GOP’s prize council candidate picks fight with neighbors

Betty BeanKnox Scene

It probably didn’t surprise anyone who knows how things work that the city Board of Zoning Appeals turned down Jim Klonaris’ request for variances on three skinny, single family residential lots in Historic Fourth & Gill this week.

Fourth & Gill, which was developed in the 1880s, was in a state of decay when it was rescued by do-it-yourself residents like Bob Whetsel, who has lived there for more than 40 years in homes he and his wife, Melynda, restored themselves. They are serious about historic preservation over there as well as politically active and connected.

Whetsel, a former city redevelopment director, spoke – forcefully – against Klonaris’ request at the meeting Tuesday. He probably didn’t need to. It wasn’t a close call.

Klonaris wants to build six duplexes (which he calls town homes) rather than single family homes on three 50×100-foot lots on the south end of Fourth & Gill that he bought in 2020 and 2021 and has since sold to an investment company in which he is involved. Zoning boards have limited powers and can only grant variance requests when they are necessary to overcome obstacles that prevent property owners from using the property as the zoning ordinance intended.

Financial gain is not such a hardship, and the board ruled 5-0 against the Klonaris investment group. The next step is to appeal the decision to Knoxville City Council.

The investors had requested:

  • to reduce the minimum lot size for a two-family dwelling
  • to increase the maximum building coverage
  • to increase the maximum permitted amount of impervious surface coverage (parking)
  • to reduce the minimum total of permitted side-yard setbacks, and
  • to reduce the minimum number of parking spaces for a duplex from four spaces to two spaces.

Whetsel and other neighbors say Klonaris has threatened to build five-bedroom boarding houses and rent rooms to college students if he doesn’t get his way.

It didn’t take long for the board to turn Klonaris down, but here’s what makes this otherwise routine matter interesting: Klonaris lives in Fourth & Gill. And he’s running for the District 4 city council seat. And he’s not just running – he’s the Knox County Republican Party’s marquee candidate and top fund raiser in this non-partisan election, sitting on top of a slate of four candidates that the GOP hopes will begin the process of ridding city government of dangerous leftists. Klonaris is the best known and most connected of the four.

Ellen Moriarty Lee lives across Deery Street from the three lots in question, in the house she grew up in. Her grandfather, Daniel Moriarty, built it in 1887 (her brother Dan, owner of the Time Warp Tea Room in Happy Holler, is his namesake and also grew up there). Lee thinks she may be the senior resident of the neighborhood, and she watched the neighborhood deteriorate before it was protected by a historic overlay.

“There are certain guidelines that are set in stone by historical overlay, and one is that (the neighborhood) is zoned for single family homes, and for duplexes if they had variances. He (Klonaris) insists he can’t make enough money on single-family homes. After he bought the property, I asked him why he’d buy an R3 property zoned for single-family homes. He said he didn’t care – he just wanted the property.

“A lot of people told him long as Lauren (Rider) is running, they’ll be backing her. This has really soured some of them – left a wound.”

Betty Bean writes a Thursday opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.

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