Bryan Echols

Bryan Echols focuses on commercial real estate, including zoning and land use, acquisitions and due diligence, financing, development, planning and leasing. He has assisted with shopping centers, business centers, commercial office space and flex-space leases.

He also represents lenders and commercial borrowers in loan transactions, including national lenders providing conduit credit facilities secured by real estate interests. Another facet of his practice is the use of conservation easements, fund-raising for preservation purposes and related issues. You can contact Bryan at bryan.echols@stites.com or by phone at 615-782-2388.

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Legal Notice Requirements for Rezonings

07.02.10 2:53 AM
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A recent Tennessee Court of Appeals case ruled invalid a rezoning when the published notice to the public was insufficiently informative.  The Court determined that the notice must be specific or complete enough to enable the average person to determine whether his or her property might be affected by the proposed change.  Further, the Court cited language indicating that if there is doubt as to the adequacy of the notice, the doubt would be resolved against the notice. 

This may leave some question about how specific the language must be.  Is it sufficient to recite only the change or to cite the new zoning category, or must there be an explanation of what the category might mean? 

In this case, the suit was brought by a party whose property had been rezoned.  One could imagine, however, adjacent neighbors using this argument against rezonings that they had opposed unsuccessfully.  My recommendation is to review the proposed language of the notice, which is usually done by the governing authority, to avoid this vulnerability.

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