By Tabitha Evans Moore
Editor & Publisher

LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — It’s Tuesday afternoon at 5:30 p.m. and four of the five members of the Metro Planning Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) sit across a long conference table in the Moore County Building basement. From left to right are Peggy Sue Blackburn, Patrick Maynard, Houston Lindsey, and BZA Chair Keith Moses. Planning Commission Administrative Assistant Christine Pyrdom sits to the right of Chair Moses.

Blackburn and Lindsey also sit on the Metro Council and Moses is currently running for the office of Metro Moore County Mayor. The fifth appointed member, Josh Cook, is absent.

One the other side in folding chairs across the front row sit Gateway representative Troy Woodis and their attorney, Madison Crooks Haynes of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP. She’s an associate out of their Nashville office.

Bradley exists as a huge firm employing over 700 lawyers with names like the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Monsanto, and Microsoft among their client list, according to their website.

Miss Haynes has also represented the under-construction Silicon Ranch solar farm along Highway 55 and the Retreat at Whiskey Creek tiny home community located along Main Street in public meetings over the past year — so she’s a frequent flyer here in Lynchburg.

Other interested parties sit in the rows behind them — Mayor Sloan Stewart, Roads Superintendent Shannon Cauble, Planning Chair Dexter Golden and Planning Committee member Jimmy Hammond. Both also serve on the Metro Council. Fellow council member Robert Bracewell is there as is third district candidate Chris Benson. On the very back row sits Stanley Fanning — the current owner of the 5.13-acre parcel along Main Street Gateway is eyeing for development.

The purpose of the meeting is to discuss a 42-unit townhome community proposed by Gateway Development Corporation — a Birmingham, Alabama based company with the stated mission of providing quality, affordable housing for workforce clientele. According to their website, they own over 120 such communities sprinkled throughout the Southeastern United States.

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TWO QUESTIONS BEFORE THE BOARD

According to the Application to Request Appeal proved by the Metro Codes Enforcer’s office, the purpose of the meeting is twofold: to appeal the Metro Planning Commission’s interpretation of the Metro Zoning Ordinance’s definition of a townhome and their subsequent preliminary site plan denial, which took place on June 2, 2026.

Chair Moses opened the meeting and for a large portion of it simply read items into the record verbatim from official documents included in the pre-meeting packet — the Ordinance’s definition of a townhome, permitted uses in the R-1 District, development standards for group housing projects, etc.

One item included in the meeting packet, a July 7 letter from Moore County Road Superintendent Shannon Cauble entitled “Technical Road Review for Proposed Main Street Developments” never made it into the discussion.

In it, Cauble declared that the Highway 50 / Main Street corridor that extends from Woodard’s Market to the Bill Dance Bridge near the Jack Daniel’s Visitor’s Center cannot legally absorb the traffic from two pending proposals — including the proposed 42-unit Gateway townhome project — and announced that the department “must defer all additional developer-initiated access” along Main Street until the road itself is widened at developer expense.

Chair Moses acknowledges the document at one point and says he intends to circle back to it, but never does.

THE DEFINITION OF A TOWNHOME AND THE ONE ZONED LOT DEBATE

According to a preliminary site plan, Gateway wants to build 42 homes in seven rows of six. In June, the Planning Commission said no. Their reasoning had nothing to do with whether Gateway called the proposed structure apartments or townhomes. Both parties seemed to have moved on from that fight.

On June 3, the dispute came down to a single phrase in the zoning ordinance’s definition of a “townhouse” — that each building sits “upon one (1) zone lot, containing no more than two dwelling units.” It’s the “no more than two dwelling units” part that the Planning Commission objected to in June.

Planning Commission Chair Golden read the ordinance’s separate definition of “zone lot” aloud and applied the half-acre minimum lot size across Gateway’s 5.13-acre parcel, calculating that the property divides into roughly 10 zone lots. With two dwelling units permitted per zone lot under the townhouse definition, Golden arrived at approximately 21 units — “twenty point seventy-eight,” in his words — well short of Gateway’s proposed 42.

Gateway’s attorney Haynes argued for a different reading: that each individual townhome unit, with its own front door, kitchen, and back door, is itself a single building containing one dwelling unit — meaning the entire 5.13-acre parcel functions as one zone lot, not 10, and density should instead be governed by the ordinance’s square-footage table rather than the half-acre minimum. Under that math, Gateway calculated room for roughly 42 to 43 units. Golden rejected that interpretation directly, telling Haynes, “I can’t insert ‘one’ into the definition if it’s not there.”

Metro Attorney Bill Reider, asked to settle the disagreement, declined to rule on it, noting there’s an administrative appeal process available instead. That process played out on Tuesday.

However at Tuesday’s BZA, the Gateway crew appeared to have changed tactics. A 16-page Bradley legal memo submitted as part of the pre-meeting package appears to have reframed the Planning Commission’s actual, more technical zone-lot argument into a cleaner “apartment vs. townhouse” binary.

Where the analysis gets thin is on the actual point of contention. Golden’s objection to Gateway’s density math was specific: the ordinance requires each townhouse building to sit “upon one (1) zone lot,” and applying the ordinance’s half-acre minimum across Gateway’s 5.13 acres, he calculated the property contains roughly 10 zone lots — not one.

Chairman Moses finding on that same question, at the BZA hearing, came down to a single sentence: “I would submit it meets that criteria as it’s one lot at five point one three acres.” No further explanation was given for why the parcel should be treated as one zone lot rather than the roughly 10 Golden calculated, and no mention was made of the half-acre minimum that drove Golden’s math in the first place.

Instead, Moses spent several minutes reading Tennessee’s building-safety statute, Tenn. Code Ann. § 68-120-101(a)(8)(C), into the record — front doors, separate egress, open space on two sides, a two-hour fire-resistance rating. But none of that addresses zone lots at all; the state statute is silent on the term. And nothing in the June 2 meeting suggests the Planning Commission ever disputed whether Gateway’s units had separate front doors or fire-rated walls — Golden’s stated objection was narrower and different. The result is that the one question actually in dispute on June 2 received a single unsupported sentence at the BZA hearing, while several paragraphs of analysis went to questions nobody at the Planning Commission had raised.

Blackburn made the motion that the Gateway project met the definition of a town home and Maynard seconded it. Blackburn, Maynard, and Moses voted in favor and Lindsey voted against and the first part of the appeal passed.

The board voted 3 to 1 to agree with Gateway on this question.

THE QUESTION OF THE DENIED SITE PLAN APPROVAL

Next, the BZA moved onto the question of the denial of Gateway’s preliminary site on June 2. The second fight revolved around how many homes the property is allowed to hold.

Bradley’s memo argues Gateway is entitled to site plan approval because the density math works out in its favor. Their reasoning: the ordinance’s “half-acre lot” language only sets a minimum size for individually platted lots — it doesn’t apply to Gateway’s project, since the property is one undivided 5.13-acre tract, not subdivided land. Instead, they argue, the real formula that governs is the ordinance’s tiered square-footage table, which requires 215,000 square feet for 42 units. The property has 223,462 square feet — about 8,462 to spare — so Bradley concludes the project fits under the ordinance’s own numbers and the denial should be reversed outright.

The catch is that the argument answers a different math problem than the one the Planning Commission actually used. Golden’s method divided the 5.13 acres into roughly 10 zone lots (using the half-acre minimum) and applied two units per zone lot — landing at about 21 units. Bradley’s memo never engages that calculation directly; it argues against the half-acre rule applying at all, rather than against the Commission’s specific zone-lot arithmetic.

Complicating both appeals is a dispute over which version of the ordinance amendment is official. Gateway says the code book it purchased in August 2025, along with emails from the county’s codes office as recently as February 2026, consistently show the lower-density numbers it built its site plan around — and that it was never notified of any change. The county says those numbers reflect a clerical error, since corrected, and that a signed and sealed version matching the official minutes book is the one that governs. At Tuesday’s hearing, even that “official” version came under question, with conflicting signed copies circulating same-day from the clerk’s office.

Metro Moore County’s attorney Bill Reider agreed that two different versions of the rule exist — one with lower numbers, one with higher numbers — and agreed the lower version was a mistake that made it into the county’s printed rulebook. But he argued that “a clerical error” shouldn’t decide the case in Gateway’s favor. Instead, he said he went back to the actual minutes from the meetings where the council passed the rule, to figure out what the council meant to do — not just what got printed by accident.

Eventually, Blackburn made a motion to grant Gateway’s appeal of the June 2 preliminary site plan denial. Moses seconded the motion. Blackburn and Moses voted in favor of the appeal and Maynard and Lindsey voted against the motion. And here’s where it gets interesting.

Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised states that a 2-2 vote is not a tie. It is a defeated motion.

Following the 2-2 vote, Maynard called upon Metro Mayor Stewart to cast the deciding vote,  and he declined citing a conflict of interest. After the meeting, The Times spoke with Mayor Stewart who explained he declined for two reasons. One, he sits on the board of directors of a Tennessee corporation that uses the Bradley law firm as counsel. And two, Bradley represents two other developers with active projects inside the county.

A vote that ends in a tie means the motion fails. That’s what happened here: the motion to reverse the Planning Commission’s denial got a 2-2 vote, so it failed, and the original denial should have stood. Instead of accepting that result, the board voted to table the whole matter until a fifth member could take part. But under Robert’s Rules, you can only “pause” something that hasn’t been decided yet — not something the board just finished voting on. Once the vote was counted and announced, that question was closed. The only proper way to reopen it would have been for someone who voted against Gateway to ask the board to reconsider — and that didn’t happen.

The meeting ended with the BZA stating their intention to call a special-called meeting with the full body to revote.

The Times will continue to follow the Gateway BZA appeal closely. •

About the Lynchburg Times: The Lynchburg Times is Moore County’s locally owned, independent news source and the only local media source own by a Lynchburg native. Our reporting is supported by readers, small business partners, and underwriters who believe community journalism matters. If this story was valuable to you, consider becoming a supporter at lynchburgtimes.com.