Hoover council denies rezoning request for part of former Smith dairy farm

The Hoover City Council on Monday night unanimously denied a developer’s request to rezone 5.7 acres of the former Smith dairy farm in Bluff Park to make way for 47 new homes in addition to one already there.

However, the developer, Lance Kitchens, said he can already get up to 43 homes on the property with the current zoning and will begin working on development plans immediately now that the council denied his rezoning request.

Kitchens on Monday night offered to cap the number of homes on the property at 46, but City Attorney Phillip Corley said changing the number would require readvertising the rezoning request and yet another delay in what has been a months-long process.

Councilman Mike Shaw, indicating he was willing to wait a little longer, made a motion to approve the rezoning request but cap the number of total homes at 46, but that motion failed on a 4-3 vote.

Shaw said he would feel differently if the question was whether to have zero houses or 48 houses, but the choice Monday night was whether to have 43 homes or have a few more homes than that and get land for a city park as well.

Kitchens had offered to donate up to 9,000 square feet of space where the city could build a community playground.

Shaw said people in that area have talked about the need for a community park and that the city’s comprehensive plan called for more parks like that.

Bluff Park resident Robin Schultz said the issue was not the playground but the proper zoning for the land.

Numerous residents have complained the rezoning Kitchens was requesting — moving some of the property from agricultural zoning to E-2 estate zoning (with minimum 20,000-square-foot lots) and R-1 single-family residential zoning (with minimum 15,000-square-foot lots) would allow too many homes for that space.

Bluff Park resident Jim Butler said he was concerned about the impact the new development would have on traffic and schools.

Another nearby neighbor, Glenn Ellis, said E-2 zoning would be more appropriate than R-1 for all of the property. Kitchens said he already had modified his plan to allow E-2 zoning next to the street where Ellis lives.

Councilman Casey Middlebrooks said Simmons Middle School still has some capacity to add students, but Bluff Park Elementary School already is above operational capacity, as far as the U.S. District Court is concerned.

Kitchens’ development is expected to add one child for every 2.5 homes, which would have a significant impact on Bluff Park Elementary, Middlebrooks said.

Councilman John Greene said he didn’t feel like Kitchens’ rezoning request was unreasonable, but the overwhelming response he was hearing from Bluff Park residents is opposition to the proposal, and he has to side with the majority of residents.

When it came time to vote Monday night, every council member voted against the rezoning request, including Shaw, who initially tried to get the rezoning change to pass with the new cap.

After Monday’s meeting, Shaw said he voted against it because there was just too much confusion surrounding the proposal. The park land donation was not an official part of the recommendation from the zoning board and therefore wasn’t binding without amending and readvertising the proposal, he said. And a majority of the council already had voted against an amendment and delay.

After the vote to deny the rezoning request, Kitchens said the big question is why does the city have a Planning and Zoning Commission if the council isn’t going to listen to it. “I would be insulted if I were the Planning and Zoning Commission,” he said.

He will begin work immediately on preliminary plans under the current zoning, he said.