Fourth of July picnics may never be the same in the Cherokee Park neighborhood off West End Avenue—at least not this summer. At this point, some neighbors might be inclined to spike the watermelon slices with syringes full of vinegar.
Residents are fighting a bitter dispute over the age-old issue of property rights. The neighborhood’s proposed ”conservation zoning“ has degenerated into such a vile squabble that at least one resident has threatened to sue another, and many are vowing to toss their Council member, John Summers, out of office come the next election day.
Meanwhile, sarcastic e-mails and unsigned letters are finding their way onto the hard drives and into the mailboxes of Cherokee Park, which boasts one of the largest—if not the largest—concentrations of 1920s Tudor revival homes in Nashville.
Zoning advocates say the proposed change would place only relatively mild restrictions on property owners—subjecting home additions, new outbuildings, the razing of historic structures, and the construction of new homes to special review and approval. That would help preserve the architectural sense of the neighborhood and maintain what are already reasonably high property values there, they say.
Opponents characterize the special zoning designation as an imposition on property owners and just another layer of bureaucracy they’d have to navigate to improve their little piece of the earth.
”It is the least restrictive of historic zoning,“ Summers insists.
He’s made no secret of his support for conservation zoning for the 320 or so properties in the neighborhood. In fact, when he represented East Nashville on the Council in the 1980s, he was the first to ever pass the designation for a neighborhood.
”The truth of the matter is,“ he says, ”if you’re not going to build a garage or add an addition on to your home, this doesn’t affect you. So that means you can paint your house, you can put siding on it, you can change the windows, you can put up a fence. Anything that you do in terms of normal repairs and maintenance to an existing home wouldn’t be reviewed.“
Some Cherokee Park residents say Summers, who has earned a reputation as an antagonistic type, has helped set a tone for the controversy that has only added fuel to the fire. At a February meeting, property owner Archie Potts asked Summers how the proposal came about.
”He gave me about a three-minute dialogue, and when he stopped talking, I repeated the question,“ Potts recalls. ”He didn’t answer me. So anyway, at that point, he says, ‘You can just sit down and hush.’ And I took offense to that.“
Summers concedes he told Potts to ”sit down and hush“ and admits that the two public meetings about the issue have been enormously confrontational. But, he says, ”This is not one of those issues that should be generating this kind of nastiness. It’s not like we’re rezoning this property commercial. It’s not like we’re trying to put a landfill in the middle of a neighborhood.“
Summers attributes much of the confrontation to what he describes as ”one woman.“ That woman is Karen Daskawicz, who doesn’t mind being known as part of the opposition camp. Her committee against the zoning, known as ”My House, My Choice,“ dismisses the fear-mongering prospects of lower property values and eyesore home additions should the neighborhood fail to secure the zoning.
”Remember, the Metro bureaucrats, who will pass aesthetic judgment on your hopes and dreams, have much to gain and nothing to lose by gaining control over our neighborhood,“ one of her committee’s mailings reads. ”They justify their existence and are looking forward to increased power, funding, and job security with conservation zoning.“
Resolution of the dispute will happen sooner than expected. Summers has asked the Metro agencies involved—the Planning Commission and the Historic Zoning Commission—to make special arrangements to fast-track the proposal for a public hearing in July.
”The people for it want to proceed with this,“ he says.
Each side insists it’s in the majority, but Summers says he’ll try to make a determination of that once and for all when he collects petitions he’s asked each side to circulate.
Meanwhile, neither side is budging. ”He’s bringing a situation over here that the majority doesn’t want and he’s really ramrodding it through,“ Potts says.
Says Jerry Narramore, a vocal proponent of the zoning: ”I think there’s a part of the city’s heritage we need to preserve. And we’re willing to give up the opportunity to turn a Tudor into an A-frame.“
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