Discussion:
Scott County and Scott Community Development Agency (CDA) are proposing reguiding, rezoning and platting of property located at the northwest corner of Eagle Creek Boulevard and County Road 18. The property is presently guided Parks and Open Space and zoned Rural Residential (RR).
Scott County is proposing a change to Suburban Residential guiding and Urban Residential (R-1B) Zone to allow development of a single-family subdivision. They also intend to Preliminary and Final Plat the property for a 10-lot residential subdivision.
Scott County and Scott County Development Agency have previously submitted a plan for this site that was a15-lot single family home subdivision that also impacted the woodland areas. After community input and comments from and at the Planning Commission, the County and CDA withdrew the application to redesign the development to reduce the number of homes to be more in keeping with the neighborhood layout and design.
CDA Land Trust
These homes will be held in the CDA's Land Trust Program. The land remains in the Trust and purchasers buy the home. This lowers the acquisition costs, allowing a family of four with an income at 80% of the Scott County Area Median Income to be able to purchase a home. There is equity sharing model where the Land Trust retains 75% of the appreciation and the homeowner receives 25%. This allows the house to remain affordable for the long term. The home seller retains their original down payment plus the 25%.
Community land trusts recycle a single public investment in affordability. The resale restrictions means the one initial subsidy that made a home affordable stays with the home, keeping it affordable in perpetuity, as opposed to being lost once affordability restrictions lift.
Community land trusts support their residents, and homeowners in them have much lower rates of delinquency and foreclosure than homeowners in the regular market. The terms of the ground lease allow the Trusts to intervene if a homeowner is struggling with their mortgage.
Research has found that Land Trust homeowners do build enough equity to buy a home on the open market if they want to—through the forced savings aspect of a mortgage, modest appreciation, and the cost savings of having an affordable home.
Reguiding
Staff believes that this area was not properly guided because Scott County never platted out the land acquired for the roadway from the remnant lots.
The County's request to reguide the property from Parks and Open Space to Suburban Residential is a use consistent with single family residential development that is adjacent to the property. The area outside of the proposed residential development will remain Parks and Open Space. The application is to only reguide the proposed 10-lot subdivision. Other properties in the city that have been guided to this have largely been rezoned to Parks and Open Space in 2020.
Rezoning
The applicant has provided a conceptual site development and plat that identifies parcels and potential home sites that comply with the R-1B design standards for lot sizes/density, setbacks and lot coverage and city code performance standard compliance with building materials, window coverage and parking requirements.
The applicant has also conducted a traffic study to demonstrate the minimal impact of this subdivision on the surrounding roadway system.
The proposed homes are all two stories, have basements, two car garages and have windows on all four sides, exceeding the code for amount of openings. The exterior material is proposed to be LP siding, which is a considered an industry leading product because of its 50 year warranty and prefinished factory colors and low maintenance. It significantly out performs vinyl siding because it is resistant to environmental wear and tear, especially moisture. It is also highly impact and wind resistant and less likely to be damaged by large hail. LP also has a higher R-value than traditional vinyl siding. LP in the long term, can also be repainted or have color changed by an owner.
Preliminary Plat
The proposed Preliminary Plat identifies 10 single family lots that are consistent with the Suburban Residential guiding and the R-1B zoning.
City staff have provided comment on this proposed project, with recommendations supporting development as a single-family residential subdivision, conditioned on complying with their conditions of approval. SPU would condition approval that water utilities are available and would need to be looped, and underground electric utilities are available, with both subject to their standard terms and conditions. City Engineering has provided a memo which notes their conditions of approval, primarily addressing utility and traffic requirements should this request be approved.
Reguiding/Rezoning Considerations
The City Council may grant a zoning ordinance amendment when it finds that one or more of the following criteria exists:
1. The original comp plan and zoning ordinance are in error.
Staff believes this property should not be guided Parks & Open Space, nor zoned Rural Residential, as this is an area of the community that has public utilities available, which is not compatible with the Rural Residential purpose/design standards.
2. Significant changes in goals in community goals and policies have taken place.
Not necessary a change, but the intent has been that this area would be developed as expressed by the road and utilities stubbed to the property line in the original development. Sewer and water are available at the end of the existing street, as required by code in anticipation of future development on adjacent properties.
3. Significant changes in city-wide or neighborhood development patterns have occurred.
The CDA's intent is to construct a single-family residential subdivision utilizing the same zoning/guiding as adjacent subdivisions.
4. The comprehensive plan requires another provision.
Staff believes that several of these criteria would be met with this proposal as noted above; therefore, staff support the requested reguiding and rezoning of the proposed subdivision. There is a stub street and utilities extended to this property, with the intent at the time of development of the adjacent subdivision that there would be development of this property.
The intended subdivision is generally consistent with the adjacent developments (single family residential).
Planning Commission
Planning Commission voted 6-0 to recommend all actions be approved by the city council. The Commission felt that the CDA and Scott County had made significant changes to their original plan and the homes were now on much larger lots and had minimal impact on the wooded areas.
Residents spoke in opposition to the project largely because of its impact on the adjacent land, the feeling that the homes were not as large as existing homes, their home values would be lowered because of the Land Trust model and that purchasers would not be able to afford the homes.
Residents also stated that the retention ponds to the north were dry and that it had impacted wildlife and that this development could further impact those ponds. A resident presented a petition that showed all but approximately four homes had signed opposing the project (the remaining residents they were not able to reach).