The Greeneville Municipal Airport Authority Board heard a presentation from Town of Greeneville Development Services Director Andy Broyles on a proposed plan for an Airport Overlay District around the Greeneville Airport during its meeting Wednesday, a plan that was met with some resistance from board member and former mayor W.T. Daniels.
The Airport Board has no authority over the overlay around the airport as it involves planning and zoning and does not inhibit what can be constructed on the airport’s property or the activities of the airport. The overlay proposal was presented for informational purposes.
Members of the board in attendance Wednesday were John Curran, Wes Hope, W.T. Daniels, Paul McAfee, and Catherine Bacon.
McAfee and Hope both asked some questions about the overlay. Ultimately, McAfee said it could help the airport when dealing with trees growing into the flight path of aircraft coming into the airport and Hope said an overlay would improve safety at the airport and was “needed.”
However, Daniels took issue with the overlay, saying that it was an encroachment on people’s property rights in the overlay zone.
The overlay district would extend out from both ends of the airport’s runway in the shape of a widening cone. Each cone would be split into an “inner runway approach compatibility area” extending 6,000 feet out from the runway, and an “outer runway approach compatibility area” which would extend out an additional 4,000 feet. The result would be an overlay extending 10,000 feet from each end of the runway.
The inner area of the cone overlay would prevent tall structures, large glare producing surfaces, areas that could attract wildlife hazards leading to birdstrike, high-density residential housing and other incompatible developments.
Broyles said that the overlay was no different in principle than the gateway overlay zones that the town currently has in place near certain entry points into the Town of Greeneville. He noted that the Tennessee Department of Transportation Aeronautics division was working to bring all public airports into line with Tennessee state law that requires some type of zoning overlay. He said about half of state’s airports had adopted the required overlays.
FORMER MAYOR DANIELS SPEAKS ON OVERLAY, LAND STAR PROPERTY
After Wednesday’s meeting, Daniels called a Radio Greeneville reporter directly to discuss his concerns with the overlay zone further on the record. Daniels also answered questions on the record regarding a property that would fall within the proposed overlay zone that was formerly owned by his wife and sister-in-law before being sold in 2022 for a proposed housing development that was later denied by the Greeneville Municipal Planning Commission.
Daniels said he hoped the public was “paying attention” to the changes presented through the possible overlay district, and that he felt a warranty deed was one of most important documents an individual can hold. He then compared a land deed, and the property rights that come along with one, to the U.S. Constitution in its importance.
Daniels said that although he was a member of the Airport Authority Board and “all for the airport,” he felt ownership of property was more important than the airport in the community.
“To me, the property rights and people’s ownership of property, to me, that’s more important than that airport. That’s just the way I feel about it. You know you can always move that airport, but you can’t move those property rights,” Daniels said.
He noted that the airport or town should be prepared to buy the properties around the airport if such regulations were to be put in place.
Daniels said he was glad that there would be a public hearing on the overlay district whenever it was considered by the City Council, but he said he did not know if he would attend the meeting to comment during the hearing.
At one point, Daniels’ family owned property in a portion of what could become the Airport Overlay District if it were approved by the City Council.
A subdivision of over 200 homes was planned for the 104-acre property, which is now owned by Land Star Development, but the Greeneville Municipal Planning Commission denied the dense subdivision outright in April 2025 after rejecting a mass grading plan in March 2025.
The property has been a source of controversy since the denial, and is currently the subject of a lawsuit against the Town of Greeneville by Land Star Development. An error on the part of the Town of Greeneville’s Building and Zoning Department during the April 2025 Planning Commission meeting, not discovered until recently, added to the controversy.
A timeline prepared and presented by former Town of Greeneville Planning Administrator Randy Davenport at the April 2025 commission meeting stated that the property was first recommended for rezoning at the September 14, 2021 meeting of the Greeneville Planning Commission, and that the rezoning was approved by the City Council on first reading on October 5, 2021 and on final reading on October 19, 2021. Those dates would align with Daniels’ time as mayor of Greeneville and his time as a member of the Planning Commission. The town’s mayor also sits as a member of the Planning Commission according to the town’s charter.
However, those dates presented to the Planning Commission and the public in April 2025 are incorrect. They pertain to a different property that was subject to a separate rezoning request in late 2021 that has the same numerical parcel identification, but an added alphabetic identification.
According to the Town of Greeneville Building and Zoning Office, when creating the timeline, Davenport electronically searched for the parcel number of the 104-acre property which is 8649. The numerical search led Davenport to pull data for a property with a parcel number 86MB49 in error, instead of the Land Star property with the identification 8649.
The property that Davenport mistakenly pulled data for is a property located on Raymond Road along U.S. Highway 11E a couple hundred yards away from the Land Star property. The Raymond Road property was part of a group of properties that were rezoned from industrial zoning to residential zoning in late 2021 so that homeowners could get loans using the equity in their homes, and loans could be obtained by purchasers if the homeowners ever decided to sell their homes. Homes cannot be built, or rebuilt if destroyed, in an industrial zone in the Town of Greeneville, so the residents asked for their properties to be placed in an appropriate residential zone and to improve financing options.
In actuality, the annexation request for the 104-acre Land Star property previously owned by Daniels’ family was not brought before the Planning Commission until September 13, 2022. Daniels was no longer mayor at the time as Cal Doty was sworn in as mayor on September 6, 2022 after defeating Daniels in the race for mayor in early August 2022. Daniels did not attend what would have been his last Planning Commission meeting as mayor in August of 2022.
Had his bid for reelection been successful, Daniels would have remained a member of the Planning Commission as mayor, but due to his defeat, the August 2022 meeting of the Planning Commission was his last as a member of the commission though he did not attend.
Therefore, Daniels was not mayor or a member of the Planning Commission when the property was annexed into the town by the City Council in December 2022 by way of the September 2022 recommendation of the Planning Commission.
However, Daniels was mayor when preliminary departmental meetings were held in February 2022 about providing services to the property if it were to be annexed. He was also mayor when the property was purchased by Land Star Development for $1.7 million in July 2022 from his wife Andrea Daniels and his sister-in-law Gloria Susong.
Daniels maintained Wednesday that he felt there was “absolutely not” any conflict of interest that he would have needed to make known during his time as mayor in relation to the property due to the property being in his wife and sister-in-law’s name and not his, and due to him no longer being mayor or on the Planning Commission when the annexation vote was held.
When asked if his family would be impacted if the proposed subdivision at the center of the ongoing lawsuit between the town and Land Star was not built on the property Daniels said that he was unsure, and that it was possible that the property would never be developed.
“At this point, I really don’t know,” Daniels said.
He noted that his family currently “had no ownership” in the property, which is now owned by Land Star Development.
Daniels said he thought the way Land Star had been treated after purchasing the property was “bull,” and that the town was facing a “tough sell” in implementing the overlay district.
ABOUT THE AIRPORT OVERLAY
The proposed overlay only applies to the areas directly in line with aircraft takeoffs and landings.
It does not apply to properties beside the airport or all properties surrounding the airport.
The overlay follows the FAA-defined flight approach paths extending outward from the ends of the runway where aircraft fly at lower altitudes during takeoff and landing operations.
The outer area of the cone would carry few restrictions, but the inner area of the cone would carry restrictions. Broyles said that most aviation accidents occur upon takeoff and landing at airports according to TDOT Aeronautics, which is why the overlay is set near the airport runway.
The goal of the overlay is to protect the safety of members of the public on the ground, and those flying aircraft.
On Tuesday morning, the Greeneville Municipal Planning Commission recommended sending the zoning overlay to the Greeneville City Council for consideration after an internal legal review. The overlay was also presented to the County Planning Commission as an informational item on Tuesday afternoon. Broyles said he hoped to have work on the overlay completed by the end of the year, and that it likely would not appear before the City Council until the fall.
