News

NIMBY NATION: No more dwellings after we move in

By Lightning Editorial Board, Published: September 28, 2023

Not in My Backyard campaigns are ascendant across Henderson County — powered by homeowners ready to cross swords with developers wherever a shovel threatens to turn dirt.

The well-organized and well-funded movement to defeat a 200-duplex subdivision on the south course property of Etowah Valley Golf & Resort has rallied the biggest opposition since the Balfour Parkway ignited a third of the county. Hundreds of homeowners strong, the organization has hired not one but two law firms — one to oppose the duplex master plan before the Henderson County Planning Board and the other to file a lawsuit in Superior Court to block the development.

Had the developer pressed on with the original plans to build a 343-unit RV park on the golf course land, we can only imagine how mightily the opponents would have proclaimed before governing boards that the developer ought to just build what the land-use code allows by right — detached dwellings in a subdivision. That’s what Tribute Investment has now submitted, of course, yet the Etowah Valley Preservation Society is every bit as opposed to detached homes as it was to an RV park.

The society has written a 17-page letter to the Planning Board imploring members to reject the subdivision plan; drafted a 47-page brief detailing master plan “deficiencies,” potential problems with flooding, a wastewater treatment plant and traffic, and threats to quality of life; sent up a 12-page traffic report; and commissioned an 18-page traffic impact analysis.

The pattern has become familiar as homeowners rise up to shoot down development plans that add vehicle trips, remove trees or threaten wildlife habitats. Those may be valid concerns to take into account but if our appointed and elected decision makers reject every development that removes trees, where are the new homes, duplexes or apartments going to go?

That’s why, in this environment, it was a relief to see the Hendersonville Planning Board on Sept. 14 unanimously OK an application to build 50 two-story townhomes in 11 buildings on 7½  acres on Greenville Highway between Brookdale Avenue and Balsam Road. Lock 7 Development LLC downsized its original proposal to build a 185-unit apartment complex by 70 percent — an application Lock 7 pulled after the city Planning Board said no, unanimously, in August 2022.

Neighborhood opposition and the Planning Board members’ comments “helped us reimagine the project into something that we think is a great fit for this site,” developer Eric Mioduski said. “At the end of the day, these changes were a direct result of the feedback that we get from council members and planning members that are here today.”

That would seem to be the rare positive outcome where a landowner wins government approval for a (scaled-back) development of badly needed housing. We’re aware, of course, that the no-growth, no-change party won’t see it that way. If an oak tree has to be chain-sawed to allow it, or if a deer sighting is threatened, or a cardinal’s perch becomes precarious, those homeowners will say no — remaining completely oblivious to the fact that trees were bulldozed to create a lot for their own home next door.