Bluff Park residents voice opposition to rezoning part of old Smith dairy farm

Bluff Park residents on Monday night voiced opposition to a developer’s request to rezone about 6.7 acres of a 26.6-acre tract planned for a new subdivision on the old Smith Farm property.

About 70 people showed up at the Hoover Senior Center for a meeting of the Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission, and about 50 of them appeared to be there for the Bluff Park zoning case.

Lance Kitchens of CK Enterprises, which bought the 26-acre tract at auction on Oct. 31, is asking the zoning board to rezone about 5.7 acres from an agricultural district and 1 acre from an E-2 estate district to an R-1 single-family residential district.

About 75 percent of the property — 19.88 acres — already is zoned R-1, and rezoning all of it to R-1 would provide uniformity in regulations, Kitchens said. It also would enable him to increase the number of planned houses on the property from 36 to a maximum of 50, he said. However, Kitchens said he is still early in the planning process and not certain how many houses he actually would build, he said.

Right now, his plan is to build house with an average 3,100 square feet in the $500,000s to $700,000s price range, he said.

Kitchens emphasized that the part of the Smith Farm he bought is not the most scenic part of the farm with the grassy meadows, pond and barn seen from Sanders Road and Savoy Street. That property was bought by David Hare, the owner of the Bluff Park Ice Cream Shoppe, who said he plans to preserve it much like its present state.

The part bought by Kitchens is mostly vacant land with woods, he said. There is a large house on one of the parcels, and he plans to break that parcel off and sell it separately, he said.

Most of the surrounding land also is zoned R-1, Kitchens said. However, there are some nearby parcels with agricultural and estate zoning as well, he said.

Numerous Bluff Park residents spoke against Kitchens’ rezoning request Monday night, saying they don’t want to increase the density of the planned subdivision any more than is already allowed. The roads in that area are narrow and can’t accommodate that much more traffic, residents said.

“This is an ancient, old community,” Judy Morton said. “The infrastructure is old. Our roads are barely two lane.”

The land that is zoned agricultural was zoned that way to serve as a buffer for the old Smith dairy farm, Morton said. “We need that buffer even more now than ever,” she said.

Bluff Park resident Robin Schultz said adding 50 houses on this property would take away from the historic nature of the area. Also, Bluff Park Elementary School already is near capacity and couldn’t handle the children that would come from this development, Schultz said. Parts of Bluff Park already were rezoned from Bluff Park Elementary to Green Valley Elementary due to crowding, he said.

Bob Lawry, coordinator of student services for the Hoover school system, confirmed that Bluff Park Elementary is nearing capacity and in a fragile state right now. Adding onto the school to handle more children would be a three-year process, and rezoning the new subdivision to another school would require approval of the federal court, which already has indicated a desire to keep children in schools closer to their neighborhoods, Lawry said.

Schultz said the developer knew what the zoning was when he bought it.

“We’re not asking you to prevent him from building the homes he would like to build,” Schultz said. “We’re asking you to not rezone the areas he’s asking you to rezone.”

Larry Nolen, who has lived on Savoy Street since 1980, the zoning needs to stay as it was at the time Kitchens purchased it. Nolen said he has no problem with Kitchens building houses on his property, “but 50 houses is crazy.” Bluff Park is a fantastic wonderful community, and “this is a travesty to rezone this,” he said.

Kitchens said a traffic study he had performed indicated that 50 new houses on his property would add about 450 vehicle trips per day on Savoy Street, 225 trips in each direction. Only about 126 of those 450 trips per day would be from the land proposed for rezoning, he said.

Hoover Councilman Mike Shaw, who also sits on the zoning board, said the city is charged with looking out for the health, safety and welfare of the community, and he sees no compelling reason to increase the density of the community that Kitchens is proposing to build.

Planning Commission Chairman Mike Wood said it’s clear that there is a lot of opposition to Kitchens’ plan and recommended Kitchens try to meet with the community again to come up with some type of compromise plan.

Kitchens said he was open to that idea. After Monday night’s meeting, a community meeting was set for 7 p.m. on Jan. 2 at Shades Crest Baptist Church, and Kitchens said he plans to meet with residents then.

The city of Hoover has set up a similar meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 7, at 6:30 p.m. in the cafeteria at Bluff Park Elementary School.

The case is scheduled to come back up at the Jan. 13 meeting of the Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission at 5:30 p.m.