Development review commission approves multiple requests

Nashville Development Review Commission met on Aug. 17, approving a variety of requests from local businesses and individuals.

Hidden Valley Inn is being renamed to Grand Wood Suites and was approved for a sign application. The sign will stay consistent with the current look.

One Son Construction was approved for the certificate of appropriateness for the installation of a walk-in at the back of the Circle K on State Road 46 East. It will sit on the grassy area behind the building.

Aaron Rudd from Hob Nob Corner Restaurant joined the meeting via Zoom, requesting three changes to the restaurant for repairs for roof leaks over the kitchen and to repair the entirety of the lower back roof section for continuity. Rudd also requested to remove the exterior stairs on the west side of the building, which are rotting. They are not original to the building. The last request was to repaint the building with a fresh coat of white in November. All of those requests were approved.

Jill Lane, the new owner of the historic Doc Tilton House, at 23 North Jefferson Street, also sought approval for a number of requests.

On the exterior, she requested to replace missing and broken screen doors for more of a “Victorian look.” She wanted to paint the porch railings and window panes in a shade of blue and replace original shutters. She requested to replace the pipe porch railings with vintage railings and remove a small segment of the stone wall behind the house to make an entrance for off street parking.

Lane’s goal is to preserve the house, add a “micro museum” of the home on one side then have the opposite side as a curio shop with Tilton related merchandise. There will be an Airbnb unit and Lane will also live in the house.

“My plan is to respect the history and location and the look,” she said. “I simply want to enhance what has been done and maintain as much of the historic integrity as possible, and open it to the visiting public.”

Phase two of her project is to add a white picket fence and a white gazebo in the back yard. She also wants to add signage facing both Jefferson Street and the Village Green with a sign off of Honeysuckle Lane. All of her requests were approved.

The commission also discussed feather banner guidelines and whether to adjust guidelines or to not allow the use of feather banners at all. The group voted eight to one to make a recommendation to not allow the use of feather banners within town limits.

Update on residential tax-increment financing

The Nashville Redevelopment Commission met on Aug. 3 and further discussed the progress of establishing residential tax-increment financing.

The process of establishing residential TIF is ongoing.

The first meeting for public comment was held in June. The then commission provided a 30-day notice of a meeting to review their economic development plan. Due to the meeting being canceled, the commission will submit another notice.

“Once we’ve done that, we’ll be in a place to create a declaratory resolution,” adviser Ed Curtin said.

“We’ll need to then go back to the school to hopefully gain their support and get a resolution from there to create TIF and complete our steps.”

County redevelopment commission presents to town redevelopment

The Nashville Redevelopment Commission meeting received an update from the county’s Redevelopment Commission on the Brown County Landbank project.

County RDC President Justin Schwenk gave a presentation on Brown County Community Investment Corporation, also known as the Brown County Landbank, during the Aug. 3 town RDC meeting. Scwhenk said he was in the “education phase” of the process.

“We have for about the last two years engaged in a process of trying to solve a couple different problems by the most efficient means possible,” Schwenk said. “We started several years ago with how we’d address the issue of blight in the county. It’s grown into something different.”

Since this past winter, RDC members and other volunteers have been gathering data on land use in Brown County through a survey tool called Landgrid. After canvassing most of Van Buren and Washington townships so far, they reported identifying around 60 land parcels where a vacant home was found and a new home could go instead.

“Those surveys present troubling results for us in the county,” he said. “In order to have a holistic, well-established county, we have to have a variety of age demographics living in the county. … We are not attracting the 20 to 40 year old demographic. There are many reasons, one reason is the price of housing.”

With average home prices continuing to rise, Schwenk said it moves the county further away from attracting a younger demographic of 20 to 40 year olds.

“Not to mention that 50-percent of the homes (in Brown County) were built before 1980 and need probably $20,000 to $30,000 of work,” he said. “It simply prices us out of that demographic. This is not good news for us.”

Schwenk said that the county RDC is going “parcel by parcel” checking to see how many have structures on them, do not have structures or have an abandoned structure

“Once we have that info, then we can make sure what we’re doing is justified,” he said.

Under the language proposed for the Brown County Landbank charter, “no property shall be acquired by the corporation if said property is currently occupied or is the full-time primary residence of the property owner.”

A land bank is a way to capture tax on delinquent properties and redevelop them in a way that benefits the community, Schwenk said.

“I draw a fairly liberal line between tax delinquent properties and dilapidated homes and homes that belong to people that don’t live in the county,” he said. “Since 2016 there have been 180 tax delinquent properties this year. Only 30 wind up selling at the tax sale.”

For a land bank to capture the land, the county can put a county lien on the property if it doesn’t sell, can re-assume control, then it can be assigned to any 501c3. The land bank can clear back taxes and liens so they don’t have mortgages on them.

Land acquired by the land bank would be available for local contractors and businesses to work on clearing blight, land maintenance and even building a home.

“That’s life changing for our residents,” Schwenk said. “You have a buildable homesite, ready to turn it into a home that’s affordable.”

During the Aug. 3 meeting, the town RDC also introduced new member Louis Klein. Klein relocated to Brown County from northern Illinois in December 2019.