No rezoning: RV park plan rejected
Norris council unanimous in decision to deny church’s application
The Norris City Council on Monday night once again denied the application from Covenant Life Church for rezoning of a portion of its Norris campus for use as a recreational-vehicle park.
On a motion by Councilman Will Grinder, seconded by Councilman Chuck Nicholson, the council voted 4-0 to reject approval of an ordinance that would have rezoned a 3.3-acre parcel of the church’s 17.6-acre campus to C2, a general commercial zone.
Councilwoman Loretta Painter was absent, but had previously voted against the rezoning.
RV parks and trailer parks are permitted in C2 zones, but are not allowed in the P1 professional/civic zone that covers the church property now.
And once again, there were no representatives of Covenant Life Church – not even its attorney – present for either a 5:30 public hearing on the request or the 6 p.m. council meeting, during which the council voted a second time on the measure.
Five Norris residents did speak during the public hearing, but they all spoke in opposition to the request, saying that the area along Norris Freeway (U.S. 441) needs to be kept non-commercial.
The church was given two opportunities to persuade the council to approve the rezoning, once during the July 8 council meeting and again Monday night during the regular August meeting.
This was the council’s final vote on the issue regarding the church’s Solid Rock RV Park, which Covenant Life opened in 2019.
After operating the RV park illegally – without proper zoning or permits from the city -- for nearly five years, the church finally shut it down May 31 after receiving an order to do so from the U.S. District Court in Knoxville.
The church then filed a rezoning request with the city, which it had steadfastly refused to do before.
In an unusual move after the rezoning request failed at the July 8 council meeting, Mayor Chris Mitchell got the council’s permission to schedule the public hearing and another vote on the request for the August meeting.
What’s unusual about it is that if a proposed ordinance fails on first reading, it’s usually finished, and no further action is taken. It’s normally only after an ordinance is approved on first reading that a public hearing is set, and the ordinance is given a second and final reading for an additional vote. Proposed ordinances in Norris must be approved on two readings to take effect.
In this case, even if the council had approved the ordinance Monday, that still would have been considered only the first reading, and it would have had to be voted on and approved again at a subsequent meeting – after another public hearing – to gain final approval.
During the July council meeting, the rezoning request was denied on a 3-0 vote, with two of the five council members absent.
Following that vote, the mayor said he wanted to schedule a public hearing to allow church representatives extra time to appear before the council to state their case in favor of the rezoning, and give the ordinance a second chance to pass.
Monday’s second first-reading also allowed the two council members absent during the July 8 meeting, Chuck Nicholson and Bill Grieve, to cast their votes on the issue.
On July 8, Mitchell and council members Loretta Painter and Will Grinder voted to reject the ordinance on first reading.
Painter said she would not be able to attend the Aug. 12 hearing and meeting, but Nicholson and Grieve were in attendance.
The church’s lawyer, Daniel Sanders of Knoxville, said during the July 1 Norris Planning Commission meeting that the July 8 council meeting was not convenient for church representatives to attend. He requested that the vote be delayed until the August meeting, which he indicated he and supportive church members would attend. None of them did.
The city has been battling the church over the RV park since it opened.
Then, on May 1, it was ordered shut down by U.S. District Judge Charles E. Atchley Jr. in Knoxville.
On July 1, the Planning Commission voted 7-0 against the rezoning, citing documents from 1937 and 1959 in which the Tennessee Valley Authority required that the land along Norris Freeway from Andersonville Highway to beyond Norris Dam be preserved as a greenway, and not be used for commercial purposes.
Mitchell, who supplied the Planning Commission with the documents, led the discussion at the Planning Commission and again during the July 8 council meeting, during which he cited protection of the Norris Freeway greenway as the reason the church’s rezoning should be denied.
“The city and TVA have valued this as a special area,” Mitchell said before the vote on the rezoning request at the Planning Commission, adding that the “intent is to keep the area beautiful.”
Also cited during the Planning Commission discussion was the recently created Norris Freeway Scenic Byway, part of a state/federal program that gives special recognition and protection to certain designated scenic routes from development and commercialization across the United States.
The rezoning request from the church came in early June after the church had cleared the last of the RV trailers from the 16-space pull-though campsites by May 31, as required by the federal court order issued May 1.
The church, at the northwest corner of Andersonville Highway and Norris Freeway (U.S. 441), opened the facility initially as the Solid Rock RV Park, which it later renamed the Solid Rock Retreat, before being shut down by the court order.
It was only after that order was issued that the church decided to follow the city’s regulations, and asked Norris to rezone the site to allow for the campground.
The church’s request would have resulted in rezoning of the area carved out earlier for the RV park on the church’s along Andersonville Highway and Norris Freeway.
Although the church’s attorney acknowledged that the RV park initially charged campers for staying on the site, he said that after the city made an issue of that, the church began accepting donations from campers, rather than directly charging them overnight fees.
He told the Planning Commission, however, that the church might go back to operating the campground as a commercial enterprise if the rezoning is approved. The church would also collect hotel/motel taxes on those fees, which would be turned over to the city, he noted.
While it was operating commercially, the church charged campers $800 a month for each RV site, and advertised the park on its own website, where people could reserve a space and pay for it online.
Many of the park’s users had been living in their trailers on the site for more than a year, leading some city officials to characterize the enterprise as a trailer park rather than a conventional RV park, which normally serves only short-term renters (30 days or less).
Even if the City Council had overruled the Planning Commission and granted the rezoning, the church still would have been required 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.
The RV park site is accessible by entry from Andersonville Highway via Sycamore Place, which runs up to the church from that highway, or from Norris Freeway/U.S. 441 across from Cross Pike Road.
A site plan filed with the rezoning application included a satellite photo that outlined the 3.3-acre parcel, and also showed the RV park already in operation with 15 travel trailers parked in the 16 spaces that were constructed in 2018-19. The sites included water, sewer and electrical hookups, along with picnic tables for each.
