The Protect Highland Road Task Force may have lost its most recent fight to keep a residential development with a higher-than-desired density from being approved by the Planning Commission, but its leaders are gearing up for a large battle in the coming year.
The task force was created earlier this year when residents successfully fought approval of the Heritage Oaks subdivision. But it was unsuccessful last week in persuading the Planning Commission to reject approval of Valhalla subdivision, which is less dense than Heritage Oaks, but still calls for slightly more than one unit per acre.
The subdivision, located on the same tract that Heritage Oaks was proposed, is being developed by Dantin Bruce and calls for 20 residences on 15 acres. Over objections from the task force—which wants residential developments to be limited to one per acre—the Planning Commission voted 6-1 to approve Valhalla on Monday, Dec. 14.
Also at that meeting, the commission voted 8-1 to approve recommendation of an ordinance change that would require any rezoning of a property without the owner’s consent to get a super majority vote—or nine votes—by the Metro Council rather than the seven votes, or simple majority, currently required.
Ron Ross and Wayne Stromeyer, president and vice president of the task force, tell Daily Report they will fight the ordinance change when it comes before the Metro Council for final approval next month. They will also be working to get approval for their effort to rezone from rural to REA1 a roughly three-mile stretch of Highland Road between Siegen Lane and the Country Club of Louisiana, as well as about a mile stretch of Pecue Lane that connects Highland and Interstate 10. The rezoning change would restrict residential developments to one unit per acre. The current rural zoning allows for up to seven units per acre.
Since its formation, the task force has grown to 11 members, including three homeowners associations. Ross and Stromeyer say there are about 250 pieces of property along the stretch the task force is focused on that measure larger than one acre. They add they have now have secured signatures of 87% of the property owners in the area who support their rezoning push.
“We’ve spent months collecting signatures,” Stromeyer says. “It’s a formal petition. We have it documented and we’re trying to get it before the Metro Council now.”
Ross takes exception with the suggestion that he and his neighbors along Highland and Pecue are merely trying to protect their own properties and keep any future residential development from taking place in the area.
“We know it’s going to be developed,” he says. “It just needs to be controlled.”
The additional traffic forced onto Highland and Pecue by high-density residential developments poses public safety and flooding threats, he says.
“These are real serious concerns that we don’t think have been addressed,” he says.
Getting the rezoning from rural to REA1 is really on the first step in a much larger effort, Stromeyer adds.
“We need some long-range planning,” says Stromeyer. “It’s already gone too far.”
Stromeyer points to one objective in the FuturEBR master plan for development that calls for the creation of “a robust and meaningful public involvement process that emphasizes long-term consensus rather than project-by-project evaluation and approval.”
“That’s exactly what we’re trying to do,” he says.
—Steve Sanoski
