A proposed Leander subdivision gained preliminary City Council approval Nov. 29 with one caveat placed on the project.

Leander City Council voted 5-2 to rezone the 69.23-acre property northwest of H-E-B Plus at the intersection of Old FM 2243 and US 183 from commercial to residential. The development will not be allowed to have 40-foot-wide lots after the council rejected the original zoning request to include a variety of 40-, 50- and 60-foot-wide lots in the 253-lot configuration.

Councilman David Siebold said the 40-foot-lots would create an eyesore because city ordinances still require a front-facing garage unit—in this case, a one-car, 8-foot-wide garage entrance—resulting in too much of the house front being garage and not actual house.

Preliminary plans call for a tandem garage set 5 feet behind the front of the house, Tom Moody of homebuilder D.R. Horton said. That allows two cars to park one behind the other within the garage, he said, but that lead to further council concern.

"Any time you're going to require cars to be back-to-back, it's going to become an inconvenience for those people, meaning there will be a lot more street parking, which has caused some problems driving in the past," Siebold said.

The 40-foot-wide lots only make up 12 percent of the project, Moody said. Home prices will vary from $150,000 to the low $200,000 range, he said, depending on size and amenities. The restriction placed on small-sized lots will result in approximately a half-dozen less properties to develop, he said.

"And that's money out the window," Moody said. "And it brings a lot of cost up for the other lots, too." Moody estimated minimum home values will now cost at least $160,000.

City Manager Kent Cagle urged council to review the ordinance and make any necessary changes to address the problems proposed during the Nov. 29 discussion.

"If what's in there now doesn't work, we need to address it some other way through the ordinance to allow detached garages, or rear entry or some cutoff on smaller lots," Cagle said, suggesting the council could even consider restricting smaller lots altogether, if members deem it necessary.

Siebold agreed, suggesting council meets with the Planning and Zoning Commission in the near future to review the existing ordinance on smaller lots and street parking.

"We've been talking, whining, seeing things we really need to sit down and come up with something," he said.

Councilwoman Kirsten Lynch continued to reject the proposed rezoning, calling the land one of the last large spaces a big-box retailer could develop in Leander.

"We purposefully called this a commercial retail area when we laid it out in our master plan," Lynch said. "That's my concern, to give something up that could be a potential tax [fund] raiser and put rooftops in it."

Lynch also voiced concern over the inability to walk from the neighborhood to the adjoining H-E-B. Councilman Simon Garcia joined Lynch in voting against the final rezoning.

Ownership of the property, still in H-E-B's possession, will be transferred to D.R. Horton following approval on the Jan. 17 second reading of the proposed zoning case.