I ran into Planning and Zoning Commissioner Timothy Kay at the H-E-B last week and we had a nice little chat. I asked him what he thought of the city council pre-empting P&Z’s normal second Tuesday meeting slot this week. He smiled and told me he was going to enjoy the week off.
Turns out he’s not getting a week off which presents an interesting logistics quandary. P&Z, with four scheduled public hearings on its agenda, has been scheduled to meet in the council chambers at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. And a the city council is scheduled for a quickie at 7 p.m. for the mandatory second reading on the the upcoming fiscal year budget and tax rate.
Now there’s a chance — albeit a very small one — P&Z can get through their business in 30 minutes. One of the zoning issues is a request by Scott Felder Homes to rezone those 130 acres the city recently annexed at the northwest corner of North Old Stagecoach Road, Center Street and Cypress road from agricultural to single family residential (the developer also wants to rezone about 2½ acres of the property facing North Old Stagecoach to retail services) so 339 single family homes can be built there. (Scott Felder Homes are featured on the front page of the Austin American-Statesman's Home section, which admittedly is an advertising puff piece.) At least one person has been outspoken in his opposition to the development of that property so that pubic hearing has the potential of taking up almost all of the 30 minutes.
A second request pending Tuesday before P&Z would rezone almost two acres of land along RR150 between Newbridge Drive and Waterleaf Boulevard from single family to retail service. There may be some pushback on this request to limit the change to the slightly more restrictive Community Commercial. Discussion of the distinctions between those two zoning classifications could also take P&Z’s meeting past 7 p.m.
A third request, which could also cause some controversy, involves a little more than 16½ acres located on Lehman Road near the intersection of RR 150, behind Garcia’s Mexican restaurant. The site was originally scheduled to be the location of an apartment complex but now an applicant wants to have a little more than three acres of that tract rezoned from multi-family residential to warehouse. It appears city officials are not going to recommend that zoning change because the land in question "is located in a border area between the ‘Regional Node’ and ‘Mid-Town Community’ character areas" and "In the Regional Node, it is not recommended that ‘Warehouse’ be approved as a zoning district." The staff concluded "it would be a significant act of faith on the part of the planning commission to expect that the project would be developed into a neighborhood amenity that increases the region’s quality of life and benefits the city as a whole" if the commission granted the warehouse zoning.
The fourth request would allow the remainder of that 16½ acres to be rezoned from multi-family to duplex zoning. There doesn’t appear to be too much opposition to this idea. In fact, the city staff’s recommendation for approval says the new zoning "serves as a land use buffer between the existing low-density residential to the east and the proposed activity center to the west."
Still, that’s a lot to cram into 30 minutes, even if no one shows up to talk during the open comments session at the beginning of the meeting or if nothing is pulled from the two-item consent agenda. Of course, the council could ask the P&Z commissioners at 7 "Mind if we interrupt your meeting for a few seconds to enact a budget and a tax rate?" Hey, it could happen.
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