Planning Commission Approves East Ridge Avenue Rezone

On Monday evening the East Ridge Planning Commission voted to rezone property less than a block from Ringgold Road to allow a business next door to utilize the house for the owner’s real estate business.

Kenny Custer, the city’s Director of Community Services, told board members that the property owner, Wade Trammel, runs his real estate business in the house next door to the subject property at 1509 East Ridge Avenue. That house – which is zoned commercial – is the first house on East Ridge Avenue directly behind Smart Bank. Custer said the owner wants the rezoning so he can potentially allow clients of his real estate business who may come in overnight to stay in the house. Custer said the owner has no plans to rent the house on any kind of regular basis.

Board member Larry Sewell asked Custer if the owner had any desire to turn the property into a short-term vacation rental unit. Custer said it would not be permitted under current zoning.

The motion to rezone the property from R-1 Residential to C-2 Commercial District was approved unanimously by the board.

In the only other business before the planning commission, members approved plat signing for the new Jack’s Family Restaurant at 4209 Ringgold Road and 3.19 acres at 322 Scruggs Road for Northwest Fruit Health Subdivision.

Officials said the plat signing for the Scruggs Road property does not include any plans to build homes or a subdivision. The city once considered the Scruggs Road property as the site for East Ridge Fire Department’s Fire Hall No. 2. That deal never came to fruition.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.