Developer takes a win in Centennial Church Road neighborhood dispute

The Blount County Planning Commission has lost a legal fight to prevent construction of a 60-home subdivision near the proposed extension of Pellissippi Parkway.

Sugarland Creek, a planned subdivision off Centennial Church Road, will move forward after a February Blount County Circuit Court judgement that the county’s regional planning commission erred when it denied developers the right to proceed with the project. Blount County Planning Commissioners last year rejected developer Travis Fuller’s early-stage map of the subdivision, citing an expired permission.

With that rejection, Fuller would have needed to resubmit plans to continue with the project. Such plans would have also needed to conform to ordinance changes the county passed in 2022, and Fuller would have been required to put homes on larger lots than he’d intended.

But the work put into constructing the subdivision, and an early approval it received from planning commissioners, predate the new rules. Sugarland Creek received its first approval in May 2021. That means, according to a judgment registered in Blount County Circuit Court, that the developers can retain their old map.

Development in the county — particularly of smaller-lot homes — has been contentious. Proponents of some developments have said that building reduces home prices overall by increasing the supply of housing available. Opponents have taken issue with the aesthetics of such projects, as well as with strain on local infrastructure, among other concerns.

Sugarland Creek’s appearance on a planning commission agenda last year led several Blount Countians to speak against the proposal. And planning commissioners, too, registered concerns over the proposed map of the subdivision, though they voted to reject the map as an earlier permission for work on the project had expired.

Then, days later, Sugarland Creek LLC brought a suit against the county and the planning commission. The case turned on the question of vested rights. Such rights would prohibit a government entity from applying laws or ordinances passed after the beginning of a project to that project as it continues, in some circumstances.

“(The planning commission’s) decision was arbitrary and capricious and contrary to Tennessee’s vested property right’s law,” the judgment reversing the decision reads.

Developers have a current grading permit for the subdivision, according to a representative of the Blount County Highway Department. The project, which has received two denials to one approval from the planning commission, will go before planning commissioners again as it nears completion.

The Daily Times reached out by phone, but was not able to contact Fuller by press time.