With Walden’s regular February town meeting less than two weeks away, officials are busy getting their legal ducks in a row.
Once again, the board of aldermen is set to consider a proposed resolution which contends that Walden officials erred in 2019 when they approved a plan to convert the old Lines Orchids site into a so-called “village center.”
The tentative agenda for the meeting, due to be finalized and made public next week, includes consideration of the proposal.
The board had been scheduled to take up the resolution at its Jan.
12 meeting.
However, a temporary restraining order (TRO) issued earlier that day by Hamilton County Chancellor Pamela Fleenor – at the request of attorney John Anderson, acting as principal for nominal landowner LOP LLC – forced postponement.
“The temporary restraining order dissolved on Jan. 27,” Mayor Lee Davis said, noting that he has asked Walden town attorney Sam Elliott to “file a motion with the court just to clarify that.”
If approved, Mayor Davis said, the resolution currently before the Walden Council would not overturn the 2019 rezoning.
As proposed, the resolution would “authorize and direct” the mayor to “take all appropriate actions to invalidate the 2019 ordinance approving the rezoning . . . and to carry out the intent and purpose of this resolution, which is to comply with state law and the zoning ordinance – and to correct the erroneous passage of Ordinance 331.”
Further, it would end the town’s opposition to a lawsuit opposing the grocery store complex filed early in 2020 against LOP LLC and the town by Linda Collins, Gary D. Smith and Anthony J. Wheeler.
From now on, the resolution said, Walden officials and attorneys will “cooperate with the petitioners in the lawsuit.”
The Jan. 12 TRO was requested in a surprise, last-minute lawsuit filed just hours before the town council meeting.
The suit petitioned Chancery Court to prohibit Walden officials from reconsidering the 2019 rezoning, which was intended to clear the way for developers to build a 43,000-square-foot supermarket in the heart of the town.
Chancellor Fleenor issued the TRO, she said this week in court documents, “to maintain the status quo in this matter” while an earlier, related lawsuit challenging the rezoning moves through a different court.
It’s unclear why Attorney Anderson – who has said he owns 80 percent of the land in question – filed his petition in Hamilton County Chancery Court.
After Hamilton County Circuit Court judges recused themselves from hearing a lawsuit filed early last year by Walden residents against LOP LLC and the town of Walden, that case was transferred to Bradley County Circuit Court Judge J. Michael Sharp.
That case and the new one filed in Chancery Court are related, Chancellor Fleenor found. Consequently, she ruled, Judge Sharp should hear both of them.
In her ruling, Chancellor Fleenor said that it “(appeared) to the court that this case involves common questions of law and fact (also central to the circuit court lawsuit transferred to Bradley County) and . . . the disposition of one may impair or impede interests in the other.”
Consequently, “. . . to avoid the risk of conflicting, inconsistent rulings, the court determines the case should be transferred,” she wrote. “Judge Sharp has graciously consented to a mutually convenient interchange and to hear this matter to conclusion.”
Officials said a hearing on the former Chancery Court lawsuit has been tentatively scheduled for next week in Judge Sharp’s court – just a few days before Walden’s regular February meeting.