Covenant Life RV park rezoning will be topic of Monday meetings
This is Covenant Life Church’s former Solid Rock RV Park on its last day of operation, May 31, as the final travel trail- er is being hooked up for removal, which was required by an order issued by the U.S. District Court in Knoxville. The order was the result of a lawsuit filed by the city of Norris against the church alleging that the 16-space camp- ground, complete with water, sewer and eletric hookups at all sites, was built without the city’s required approval. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Both meetings are open to the public, and those attending will be given the opportunity to express their opinions about the church’s plans.
This comes after a federal court in May ordered the church to shut down the RV park on its Norris campus, which it had been operating without the necessary aprrovals for about five years.
Since the church shut down the park and removed the last six RVs from it May 31 as required by the U.S. District Court in Knoxville, it has now decided to follow the rules and ask the city to rezone the site to allow for the campground.
The church’s request, if approved, would result in the rezoning of a 3.3-acre tract on the church’s 17.6-acre campus along Andersonville Highway to commercial use, which allows for RV parks.
Even if the rezoning is approved by the Planning Commission, it would still need to be considered by the City Council, which must pass a zoning ordinance on two readings to make the change to C2 (Commercial) zoning from the current P1 (Professional and Civic).
Even if the church’s request is denied by the Planning Commission, Covenant Life could still appeal that decision to the City Council.
Then, if approved, the church needs to submit an engineered site plan to the Planning Commission to obtain building permits, a prerequisite to getting a certificate of occupancy to allow the RV park to operate.
A half-hour before the Planning Commission meets Monday, the Board of Zoning appeals will hear Covenant Life’s appeal of the city building inspector’s denial in mid-May of a certificate of occupancy that would have allowed the church to continue operating the RV park, which Covenant Life recently has recast as a “religious retreat” for owners of recreational vehicles.
The BZA is not expected to approve the church’s appeal, but if it does, that decision would be final, and the City Council would have no further say over the matter. And if the appeal is denied, the church still would be allowed to proceed with the rezoning request before the Planning Commission.
For the rezoning request, Covenant Life has carved out the 3.3 acres for the RV park from its 17.6-acre church property at 151 Sycamore Place. The site is accessible from Andersonville Highway via Sycamore Place, or from Norris Freeway/U.S. 441 across from Cross Pike Road.
A site plan filed with the rezoning application includes a satellite photo that outlines the 3.3-acre parcel. But it also shows the RV park in operation with 15 travel trailers parked in the 16 spaces that were constructed in 2018-19. The sites include water, sewer, and electrical hookups, along with picnic tables for each.
The last trailers were removed in time to comply with the federal court order issued May 1 that required them to be gone no later than May 31. The order resulted from a lawsuit filed by Norris in U.S. District Court in Knoxville last fall seeking a shutdown of the park.
“The lawsuit is still ongoing,” Norris City Manager Adam Ledford said after the May 31 deadline. “But [the moving of the trailers] complies with the order of the judge consistent with the current state of the case. There are still some outstanding legal issues.”
Covenant Life opened the facility as the Solid Rock RV Park in 2019, promoting it on the website thesolidrockrvpark.com, which allowed users to make reservations and pay the camping fees all online.
But the city of Norris said the RV park was opened illegally, because the church did not first obtain a required zoning change from the city, or present a site plan and secure building permits necessary to install the park’s infrastructure.
Norris eventually took the church to the federal court in Knoxville to force the removal of the trailers. During most of its operations, Solid Rock RV Park’s 16 campsites were filled, and many if not most tenants of the trailers and motor homes were longtime residents of the park.
Initially, the church charged those campers $800 a month rent for each campsite, and the tenants reported that the church drafted the rental fees from their bank accounts automatically.
Later, after Norris began challenging the church over its operation of the RV park, the church began referring to it as the “Solid Rock Retreat,” and said in court that it never charged anyone for staying there. What the tenants paid to the church was characterized as “voluntary donations,” the church contended.
On May 1, U.S. District Judge Charles E. Atchley Jr. in Knoxville ordered the church to shut down the park and remove the recreational vehicles by the end of the month.