Norris U-Haul dealer can continue to operate, must remove structures

June 5, 2024 by G. Chambers Williams III

The new Norris U-Haul dealer will be allowed to continue operating, but must remove the portable office building and metal carport the business placed on the leased property at 3356 Andersonville Highway, city officials said.

Instead of using the small building as the office, the business will set up its office inside the Liquor Depot, which is next door and sits on the same lot as the U-Haul store.

The store operates as D&S Auto Repair and Recovery, according to business owner Shadow Schneider.

Although the business has been open for more than a month, D&S failed to obtain Norris Planning Commission approval and a required building permit before placing the structures on the property.

When Schneider did ask the Planning Commission for approval of its site plan, the commission voted 4-2 against the plan, preventing D&S from moving ahead with a building permit, which would have actually covered work already done.

On Monday evening (June 3), the Norris Board of Zoning Appeals turned down Schneider’s appeal of the Planning Commission action.

Then, during a Planning Commission meeting that followed, Schneider was told that neither the portable office building nor the aluminum carport would be permitted on the property.

City planning consultant Kathryn Baldwin said during Monday night’s Planning Commission meeting that the portable building D&S has been using as an office “cannot be an office. It does not meet state code.”

That’s mainly because it does not have a rest-room. Instead, D&S placed a portable rest-room outside the office.

The carport also is not allowed because of its location at the side of the lot, she said.

But with D&S moving its office to a room inside the Liquor Depot, it won’t need any building permits. The business already has obtained Norris and Anderson County business licenses.

“If they remove all the structures, that removes the areas causing the issues,” Norris Assistant City Manager Bailey Whited said Tuesday morning.

Tiffany Martin, manager of the business, said earlier that the city told the company that it had violated city building codes by moving the portable building onto the property and erecting the carport without first getting Planning Commission approval and a building permit.

“But we just replaced a portable building that was on the site before we leased it, and did not know that we needed a building permit to do that,” she said.

“I think they’re afraid we’re going to turn [the site] into what it was in the past – a junkyard,” she told The Courier News in May. “But we’re just going to operate the U-Haul store here, along with our other business, installing and servicing Intoxalock ignition interlock systems on cars for people who have been convicted of DUI.”

“When we came here, we didn’t even know we were in Norris,” Martin said.

D&S does not do any auto recovery or repair business on the property, which sits just to the ast of the Liquor Depot. It’s on the same tract that holds the liquor store.

The property is owned by the Clinton Liquor Partnership.