An announcement released yesterday from the city and reprinted in the below article revealed another step in the long, bumpy saga concerning the property at the northwest corner of I-35 and Yarrington Road. You know the spot. The one that so many feared would be the site of the worst thing possible. No, not a nuclear waste dump. No, not a smoke-belching steel mill. This was far worse than that. It was going to be the location of a (Gasp!) truck stop!
In fact, when the developers of the property, PGI Investments, came before the Planning Commission almost a year ago to seek a change in zoning from Agriculture to Warehouse, it drew the single largest crowd to attend a city legislative meeting in the more than two years I’ve been covering city government. And that crowd, most of whom didn’t even live in Kyle but across the street in San Marcos, came prepared to wage war. They didn’t want the truck stop there. And the Planning Commission sympathized with their pleas and denied the zoning.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you view the eventual outcome), two of the planning commissioners publicly stated during the meeting they were voting against the request because they didn’t want a truck stop located there. And, in Texas, making a zoning decision based on what someone wants to eventually place on the land in question is illegal. In effect, the Planning Commission virtually guaranteed PGI could locate a truck stop there.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you view the eventual outcome) cooler, more reasoned, heads prevailed. Political and government leaders from Kyle huddled with their counterparts from San Marcos, quickly asking PGI to join the conversations. The short term result was that the applicant withdrew his zoning request so the City Council didn’t even have to consider the zoning issue at its next meeting. The interim result was that several months later the two cities and PGI had agreed on a joint plan for that corner that involved a convenience store with eight gas pumps, some restaurants, perhaps a hotel or two and a sharing of wastewater facilities.
It was quiet for a long time after that until yesterday’s unveiling of the "final stages" of the concept plan for the area, a plan that includes a retail anchor at the center rear of the property, offices and smaller retail on the Yarrington Road side, at least one restaurant and pods for eight more restaurants/retail outlets on the I-35 side, two hotels between the retail anchor and the restaurant/retail pods and a convenience store on the northern point of the triangle-shaped property. The news release accompanying the concept plan said, in part, "A public hearing on rezoning will take place during the upcoming February 7 Kyle City Council meeting. Mayor Todd Webster said council will consider rezoning the property to RS (Retail Services), which is more restrictive in terms of the kinds of businesses that would be allowed."
So far, all well and good.
But this morning, my weekly copy of the Hays Free Press came in the mail and a Public Notice on Page 2D jumped out at me. It said "The City of Kyle shall hold a public hearing on Z-15-021 a request by PGI Investments, LLC to assign original zoning to approximately 47.74 acres of land from Agriculture ‘AG’ to Warehouse District ‘W’ for property located at 24800 IH 35, in Hays County, Texas. A public hearing will be held by the Kyle City Council on Tuesday, February 7, 2017, at 7:00 p.m."
Huh?
That seemed to directly contradict what the City’s news release from the day before said. So I turned to the one person I thought could provide the needed expertise to clear this up, the City’s Planning Director Howard J. Koontz. And clear it up, he did.
Basically, what he told me is this: Not to worry. The applicant is not trying to sneak another plan for a truck stop through City Council. In essence, it’s all government mandated gobbledygook, or, as many call it, "red tape."
Here’s exactly what he told me today:
"The request from the applicant to the City (Z-15-021) is to apply Warehouse zoning to the Yarrington property. Staff cannot administratively change their application mid-stream."
The short answer to my query over this seeming contradiction, he told me, is "The ad text summarizes the applicant's request to the City, it does not indicate a required or imminent action on the part of the Council."
But Koontz was gracious and patient enough to provide a longer answer as well:
"Since the postponement, the applicant has met with all manner of stake holders and revised their expectation such that R/S zoning is agreeable on their part. They have indicated to the City both verbally and in writing that they are amenable to having their request down-zoned to R/S upon adjudication on the seventh (which is always an allowable outcome available to the Council anytime anyone seeks to have a property rezoned).
"But that amended request can't be carried out until the Council picks the item back up on the seventh. Until that time, the original request still exists, in procedural stasis, until the issue is taken up again at the Council meeting on the seventh.
"For consistency's sake, staff published the ad text with the same language as the original request from December 2015 (Z-15-021, AG to W). That way no one should have any expectation that (1) the applicant has made a duplicate request for a new/different property, and (2) that the city will be acting on the previous application of which everyone is so well aware, not a different or separate request."
Now, here comes the important part:
"Staff is hopeful that the public will take their clues of the impending outcome from the text of the press releases the city has put forward, and not from the limited wording of the legal ad. The ad only summarizes the applicant's request; the city PR wording will hopefully lend more insight as to what is expected to take place on the seventh.
"At the end of the day, if a person or persons are concerned that the city is applying W zoning as formerly requested, well, then staff invites them to the City Council meeting on the seventh at 7 p.m. to watch the resolution play out differently, like what the press release indicates. That is, after all, why the City chose to post an additional Public Hearing notice in the first place, to get people to attend the meeting."
Frankly, I don’t think he needs to worry about people attending the meeting. I expect the Usual No-Growth Suspects to be out in force. They will be arguing that the property should instead be turned into a park or a green space, which might make sense, if either Kyle or San Marcos actually owned the property. But they don’t. A private developer does. So, in this case, asking them to turn it into a park or a green space makes as much sense and will gather as much traction as petitioning the Walton Family to stop selling stuff.
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