mix of uses in the area, including multi-family residential, commercial office, and single-family uses.

The staff recommendation goes through the secondary use criteria of offices, but the found that the request is compatible with the Area 3 Plan.

The staff report that's part of your application materials, or excuse me, part of the case materials does go through a checklist of the secondary criteria.

Requests that staff found the request is compatible with adjacent land uses and development form, and staff recommends the O-1 Zone with conditions to ensure compatibility with adjacent residential land uses and development form.

Approving the R-4 Zone at this location will introduce the mixed-use zone into the 2700 block of Oak Street.

However, there is R-3 Zone Property across the street at 2608 Glenwood Parkway in R-4 Zone property to the north, excuse me, it's actually south of the McCallie School.

So staff recommendation was to deny the R-4 Zone and approved the O-1 Office Zone, subject of conditions related to retaining the existing structure, limiting building height, limiting the time for dumpster pickup and language related to limitations for just one monument sign.

There was opposition at Planning Commission.

In summary, that opposition was just a note to need to protect and preserve the story single-family, residential neighborhood, concerned about officing non-residential encroachment and just the current use of the property.

So Planning Commission determination was very similar to staff.

A Planning Commission found the request is compatible with the plan, development form, and adjacent land uses and similar to Staff Planning Commission recommendations to not to deny the R-4 Special Zone and approve the O-1 Office Zone, subject to the following conditions; retain existing structure and building height, limited to two and a half stories or 35 feet, no dumpster services for trash pickup, and one monument sign, which shall be set back 10 feet from any property line and one building sign shall be permitted.

The monument sign shall not exceed 48 square feet in area and shall not be more than four feet in height.

If illuminated, the sun shall be indirectly lit in such a way that the light source cannot not be seen from any public way or joining property.

The lighting intensity shall not exceed 25 foot candles that the face of the sign, no flashing or intermittent lights will be prohibited and no internally illuminated signs shall be permitted.

Pole signs are prohibited and those conditions are intimidated to help mitigate the impact of the proposed use zoning, bring residences.

- I'm sorry.

- And give us your name.

- I'm Harry Cash.

I'm lawyer with Grant Konvalinka & Harrison, and I'm the applicant for Phoenix Rising Properties LLC in this case.

Much of what I had planned to say, Ms. Renick just told you all.

It's an application as originally filed the application was to rezone from R-1 to R-4.

The applicant purchased this property because they loved the home.

They want to live there.

They don't wanna move somewhere else.

They have a telemedicine business, a medical business, all of their business is done remotely.

They don't have clients, patients coming in to the building.

They do have some employees.

They are necessary employees, they come and leave during work hours.

They park at the First Lutheran Church parking lot.

They don't park on the 2700 Oak Street property.

The applicant when they bought the home, they knew that it had been business property for at least 14 years prior to that.

The prior owners Maggie Armstrong and Barb Storm are both here.

And what they would tell you is, that while they own the property for 14 years, and perhaps prior to that, there had been various businesses there.

There had been an antique shop, a realtor's office, a catering business, there was a venue for hosting weddings, family reunions, parties, similar things.

Once upon a time, it was known as the Haddock House.

So the traffic that's gonna be generated by letting these this business stay there, is less than it has been in the past.

RPA and the Planning Commission recommended denial of the R-4 recommended approval of an O-1 Zoning with certain conditions.

The applicant is agreed to those conditions.

In fact, one of the conditions is that one monument sign, which shall be set back 10 feet from the property line in one building sign shall be permitted.

They never planned to put a sign there.

They want this property to continue to look like and be the pretty residential home that they bought.

They intend to stay there.

We have met with some residents in the area to try to see if we could work something out and have been unable to do so until probably three o'clock this afternoon.

I thought we were gonna defer and try one more time to see if we can work something out.

As Ms. Renick said, the basis for the both the staff recommendation and the Planning Commission recommendation for the O-1 zoning with conditions is that the request is compatible with the Area 3 Plan, secondary uses, adjacent land use, and development form.

The side is surrounded by a mix of uses, including office, institutional, multifamily, and two-family residential.

It fits within the neighborhood.

It doesn't change what has gone on at that property for at least 14 years.

And I'm quite sure well beyond that.

Now I know you're gonna hear from some opposition, people who want this area to stay R-1.

R-1 does it mean, as you all know, that it can only be single-family residential.

There can be other uses.

There are however, a number of residents in the Glenwood area who support this rezoning request.

I have with me a November 19th, 2021, a statement as a member of the Glenwood Neighborhood, I support the rezoning of 2700 Oak Street, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 37404 owned by Dr. Keith and Angie Nichols from R-1 to R-4 for the purpose of operations of their preventive medical practice, Tier 1 Health and Wellness.

And it's signed by Jewel Jackson, Diane Meadows, Olin Ivey, Tommy Diller, and Donald Sanderfur.

We would have had some of those people, or hopefully all of those people here, had we not known that this matter was not gonna be deferred for one more time.

Let me just conclude by saying that the residents consider this their home.

They decorated it for Christmas.

They have dogs.

They have things at their homes that most of the rest of us have.

They don't want it to be anything but their home.

They bought it in good faith, thinking that they could conduct their business there.

They conducted their business there for quite some time.

And then a former owner from long ago, apparently made a complaint about it.

There wasn't any problem with the neighborhood prior to that complaint, but code enforcement tells me, and understandably that once a complaint is filed with them, they have to look into it.

That's what they did.

That's what led to this request to rezone.

But if this property is rezoned O-1 with the conditions as recommended by staff and the Planning Commission, the neighborhood will not see any difference in what has happened.

What has been going on out there since these people have owned it, and frankly, less problems than had happened previously.

Thank you.

- Councilwoman Coonrod, any questions for the applicant?

- No.

- Councilor Ledford?

- Thank you, Chairman.

I have a couple of questions for Mr. Cash.

In the time this has been operating as a telemedicine facility or operating a business out of your home, which is extremely popular these days and encouraged actually in a lot of areas.

And we've passed zoning laws recently that encouraged businesses to be operating out of homes that served the community.

Has there been any complaints filed other than the one complaint for the years that they have been operating?

- Not that I'm aware of.

No.

- So there's no record of anyone.

So do you know what triggered the complaint from a former owner?

- I do not.

- That I find interesting.

- Well, wait, it took, and the former owner was at the Planning Commission as I recall and very friendly.

But we don't know what prompted it.

- Okay.

And they, you stated that the homeowners operating a home business do not plan on even advertising it because it's all done, I guess, over the internet, and the home will look exactly like, the home will look exactly the home as is, with no signage or anything drawing attention to it.

No lit signs at night, I'm trying to get a visual on this.

- That's correct.

It's gonna look like it does right now.

- Because they have no walk-in traffic.

- Pretty home.

That that's right.

They've actually renovated what was a garage to be a home gym.

But it's their home.

- So it's basically.

It's basically a residence with a home office that's a little bit larger probably than most.

- Correct.

- And the employees that are coming there, are they parking, you said they're not parking on that property?

- They are not parking on that property.

They're parking with permission on the First Lutheran Church property adjacent.

- Okay.

So they're not creating any traffic issues other than as if they were going to church next door.

- That's correct.

They're not parking on the street.

They are parking in an adjacent parking lot.

- Okay.

So this is basically a home business that we're trying to bring into compliance.

- Exactly.

Right.

- Thank you, Chairman.

- I see no other lots at this time, so I will turn to the opposition.

- Hey, good evening.

City Council members.

I'm Billy Reynolds.

I'm the current secretary of the Glenwood Neighborhood Association.

I'm a501c3 Nonprofit.

And that's the neighborhood that that the property is within.

As a secretary, I emailed 40 of our most active members and residents and just welcomed them to share their own input about opposition or support for this rezoning.

Nine publicly or nine either reached out to me or publicly opposed it, and three have supported it.

So it's a nine to three.

That's a very small number considering we have 800 or somewhere thereabouts number of homes.

So that's a very small representation.

So yeah, just on behalf of the, of the Glenwood Neighborhood Association, I wanted to share those numbers and I've shared those with Councilwoman Coonrod.

I personally opposed it.

I own four properties and several acres in Glenwood, I bought a few of them.

Like I bought some of that property last year, but I oppose it for several reasons.

And just to skip ahead to some of those reasons.

And I was also on the Area 3 Historic River to Ridge Planning, also the Advisory Committee.

My name is listed in the front of the book, or is acknowledged in the front of the book as contributing to the planning process for the Historic River to Ridge Area 3 Plan.

But anyway, so reasons for opposing it, one of the priorities identified through the Area 3 Plan or the Historic River to Ridge Plan is affordable housing.

So every house that we give to a business, instead of a home reduces our inventory of housing.

So I feel that this move would be in conflict with the affordable housing priority that's been identified.

Additionally, another priority that was identified through the Area 3 Plan, is preserving our homes as it was mentioned previously.

So I guess this plan has, I guess, this rezoning has been found to be agreeable with the Area 3 Plan in ways, but at least in those two ways.

I don't see how it would preserve our neighborhood.

And I don't see how it would preserve affordable housing.

Another point I would mention.

And if someone could let us know when it's three minutes or something like that, that would, I guess, it's in front of it.

Okay.

And I guess just to speed up my time, people didn't ask for more telemedicine or for medical facilities.

So that's another thing within the Area 3 Plan.

That's not something people said that they want it.

We want single-family housing.

We want grocery, we want retail, other things like that, but I would refer you back to the Area 3 Plan for what people did say they want and see if there are more telemedicine or medical sort of places within that.

Another thing is changing the fate of this property will also ultimately alter the fate of the 10 homes to the west of it, on the block to the west of it.

I think because this is a more premier home for that little spot.

And just to try to wrap up real quick, it'll change the face of the street if we do get signage, they make wonderful promises about no signage and about keeping it the same now, but without restrictions there's no real promise to that.

So, and I'll just give the rest of the time, just for the sake of five minutes.

- All right.

- My name is Jackie Thomas, and I've been a resident of Glenwood for the last 27 years, a resident of Chattanooga for over 35.

I am one of those residents that opposed this and a great opposition due to the fact that Glenwood preservation, the historic homes in Glenwood are just that.

I heard Mr. Ledford explain simply to you all, "Oh, this, it has been this, it has been that."

The fact is that, this house, the residents at this house requested to rezone it years ago, they were denied.

So the Glenwood residents are not aware of catering.

We're, everything that he said, because it has not been a business.

Because if any of you know anything about Glenwood, we are there always in opposition.

In the fact that we are trying to preserve our homes in Glenwood.

We have been encroached many times by the hospitals that are there.

And until we finally got a memorandum of agreement for you to stop knocking our houses down.

So we have tried, we are trying to preserve these houses in Glenwood, the story of this, they have been doing it as a business.

They'd been illegally doing things as a business.

They have not been given approval by Glenwood.

And I still stand here and say allow something in Chattanooga to remain the same.

It's okay if we wanna be just a historic district without offices.

We're surrounded by offices, the hospital offices.

And we have all talk with the hospitals.

We'd compromised.

And I have seen them chip away one house at a time in Glenwood.

Now they're crossing over Glenwood Drive.

Now we're starting there.

Once we set this precedent, others we're come.

We know that.

And so I just asked you all to allow Glenwood to preserve Glenwood, allow us to remain residential.

We talk about housing shortages all the time.

We are not trying to intertwine businesses because we already have them.

We want to reserve our residential housing.

And we asked you all to please help us do that.

Not all of the simple things that Councilman Ledford suggested because that's not true.

And so that leads me to no, leave us Glenwood, historic homes, they're still come.

That's one of the biggest, better historic homes, other than the governor's mansion.

That's still on Glenwood Drive.

There's a lot of history in Glenwood.

I hope you all have actually educated yourself about the history in Glenwood.

I don't think it's a lot for us to ask to preserve that home in Glenwood.

You denied residential R-4 four years ago, because we wanted to preserve the Glenwood Historic District.

And I ask that you continue to allow us to do that.

Thank you.

- Good evening Council?

- Good evening.

- My name is Marvene Noel, and I'm here in opposition of this rezoning due to the fact that I did work as well on the Historic River to Ridge Planning, tirelessly gave a lot of time and energy, which you all passed.

You all passed that Historic River to Ridge.

And what we were very intentional about when we started that journey was to keep the R-1 single-family dwelling.

The people spoke on that, all the previous meetings that we attended, people spoke.

We do not want our R-1 Zoning to be changed.

We need to keep our single-family dwelling.

And just because of home or resident operated for several years, yes?

Under the radar that happened, it happens a lot.

Does not make it right.

It needs to stay focused in on what the people want.

And they spoke when we all worked on the Historic River to Ridge.

So I pray that you all will deny this rezone.

Thank you.

- One of the things that I didn't hear, my name is Donald Sanderfur.

I'm on my fourth term as the president of the Glenwood Neighborhood Association.

One of the things that our secretary said that was incorrect, we don't have the authorization to speak on behalf of the Glenwood Neighborhood Association.

So I hope you all will accept me as myself being the president.

Please disregard that part about the Glenwood Neighborhood Association because we did not authorize anyone, not even me, to come and speak on behalf of the Glenwood Neighborhood Association.

But I am here for this some type of help to help these people be the residents and do the work in that neighborhood because I've been in that neighborhood for 50 years, since I was 15 years old, I'm on my way to 68.

I'm a veteran.

I've watched that neighborhood evolve into what it is now and what is going to evolve into a business wise and residential wise, I'm all in favor of preserving what we do have as a historic neighborhood.

This, but one thing I will say about this family, this family, I'm saying a family, they came in, they couldn't help, but be under the impression that they would be able to operate as they want to operate, because it's going on in Glenwood.

In the residential, not just the hospitals and what you see out front, but also in people's homes that I can also see and have seen legal or illegal, whatever you wanna call it, that goes on in Glenwood.

So it is happening to the point where I don't know, you know, people are being visual and about this zoning.

- Mr. Sanderfur, I'm gonna have to stop you right there.

We give a total of nine minute to opposition, unless Counsel has questions for you.

I'm gonna have to ask you to stop at this point.

- I'll try not to take the whole two minutes.

I think actually Mr. Sanderfur is not in opposition to the request.

- Mr Sanderfur took opposition time.

- Hold, hold, let's, don't address the Council unless you're at the podium.

Go ahead, sir.

- Well, what I would say is to the, somebody pointed out that there was a rezoning request years ago, and that rezoning request, I think it was recommended for denial at Planning Commission and then withdrawn.

The Area 3 River to Ridge Plan was not enforce, had not been developed and approved at that time.

What the Planning Commission and the staff now tell us is that the O-1 Rezoning does comply with the existing plan for this property.

The other thing, there was some discussion about this property.

They're talking now about they're not gonna change anything.

Well, one of the conditions that they have agreed to, is that they will retain the existing structure and building height limited to two and a half stories or 35 feet.

They've agreed to that.

- Councilwoman Coonrod.

- Chair, it's been a lot said from those that are for it and those that oppose, and I think we need an education session in District 9 about this rezoning, as far as R-1 and O-1.

What can be in it, what can not, because it's been some things said tonight that just not true.

And I most definitely don't want my constituents will still walk away from anything with the wrong information.

I wanna make sure that they had the right information.

We've met several times, I've spoken to Mr. Harry several times.

It's as if I don't know if it was confusing or not after we got off the call.

But at three o'clock, you've chose the date for the deferral.

(laughs) So I thought that was what was gonna happen after I provided you with three, four options.

I have spoken with Karen.

Again, there are some things that we wanna get with the City Attorney to see if these things can be added as conditions along with the community members had asked at a meeting two weeks ago that we could get in and just found out that those things can be done.

So I wanna do all I can to make this work for the business and the community before we go any further.

And I don't wanna just urgently make a decision that could impact either.

So we're gonna defer it to February the 15th.

That gives everybody an opportunity to meet once twice, three times, four times, as many times as needed and work with the City Attorney to get clarity along with what RPA is suggesting when Karen sent that information out and then we'll decide then.

- Okay, so you're making a motion to defer until February the 15th.

- February the 15th.

- We have a motion on the floor to defer until February the 15th with a proper second.

Are there any questions or comments before we vote on a deferral?

Roll call, please.

- Councilwoman Coonrod?

- Yes.

- Councilman Byrd?

- Yes.

- Councilwoman Dotley?

- Yes.

- Councilman Hester?

- Yes.

- Councilman Ledford?

- Yes.

- Councilwoman Hill?

- Yes.

- Vice-Chairman Smith.

- Yes.

- Chairman Henderson?

- Yes.

- Eight yeses.

- Motion to defer does carry.

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