LYNCHBURG — The steps to acquire a building permit in Metro Moore County are simple. First, any developer or business visits the Metro Codes office and obtains a copy of the policy or ordinance for their project type. Then, based on those guidelines, they create a site plan, which they submit to the Metro Planning Commission for a preliminary approval. Once approved, that approved site plan gets submitted with the building permit application.

On Tuesday, representatives of Silicon Ranch appeared before the Commission asking for approval of a solar farm substation site plan in an effort to get any forward movement towards building the $100 million solar farm investment that the Metro Board of Zoning Appeals approved back in 2022. They were denied unanimously based on the fact that they could not produce a site plan of the full project and the fact that no roads agreement existed between the solar farm developer and the Metro Highway Department.

On August 6, the Metro Planning Commission voted unanimously to send their $490,000 solar farm building permit fee recommendation to the Metro Council for feedback. Then on August 20, the Council punted the issue back to the Planning Commission – voting 9-6 to table a Metro Codes solar farm building permit fee structure that would have brought nearly half a million dollars into Metro coffers. It’s left the overall question in limbo.

{EDITOR’S NOTE: We attend every Metro Moore County public meeting. This article represents over 20 years of knowledge about local politics and hours of research and writing. We publish it without a paywall as a community service. If you’d like to support our work for as little as $5 a month, you can do so by clicking here.}

Silicon Ranch says substation is phase one of a larger project

Silicon Ranch officials told the Commission that with the building fee structure currently tabled at the Metro Council, an approved substation site plan would allow them to move forward with “Phase 1” of the project – further explaining that the substation and solar panel array would have two different contractors and building permits.

“Under your zoning ordinance, this is a portion of this project by definition,” Madison Haynes of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings – the Nashville legal firm representing Silicon Ranch stated. “The reason we’re coming separately is that this will be built by a separate contractor and therefore will have a separate building permit than the actual solar farm array itself. This isn’t our building plan permit application, this is just a site plan for that structure.”

Metro Planning and Zoning Chair Dexter Golden pushed back insisting that the substation and the solar farm were one project and without a site plan that included the entire footprint, the substation site plan could not be considered.

Fellow member Jim Crawford disagreed.

“I think this is probably a step in the right direction,” he said. “So, it’s not going to hurt anything to bring it in one piece at a time if that’s what it takes.”

Since the substation site plan involved just concrete, gravel, a couple of fences, and involved no solar panels, Haynes stated that she assumed it would fall under the existing industrial fee structure of $4,500, and thus would not be affected by the large project’s building permit fee remaining undecided.

Silicon Ranch came to the meeting armed with pages and pages of engineering drawings and a binder full of additional information detailing how their proposal met each criteria of the zoning ordinance. Haynes also reminded the Commission that they asked Silicon Ranch for the project’s approved SWIFT permit back in March. That document was included in the October meeting packet.

“We tried to come as over prepared as possible. To show, hey guys, this is straightforward and administrative. We are designing the substation to your rules. This is an administrative sign off. And again, where we are with this project, we have permission to build a solar farm here. We got that in 2022. And now we just have to build it by the law, the regulations in Moore County,” Silicon Ranch Economic and Community Development Manager Morey Hill explained.

Hill went on to state that Silicon Ranch is eager to move forward once a legal building permit fee structure is in place.

“Some of our competitors would have immediately filed a lawsuit to fix that,” Hill continued, referring to the yet undetermined solar farm building permit fee structure. “That’s not how we wanted to do this. We are not a business that will operate like that, or try to pull a quick one on anybody here.”

“But you’re not happy with that price,” Golden retorted – referencing the proposed building permit fee. “And that’s in limbo with legal letters sent to us saying you cannot charge this. With our comeback saying we need to see site plans to know what we need to charge. There’s a catch-22 there.”

Crawford attempted to refocus the group.

“I think what we’re looking at tonight does this meet the requirements of the state as far as storm water, construction, so forth. I mean, it’s basically a square with some concrete and gravel, and later on once they get rolling they’re going to bring in transformers. But this is just a site plan. I don’t think it’s connected to anything else. We need to just look at this on the merits of its own instead of,” Crawford explained to the rest of the Commission.

Cauble wants separate roads agreement

The substation in question would be accessed at Cumberland Springs Road. At this point, the Commission looked to Metro Highways Superintendent Shannon Cauble for her input. Cauble has gone on record stating that she’d like a separate agreement with Silicon Ranch stating that they plan to repair any damages to Moore County roads once the solar farm construction is completed.

“That was part of what we offered in the signing agreement that we presented to Mayor Stewart,” Hill said. “We even laid out how it would be evaluated before and post construction, and that that would be on our contractors to make that whole.”

“I’m going to want something that’s strictly with me and y’all. Not through the mayor, not through planning,” Cauble responded.

“Well, it feels a little bit like we’re being blocked and tackled at every turn,” Hill stated.

Later in the meeting, member Scott Fruehauf insisted that his approach had not changed throughout the process – a complete plan and third party engineering approval.

“I’ve been consistent the whole time. I just want to see the overall site plan,” Fruehauf stated. “This is a great first step. This has a lot of information that we’ve been asking for. As soon as there is an overall site plan, the entire site plan for the entire project, and it gets sent off for approval by a third-party engineer, which is part of the reason why the permit fee is so high, I’m in. Bring me a plan, a whole plan, a full plan. But this is a part of the plan.”

Silicon Ranch again pushed back – accusing the Metro Planning Commission of “moving the goalposts.”

“None of these concerns were brought up last time,” Hill insisted. “We were here in March. The concerns last time were, hey, go get a SWIFT permit. Normally we don’t have to get a SWIFT permit before site plan approval for these. We did anyway. We had the time, and we are back and we have it. And now we’re hearing five different concerns.”

“This just lets us get going with finding a contractor to build a substation based on a site plan that’s been approved by the county,” Hill explained. “If there is some worst case scenario where you guys don’t approve our solar farm plan, we’re not going to build a substation to nowhere.”

Motion to deny passes unanimously

In the end Jim Crawford made a motion to approve the site plan contingent on sign off from Metro Attorney William Rieder. Robert Carroll seconded it, but it fell apart during open discussion based on no complete project site plan and the precedent that the Planning Commission recently required subdivision developer Joe Denby to supply Superintendent Cauble with a separate roads agreement before moving forward.

“Scott brought up a good point about being consistent,” Golden stated. “We’ve held up someone else’s because of not having a roads agreement on file. So once we get the roads agreement, I don’t see any problem with anything else on this.”

Fruehauf then made a motion to deny the substation site plan based on the fact that it is “a partial site plan of a larger project that needs more information.” Jimmy Hammond seconded the motion. It passed unanimously.

The next Metro Planning and Zoning Commission meeting will take place on November 5 at the County Building. During the October meeting, members elected to move the meeting time from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. To be added to the agenda, contact the Metro Codes office at 931-759-7068. •

{The Lynchburg Times is the only newspaper in Moore County that is owned, published, edited, and reported by a Lynchburg native. We offer common-sense, fact-driven stories written by a local with over 20 years of journalism experience.  We are supported by both readers and organizations who value community journalism. Click here to support us.}