Keller City Council approved a zoning change for the excess land Keller ISD recently sold around the Keller High School tennis courts and bus lot.
The motion was amended and then approved, 5-1, with one abstaining vote from Charles Randklev, at a regular meeting Oct. 20.
The gist
A gated community, Providence, will be developed behind the tennis courts and bus lot and will feature custom-built, 5,000-square-foot houses worth around $2 million.
The area was initially zoned for single family residential homes on 36,000-square-foot lots. The depth of each lot required in that zoning area, along with the odd shape of the land, would only allow for one row of houses with an adjacent road instead of two rows with a road down the middle, according to the developer’s presentation to the council.
Applicant Curtis Young, a principal at architecture firm Sage Group, proposed zoning for single-family residential homes on 25,000-square-foot lots in a planned development. This type of development, which has to be approved by council, allows developers to deviate from certain zoning restrictions.
These deviations included a higher percentage of the lot being covered by the house and driveway, corner houses with a shorter width than normally permitted and larger-than-mandated side yards.
The initial proposal included 22 houses on around 21 acres in a gated community that had 2.6 acres of open space, including a public green space. The proposal passed after it was amended to have 21 houses and a change from iron fencing to mason walls bordering the tennis courts on the east.
The development will also bring around $450,000 in tax revenue to KISD, said developer David Washington, Sage Group’s client and the owner of DW Commercial, the company that bought the land.
More details
The land off Johnson Road around the Keller High School tennis courts, equipment storage and bus and car parking was not being used by KISD, according to district documents. It was deemed excess and put up for bid.
While the proposal zoned the area for 25,000-square-foot lots, that was only to avoid the depth requirements for larger square foot zoning. The average lot size will be around 32,000 square feet, which increased to nearly 36,000 square feet when one house was removed from the plan and that land was redistributed.
The adjusted zoning also allowed for the lot lines to line up with the houses in Gean Estates, the new development’s neighbors to the north.
To the east, a portion of the existing tree grove would be kept as a natural barrier between the development and Keller United Methodist Church.
“What the [planned development] process allows us to do here is to customize this to fit the site in a high-quality way that we think complements our neighbors and works well here,” Young said.
Those opposed
The motion was approved by Council Members Greg Will, Karen Brennan, Jarrett Armstrong, Mayor Pro Tem Shannon Dubberly and Mayor Ross McMullin, while Council Member Chris Whatley voted against it.
Whatley argued for a stricter adherence to existing zoning laws, especially where zoning for 36,000-foot single-family lots was possible.
Other concerns from public comments included how the lights from the tennis courts, the noise from the buses and across-the-street football games would affect people living in the new community.
What’s next
Once work starts on the property, one of the first steps will be to reroute drainage and put in water and sewer lines that could be shared by the high school.
Washington said he estimates that crews will break ground in about a year, and Providence will begin selling houses in two years.
