After the city’s Land Development Code revised the acceptable usage for many existing properties in November 2023, the city created a window for property owners to petition to change the new designations.
So far, requests for place type changes have been presented in four batches to the City Council for approval, but not always without some pushback from the community.
Councilman Mitch Drummond asked council to reconsider approving one such change at the Thursday, April 11 meeting.
“I’ve visited with many neighbors in that area, many of the homeowners, and they’re concerned about what’s going to come in there because there’s no telling at this point. It’s up for sale, anybody could buy it. They’d like a little certainty about what’s happening in their neighborhood,” Drummond said.
The ordinance was introduced March 28 and this week’s meeting served as the second reading.
The councilman was referring to a piece of property at 1020 Hackberry St., a small vacant lot adjacent to and owned by Tenth Street United Methodist Church. It had been reclassified as CS-Civic Space, but since it was for sale, the church applied to change the type to P4-Mix so that potential buyers would have more development options.
P4-Mix can include a variety of building types ranging from smaller commercial buildings to intermixed house-commercial and attached and detached residential buildings while the P3-Neighborhood place type generally includes low-density residential areas, according to the city’s land development code. The lot is immediately surrounded by homes with place type of P3-Neighborhood.
Ed Komandosky, president of the church congregation, is listed as the contact on the land use change application. He stated on the application that the reason for the P4 place type request is “to facilitate development of an infill lot in a neighborhood of existing intermixed housing forms.”
“I would suggest instead of going to P4 we go to P3 because that’s where the rest of the neighborhood is and it matches everyone else and I think it’s where we need to be,” Drummond told fellow councilmen. “I’ve talked with one of the property owners who is handling the sale and they have no issues with going to P3. All the neighbors are in agreement, so I think this would be the thing to do.”
Council agreed that P3 would be an appropriate place type for the property and asked staff to bring back a revised amendment for this property for approval, while also noting that any new owners would be able to petition to change the usage.
