Taylor City Council heard plans for a new 113-acre development just west of the Taylor Municipal Airport that will combine light industrial buildings with residential and commercial use. The residences, which will be a combination of single and multifamily, will all be located within 1.7 miles from the Samsung plant, according to city documents.
The development is among the first to use the city’s new procedures for rezoning, said Assistant City Manager Tom Yantis, who presented the zoning change proposal to council at their Dec. 7 meeting.
“Our growth sector map identifies properties that are intended for development, and this is in the intended growth sector because it does have access to infrastructure, streets, water and sewer,” Yantis said.
The new development, called Silicon Vistas Planned Development, is owned by Mallik Avula in Irving, Texas, according to the rezoning application. The acreage is currently zoned as Single Family Residential (R-1). The requested zoning is Employment Center Planned Development (EC-PD).
The reason listed for the change is to propose zoning and technical design standards to align the community with Taylor’s long-term vision and goals. Land-use plans show 77 acres of mixed residential units and approximately 36 acres of industrial uses.
“The design of this new community will help the city meet the ever-growing demand for walkable communities, while accommodating the necessary requirements of emergency access, trash collection, storm water management, and the like,” read a comment from city staff in their recommendation for approving the change.
“The land use designation is one of our employment center land use designations,” Yantis said. “We have different scales of that. This one’s in the regional employment designation which are areas designated to attract major employment land uses and it’s also intended to be a mixeduse district.”
Yantis explained that part of the purpose of employment center designations is that an employment center plan be prepared for the property as the first step in the development process. The land in question features a flood plain and a drainage area. He said the topography dictated the flatter, east side of the property be set up for industrial buildings while the areas closer to the tributary and flood plain be more set up for green space and residential life, along with retail use.
The statewide issue of extraterritorial jurisdiction properties being able to request release from their prospective cities’ territories played into the thought process in developing this land, specifically as it relates to investing in transportation.
“The south side of this area is in the city limits and the north side (north of CR 398) is in the ETJ currently. Some of our concern is we don’t know what’s going to happen to that land on the north side...so we don’t want to have the developers investing a lot of money in those improvements,” Yantis said.
The development is surrounded on all sides by vacant agricultural land. Yantis told council that he will be bringing a plan forward after the first of the year that will propose additional development of the land west of the airport.
“When we bring you that small area plan for the whole west side of the airport next year, we’ve got some ideas for some of that traffic circulation in that area to make sure we get the best advantage from the tax revenue perspective for the infrastructure that we do build in that area,” Yantis told council.
According to the city, no responses or comments from the public have been received regarding the notice for the zoning change. Nobody stepped up to speak during the public hearing on Dec. 7. The vote on the zoning change will take place at the Dec. 14 council meeting.
Location of Silicon Vistas development on Justin Lane south of CR 398 is all within city limits. Photos courtesy of the city of Taylor
Proposal shows residential dwellings to the east and industrial buildings to the west.
