The 2021-22 Hot Springs Board of Directors will wade into a controversial rezoning request tonight that the 2019-20 board tabled at its final business meeting.
District 3 and 6 directors Marcia Dobbs-Smith and Steve Trusty have been sworn in since the previous board tabled the Carter family's rezoning request for 62 acres of its former dairy at the intersection of Burchwood Bay Road and Lakeshore Drive. The requested low/medium density, or R-3, zoning is needed to subdivide the property into a residential neighborhood the family's consulting engineer compared to Forest Lakes Garden Homes of Twin Points Roads.
"Less yard maintenance is popular with recent retirees," Jonathan Hope of Hope Consulting said in a letter to the city's planning and development department. "We feel there is a need in the Hot Springs market for this product. Forest Lakes is a great example."
The 1-acre minimum lot size required by the property's rural residential, or R-1, zoning doesn't allow smaller lot sizes needed for a residential neighborhood, prohibiting developers from presenting a subdivision plan showing the number of homes per acre. The previous board tabled the rezoning application at its Dec. 15 business meeting, asking Hope to present a preliminary subdivision plan that will give residents of adjacent neighborhoods a sense of the prospective development's housing density.
Plans included in the planning and development's request for board action divided the 62 acres into more than 200 lots ranging from 7,000 to 8,000 square feet, lot sizes meeting R-3's minimum of 7,000 square feet for interior lots and 7,500 square feet for corner lots.
Residents of adjacent neighborhoods told the board R-3 zoning would increase traffic on Burchwood Bay and Lakeshore, two city-maintained roads they said were already congested. A traffic study they commissioned projected the zoning change would increase traffic volume on Burchwood Bay from Lakeshore to Twin Points by almost 2,000 vehicles a day.
The volume was based on a 372-unit development, a density level the city said didn't account for setbacks or interior roads. Planning and Development Director Kathy Sellman told the board last month that the study was speculative and questioned if the property could accommodate the density on which the study was based.
Sellman told the board traffic increases will be weighed when a request to subdivide the land is submitted. She said the developer may be required to add turn lanes or widen roads, but subdivision and development proposals can't be considered until the property is rezoned for smaller lot sizes.
In November, the planning commission unanimously adopted the planning and development department's recommendation to rezone the property, determining its access to utilities and proximity to two major city roads and nearby single-family neighborhoods made R-3 an appropriate designation.
"Carter Dairy Phase 1 cannot be described as rural or remote," planning and development said in its request for board action. "It is served by utilities. It fronts Burchwood Bay Road, an arterial street. Its owners have ceased their farming operation and intend to convert to urban use -- the development of a single-family neighborhood similar to those nearby."
The property was zoned R-1, the city's default designation for newly-annexed lands, after the family voluntarily annexed it into the city in 2014. Nearby residents who oppose the zoning change also opposed the application for medium/high-density residential, or R-4, zoning submitted for the property in 2014. R-4 would have allowed the property to be developed for apartments, which are a permitted use in the R-4 zone.
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January 05, 2021 at 05:20PM
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Board to consider rezoning request it tabled last year - Hot Springs Sentinel
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