When country songwriter Patsy Bruce sold her Williamson County farm and moved to West Nashville’s Cherokee Park for a quieter, lower-maintenance life, little did she know she was stepping into a sort of urban battlefield.
In Cherokee Park, the summer doldrums—when neighbors should rock together in wicker chairs and share their divided hostas—have been replaced with a bitter and divisive dispute over a proposed zoning designation that would impose limited restrictions on the neighborhood’s historic homes. The idea for so-called “conservation zoning” has degenerated into such a vile squabble that opponents of the designation have—through sneaky, if legal, paper-shuffling high jinks—taken custody of the Cherokee Park Neighborhood Association name and installed themselves as its leadership.
The former Cherokee Park Neighborhood Association—whose officers allowed the group’s charter to lapse, opening the door for the rival group’s coup—generally favored conservation zoning, and its leaders were trying to persuade the Metro Council to adopt it.
“To me, it was quite a surprise,” says Bruce, who was elected unanimously June 13 as the original group’s president.
The district’s Council member, John Summers, favors the conservation zoning but says he’ll recommend to the Council whatever the majority of the neighborhood wants. He calls the neighborhood association takeover “a clear attempt to deceive the Council.”
As it is, both groups are using the same name, which Summers explains can only confuse the Council, which is set to hold a final vote on the issue Aug. 15. He says he thinks that was the whole idea behind the opponents chartering a new association and taking the name of the existing group.
At a public hearing before the Council in early July, opponents explained why they were against conservation zoning and identified themselves as representatives from the neighborhood association. Meanwhile, zoning advocates struggled to explain the strange set of circumstances to Council members.
“A lot of Council members were quite disturbed, quite angry that they were intentionally being misled,” Summer says. “You know, it’s pretty deceptive. Their approach is scorched earth.”
Jim Davis, an attorney and Cherokee Park resident who filed for a new charter and took the association name, claims he’s trying to use the new group to bring the neighborhood together, not further a political position.
“It’s not appropriate for the neighborhood association to take a position,” Davis says.
But in a letter to the Council, Davis said on the one hand that his group wasn’t taking a position but then explained why he thinks the zoning designation is a bad idea.
“I think the vocal minority has managed to put up a confusing screen,” Bruce says.
She says she’s amazed by the level of antipathy the debate has generated. After all, the proposed change would place only relatively mild restrictions on property owners in Cherokee Park, which boasts one of the largest—if not the largest—concentrations of 1920s Tudor revival homes in Nashville. Under the proposed zoning—which both the Metro Planning Commission and the Metro Historic Zoning Commission have recommended—only home additions, new outbuildings, the razing of historic structures, and the construction of new homes would be subject to special review and approval.
Opponents, however, have managed to convince property owners—particularly elderly residents—that the government would be interfering in all matters related to home improvement.
“I guess if I feel anything, I feel baffled because there is so much misinformation circulated, things that are simply not true,” Bruce says. “Some of the things that have been going on have been appalling, and it’s a very unfortunate thing, because any time you can attract this much attention to an issue that should be a very quiet neighborhood issue, there’s something wrong.”
Advocates say conservation zoning would preserve the architectural sense of the neighborhood and maintain what are already reasonably high property values. Opponents characterize the 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.
But Summers insists, “It is the least restrictive of historic zoning.” He’s made no secret of his support for conservation zoning. 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.
“This is not one of those issues that should be generating this kind of nastiness,” he told the Scene this summer when opponents and proponents were swapping nasty e-mail messages and engaging in similarly petty shenanigans. “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.”
Both sides still claim a majority, and both claim to have signature lists to prove their strength. Summers says he’s taking himself out of the signature-verification business, turning over both sides’ lists to an independent person or agency to count and refusing to release the name of that person or group.
“At the proper time, I’m going to tell everybody how it was verified,” he says. “I’m doing this to protect the integrity of the process so we don’t have people trying to influence it on either side.”
Summers says, however, that he’s confident the zoning advocates will be the majority, and a substantial enough one that the Council will feel comfortable imposing the new designation on the neighborhood. If it’s evenly divided, for and against, he says he’ll defer the legislation.
One way or another, though, the issue should be settled Aug. 15. “I think that’ll be good,” an exhausted Bruce says. “You can quote me on that.”
