Brown County Commissioners last week paved the way for a new recreational vehicle park in downtown Nashville, though most attendees at a public meeting opposed the project and voiced concerns about wildlife, traffic and flooding.
Brown County property owner Jimmy Tilton had asked local officials to rezone about 86 acres of land at 279 W. Main St., just southwest of Nashville’s downtown. Tilton plans to use the land to host festivals and up to 36 recreational vehicles.
Tilton told commissioners Wednesday that tourism in Nashville has declined in the last few years, and given his deep roots in the county, he’d like to offer more attractions that will bring additional visitors into a community that relies heavily on shoppers, hikers and leaf peepers. Brown County State Park annually attracts 1.2 million visitors, according to state officials.
Tilton said he also plans to provide on his property additional parking, next to a city parking lot in downtown Nashville, to help tourists who often struggle to find convenient parking spots to access the small town’s shops and restaurants.
Tilton’s property is south of Helmsburg Road, but a small portion also fronts Ind. 46. The CVS drug store southwest of the intersection of Ind. 135 and Ind. 46 is east of the Tilton property.
“Despite the property’s challenges, being largely situated in a floodway, we believe it holds immense potential to serve our community,” Tilton told commissioners. “With your approval, we can transform it into a valuable asset that provides space for trails, space for parking and space for fun.”
However, the plans drew strong opposition from a clear majority of the roughly 75 attendees who squeezed into a second-floor meeting room at the Brown County government center on Locust Lane.
When Tilton said the recreational vehicles would gain access to his property via Washington Street, a two-lane street that leads past the Brown County Visitors Center, some audience members responded with derisive laughter, with one asking whether officials planned to widen the road.
Tilton said after the meeting that he would provide an alternate access route, just south of town, to Deer Run Park, which would decrease the number of drivers that access the park by driving through town. That decline, he said, would more than make up for the increase in traffic from RVs, he said.
Tilton said the small number of RVs, whose stays will be capped at two weeks, would not affect traffic that much, because drivers will come into the RV park, keep the vehicles there for a week or two, and then leave. In other words, they wouldn’t be crawling through downtown Nashville on a daily basis and snarl traffic.
Other critics worried Tilton’s project would worsen flooding, negatively affect wildlife or overwhelm local utility infrastructure.
Tilton said, however, that it was too early in the process to answer all questions, though he emphasized that local and state officials would not allow any structures on the property to worsen flooding for others.
A spokesman for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources said multiple agencies have jurisdiction over the Tilton property. For example, permits for construction in the floodplain would be handled by local officials, while construction in the floodway, a smaller portion within the floodplain, would additionally require approval from DNR.
Marty Benson, a DNR spokesman, said via email the state also restricts what can be built in the floodway. “New homes are not allowed in the floodway,” he said.
Wednesday’s commissioner meeting was beset by allegations of conflicts of interest, accusations of bias and impudence, and technical difficulties, which, at the meeting’s beginning, produced loud wailing sounds and curse words emanating from a loudspeaker, prompting one of the commissioners to proclaim, “We’ve been hacked.”
