The Butcher Mansion - a Retirement Home?

Q. Kathie asked: "What was all the business about a nursing/retirement home going in the Butcher Mansion? Does the man that bought it years ago still own it?"

A.The short answer is, aside from the lending institutions, there have been 3 owners: The Butchers, the Barbours and Charlie Hicks. But the long answer is a bit more complicated.

The Butchers moved into their dream home in 1974. But by 1985, Sonya Butcher was forced to sell the home due to Jake Butcher's arrest and subsequent bankruptcy.

Clifford and Dorothy Barbour picked up the home from Sonya for $800,000. The Barbours then lost the home less than eight years later to their own foreclosure (1993).

In 1993, Charlie Hicks and partners picked up the property at the Barbour's foreclosure for $621,000. Hicks and his partners subdivided the 27 acres into parcels and chopped the home into 5 condos. 

Restrictive covenants for a Home Owners Association were filed in 1994 and a condominium master deed was filed in 1997.

Though the Home Owner's Association for the neighborhood continued, the condo project was terminated 10 years after filing because...
according to an April 2011 Knoxville Journal article, utilities and upkeep were higher than mortgage and rents and thus everyone moved out.

The house has been vacant since 2007.

Attempts have been made to sell the home but because the property was subdivided and a Home Owner's Association born, the Home Owners are in control and determine what the property can be used for. They don't want a business being run out of the house. They turned down the retirement home because they don't want to open their neighborhood up to thru traffic.

The property is zoned for residential use. There can be no spa, no bed and breakfast, no assisted living, no lodging facility of any kind. Only a single family residence. In fact, the covenants for the subdivision spell out, "No lot, or any portion thereof, shall at any time be used for any commercial, business or professional purpose." (covenants filed Book 1471, Page 2277)

Charlie Hicks lost his partners in the Whirlwind project because it was bleeding money. Hicks began to borrow from one bank to pay another. He did this for several years until February 2011 when the final bank took over the interests of all the other banks and foreclosed on Hicks.

Commercial Bank now owns the property. They were the highest bidder at the foreclosure sale which occurred February 18, 2011. Commercial Bank paid $400,000 for the house at foreclosure.

They put it on the market to sell at $1,200,000.


Article from Elizabethon Star October 8, 2006


Article from Volunteertv.com