LANDOWNERS AGREE TO REZONING

JACKSON -- Saying his clients "don't want to delay action," an attorney for landowners seeking commercial rezoning for their property along East Main Street said Monday his clients reluctantly will agree to a partial rezoning as recommended by the Planning and Zoning Commission.

John Lichtenegger, an attorney for the eight property owners, told the Jackson Board of Aldermen his clients don't agree with the commission's recommendation but would go along to get the process moving.

The commission has denied the landowners' request to rezone the 53.5 acres from single-family and general residential to general commercial and recommended instead the rezoning to general commercial of part of the land on the north side of East Main Street.

Eighteen nearby property owners signed petitions in favor of the rezoning while 45 other property owners signed petitions opposing the rezoning. Their spokesmen said Monday those signatories oppose any rezoning.

Harold Schmarje said their concerns are over noise, traffic, air quality and stormwater runoff. John Stinson said even a partial commercial rezoning would be "like pulling a rug out from people who made a substantial investment."

He warned that allowing apartments to be built on the land would bring more traffic and more children into the school system.

The owners of the 53.5 acres are Mrs. Edna Hawthorne, Mr. and Mrs. John V. Priest, William Francis, Joe Bullinger, Mary Hartje, Pat Tollison and Roy D. Bollinger. Priest recently came in conflict with the city over his parking of tractor-trailers on land where he stores the tractor-trailer refrigeration units used in his business. He has moved the trailers, and Lichtenegger said Priest intends to clean up the site.

But Priest maintains he was assured by the city at the time the East Main Street extension was built that there would be no problem getting his property commercially zoned.

Lichtenegger distributed to the board a copy of a July 1998 letter from City Administrator Steve Wilson to Priest in which Wilson wrote: "There appears to be no opposition from the Board's standpoint to maintain a commercial corridor that is consistent with our zoning elsewhere in the city and further allowing R-3 rezoning where you would be able to construct duplexes and apartment buildings on your property as you described to me."

The Board of Aldermen is scheduled to vote on the rezoning at its June 5 meeting.