Houston-based planning firm Kendig Keast Collaborative gave the presentation.
It focuses on transportation, which includes ideas to change how different roadways are used, as well as land use and community character, which outlines a framework for rural preservation, estate residential, suburban residential, master-planned development, commercial and industrial throughout the city.
What’s happening?
On the transportation side, the presentation by Kendig Keast President and project manager Gary Mitchell sectioned Hwy. 288 as a limited-access highway, and Hwy. 6 as the primary roadway to move traffic in and out of the city, otherwise known as the sole major thoroughfare.
For local roadways, the plan sections them into the following:
- Parkways: plans to carry higher volumes of traffic, typically run across the city
- Arterials: plans to facilitate travel from point A to point B
- Collector: plans to move traffic into and out of specific neighborhoods or parts of the city, connecting them to the major roadway network
Of the proposed changes, some of the following are the most notable:
- Maintaining Kirby Drive as an arterial. Previously, Kirby Drive was proposed to be turned into a parkway, but it’s now proposed to remain an arterial due to right-of-way considerations and its proximity to Airline Road.
- Turning Patterson Road into a full collector to have it serve as a more internal road distributing traffic to larger framing roads, including Lira and Masters roads.
- Extending Cemetery Road, specifically south of Hwy. 6, and a new collector line to connect Cemetery Road to Masters Road.
- Extending Iowa Lane, specifically south of Hwy. 6
Mitchell labeled the city’s first future land use map as a “growth management tool” for Manvel.
The map places future land use into the following categories:
- Rural preservation
- Estate residential
- Suburban residential
- Master-planned development
- Commercial
- Industrial
Some of the following goals from the draft plan are most notable for the city’s future land use:
- Keep the most intensive future development toward the Hwy. 288 and Hwy. 6 corridors.
- Make the city’s edges and the extraterritorial jurisdiction estate residential and rural preservation to maintain a rural atmosphere.
- Include multifamily residential or apartments in areas planned to be master-planned developments.
While council members supported the overall goal of using the major thoroughfare plan as a "growth management tool" for the future, concerns were raised over specific roadway classifications such as Patterson Road.
“I want to preserve history for Manvel, and these trees [on Patterson Road] are history,” council member David Lands said at the meeting. “There’s a lot of great ideas here that I think can get from point A to point B, but my personal preference ... is to remove Patterson from any change to any wider road than it is right now.”
Another point of concern included apartments in future master-planned developments. Mayor Dan Davis said adding apartments would provide negative impacts on city services and the community.
“Even in master plan communities, I'll go on the record and say that I would not support apartments ... [due to] the strain and the stress that it puts on all of our city resources,” Davis said at the meeting.
What’s next
Mitchell emphasized that the current plans are in draft form and are planned to be relayed to the public with public hearings that will most likely lead to further changes.
The following will be presented in future City Council workshops for the city’s comprehensive and major thoroughfare plan:
- Environment
- Growth capacity
- Economic development
- Recreation and amenities
