Hoover officials discuss changes to comprehensive plan

The city of Hoover has continued to tweak its proposed comprehensive plan to guide decisions for the next 20 years, including new plans for undeveloped land.

City Planner Mac Martin on Tuesday night outlined to the Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission numerous modifications that have been made to the plan following feedback from the public and commissioners in the past several months.

One of the key changes requested by planning commissioners was the addition of a summary at the beginning of the plan, better explaining how the plan is meant to be a guide for decision-making, but not a regulatory instrument that levies restrictions on individual properties.

“This plan is meant to serve as a vision and long-range guide to help shape the future development of the city — to assist public officials and private citizens alike as they consider investments that may have long-term implications for Hoover,” the first part of the summary states.

“It presents guiding principals for making Hoover a successful and sustainable city and ideas for maintaining and building on the qualities of community that residents value,” the summary says. “It illustrates a ‘general’ development pattern that allows the city to forecast infrastructure needs so that public monies are used wisely. Likewise, this helps developers and other private citizens visualize what can reasonably be expected to occur in Hoover over time, providing some assurance regarding their investment decisions.”

Martin said the plan also now emphasizes that much of the development taking place today is the result of zoning plans and annexation agreements approved decades ago.

For example, in addition to about 300 more homes coming to Lake Wilborn and nearly 1,000 more homes coming to Blackridge, U.S. Steel has more than 1,900 homes approved on the south side of Shelby County 52. More details plans still must be submitted for final approval, but the general agreement for those rooftops already is in place.

Hoover Councilman Mike Shaw, who also sits on the planning commission, said that is one of the most important parts of the document. It’s important for people to understand that these new homes are coming not because of decisions made recently but because the city made commitments to developers decades ago, he said.

DEVELOPMENT IMPACT ON SCHOOLS

Martin also added a statistic that newly constructed homes are half as likely to have children in Hoover schools as existing homes. For every 10 newly built homes, just under two children attend Hoover schools, while for every 10 existing houses, just under four children attend Hoover schools, he said.

City Administrator Allan Rice, another member of the planning commission, said that’s probably the second most important part of the comprehensive plan.

The conventional wisdom in the city is that new houses are bringing a lot of children to the school system, he said. It’s true that new construction does add some children to schools, but “the overwhelming majority of new children in Hoover City Schools in recent years is coming from the churn or the turnover of our existing housing stock,” Rice said.

Older people are downsizing, moving into assisted living facilities, dying and moving out of the city or state to be closer to children, and they are being replaced by younger people with children, he said. “If we didn’t build another new house, we would see increases in enrollment in our school system.”

Also, while the school system is still adding students, “our boom years are behind us,” Rice said.  “We’re not seeing enrollment growth now like we did several years ago.”

The city still needs to help the school system find ways to manage the growth, “but it is not because of brand new neighborhoods being built that all of a sudden all these kids show up,” he said.

DESIRED LAND USE CHANGES

Martin said another change made in the plan is the desired strategy for undeveloped land in southwestern Hoover. Instead of marking that land for preservation and estate-style development, planning commissioners expressed a desire to acknowledge that more traditional, suburban development will occur in the area south of Morgan Road at some point in time, Martin said.

When that development does occur, the city needs to make sure it can still provide an exceptional level of service, he said.

Also, planning commissioners wanted to change the desired use for undeveloped land along Interstate 459 between the Patton Creek shopping center and Preserve Parkway from a “potential employment center” to more of “mixed-use infill” area, Martin said.

This property, often referred to as the Hidden Valley property, was the subject of a lawsuit against the city filed by two of the property owners.

Meade Whitaker Jr. and Frances Schoonover had a contract with a development company to build apartments on their land, but the Hoover City Council in 2016 — against the property owners’ wishes — rezoned 253 acres along I-459 from apartment use to commercial use and 20 acres near Paradise Acres from apartment use to single-family residential use.

Whitaker and Schoonover filed suit in April 2018, claiming the city violated their property rights and intentionally interfered in the contract between them and the apartment developer.

While the first draft of the comprehensive plan called for this land to be used as a potential employment center, Martin said planning commissioners and property owners felt that description was too narrowly defined and recommended that land be marked for “mixed-use infill.”

Some planning commissioners also had taken issue with wording in the plan that said the city “should preserve” steep slopes, so that wording was changed to “should consider preserving,” Martin said.

That still wasn’t enough for Planning Commission Chairman Mike Wood, who said he didn’t like that the comprehensive plan specified that developers should especially consider preserving slopes that are at least 15 percent.

“That’s not very steep,” he said. He would be willing to bet that portions of the Riverchase Galleria and The Grove properties had slopes disturbed that were greater than 15 percent, he said. The percentage reference may need to be removed altogether, he said.

Wood and Shaw also took issue with the comment in the plan that dead-end streets should me minimized and, where used, limited to about 200 feet. That idea was put in there in an effort to encourage more interconnection of streets, but Wood said following that practice would eliminate some areas for development.

Wood said the next likely step is for the commission to vote on the plan. It’s possible that vote could occur at the commission’s July 8 meeting, but he’s not sure, he said.

Once the planning commission adopts a comprehensive plan, that’s the final step for it, he said. It does not require approval by the Hoover City Council.

Click here to see the most recent version of the comprehensive plan.