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Hoover City Council on Monday to consider rezoning 1,523 acres; 1,150 houses planned

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Map provided by city of Hoover

The Hoover City Council tonight plans to consider a request to rezone 1,523 acres in southwest Hoover to make it a “planned unit development” called Blackridge.

Signature Homes President Jonathan Belcher said he and another landowner, Riverwoods Holdings, plan to put 1,150 houses on the land, which is just southwest of the 500-house Lake Wilborn property that Signature Homes is developing at the end of Stadium Trace Parkway.

The Blackridge property is between Lake Wilborn and Shelby County 52, east of South Shades Crest Road and north of the Cahaba River.

The land currently is zoned for either agricultural use or is not zoned at all.

The Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission voted on May 9 to recommend that the City Council approve the rezoning request. Read more about that meeting here.

Belcher said Signature Homes wants to build 650 houses on the 700 acres it owns right next to Lake Wilborn. Up to 362 of those houses would be built on “medium-density lots” with a minimum lot width of 60 feet. The other 288 would be on lots of at least 15,000 square feet and at least 75 feet in width.

Signature Homes plans to put the larger homes around a 100-acre lake. Signature’s portion of the property would be a gated community with private roads, bounded on both sides by railroad tracks.

Further south, Riverwoods Holdings plans to put 500 houses on 823 acres between the second set of railroad tracks and Shelby County 52.

Some people have expressed concern about adding 1,150 more houses in Hoover, saying the school system can’t handle that many more houses right now.

Belcher said the 1,150 houses is a much smaller number of houses than originally approved for the property when it was annexed into Hoover around 1994. The annexation agreement allowed for 2.25 houses per acre. With 1,523 acres, 3,435 houses would have been allowed under that formula, and that was the number for which school officials were originally told to plan, he said.

But the new proposal calls for just .75 homes per acre, Belcher said.

Signature Homes previously said it was willing to give up about 1,000 home sites but wanted the city to reserve 1,232 lots for Signature to develop on other property it may develop in the future.

However, Signature since has dropped the request to reserve lots for other property. Council President Jack Wright said the city does not allow developers to reserve lots for future development on undesignated property.

The annexation agreement for the property requires the landowners to donate an acre of land for recreational use for every 100 residents, assuming 2.5 residents per dwelling, Belcher said. That would amount to about 29 acres, and Signature is proposing to create a 60-acre park on adjacent land it owns next to the Cahaba River, with 4,000 to 5,000 linear feet along the Cahaba.

The annexation agreement also requires the landowners to donate land for a public safety building (fire station) and build the station for the city. It also requires that the developer donate a prepared school site for every 1,800 dwellings, assuming one student per three dwellings.

This development would not contain 1,800 homes, but the annexation agreement and school site donation requirements also apply to other land south of Shelby County 52, city officials said.

In other business Monday night, the City Council is scheduled to consider:

See the complete agenda for Monday's council meeting here.

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. in the William Billingsley Council Chambers at the Hoover Municipal Center at 100 Municipal Lane.

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