Housing and other uses may be added to business-zoned areas
By Mike Steely
The General Business (CA) and Business and Manufacturing (CB) zones in Knox County may be amended after a special called meeting of the Knox County Commission this afternoon.
Currently, the CA zone allows retail business and services such as grocery, restaurants, offices, banks, motels, and auto sales and service. The CB zone permits retail and service businesses as well as manufacturing such as bottling, canneries, creamery, leather, optical and paper goods fabrication, wholesaling, warehousing and distribution.
The special 4:30 public hearing and discussion will regard the adding clinics, medical and dental offices, and multi-family dwellings with up to 12 units per acre to the two zone categories. Applicants would undergo a special use review for multi-family homes.
Most of the amendments in this proposal were recommendations of the Alcoa Highway Corridor Plan, adopted by city council on July 26, 2022, and county commission on July 25, 2022. Since all of the uses recommended for the CA and CB zones would affect properties county-wide, they are being reviewed for applicability in that larger context.
“This zoning will be for areas like Alcoa Highway to promote business and residential. Without this zoning, areas like Alcoa Highway will never be developed,” Commission District 9’s Carson Dailey told The Focus.
Another change is the definition of an upper-level dwelling in additional zones.
A memo from Knoxville-Knox Planning states that upper-level dwellings (multiple unit developments, not garage apartments) are allowed in the Town Center (TC) zones and allows dwellings in upper-level buildings (i.e., apartments over commercial, for example) in a development’s peripheral and core areas as a permitted use. Commercial Neighborhood (CR and CN) zones allow residential units on the second floor and above a business as permitted use. While upper-level dwellings as a use are already referenced in the Knox County Zoning Ordinance, they have not been defined.
Adopting the changes would open up additional zones for apartments and multi-use housing in the corridors of Knox County where such housing has previously been prohibited.
