The Cheatham County Commission voted to approve a resolution that would mandate a minimum of 25% commercial development in C-5 zoned properties of at least 20,000 square feet during their July 20 meeting via teleconference. The Planning Commission had reviewed the zoning resolution and made the recommendation not to accept, according to Franklin Wilkinson, Building Commissioner. Commissioners vote to amend the resolution to keep the 25% minimum of commercial development.
During discussion of the proposal, Gary Binkley, District 1 Commissioner, suggested possibly amending the resolution to mandate 50% commercial development in the C-5 areas. Binkley said he was concerned that there was “a lot of C-5 property out at Exit 31 which is prime commercial property. One hundred percent of that sales tax from that property would go to our schools. We will lose our commercial property because of that.”
According to County Attorney Michael Bleigh, the discussion the planning commission had about why not to include the 25% mandate, was the thought of many of the lots there, the 25 percent commercial requirement would not be feasible.
District 1 Commissioner David Anderson questioned whether possibly rezoning C-5 properties to C-1 would be possible, to which Binkley replied that blanket rezoning is not typically done, that the procedure is to usually just wait for property owner to come before planning commission for rezoning requests.
After the commission voted unanimously to approve the amendment and the resolution, Bleigh thanked the members for their action. “Three years of work had gone into that zoning resolution and a lot of people put a lot of time into it,” he said.
