Council pauses South Waterfront apartments, asks company to go back to drawing board

The Knoxville City Council paused plans for an apartment complex development in a vibrant, growing neighborhood after residents balked at it restricting their views of the Tennessee River and downtown.

Council disagreed with the developer over technical aspects of the building plans and asked them to go back to the drawing board.

The Council on Tuesday unanimously denied a variance request (an allowance for builders to bend the rules) from Dominion Development Group, which wanted special permission for a portion of a 10-building project on the South Waterfront.

Neighborhood residents — who showed up in matching light green scarves — said the variance was unnecessary and would obstruct their view of the river and downtown.

The Knoxville-based Dominion Development Group had proposed a 10-building, 230-unit complex on Waterfront Drive and Langford Avenue, across from Suttree Landing Park. The area has significantly changed over the last few years with an influx of vibrant breweries, restaurants and historic home renovation projects.

The apartment complex proposal also includes two commercial spaces.

The project hit a snag, they said, because developers couldn’t construct four of the buildings with the appropriate frontage requirement from the South Knoxville Waterfront Vision Plan. The river's curvature limited how the land could be used, they said.

The variances were OK'd by the city's Board of Zoning Appeals in December.

And yet council members were not impressed with the proposal and its lack of realistic hardships required to receive the variances. Councilman Charles Thomas said the group was putting the cart before the horse and “shoehorning” a project into an area that the codes simply wouldn’t allow.

“I think the developers knew the areas they were working with, they knew what the code was, and I think the burden, as our law says, is on them to design something that fits a particular property within the code,” he said.

The attorney representing the neighborhood, Wayne Kline, told Council as much.

“A unique hardship from the terrain is nonexistent in this case. ... Simply wanting to build structures different than the code does not meet the definition of hardship.

“If you reduce the (frontage) requirements, moving the buildings closer to the road, particularly to Phillips (Avenue) you will obstruct the view further,” he said.

Representatives from Dominion could not immediately be reached for comment and it was not clear how many units would be built if the company scrapped the four buildings that did not receive approval. It is likely they will reconfigure those four buildings and try for approval again.

Neighbors in the Old Sevier community have long sought the attention from developers on their side of the river, but not like this, said Jennifer Arthur. The 25-year community resident spearheaded the neighborhood's response. 

The variances requested would block their view of the river and disrupt their quality of life, she said.

The community gathered over 600 signatures opposing the proposal. Many showed up Tuesday night dressed in solidarity with light green, skinny scarves around their necks.

"We’ve been cultivating (the neighborhood) and have been trying to cultivate a good quality of life there and now other people are seeing it and we just want them to abide by the vision (set in the vision plan)," she said.