The virtual town hall meeting held by District 3 City Councilmember Justin Outling on Tuesday, Nov. 10 did reveal the strategy of the opponents of the Koury Corporation rezoning request for 23 acres on Cone Boulevard.
It also revealed that the rezoning request has a multitude of opponents from north, south, east and west of the site. Over 100 people participated in the Zoom meeting. No one spoke in favor of the rezoning request.
Koury has requested that 23.3 acres it owns on Cone Boulevard between Lafayette Avenue and Cleburne Street be rezoned from Residential Single-Family to Conditional District–Residential Multifamily- 26 (CD-RM-26).
The rezoning request was approved by the Zoning Commission and appealed by opponents to the City Council, where it is scheduled to be heard at the virtual City Council meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 17.
Many of the opponents who spoke at the Zoom meeting, hosted by Outling, gave reasons why a continuance to the January meeting of the City Council should be granted.
One of those reasons repeated by opponents was that the opponents want to commission their own traffic study, one that they say will reveal that the cut through traffic in the adjacent neighborhoods of Kirkwood and Browntown will be much greater than the traffic study done for Koury by Davenport Engineering revealed.
At the Zoning Commission meeting on Oct. 19, when he was questioned about cut through traffic, John Davenport said that the study indicated most of the traffic to and from the proposed 480-apartment development would be on Cone, which is a divided thoroughfare and could, according to Davenport, easily handle the additional traffic. Davenport agreed that there would be some cut through traffic in the neighborhoods.
Many of the neighbors who spoke at the Zoom meeting strongly disagree with that assessment and asked for time for a new traffic study to be completed, which they believe will indicate that the cut through traffic will be extensive.
The heavy traffic that already exists on Cornwallis Drive was mentioned repeatedly. West Cornwallis Drive, which is overwhelmingly single-family residential, is a straight shot with no traffic signals or stop signs between North Elm Street and Lawndale Avenue.
Outling said that because of the open meetings law and the fact that a majority of the City Council could sign on to the Zoom meeting he could not discuss the issue with individual callers. Outling said, “In light of that law we need to make sure we don’t engage in discussion.”
After the meeting Outling explained that this was the first virtual town hall held by a councilmember on a zoning issue and that not engaging with individual speakers allowed more people the opportunity to speak. Everyone who made a request to speak was reportedly afforded that opportunity and several people spoke twice.
Regarding cut through traffic related to the koury rezoning, it is also worth noting that much of the traffic that travels east and west on Cornwallis does so to cut through the residential streets in Browntown and Kirkwood in order to avoid Intersections at Cone and Lawndale and Cone and Elm Street. Such is true of the traffic traveling on Cone as well.
And each of Cleburne, Lafayette, and Dellwood have a direct path between Cone and Cornwallis; generally with no sidewalk on those “ cut through” streets.
AND there is a large amount of neighborhood walking with dogs and children.
The cut through traffic between Cone and Cornwallis is already very high.
I really hate it for the folks who live up there, but I don’t know what they’re expecting? Big Brother (The Zoning Board & City Council) may entertain your arguments, but the only thing they care about is the revenue. The cost to the city to provide the water/sewer connections will be recovered quickly and they will have the taxes coming in from whoever owns those hundreds of units. Then they will be raking in the revenue from the occupants for the utility payments and vehicle taxes & fees. As John Hammer is well aware, his boss, along with several other local developers who have been in business for a while all make these investments to make money. Money makes the world go round, or so we’re told. Koury wouldn’t have dropped the money if they and their attorneys weren’t almost certain of the end result. Often times, that risk and the legal fees are part of the plan from the beginning. You can go through the motions, but Koury will prevail in the end.