(upbeat pop music) - [Narrator] You are watching highlights of the "Chattanooga City Council Meeting," a production of WTCI PBS.

(gavel thudding) - [Clerk] Testing, testing.

- We call our Tuesday, June 13th City Council agenda to order.

Okay, we have no special presentations today.

Can I get an approval on the minutes?

Okay.

Minutes will stand without objection.

We have ordinances on final reading.

Madam Clerk, if you read item A.

- An ordinance amending Chattanooga City Code part two, chapter 21, section 21137, abatement by city and lien for cost thereof.

Notice hearing appeals subsection C relating to service of notice.

- Okay, counsel?

- Second.

- It's been moved improperly.

Second, any comments or questions?

All in favor?

- (together) Aye.

- All opposed?

Motion passes.

Shall we get into planning items?

Madam Clerk Planning item A, I'm sorry, Planning item C. - [Clerk] In order to amend Chattanooga City Code Park two, chapter 38, zoning ordinance, so as the reason on property located 7707 Lee Highway from C2 Convenience commercial zone to UGC Urban Residential Zone.

- Okay, Councilwoman?

I'm sorry.

Is the applicant present?

All right.

Is opposition present?

Well, well, all right now.

All right, opposition, and Madam Clerk, just for clarity to ensure we read the right version of item C, could you read the alternate version for item C?

- [Clerk] Yes.

In ordinance to amend Chattanooga City Code part two, chapter 38, zoning ordinance, so as to rezone property located at 7707 Lee Highway from C2 convenience commercial zone to UGC Urban residential zone, subject to certain conditions.

- All right, thank you so much.

Now for item D, it's the applicant present.

Okay, is opposition present for that 77, I believe 17 Lee Highway location?

All right.

- All right, so appreciate counsel hearing the application for this particular case.

It is taking property from C2, two hotels on Lee Highway to UGC.

The purpose of this is to create two apartment complexes here that are currently hotels, which are a blight on the community.

I don't think anybody would argue that particular point.

These two hotels have not been good neighbors to the community and have created numerous issues as it relates to police calls and homelessness.

If you notice here, these were photographs that were taken in March, and this is in the area where the neighborhood is, and you can hardly see back through there in March when you really do not have any leaves or vegetation to speak of, any of the two hotels that are in question, they're talking about being converted.

So there's been a lot of discussion made on this request, and let me just state that this is, for the record, to be clear the following, this is not a government driven or subsidized housing development, this is a market rate.

The plan is to take the hotels and to convert them over to the apartments.

The request is to rezone these from C2 to UGC.

And we put forth a number of conditions that we have put to council as it relates to conditions that we would adhere to if this case were to be passed.

Now if you notice from the slide here, you will see that the distance from the hotels currently to any nearby resident is at least 290 feet, 275 feet.

So we are a far distance away.

We are not in someone's backyard, we are neighboring, but there is quite a bit of distance between this proposed development, proposed use, and those hotels and the residents that are out this way.

Now, this gives you an idea of the blight and the problem that these two hotels have been.

This is the number of police calls at 7707, which is a southern property since 2019.

This is the yearly number of police calls.

Now, this is a similar development in Nashville, where they took a hotel and they converted it over to apartments.

And if you'll notice in through here, the year that it was built was 1983.

So this was an older product, but yet they were able to go through, and put 124 units in through here, and they have a 99% occupancy rate.

Matter of fact, I called today just to find out how they're doing.

They have one unit to rent, one, that's it.

So this is not a conversion that is sort of maybe or speculative.

This is absolutely something that is a viable rent and a viable product that people want to live in and be in.

The key here is I think we are being sort of lumped in and the fear is, I believe, that you've had years of homelessness, crime, and other people in through here that are of a nature that really do not contribute to a neighborhood.

The fear is that if we come in and develop this as proposed, it's gonna be the exact same thing.

We just put pig on a lipstick or a lipstick on a pig.

That's not what we've done.

This is totally different.

The people that would be coming in through here would go through a vetting process, they would submit applications, they would be looked through, and if they fit the criteria that they're able to have the funds necessary to be able to live here, and they pass the background check.

We would absolutely look to rent to those individuals.

What you've got right now are two hotels that if you've got cash or you've got a credit card, you're good to go.

You wanna stay an hour, you wanna stay a night?

And so you've got all sorts of individuals that have come into this area that don't need to be there, and they're not a help.

That is not what we're looking at presenting.

We're looking at having people come in that would be no different than my children or your children that would want to rent things such as what we are proposing.

So based on that, I would ask that counsel would give this careful consideration.

And again, we think that this is absolutely going to be a help and a benefit to the community.

- We have those who wanna speak in opposition to this.

You may come up to the microphone, you have nine minutes.

- Hello and thank you for your time.

My name is Rick Williams, I'm the president of the Silverdale Neighborhood Association, and I'm the one that sent you the email the other day that you were talking about.

First, I want to just take a brief moment and thank you for deferring this and giving us the time to meet with the developers, to meet with Mr. Price and Mr. Thornhill to work through many ideas and concerns of ours that they did take into place.

With that said, you know, our biggest concern is security.

Okay?

It's security for our families.

It's security for our neighbors.

And at the end of the day, when we look at 280 square foot or motels that are turned into apartments, we don't have to look any further East Ridge to see how can it can go awry, okay?

And yes, he's spending a lot of money into this project, he's doing things, but where does this go three years down the road, okay?

And what are we left with?

Because the crime statistics that I'm looking at have nothing like the 2,400 calls that that they had in East Ridge and why the Hamilton County District Attorney had to get involved and shut that place down and redo it.

So that's our concern.

It's not, you know, we don't take this slightly, these are blight on the community.

These hotels are not something that we want.

We would love to see anything come in and take these over, and, you know, we're on the cusp of agreeing with them with one condition, and that's to make sure that it doesn't get outta hand like Budget Tail and previous Superior Creek Lodge.

And we feel the only way to do that security.

And that's the one thing with nobody living on premise.

Nobody there in the evenings we're relying on cameras and just, we don't see it.

You know, you know, so we want to encourage this city council to take this seriously.

Listen to what we're trying to say, listen to our concerns.

You know, to us, it's our life.

You know, it's our family and that's our concerns.

And, you know, it was a very hard choice to sit here and tell you no when we have the problems that we have in our community, you know, and I think anything less than not having security there, we have to say no, and that's how we voted.

I also wanna thank co councilman Carol Burs for attending our neighborhood association meetings, being intricately involved in it and standing up for us as a community, so I wanted to point point that out as well.

- [Speaker] Thank you.

- So thank you for your time.

Please give it considerate thought to what we're telling you.

This can go awry.

Thank you.

- Councilman Henderson.

- Thank you Madam Chair.

Mr. Williams, so we have something similar out in my district and- - Yes, sir.

- The neighborhood association voted to oppose it as well.

But here's one thing that, and I was trying to make sure they had the correct information.

Is it that you're more comfortable with the devil that you know than the devil you don't know or?

- I guess our biggest thing is that the only thing that we can relate it to when it comes to, you know, sticking people in 280 square foot motel rooms for long terms is what's in our neighborhood and what's been in our backyard, which is East Ridge, okay?

And like I said, when you look at those crime statistics that are in front of you, you can quadruple it if things go awry.

And that's what we are concerned about.

You know, this is next door to transitional housing for homeless with the airport and these two properties are next door to the airport end, okay?

- I guess what I'm asking, and, you know, I've tried to figure this out with them.

You would rather it stay like it is, than take a chance on- - Like I said, we didn't come to this decision lightly converted, you know, we did not come to this decision lightly.

I mean, you know, if they were going in there and blowing out the interiors and putting these in his average size apartments, I've already told Mr. Thornhill, I'll be down there swinging the hammer with him.

I personally would be cheering him and bringing them soft drinks during the day.

- [Henderson] So you are concerned and they were as well.

- Yeah.

- [Henderson] You're concerned about the size of the place?

- Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely because, you know, this is not your normal housing.

The average size is an efficiency apartment in the United States is 483 square feet, okay?

So you're not quite half that size, but you're a good size.

You're almost half the size of an average efficiency apartment, the smallest studios you can get, okay?

So you are jamming people into a very small place for a long period of time and you know, it's experimental housing.

If it's working in Nashville, you know, we've got nothing in this area to model that off of, except for long-term housing in motels in East Ridge.

And that's probably the worst experience that this city or this area has seen in housing, period.

- Sorry, I wasn't expecting to speak, and I'm gonna tell you little bit of embarrassing stuff about myself, but I want to speak more for the potential people who might wanna live there.

I've worked in an assisted living that's a mile and a half from these motels since 2014.

I make $12 an hour, I have excellent credit.

I would be your target market probably.

I have one child at home that just graduated Chattanooga Arts and Sciences the other day.

But I just looked up this apartment in Nashville that they mentioned it's 240 square feet for, and I just Googled it and pulled it up for 999 a month.

My coworkers can't afford a thousand bucks a month for 240 square feet.

I think with this land, I don't know what y'all should do, I just know that I work in that area.

This is my community and that this plan doesn't make sense.

Even me with just one child at home, she'll be going to UTC in the fall and hopefully, she'll be at home a lot with her mama.

Just with one child at home, I don't understand that anybody can live in 240 square feet, just almost seems inhumane.

So anyway, I don't know what you should do, and it's embarrassing for me to tell you what I make and to put that out there, but I just wanna say, you know, for a woman, a single mom with a child at home, this plan doesn't even make sense to me because one street over, I've looked at a rental property and I can get a three bedroom house for like 1,500 a month.

So I'd rather get a roommate and do that or work a second job or something.

But offering 240 square feet for a thousand dollars a month in a hotel or motel that looks like it's mold and rundown just doesn't make sense to me.

I don't know what y'all should do.

The other thing I wanted to bring up is, I know there are drug users in those motels, but I have a cousin, sorry, that has cancer and he's on hospice and his home is over 40 miles from here.

So we have him living in one of those hotels.

We pay a good amount of money every month for him to live there, but it allows us to get him to his cancer doctors and hospice comes there.

And my brother has a brain injury and he lives in a group home, and when they were doing work to his group home, they stayed at that hotel.

There aren't many hotels or motels that you can get for $65 a night.

So I know there are a lot of drugs going on there, but there are also people with cancer who are getting hospice there, and I don't know what y'all should do, but I do want y'all to be aware that there are good people that stay there for valid reasons and that someone like me, first of all, would never put my child in a 240 square foot thing.

And that is, even if I was gonna have to do that, I would say maybe $400 a month, not a thousand dollars a month, because none of my peers that I work with at the assisted living, and some of them have worked there for 15 years.

These are hardworking people who deserve... Everybody needs affordable housing and we don't have much in Chattanooga, but this doesn't seem to me like a solution, because it just doesn't make sense.

Sorry, that's it.

(people applauding) - So you're saying there is a market but- - Oh- - But for what they're doing, but not at that size.

I think that- - Well, that size, I mean we grew up poor.

We lived in campers and trailers and my dad couldn't read or write, but, you know, and I'm the first person to go to college and I don't make a lot of money, but I have a degree and I worked hard.

And to think that I would have to spend a thousand bucks a month on 240 square feet is taking me back to that poverty of childhood.

I mean, you can't in 240 square feet.

I mean, how would I play with my grandkids?

You know, like.

- All I'm saying is the market is there, but not for something that small.

- For that small at that price.

Even if it was gonna be that small, charge 400 bucks a month.

- Okay.

- You know, it'd be fair with people, but to charge 'em a thousand bucks a month for 240 square feet seems like highway robbery.

And if we have this opportunity with this land to help people that are working in Chattanooga, why not?

Why screw 'em over?

- Okay, thank you.

(people cheering) - Thank you.

So we've been doing a little bit of research up here about other hotel conversions that have happened in our area so that we can be more clear.

And I just wanted to share that passenger flats is on the south side.

It is converted hotel as part of the Choo Choo that's fully rented.

Those apartments are slightly larger.

They're at about 328 square feet I think.

And then the tomorrow building is also a hotel conversion and on the North shore, the tomorrow building is in the heart of downtown.

It is fully rented and has been, and I believe it has spaces that are even smaller than these.

And in District One on the North shore, we've just had I think summer house building, which is another iteration of the tomorrow building that is another group of micro apartments.

And at this point, none of those apartments have had any kind of significant disturbance within their neighborhood.

I also, since I was handed the mic, would like to point out, everybody has a different way that they live.

And the things that were brought up by the neighbor about the amount of space and what you do and what you don't do, we all have different needs.

Some people want huge yards and they choose to live in parts of the city where they have acre lots.

Some people want no maintenance at all and they choose to live in condominiums.

When you have a thousand dollars to spend, you have choices about where you spend that money.

And I don't think that we have in Chattanooga a proven example of a micro apartment complex being a nuisance.

We have a proven example of a hotel in East Ridge being a nuisance and multiple motels on Lee Highway being nuisances.

So two separate things.

That's all.

Thank you.

- Thank you, and thank you for the comments that we received from the residence.

So I think we're close in many ways.

We continually get compared to East Ridge and what took place there.

I don't think that is a fair comparison in any stretch of the imagination.

Again, we are gonna have background checks, security cameras, these are long-term leases and when you look at the model of what we showed taking place in Nashville, it's 99% rented out, 99% occupancy.

If it was a problem and people didn't wanna live there, they wouldn't.

This can work, and this is a solution to the community.

That being said, we do have a nuance that I need to bring up as it relates to 7707.

The request is to rezone the front portion, but we don't own the land where the buffer is being proposed to go.

So I need to ask for a deferral, excuse me, on 7707.

If we're gonna ask for a deferral on that one, it sort of makes sense to ask a deferral for both and then bring these back before the council.

We'll be happy to see if we can bridge the gap any closer with the community.

Some of the things that were mentioned, I think can be done.

Some of the things that have been mentioned, I don't think that there's a way to the degree of what had been asked for the developer to do.

But with that being said, I would ask if we could get a 30-day deferral, which I believe would put us on the July 11th meeting.

And then hopefully at that point we can bring this back to the commission for a vote at that point.

And if there's any questions, I'll be happy to answer those.

- Okay.

I've seen no lights.

Thank you Mr. Price.

- Thank you.

- I think given all the interest and the positive things that could happen, including making the apartments larger or whatever, I believe that we give them the 30-day deferral.

- Okay, this- - Second time.

- All right, that is for item C, a 30-day deferral.

It's been motioned properly, second, any comments or questions?

All in favor?

- (together) Aye.

- All opposed?

Motion passes.

Item D has already been read account form members.

- I move that we give them also a 30-day referral.

- All right.

- My name is Corey Bischer.

I live in East Brainerd.

However, something happened yesterday that just thoroughly made me upset.

First of all, let me stop.

Demetri's family first no matter what.

So there was a older man whose property got taken through property taxes.

He didn't pay his taxes because he kept getting fined because his lawn needed mowing, and so you guys kept sending somebody out to mow his lawn.

He was worried about not being able to pay that fine because he thought that the city could take his property because he kept getting these fines.

Well, he didn't pay it and he didn't, he paid that, but he didn't pay his taxes.

His property got taken away.

Come to find out they sold his house out of tax sale.

The redemption period was that year, he knew nothing about it.

He's 72 years old.

His property was, I'd say it was stolen from him, but it was taken from him and someone purchased it.

He has until June 30th to pay that $23,000.

A week ago, that person came and took all of his things out of his house, threw them in the dumpster, told him that he no longer lived there and thinks that she's gonna get away with it.

She's not.

However, what I would like for the council to please consider you guys, there are a lot of programs and services that you say are to help elderly and to help seniors with things like mowing their lawn or understanding how taxes work or all of those things, but none of those things work for him.

In order for him to get violations, someone had to call and someone had to come to his house.

I would ask that you guys put in place with the code enforcement that someone actually has to go to that door and say, "Do you need help?"

They would've seen that he was a 72-year old man.

The solution, I will tell you the solution.

I work with youth through the city of Chattanooga that will mow lawns for elderly veterans and single family houses absolutely free.

I just need to know the addresses.

I know whoever it is that takes those violations.

They can call me at any point and I will send a kid absolutely free to those houses because it should not be an issue of should I pay for my medicine, pay for my food, pay for my electricity, or pay for fines put on that person by the city?

I think that you guys have programs for the city, for citizens, but they're absolutely no good if the people that actually use them don't know how to find them.

I'm an able-minded person that can get on a computer that can navigate you guys city website, so I can find it some kind of way.

People like this gentleman that need the services, those are the people that you guys need to actually learn how to reach.

That's all.

- Hi, my name is Kimberly Smith and we're talking about the same man, he's my neighbor.

And he literally was put on the end of his driveway.

I mean, all of his belongings put out there and everything, and I filmed it and it was timestamped in April.

But going to say that he ended up being homeless and I tried my best to help him and I did eventually help him, but not with any kind of agency that was set up for homeless people at all because it is so difficult to try to get any help through two and one or homeless agencies.

And going through all the hoops and stuff, somebody is, well, I'm not young, but younger than him of course, and can navigate the internet and can drive and have a car and everything.

It just seemed impossible.

Almost like you were sorting, throw your hands up.

I couldn't imagine what it's like to be homeless without a vehicle trying to do this on the bus and not knowing how to navigate the internet or how to reach out for help.

But eventually, I had to get a private investor to help him.

And they did rent him a place and everything, but somebody has got to do something about the homeless 'cause they want help.

They just don't know how to get help.

And me trying to reach out and trying to get this man help, it just felt impossible that I just wanted to give up and just throw my hands up.

It's just so many, you know, red tape and hoops to jump through.

I can imagine trying to do it without a home, without a telephone.

And someone should have told him that, and I don't know why they didn't, 'cause he qualified for that tax relief, 'cause he is like 72 years old and this man lived in that same house since he was 10 years old, lived there 62 years and he's lost his house.

And it was sold at the auction, but the private investor is supposed to be helping, but I just don't understand why anybody didn't tell him he qualified for tax relief at his age.

Nobody reach out, told him anything.

That's all I gotta say.

Thank you.

- All right, counsel.

I don't see anyone else wishing to address the counsel.

What's your (indistinct) (indistinct) meeting adjourn.

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