San Marcos' third H-E-B store will be built at the intersection of Wonder World Drive & Hunter Road. City Council approved a rezoning request Aug. 2 that will allow the new store to be built on the site.[/caption] San Marcos will be getting a third H-E-B store after City Council voted 5-2 on Aug. 2 to approve the grocer’s request to rezone a 6.4-acre property at Wonder World Drive and Hunter Road to allow for commercial use. “We all know San Marcos is a very desirable place to live, but more people are coming here,” Council Member John Thomaides said. “This council hasn’t said ‘no’ to additional people moving in. Good planning requires us to consider that and deal with that. Part of dealing with that is putting essential services near where people live.” Ben Scott, H-E-B director of real estate, described the proposed H-E-B location as a medium-sized store and said it is not meant to replace the “little H-E-B” near Hopkins and Comanche streets in downtown San Marcos. That location will remain open through at least the end of the store’s lease, which Scott said still has nine years remaining. The property that will contain San Marcos' third H-E-B store is almost completely outside the floodplain, save for the northeast corner of the property, which will contain a driveway.[/caption] Council members Thomaides, Jude Prather, Scott Gregson and Jane Hughson, as well as Mayor Daniel Guerrero, voted in favor of the rezoning, which was the last hurdle H-E-B had to clear before work can begin on the new store. Council members Melissa Derrick and Lisa Prewitt voted against approval, citing concerns about potential flooding on the property, which is located near Purgatory Creek, as well as traffic and safety. During the public comment portion of the meeting, San Marcos resident Christina Orta was brought to tears speaking about the proposal. Orta likened the H-E-B proposal to the Cape’s Camp development, which opened the door for construction of the Woods apartments, which worsened flooding in the Blanco Gardens neighborhood during last year’s Memorial Day weekend flood. “I speak out today because I didn’t speak out at Cape’s Camp, and speaking out at Cape’s Camp wouldn’t have made a difference either,” Orta said. “This feels so emotional because our city is fading fast. The beauty we have we must hold on to with every ounce of energy and passion that we can.” The 6.4-acre site is not located within the floodplain, save for a portion of the northeast corner of the property, which would contain a driveway for cars entering the parking lot from Hunter Road. Halff Associates, the city’s floodplain management consultant, performed an analysis on the property to determine whether flooding would occur during a 100-year storm, which is a storm that has a 1 percent chance of occurring in a given year. That analysis found that the property is in compliance with the city’s floodplain ordinance. The property will not increase the 100-year water surface of the Purgatory Creek downstream of the proposed H-E-B site, the analysis found. Scott said the final grading—or leveling—on the site has not been completed, so the company is unsure of how much soil will be removed or repositioned within the area and how that may affect flooding. Scott said that when the final grading is completed the company will have another analysis performed to determine whether or not the property will affect the floodplain. Derrick and Prewitt echoed many residents’ sentiments that a proposed store on the south side of San Marcos near the intersection of I-35 and McCarty Lane would make more sense than the proposed Wonder World Drive and Hunter Road store. “With all the site restrictions we have, health, safety and welfare concerns, environmental concerns, traffic concerns and you guys have worked and worked and worked to change them, wouldn’t it be easier to just build at McCarty where you don’t have all these restrictions and slowly build that out?” Derrick said. “I just don’t understand why this site is worth this much trouble.” Scott said the company sees the McCarty store as being “10 plus years in the future.” “We think [the Wonder World and Hunter location] is close to our customers,” Scott said. “It has two major thoroughfares to it, and it’s in the pattern of where folks move and where houses are being built. We think it’s the site for today, and McCarty is the future site. The rooftops just aren’t there today to support the store on McCarty.” The company has come up with two potential solutions to alleviate residents’ and council members’ concerns about H-E-B shipping trucks and vendor trucks turning left out of the store onto Wonder World Drive in order to get back to I-35. The company’s preferred alternative to the left-turn onto Wonder World is a turnaround lane that would be constructed near Wonder World and Craddock Avenue that would allow trucks to turn without impeding traffic. Scott said the company has shown the plans to the Texas Department of Transportation, and the department has been receptive to the idea. Scott said there is no timeline for when construction on the property may begin. The company has been focused on securing approval for the site from the city, he said. "I personally have never sat with, met with, talked to a company, a development group that was more willing to do what we felt we needed to do to have a safe development on this site," Thomaides said. "Never. [They would] not complain about it, not moan about it, not say it costs too much. They were willing to say, 'Put it in the contract. Put it in the paper, and we’ll agree to it.'"