Pardon me, but when I walk out my front door I don’t want to see your rear end

The Planning & Zoning Commission tabled this evening a request from Sac N Pac Stores for a conditional use permit to construct a 17,300 square foot retail center on the I-35 frontage road because the back of its proposed building looked too much like the back of a building.

Now before you go to scratching your head over this, there is sound logic in the P&Z’s decision. In fact, that logic reminded me of the Paul Simon song "One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor."

The proposed building would occupy a space between the frontage road and Old Highway 81, immediately north of East Lockhart Street in downtown Kyle. As proposed by Sac N Pac, the front of the building would face the frontage road and the rear would face Old Highway 81. The problem is city planners envision Old Highway 81 becoming as much, if not more, of a commercial hub than that section of the frontage road (That makes sense because, unlike Highway 81, the frontage road is uni-directional.), but to make that happen, any structure that’s part of that commercial hub must "front" Old Highway 81. At the very least it must give the impression that a front faces that roadway. And the commissioners — all five of them who bothered to attend tonight’s meeting (Dex Ellison and Lori Huey were absent) — were unanimous in their opinion that the developers behind the Sac N Pac proposal hadn’t done that. And Kirk Brumley, the Sac N Pac representative who attended the meeting didn’t dispute the notion; he just seemed a little put out by the idea of having to re-design a building so that, at least, it appears to have two fronts. The commissioners asked Brumley to return with a revised concept at its meeting scheduled for July 26.

Concern about the proposal was first raised by former commission member Mike Wilson during the public comments section of the meeting.

"I think if we allow companies to come in and not develop the back side of that road, then we’re going to lose a whole strip of land that future companies could come in and develop and bring business to," Wilson told the commissioners, "As you get more and more businesses that way that don’t want to promote that side of the road, we’re going to get fewer and fewer people driving that way and fewer possible future development there. I think that’s a critical area of commercial development in Kyle. I think it would be a detriment to that area to have a really large parcel not be aesthetically pleasing on that side of the road."

Chairman Mike Rubsam was even more direct when the item came up on the agenda.

"We’d like to develop Highway 81 and not have it look like it’s an alley," Rubsam told Brumley. "I think the front of your building looks good and I think both ends of your building look good. But, frankly, I am very unhappy with the way the back of it is presented to Highway 81."

When Brumley asked Rubsam what he would like to see different, the chairman shot back "I would like to see something that’s more presentable. It needs to look a whole lot better than it does right now."

In other action during the relatively brief 28-minute meeting, the commissioners:

• Delayed the election of a commission vice chair until its June 28 meeting because of the absence of two commission members
• Okayed an additional parking lot on the Austin Community College campus. The new lot will be hidden from the view of travelers on either FM 1626 or Kohlers Crossing.
• Recommended the City Council get out its giant eraser and obliterate plans for a Wood Ridge Subdivision that was originally planned for 47 acres located between Bunton Creek Road and Kyle Parkway. The proposed Goforth Extension is now planned to go through that property, so any future development would obviously have to take that into consideration.