Review of McCutcheon Farms Proposal
This is a review of the key points of the McCutcheon Farms Proposal for the the intersection of FM 549 and 550 near the town center. The exact location can be seen from the following image submitted to the P&Z Board with their submission.
The 122 acre parcel is currently zoned with around 5 acres in the Town Center Overlay and the remaining 117 acres as agricultural. The developer is requesting two separate zoning changes. In the area marked as Zoning Parcel 1, the developer is requesting that 20 acres of the parcel be rezoned as Town Center Overlay District with some significant changes and disturbing changes. In the marked as Zoning Parcel 2, the developer is requesting that the remaining 102 acres be rezoned from Agricultural to a Planned Development District.
Both of these requests are among the worst submitted to the city in recent memory full of misleading and outrageous standards. Both requests should be denied in their current incarnation and likely any modified plan as well because any submitted plan will have the same fundamental flaws.
I will discuss the two proposals separately, beginning with Zoning Parcel 1 and finishing with Zoning Parcel 2.
ZONING PARCEL 1
The proposed zoning has a number of flaws, but to me there are two glaring issues. First, the developer requests to quadruple the size permitted by current zoning without any concession to the city to offset this unprecedented request. Second, the developer’s proposed submission is way too vague and the meager requirements that have been submitted would not meet the requirements for a walkable, integrated commercial center. A large portion of the second point is caused by the deficiencies in the City’s existing Town Overlay Center District, which is not detailed enough to adequately ensure the objectives recounted in the Comprehensive Plan.
The city briefing summarizes the Zoning Parcel 1 as follows:
The developer has requested a 20 acre commercial parcel with 37 town homes that is a quadrupling of the current size zoned area with a minimal offset. The developer will point to a park in the center of the development that they say is sized at 1.5 acres but appears to be smaller than that in the proposal drawing submitted by the developer. The most detailed image I could find of the overall district is below:
The yellow and green areas are marked as a (A) Park & Event Space and (C) Tree Grove with Lounge Seating. The developer states that the Community Event Space will be approximately 1.5 acres but that is highly misleading as it includes a Central Pocket Park located in Zoning Parcel 2.
The details as submitted by the developer are below:
Based on the scale in the drawing above that a certain length is 440', it appears as though the total dedicated green space is approximately 400' by 100' feet and bisected by a road which will have at least a 50' wide impact on that space. The end result is well less than an acre, with a Park & Event Space that is approximately 100' by 150' or about a quarter acre. This is about the size of a typical Heath front yard, except one that is to be directly shared by 37 town homes and all of the users of the commercial and retail buildings. It is very clear that the developer is making no serious attempt to offset its request for a quadrupling of the commercial zoning, and so it should be denied.
The proposal also includes a number of disturbing elements that hide the true scale of the proposal. A key one is the inclusion of the 37 town homes from the residential portion of the parcel to mask the number of new residential units being requested. The total overall 122 acres is 37 units from Zoning Parcel 1 and 124 units from Zoning Parcel 2 for a total of 161 units over 106 planning acres for an average of 1.5 units per acre, 50% more density than the Comprehensive Plan. This again shows that the developer is not being credulous with the requested rezoning.
The developer says that the tiny Community Event space will be a “hub of community activity” and programmed with such events as “afternoon concerts, art fairs, holiday events, and community gathers to support facilitate community activity.” (Editors note: the last quote is directly pulled from the submitted material shown below and is not an attempt to besmirch the developer by introducing confusing language.)
However, there is no mechanism or funding to support these open-ended hollow promises. This consistent with the rest of the submission — lofty rhetoric designed to obfuscate the reality being proposed by the developer.
There are also a number of problems with the specifics and lack of specifics submitted by the developer. There are no additional walkability or connectivity requirements in the proposal beyond the City’s bare boned proposals and as a result the proposal is severely deficient in these regards.
In the image above, if a pedestrian wished to walk from the Tom Thumb development across the intersection, that pedestrian would be required to walk at least 440' feet to access a sidewalk that would take the pedestrian within the development. As shown above, that is an unshaded walk with no tree coverage. Even if the developer was required to plant trees at the required 100' spacing, that is still no effective tree cover as they will plant lollipop trees that will take 30 years of growing to provide any sort of cover. The fact that the proposal contains no sidewalk entries to connect to the largest adjacent commercial area shows that all of the discussion of walkability and connectivity are just buzzwords designed to by slick developers to confuse small town rubes. There are no requirements for any of the trees shown through the district, and as a result, they will never exist in reality. There are additionally no requirements for building fenestration to shade walkers along the commercial buildings and the developer has even neglected to include fake shade trees along those routes.
The key to walkability in Texas is shaded walkways to protect from the sun, protection from direct exposure to fast moving traffic, clear and direct wayfinding and sufficient density of potential places to go. As shown immediately above, the proposal does not address shade. The proposal does not address protection from traffic as every pedestrian would be required to walk along major highways for at least 1/10 of a mile separated by a few feet from traffic. Anyone who has walked on the sidewalk for the first widened FM 740 section knows how unpleasant that is. The two portions separated by FM 550 are not even interconnected. A pedestrian walking from one to the other would be required to walk along FM 550 to the intersection and back a total of around a 1000' walk directly along the highway. The fact that the proposal is deficient on even such trivial details as these shows how little effort and thought actually went into the proposal.
Several of the details requested by the developer that differ from the City’s Town Center Overlay District are disturbing. The proposal is below, look closely for the differences:
For the retail zoning, there are three differences that are very objectionable. First, the maximum building height would be increased by 15 feet or almost two stories to 40 feet. That is easily a 4 story building. Second, the maximum building coverage is increased to 60% which is 50% more than the existing baseline, and there is no maximum amount of square footage allowed in the district. Third, the 90% impervious coverage has not been decreased to a lower number, which is inconsistent with other recent developments approved by the city.
For the townhomes, there are a number of differences that are very objectionable. The minimum lot size is halved from 6,000 sf to 3,000 sf. This is mirrored by a doubling in Max # of dwellings per acres to 10, and doubling of max building coverage of lot area to 90%. This is incredibly dense and not even consistent with the greatly relaxed setback requirements proposed by the developer. Under the developer’s proposal, the minimum distance between buildings is 10' and the lot is only 30' wide, which means that 1/3 of each lot will be required for side set backs. The front and back setback have both been reduced to 5' feet, so each structure will have to fit into a rectangle sized 90' by 20', which is 1,800 sf, and well short of the 90% coverage requested by the developer. It is impossible for a building to occupy more than 60% of the lot, yet the developer requested a massive change of the requirement needlessly.
Lastly, the internal design of the proposal is not a city grid-like atmosphere. The Retail portion has only three entrances, so it does not provide the multiplicity of route choices that is the primary benefit of a grid system. In fact, when viewed at a high level, the illustrated proposal is a conventional strip center with a large parking area at each end bisected by two large commercial buildings. There is nothing that looks like the traditional downtown square environment that the developer claims to have presented. The developer has failed to even meet its very low standards in the submitted materials and the rezoning request should be denied.
ZONING PARCEL 2
The proposed zoning has a number of flaws, but to me there are two glaring issues. First, the developer requests way too high of a density without sufficient effort or expenditure to offset the burden of the request. Second, the developer’s proposed efforts to offset the burden are insufficient or poorly conceived.
The city briefing summarizes the Zoning Parcel 1 as follows:
As shown by the city’s summary, the request should be rejected out of hand. Even using the developer’s deceptive numbers, the density is way too high at 1.29 units per acres. Using the units from the whole development, as shown above, the density is actually 1.5 units per acre where around 16% of the acreage is commercial. This is an unprecendented request. The scope of the request can be seen in the lot sizes.
As shown above, the smallest lot size is 3,000 sf, around .07 acres, and smaller than the typical Heath house. Tthere are 37 of those lots. That’s around half the number of houses in Wyndemere crammed onto 2.5 acres. The next largest lot size is 19,800 sf, around half an acre. There are 86 of those lots. That’s basically all of the houses in Wyndemere crammed into 39 acres. The larger manor lots are only half and 3/4 of an acre and there are very few of them, only 15 and 23 respectively. The proposal is crammed with as many small lots as the developer could cram into the envelope with 123 lots on less that 42 acres. That is not a good development and should be denied.
As with the implementation of the zoning in the Zoning Parcel 1, when the developer proposes a change from the current zoning requirements, the resulting change is to a lower quality standard.
There are a number of differences that are objectionable. The setbacks are reduced. There is no reason to reduce setbacks except that the small lots with unusual configurations would be otherwise difficult to cram a house onto the small lots. The maximum building height is increased. There is no reason to have the tallest houses in the City on some of the smallest lots.
Looking beyond the small lot sizes, the developer claims that a number of features offset the small lot sizes. However, the execution of these features is not guaranteed by anything and even if implemented are not capable of integrating the proposal with the city at large.
The first obvious feature is the continuous green illustration along every street. There is nothing in the planning documents that require planting of those trees, or enough trees to create a continuous belt. The developer even goes so far as to call one street a “Greenbelt Parkway,” yet the are no requirements for tree planting in the zoning change documentation.
The claimed trees and greenway materials are simple marketing fluff designed to ease approval of the zoning change.
Even the requirements that would be required to be built, such as the trail system are poorly implemented.
Over 2000' feet of the trail run along FM 550 with minimal buffer, and as discussed above, there is very little shading provided along the trail, even of the fake kind illustrated along the streets. The trails do not connect anything outside of the property nor is there likely to be be any provision to in the future. The trail system does not even extend to the to the other portion of the property across FM 550. The trail does not extend towards the Tom Thumb development across the intersection. The sole connection of the trail system is to the Stoneleigh development at the extreme southeast corner of the development. The trail system contains no provision to extend to the large undeveloped property to the east and north. Basically the trail system is self contained within the proposed development with little connectivity to the surrounding city.
Most of the land dedicated for park of public use is either bordering a highway or undevelopable flood plain.
The portion along FM 550 appears to constitute around a quarter of the dedicated open space land, and is a rather unpleasant 100' by 1500' strip that hugs a major roadway. A person could not let young children play unrestrained that close to a highway. The remaining dedication is the retention of an existing pond, which would be necessary to meet the storm water retention requirements anyway.
The largest portion of dedication is of flood plain, which would otherwise be undevelopable.
Both Zoning Parcel 1 and Zoning Parcel 2 requests are among the worst submitted to the city and should be denied in their current incarnation and likely any modified plan as well.
