Mayor explains his Harmony re-zoning considerations
The following is commentary from Farragut Mayor Ron Williams, who voted against allowing 10 acres of property behind Ingles to be re-zoned from Office (O-1), General Single-Family Residential (R-2) and Rural Single-Family Residential (R-1) to Community Service (S-1).
The vote was decisive in a 3-2 Board of Mayor and Aldermen vote against re-zoning, during BOMA’s Thursday, March 9 meeting in Town Hall boardroom, which denied developer Doug Horne (owner of Republic Newspapers, LLC, parent company of farragutpress) to build a three-story Harmony at Farragut senior living community.
• Mayor Williams spoke, as all five BOMA reps did, before voting: “There’s been a lot of good points made tonight. As you can see, I’ve made a tremendous amount of notes.
“I had four pages like this from the (Farragut Municipal) Planning Commission (which voted 6-3 in favor of recommending the re-zoning to BOMA).
“I think (a citizen speaker earlier in the meeting) said something about working with some type of other development. I think (Alderman) Drew (Burnette) touched on that as well. And that certainly is an option.
“I look at is as: ‘Is is a good fit?’ I look at it as: ‘Is is appropriate for this district?’
“And I look at it as: ‘Is 200 units (for Harmony) really a transition?’
“This what I have to decide on.”
(Comments from Vice Mayor Louise Povlin and North Ward Alderman Scott Meyer can be found in next week’s farragutpress issue, along with Williams, Povlin and South Ward Alderman David White fighting back after strong citizen criticism during the public comment portion of the re-zoning meeting and during Citizen Forum)
