Troubled Planning and Zoning says yes to plan that could lead to 700 Kerrville homes

For most of the last two years, the Kerrville Planning and Zoning has not had an easy time when faced with potentially polarizing decisions, and after a lull, the hard choices roared back on Thursday.

Facing the four-member P&Z, two members absent and a third is now on the City Council, was a plan for 719 homes, including more than 350 homes sited on 2,750-square-foot lots. The deal was an annexation of more than 200 acres owned by Schreiner University, which is selling the land to national homebuilder Lennar.

However, the complication was jamming those 719 homes onto about 100 acres, with a front of more than 200,000 square feet of retail space along Loop 534. The plan called for project entrances off Loop 534 and Olympic Drive, adding a traffic crunch of more than 1,000 vehicle trips per day.

With commissioners Kevin Bernhard and Abram Bueche absent and Jeff Harris now on the City Council, that left commissioners Mike Sigerman, Tabor McMillan, David Lipscomb and Kim Richards to tackle the formidable ask from Lennar and Pablo Brinkman, who represents Schreiner University in the transaction.

Lennar wants the project annexed into the city and a planned development district approved for zoning. The planned development district paused Sigerman, who had seen this before.

With a planned development district, the developer gets more leeway to work around the city’s zoning ordinances; in this case, it was to encourage higher-density products. Lennar’s site plan showed rows of tightly bunched pods of housing on 25-foot wide by 110-foot long lots.

Commercial real estate agent Bruce Stracke admitted there is a desperate need for housing, but not this type of density — or skirting the city’s R-2 residential zoning ordinances. Brinkman and Stracke had a tense moment when Brinkman rebutted Stracke.

However, the commissioners shared Stracke’s concerns — particularly Sigerman and Lipscomb. Richards said there would be no perfect plan and that housing projects face intense scrutiny without producing results, and she initiated the first attempt to move the vote along.

There were long moments of silence on the dais as the commissioner contemplated the stalemate. Richards’ motion failed. McMillan tried to move it forward, and that failed.

It increasingly looked like the plan was going to fail to move forward — in any capacity, meaning no appeal to the City Council — City Attorney Mike Hayes urged the commission to come to a decision to let the City Council sort it out.

McMillan recast his motion to limit 2,750-square-foot lots to about 40% of the housing stock compared to about 50% of Lennar’s original plan. After some back-and-forth, the motion ultimately passed 4-0, but the discomfort with the project remains, which will carry over to the City Council.

The other big P&Z decision of the afternoon focused on the height of solid fencing — allowing them to reach 48 inches for solid components — as long as most were see-through. Considering the trouble the fencing ordinances have caused, Thursday’s decision was relatively simple — now heading back to the City Council for a first and second reading.