A high-rise apartment building planned for Knoxville’s downtown waterfront area will move forward after City Council on Tuesday rejected an appeal from a condominium owners’ group to halt the project.

Officials have determined the proposed 270-unit apartment building meets downtown design guidelines.

The unanimous vote came after a lengthy discussion that included allegations and insinuations of impropriety on the part of city officials.

 Woodfield Development, based in Charleston, S.C., has proposed building an 18-story structure with 270 apartments atop a five-story parking garage rising from Front Avenue near Neyland Drive. 

The building’s main entrance  would be at the corner of Hill Avenue and Locust Street, but the bulk of the L-shaped structure would rise from the bottom of a steep bluff between Front Avenue, the Overlook condos and the historic River House.

After design changes primarily focused on the mass of the building, the city’s Design Review Board voted to issue a certificate of appropriateness for the project in June. The action certified that the project would meet Knoxville’s downtown design guidelines.

The Overlook Owners Association, made up of residents of the Overlook condominium building on Hill Avenue, challenged the ruling. In August, however, the Knoxville-Knox County Planning Commission unanimously upheld the decision. The owners association then appealed to City Council. 

The Woodfield development team told Council members that they met with area residents and changed the design of the building to accommodate them and the concerns of Design Review Board members. 

Ben Hudgins, the project architect, said the team varied the heights of different parts of the building, making it taller on the eastern end overlooking Locust Street and lower on the western end closest to the Henley Bridge. The garage levels on Front Avenue will be clad with screening and contain one retail space with room for more on the ground level as demand allows.

“We believe that this process, while admittedly challenging at times, has ultimately made the project better,” Hudgins said.

Overlook residents disputed the finding that the project met the downtown design guidelines and argued that Council should nullify the certificate of appropriateness.

Resident Kathy Golsby said the building would violate all but one of the downtown design guidelines and dwarf the buildings in the surrounding area. She said the guidelines are not mere suggestions but are meant to be followed.

“This design is wholly inappropriate,” she said. “It fails to meet the letter and spirit of almost every guideline, many glaringly so.”

Lindsay Crockett, who handles design guidelines for Knoxville-Knox County Planning, however, said the project met the guidelines, which are a set of principles, not rigid rules.

“The design guidelines are intended to be applied in a flexible manner to meet the needs of development while encouraging the design to respect the context of nearby buildings on the streetscapes,” she said.

Attorney Daniel Sanders, who represents the Overlook Owners Association, said his clients didn’t want to stop the project, but only wanted a better design that meets the city’s guidelines. He also raised concerns about fairness.

Sanders accused Council members Tommy Smith and Lauren Rider, along with former Councilwoman Janet Testerman, of holding ex parte conversations with Woodfield representatives. Appeals of Planning Commission decisions are quasi-judicial functions, and Council members are forbidden from talking with the parties involved prior to the hearing. He displayed photos of Smith and Rider meeting with Woodfield representatives on the site.

Sanders also alleged that Rebekah Jane Justice, the city’s chief of urban planning and development, acted as a “project manager” for Woodfield. In an unconventional move, Justice had told Planning commissioners in August that Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon’s administration supported the project.

“It’s a process that seems to favor one side while silencing and even attacking the other,” Sanders said. “The integrity of these proceedings is at stake, and I urge the Council to take a step back and ensure it’s fairness, not favoritism, that guides the decision-making process moving forward.”

City Council Attorney Rob Frost pointed out that as an affidavit filed by an Overlook Owners Association member noted, the meetings were held in 2022 and 2023, long before Woodfield submitted plans to the Design Review Board. The Overlook Owners Association filed its appeal to Council last month, which only then triggered the restriction on ex parte discussions.

Under questioning by Frost, Rider and Smith each said they made no promises to Woodfield during their meetings and could hear the appeal in a fair and impartial manner.

Kincannon defended Justice, whose job is to talk with developers about potential projects in the city. “The allegations that anybody from the city is a project manager for this or any other project is completely false and outrageous and not true in any way,” the mayor said.

Sanders also blasted the Kincannon administration for the fees it charges for copies of public records. On behalf of the Overlook Owners Association, he had asked for copies of emails from city employees and Council members about the project, using keywords in the subject lines to signify which emails would be responsive.

The city was going to charge him more than $8,000, explaining that it would take employees an extraordinary amount of time to go through all emails that could possibly comply with such a broad request. Though inspecting public records is free, public agencies in Tennessee are allowed to charge residents for employees’ time beyond one hour spent fulfilling public records requests for copies of the records. 

“We told Mr. Sanders that up front,” Frost said. “It was a large request, and the city in my opinion made an appropriate response.”

Sanders eventually amended his request to include only Justice’s emails. He also made a smaller records request with Knoxville-Knox County Planning, which also charged for supplying the requested documents.

Like the Planning Commission in August, City Council voted unanimously to reject the Overlook Owners Association’s appeal.

Armed with the certificate of appropriateness and in no need of a zoning change, Woodfield could obtain a building permit and begin construction immediately. But the development team has previously said they would seek a payment-in-lieu-of-tax agreement as part of the finance package, which means Council will have to consider the project anew when the firm applies for the incentive.