'Sidewalk to nowhere': Middle TN developers continue to challenge longtime city ordinance
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — The debate has been an ongoing issue since 2017. Who should pay for sidewalks? And what if the sidewalk leads to nothing?
For one local developer, he said for his properties, the sidewalk would lead either into the woods or into the neighbor's grass.
Jeff Checko with RE/MAX describes it as, “ You’d just have a sidewalk to nowhere.”
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For the past five years, developers and home builders were forced to make a choice: Build a sidewalk to Metro's standards or pay an “in lieu” fee amounting to thousands of dollars. However, this only applies to homes built after 2017.
Checko says, “So it literally looks like a hopscotch board when you walk down some of these streets, where you come to the end of a sidewalk. You’ve got to go on grass and move over, and then get back on track. It's an embarrassing thing for the city.”
Checko redeveloped his homes after this ordinance went into effect. While he was faced with this obstacle, his neighbors were not. He adds, “I'd have to build a retaining wall, create a whole new drainage plan for this property, elevate a sidewalk and on top of it the property next to it is not developed. You’d have basically a cliff of sidewalk that drops off and creates a real hazard.”
And since his sidewalk would not only pose a hazard, but also lead to nothing, he opted to pay the tax fee instead. He is calling on Metro to re-examine their plan for situations like his.
He adds, “Be able to provide a system that allows people in situations like this property that don’t make a lot of sense for sidewalks. To be able to provide a common sense argument for why it shouldn’t apply to that property, and then be granted relief without a lot of strong arming.”
While Checko paid thousands of dollars in fees to not build the sidewalk, it would've cost him upwards of $25,000 to construct it.
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Checko says that he understands the need for safety and connectivity, which sidewalks can provide. However, he says it needs to make sense.
Metro tells FOX 17 News they stand by their sidewalk ordinance following a recent lawsuit at the federal level with two private property owners.
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