Officials mull plat change, safety issues
City of Lakeway and Travis County officials are reviewing plans for The Summit at Lake Travis Condominiums, 150 new single-family residences in the Lakehurst subdivision.
Lakeway Deputy City Manager Chessie Zimmerman said the project's site plan appears to comply with city statutes.
Citing a need for legal advice, Travis County Commissioners Court on April 1 delayed action on three motions that would have moved the project forward. The court planned to revisit the issue April 8, after Community Impact Newspaper went to press.
City of Lakeway
The proposed site for the condominiums is on a peninsula in Lakeway's extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ.
State law states that a city's ETJ is an area where only the city is authorized to annex the land. Cities have limited regulatory authority over the ETJ but can lay the groundwork for future growth.
Zimmerman said Lakeway's subdivision and site development rules apply there.
She said the city has gone through two rounds of staff comments with the owner regarding the submitted site plan.
"There is nothing in the [site plan's] comment section that would hold them up on our end," she said. "From what I can tell, based on [staff's] review, they seem to be in compliance."
Once the site plan receives city staff approval, the project can move forward regarding issues under Lakeway's control, Zimmerman said. The city may continue to be involved depending on what actions Travis County takes on the issues under its jurisdiction.
County concerns
During its April 1 meeting, the Commissioners Court considered three motions.
First it considered a request to cancel parts of the county's plat, or official government map, to revert several Lakehurst subdivision lots into open land.
The Lakehurst subdivision was recorded in 1941, before the area was part of Lakeway's jurisdiction. Only the county needs to take action to change the plat, since state law requires the original approving body to make the decision.
Second the proposed condominium project required a variance to subdivision requirements "since the developer has chosen not to divide the property with lots and streets," according to county documents.
Third the county considered entering into a construction agreement with the property owner to build the subdivision's infrastructure, including streets, water quality ponds and sidewalks.
Fire safety and roads
During the April 1 meeting, resident Tim Hostetter said the Lakehurst neighborhood's fundamental concern over the condos was safety because of the proposed increase in density.
"Everyone's concern is not only some of the safety of daily traffic, but [also] safety in the event of a worst-case scenario evacuation from wildfires or any other natural disaster that might happen," he said.
The Summit at Lake Travis Condominiums would have driveways on Crosswind Drive and Lakehurst Road. Residents would need to take one of those roads to travel south to Hwy. 71.
Hostetter also suggested a locked third driveway that could serve as an emergency exit.
Attorney Clint Jones, representing the project developer, said the developer felt a third exit was not necessary because the project's interior roads would be built to county standards and could support emergency vehicles.
"As I explained to the [homeowners] association yesterday, in the event of a fire [people] are not going to wait on the fire department to show up and unlock a gate when they've got two other access points to leave," he said.
County Fire Marshal Hershel Lee said the project met the county's fire code requirements. County officials have done traffic studies in the area as well.
Doug Young, a representative from the Crosswind property owners association, said that area roads were narrow and featured steep dropoffs and no shoulders. He predicted that The Summit at Lake Travis will not be the last development in the area.
"We end up with a situation where the public is faced with a fairly significant problem: We've got to build roads all throughout the area because of the limited authority of the county to regulate, and we end up with very unsafe neighborhoods," he said. "We're on a peninsula, kind of isolated right up against the lake. When will the county have the money? When will other projects be less important than the safety of the people living out there [and that those people] will have the priority to build all the infrastructure we need?"
