The St. Tammany Parish Council on Thursday approved a zoning change that will allow a landowner to build a 92-home subdivision northwest of Covington. The council voted 14-0 to disregard the recommendation of the parish's Zoning Commission, which last month suggested that the council reject the request. James H. Simpson had asked the parish to change the zoning on...
The St. Tammany Parish Council on Thursday approved a zoning change that will allow a landowner to build a 92-home subdivision northwest of Covington. The council voted 14-0 to disregard the recommendation of the parish's Zoning Commission, which last month suggested that the council reject the request.
James H. Simpson had asked the parish to change the zoning on his 51 acres on the north side of Penn Mill Road and west of Quave Road from A-1A, which allows one unit for every three acres, to A-3, which allows two units per acre. The subdivision will contain 1.8 units per acre.
In addition, the council approved a Planned Unit Development (PUD) overlay on the land to allow for certain development characteristics, such as mixed lot sizes and additional green space. The development would retain 27 acres, or 52 percent of the land, as green space.
Paul Mayronne, who represented Simpson before the council, said much of the land in the vicinity already is zoned for PUDs with similar densities and that many of the homes built along Penn Mill in the past decade are on half-acre lots.
The plan represented a change to an earlier request by Simpson, which was for A-4 zoning and 102 lots. After meeting with members of the Zoning Commission and residents at a community meeting in April, Simpson amended his request and added several elements to try to appease the surrounding landowners and parish officials.
Mayronne noted that Simpson would provide public water and sewer service to the residents, and then donate the system to Tammany Utilities when the project is complete. In addition, he said that Simpson had widened the lots at the back of the property to 90 feet.
He also said that his client would erect a 6-foot, chain-link fence along the boundary of the adjacent Covington-Vincent Airport and include in the covenants of the new subdivision that no homes would be located in the airport's flight path, so that residents could not complain later.
Some of the shareholders affiliated with the airport said they did not oppose the request for a zoning change.
Regardless, several residents at the commission meeting continued to oppose the plan, complaining about the increased density that the zoning change and PUD would allow, as well as the additional traffic and drainage impacts the project would bring.
A few residents attended the council meeting to oppose the plan as well.
Matthew Allen, who lives on Allen Lane, said three of the four PUDs that Mayronne referenced are "phantom" PUDs that were planned in 2007 but never built.
Councilman Reid Falconer noted that density doesn't have to be a bad word, saying that clustering homes on smaller lots and leaving a larger green space available for the public is smart planning.
Christine Harvey can be reached at charvey@timespicayune.com or 985.645.2853.