Hugh Dunn and the Snepp Joint Trust are requesting the city of Franklin annex and rezone 240 acres on Earlywood Drive. The western 80 acres are requested to be zoned Industrial General. The eastern 160 acres are requested to be zoned Agriculture.
Map provided by city of Franklin
The annexation of 240 acres into the city was not an issue, but the Franklin City Council opted to deny a rezone of 80 of those acres to Industrial General.
Two petitioners, Hugh Dunn and the Snepp Joint Trust, requested the city annex 240 acres on Earlywood Drive into the city. The property is between Graham and Hurricane Roads and just northeast of RJ Parkway. The request was for Dunn’s 80 acres immediately north of RJ Parkway to be zoned Industrial General and Snepp’s adjacent 160 acres to be zoned Agriculture.
The city council was unanimously in favor of annexing all 240 acres at its Wednesday meeting, but members questioned the need for the 80-acre parcel to join the city as Industrial General, voting 6-1 to deny the request. Council President Ken Austin was the only vote against denying that zoning classification.
Snepp’s request to join Franklin with Agriculture zoning was approved unanimously.
The city’s default zoning is Agriculture, so with the vote against the Industrial General zoning, all 240 acres will join the city as Agriculture, said Joanna Tennell, Franklin’s senior city planner.
The vote to deny the Dunn zoning request was in line with the unfavorable recommendation issued by the Franklin Plan Commission in May. The plan commission had recommended approval of the Snepp rezoning and the annexation of both parcels.
Why Industrial General?
A split between Industrial General and Agriculture was chosen because that best fits with the current zoning of adjacent properties, said Larry Gesse, an attorney for both petitioners.
There is no project for either parcel at this time, though the Dunn parcel is being advertised to potential developers, Gesse said.
“Neither property is under any current request for any kind of a development,” Gesse said at the May Franklin Plan Commission meeting. “Specifically for the large parcel — the 160 acres — we felt like annexation was appropriate and that for the rezoning we would deal with that whenever there was anything specific to bring before the city.”
William Dunn, son of the petitioner, spoke during the city council’s public hearing on the request in June. He said they are seeking the zoning on the advice of their real estate agent, who said having the property zoned ahead of time would be a benefit.
John Merrill, the Dunn’s real estate agent, said Wednesday there have been a number of inquiries on the property, all of them industrial.
“There is a fair amount of interest,” Merrill said. “(There’s) no specific group that I could tell you exactly what would go there, but it’s probably going to be distribution space. And there’s too much large distribution space in the market right now, so probably it will be smaller, independent industrial … about 150,000 – 250,000 square foot buildings in a park setting, of which there is a shortage right now.”
Behind the vote to deny
Several council members, including Bob Heuchan, Shawn Taylor and Anne McGuinness, said they would like to see a project before rezoning the parcel.
“I’m not against necessarily rezoning 80 acres to industrial general at some point … At this point, I’d like to see what is going in there before it’s rezoned,” Heuchan said. “In other words, I think if we rezone it at this point, we lose the ability to have any say someone was going to end up there.”
Council member Irene Nalley asked why developers who are interested haven’t put a proposal forward.
“Is it just because it’s not zoned Industrial? Is that why they’re not like wanting to buy Agriculture because they would have to come in here and have it zoned to whatever they feel (is needed)?” Nalley asked.
Mayor Steve Barnett interjected, saying he doesn’t see a reason developers would shy away without zoning in place, as many projects that initially didn’t have the proper zoning have been put forward and have been built successfully in Franklin.
“There are people that realize that once they buy a piece of property, what they would do is buy it hinging on if it got rezoned. So, they would come in and try to get a rezone before they went and closed on the property,” Barnett said. “So, it doesn’t really hold anybody out to do that.”
Tennell also said property selling with a contingency on rezoning is common.
Austin asked if the city would really lose its ability to make decisions about the land if this were to come in with Industrial General zoning.
Tennell said that depends on perspective. Typically properties come into the city with zoning that fits with nearby areas and with the city’s comprehensive plan, which is a document the city council approved years earlier. She also said it is not unprecedented for properties to be annexed into the city without a project attached, citing several examples.
Council member Josh Prine asked if Industrial General is the right zoning.
Barnett said he believes Industrial Light would be better, while Tennell said that’s a matter of perspective. Industrial General is broad and quite similar to Industrial Light, but doesn’t include manufacturing as a possible use, Tennell said. While rezoning of any type would help it sell, leaving it Agriculture wouldn’t likely harm the petitioner, she said.
“From the planning department’s perspective, it does make the property more marketable and it helps development proceed at a quicker rate,” Tennell said. “However it does not impede development to leave property zoned Agriculture and wait for a project to come in.”
Resident concerns
About a dozen nearby residents turned out to the May plan commission meeting and one turned out to the city council’s June public hearing to oppose the rezoning.
Nearby resident Jill Beavins spoke at both meetings and shared concerns about additional semi-traffic on roads surrounding the parcel. She said semi-traffic on county-maintained sections of Earlywood has become a public safety hazard. The semis have frequent accidents — sometimes taking out power poles — and have caused the edges of the road to crumble, she said.
Barnett answered some of Beavins’ concerns during the June public hearing.
The city is planning several projects for portions of Graham Road, Earlywood Drive and Paul Hand Boulevard that are already in city limits. This year the city is repaving Earlywood Drive and Paul Hand Boulevard within city limits. A $2 million extension of Graham Road is also planned using $500,000 from a developer and $650,000 from the state’s READI grant.
Roundabouts at Earlywood Drive and Graham Road, and Paul Hand and Graham Road are planned in 2024. Additional road work and a project to straighten out S-curves on Graham Road are also planned in the coming years.
After the annexation, the city would also plan to upgrade Earlywood Drive to the same standard as the portion of the road already in the city, Barnett said. The road would be further upgraded when a future developer builds on the parcels.
“I can proudly say that … where we’ve annexed, we have fixed the roads,” he said.
