By Tabitha Evans Moore | EDITOR & PUBLISHER

LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — The one-year pause on major and minor subdivisions that the Metro Planning Commission began discussing this fall is now drafted as a formal amendment to the Metropolitan Lynchburg Moore County Zoning Resolution and headed to the Metro Council during there November meeting. It still needs two readings before the Council, expected in November and December, before the moratorium can take hold. Public notice of the proposal is currently running in area newspapers. Commissioners spent part of Tuesday’s meeting working through loose ends in how the moratorium would actually be applied once it’s approved.

As drafted, the amendment would impose a one-year moratorium on accepting, processing, considering or approving applications — and on issuing associated permits — for major and minor subdivisions involving residential development, including single-family homes, townhomes, duplexes and apartments, unless the Metro Council exempts a project by action of its own.

The draft states its purpose plainly: to give the county time to update its Comprehensive Plan and development design standards; evaluate whether infrastructure and services — including transportation, water, wastewater, stormwater, public safety, sanitation and schools — can handle the pace of growth; revise zoning and subdivision rules as needed; and adopt policies for orderly, sustainable development.

Commissioners have said in past meetings that a four-lot threshold separates a minor subdivision from a major one, and that houses built individually, outside a subdivision, continue to be unaffected. (That numeric threshold comes from the county’s existing subdivision regulations rather than from the amendment language itself, which defines major and minor subdivisions by reference to those regulations.) If Metro Council approves the amendment on both readings, commissioners said work sessions to hash out the county’s longer-term zoning and subdivision updates would begin in January.

Site work can continue — building permits can’t

The question came up as commissioners discussed two minor-division rezoning requests on Tuesday’s agenda — one on Tanyard Hill Road for property owners Regina Preston and Sandra Davenport, the other on Cobb Hollow Road for property owners Grady and Sue Knight Jr., with applicant Hannah Martin presenting: landowners already in the rezoning pipeline aren’t frozen out of all activity while their projects await the council’s required two readings. Land work, such as grading or other site preparation, can proceed. What can’t move forward until a project clears both readings is the building permit itself. As minor divisions, neither of Tuesday’s two requests would fall under the subdivision moratorium even once it takes effect.

Other business

The commission approved both rezoning requests, which now head to Metro Council for their required two readings. The Tanyard Hill request splits a 1.94-acre tract off a 36-acre property owned by Preston and Davenport; the Cobb Hollow request divides the Knights’ property into three tracts, two with existing houses and a third vacant buildable lot. Both properties are currently zoned A-1, agriculture-forestry, and would need to be rezoned to R-2, residential district-rural center, to comply with county zoning. Commissioners also agreed to add a council-signature line to the preliminary plat checklist and, eventually, step-by-step instructions showing applicants the full process — preliminary review by the commission, two council readings, then final review — so landowners know what’s ahead before they start.

On data centers, the commission confirmed it will not pursue a standalone, fast-tracked moratorium. County attorney Bill Reider has advised building one comprehensive ordinance rather than amending it piecemeal, and commissioners said they’ll vote the full package in at once once his review is complete.

A separate proposal to move travel-trailer businesses out of agricultural zoning and into commercial zoning remains with Reider for legal review; commissioners said they have not yet heard back on whether the change is permissible.