As expected, landowner/developer/attorney John Anderson has appealed a circuit court judge’s ruling on Aug. 2 that Walden town officials’ 2019 decision to rezone a piece of property so it could be used for a grocery store complex was “illegal, arbitrary and capricious.”
Attorney Anderson’s notice of appeal, filed Thursday, is now in the hands the state Court of Appeals at Knoxville.
Bradley County Judge J. Michael Sharp, who declared Walden’s rezoning ordinance invalid, will get no argument from the town of Walden, however.
Although Walden was named along with attorney Anderson as a defendant in the civil lawsuit in “Anthony et al v. Town of Walden and LOP, LLC,” current Mayor Lee Davis said Monday that the town will not appeal.
“The appeal is by Anderson alone,” the mayor said.
The topic is expected to be discussed during Walden’s next regularly scheduled council meeting, set for 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in town hall.
The judge’s decision last week capped a two-year dispute over whether attorney/developer Anderson’s proposed grocery store/fuel center/office complex qualified for VC-1 zoning.
As proposed, the development would have been located on the former Lines Orchids site, and would have contained a 43,000-square-foot grocery store, 10,000 square feet of retail and/or office space, a gas station and a parking lot for 220 vehicles.
In the lawsuit, plaintiffs contended that former Mayor Bill Trohanis and Alderwoman Sarah McKenzie erred when they voted in 2019 to approve the VC-1 rezoning request, despite the fact that the project fails to include five of the six required components. For example, they point out, as proposed the development includes neither residential properties nor an internal network of streets, both of which are mandatory in a village center.
Attorney/developer Anderson disagreed, contending that the actions taken by the former mayor and alderwoman were rational because both publicly outlined their reasons for voting as they did.
"The petitioners may not think these are good reasons,” attorney Anderson told the judge in April, “but they are (their) reasons. The court should not look to the intrinsic correctness of the decision, but whether it is rationally based.”