After Cedar Park staff discovered a mistake made more than a decade ago on a city future land-use map, City Council and the developers of a project along Brushy Creek Road recently reached a compromise.
In July, representatives with MileStone Community Builders said they have been developing a residential project on 43.21 acres along Brushy Creek east of Parmer Lane for about 10 years. The property is separated into three tracts and was proposed to have 240 units of single-family detached homes and courtyard homes.
MileStone CEO Garrett Martin said the project's trails could connect to regional trails in Champion Park and Brushy Creek Lake Park. He also said the owner could sell a tract of land south of the project to the city for a park.
Will Wilson, the owner of the property, said his family plans to keep their homestead, which would sit next to the residential development.
“I think this council has improved the project in the process, and we think it’s something we’re proud of—it’s a really good project,” he said.
Discovering the map error
To allow for MileStone’s residential development, the owners of the property submitted a rezoning request for all the tracts to be a planned development with a residential designation. Martin said MileStone planned the project to match Cedar Park's future land-use map, which acts as a roadmap for zoning decisions.
The Cedar Park Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval of the rezoning request in August 2016, but in September 2016, City Manager Brenda Eivens told City Council that staff had discovered a mistake made more than a decade ago to the city’s future land-use map.
Eivens said council voted in 2007 to amend the Wilson tracts in the city’s future land-use plan to be residential on the outer two tracts and to be commercial in the middle tract. However, she said the approved commercial designation to the middle tract was never made on the future land-use map.
Director of Development Services Chris Copple said the 2007 vote officially designated the middle Wilson tract as commercial, even though the future land-use map continued to label the tract as residential.
However, he said City Council adopted a new comprehensive plan in November 2014 that establishes the goals for the city’s zoning ordinances and land-use regulations. The comprehensive plan includes the future land-use map, which showed the incorrect labeling of the Wilson tract as all-residential. Copple said council's 2014 vote officially designated the middle Wilson tract as residential.
In light of the information, P&Z in December 2016 initiated the process to amend the future land-use plan for the middle Wilson tract. In June, P&Z recommended amending the tract to commercial in the future land-use plan and recommended denying MileStone’s zoning request for its housing project.
However, representatives from MileStone said they designed their residential project for the past decade using the city’s future land-use map, which showed all three tracts as residential.
Martin said MileStone had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars designing a residential project that matched the city’s future land-use map.
“We all know that the city of Cedar Park is a very pro-business environment, and we appreciate that. But changing the development rules mid-stream made it very difficult to do business on this project,” he said. “We relied on the city’s official documents, and unfortunately that reliance was to our detriment. We believe that’s simply unfair.”
Council considerations
In July, Cedar Park City Council discussed if the approval of the entire future land-use map in the comprehensive plan in 2014 superseded the previous City Council decision from 2007.
Council Member Stephen Thomas said simply going back to the commercial designation in the future land-use plan left a sour taste in his mouth.
“I’m not against having retail—sales tax is important to the city—but this does not sit well with me,” he said.
Some residents were in favor of changing the middle tract back to commercial in the land-use plan. Scott Smith, a resident in the Ranch at Brushy Creek neighborhood, said July 13 that he wants to have a more walkable city.
“I think the mistake that potentially was made needs to be corrected, and this needs to be commercial 14 acres,” he said.
Stephen Craig, another resident of the neighborhood, said he preferred MileStone’s residential project. City Council Member Corbin Van Arsdale said feedback from surrounding residents was fairly evenly split on preferring residential or some commercial.
The majority of City Council members said they would like to see some form of commercial in this area.
“I’m fully supportive of having some commercial activity here,” Council Member Cobby Caputo said. “Perhaps 15 acres is too much, so I’m willing to have a conversation about that.”
Martin said the company was willing to add 3 acres of commercial to its housing project. On July 27, City Council approved amending the future land-use plan to add roughly 3 acres of commercial to the middle Wilson tract, about 3 acres as medium-density residential use and to designate about 8 acres as parkland.
City Attorney J.P. LeCompte said MileStone would need to start the rezoning process over with P&Z to add the commercial component to its rezoning request. Representatives from MileStone did not return requests for comments from Community Impact Newspaper.
