Important Update – January 8, 2022

This letter posted below this note went from Bryan Spears to a core group a few days ago. Already many, many have responded, very generously. We thank you!

Our community is rightfully alarmed about runaway Knox County development – with virtually no protections in place. Month after month those who should be representing and protecting the citizens are failing to do so, cleverly subverting the public system. Not every commissioner, but enough, are actually systematically stripping zoning protections and waving in out- of- state corporations to harvest Knox County assets. Those groups are stripping our mountain and ridgetops, filling our neighborhoods and streams with floodwaters and silt, overwhelming our schools, roads and fire and police protection with a remarkable disregard for consequences. Time is very short now and immediate action is needed. Please see Bryan’s letter below. Diane

Tooles area neighbors,

Over the last couple of weeks most of you have received an official mailer from NCA. Indeed several of you have responded positively to the mailer already, and we thank you for that. With that I do have a bit of unfortunate news to share. As of last week, the Bailey family has sold their farmland that would have been Post Oak development for $9 million to what appears to be another development group. Their office is in Chicago and the address they gave is apparently occupied by a development group based out of Colorado. We are doing further investigation but at this time we don’t have any additional details.

With that said, we haven’t heard of any new development plans but we’re fairly confident those are in the works. A local realtor said a few months ago that he had a potential buyer. Whether this is the same buyer or not we’re unsure. But if so, they’ve had about six months now to complete their plans and have likely already been in discussions with Knox Co planning just as the Baileys did months before they announced their development concept. If this is the case, we could be behind the political ball already once again.

Our big concern is that a lot of the concessions we got the Baileys to agree to are now off the table. They had agreed to no development of the roughly 20 acres across from Beech Grove Baptist church that runs along Tooles Bend Rd. And they had agreed to no commercial development within the Post Oak Subdivision. While the land across from the church would have to be re-zoned we’re quite certain any new developer would make that part of their overall plan. So potentially the number of houses that had gotten down to near 600 could possibly be back over 700 again or maybe even up to 1,200 given there’s roughly 400 acres of land involved that is zoned for up to 3 units per acre already.

An even bigger concern is the possibility of hundreds and hundreds of apartments. As you know, out-of-town developers are snapping up large tracks of land all over the county and throwing up hundreds of units without regard to what neighbors think or say, and Knox County planning is allowing that to happen. The large complex at Ebenezer and Westland is a prime example and there are dozens more similar concepts scattered across the county.

We hope that you’ll help us continue to protect our way of life we’ve all enjoyed in our area by giving to our legal fund. As stated in the NCA mailer we did recently receive a judgment of $30,000 from Knox Co for their apparent wrong-doing relative to Post Oak. We owe that debt of gratitude to our excellent legal team as such an accomplishment has rarely been pulled off here in Knox County. But even with the reimbursement from the county we still owe approx $45,000 in legal services already rendered. In order to move forward against any future developers we would have to shore up our account. Our ask is that if you’ve never given to NCA please do so. And if you’ve already given but are able to make another donation, we would welcome your continued support.

Make checks payable to ORNL and send to Northshore Corridor Association, PO Box 34071, Knoxville TN 37930. A pre-addressed stamped envelope was enclosed in the mailer for your convenience.

You can send checks directly to Kramer-Rayson LLP attn: Tom Hale at PO Box 629, Knoxville TN 37901. Please make those checks out to Kramer Rayson with NCA in the memo line.

Or you can make anonymous credit card donations by using the “donate” button on our website at northshorecorridorassociation.org.

Thanks again,

Bryan

on behalf of NCA Steering