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Hays County developmentPosted April 20, 2007, 11:20 p.m.
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Hays Highway Editor
KYLE — As developers persistently seek business in Hays County, local officials are concerned about preserving green space. One site designer who has succeeded in doing both simultaneously made an appearance at the Hays CISD Performing Arts Center this week before an attentive audience of about 100 people, mostly developers.
Randall Arendt, a much-applauded specialist in using site development as a conservation tool, gave a five-hour seminar Monday entitled "Rural by Design," at the behest of new Hays County Commissioners Jeff Barton (Precinct 2) and Karen Ford (Precinct 4). Arendt's presentation consisted in a slide show accompanied by a running commentary to explain his ideas.
Among Arendt’s many acclaimed books on conservation development are lively titles such as Rural by Design: Maintaining Small Town Character, and Crossroads, Hamlet, Village, Town: Design Characteristics of Traditional Neighborhoods, Old and New.
Following the presentation, Arendt put his students through an exercise in which they were given maps of a tract and instructed to use the principles he taught to draw up a development.
Among the few local officials in attendance were Barton, Ford, Precinct 3 Commissioner Will Conley, Kyle Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) Chairman Dan Ryan and Kyle Assistant City Manager James Earp.
Though developers have a hand in creating the types of residential development so dreaded by critics of suburban sprawl, those same critics typically place the responsibility on zoning boards, which write the regulations to which developers adapt.
By its purpose, zoning stratifies land uses with the unintended consequence of making conservation unattractive to developers, if not illegal. Arendt called the phenomenon "the victory of zoning over planning."
In broad outline, Arendt's program discourages the typical subdivision development in which, for example, 100 houses are put on 100 acres.
By the design of virtually every suburban housing development, the land is divided into roughly equal pieces per house, with land subtracted for roadways, easements and flood plane. Under 100/100 scenario, every lot would be a little less than an acre. Basically, the land is "chopped" into equal pieces, which is the first wrong move, on Arendt's view.
"If we want to conserve the scenic character and the ecology, we don't want to chop up the land," he said.
Arendt calls for many steps to encourage conservation while allowing developers to still put 100 houses on 100 acres and maintain, if not increase, the value of each house.
First, he said, cut the lot sizes in half. Put all the houses on 50 acres. Lots of nearly one acre spread evenly through a development, said Arendt, render the land inconvenient for living and useless for anything else. As he put it, the lots are "to large to mow and too small to plow." Arendt said homeowners aren't put off by smaller set backs and little front yards.
"Who uses the front lawn?" Arendt asked. "Front lawns are pretty useless. So abolish them."
The next step is to figure out which 50 acres should be preserved. Towards that end, Arendt recommended thorough walking tours of land being considered for development. While on such tours, observers should look for unique features, such as lines of trees, brooks and streams, flora and fauna or ancient architectural features worth preserving.
Recognizing that not all zoning commissioners are willing to walk properties, Arendt said such people "don't belong on zoning boards. They can be on library boards."
Arendt said zoning commissioners and developers should first identify "primary conservation areas," which are areas, like flood planes, where building can't take place. Next, he said, identify "secondary conservation areas," which are areas with attractive indigenous features where conservation is desirable. After studying the land, the parties would identify 50 conservation acres where no development can take place.
"It can't just be leftover pieces, the scraps, the bits," Arendt said.
Developers would be left with 50 acres for building. But the housing development should be designed with the conserved land in mind, Arendt said, so all prospective homeowners can benefit from the open space.
For example, he said, there's nothing wrong with building houses that have no street frontage. Such houses can face open space, with driveways in the back. If a number of houses thusly surround the open space, then the landowners have a common open space.
Open space within eyesight of residences is such an attractive feature, Arendt said, that "40 to 50 percent of the people who live in golf course developments don't play golf."
Arendt also recommends that curves in streets, if they're necessary, should be positioned so the outer edges front open space, thereby giving drivers consistently nice views. Another method for building attractive views consists in angling roads with oddly shaped intersections so each road has a "terminal vista," which gives drivers and residents a more pronounced sense of place.
Although lot sizes would be smaller, Arendt said, the lots would make up most, if not all of that value by their proximity to attractive open spaces. Furthermore, development costs would be reduced because the lots would be concentrated, meaning lower expenditures for roads and utilities. Arendt said developments using his techniques fetch home prices at least equal to the values in "chopped" subdivisions.
“It maxes out density and minimizes development costs,” he said
At one point in the presentation, Arendt showed a slide of an attractive home, snug in its lot with a small yard, evidently in an old part of an old town.
"The setbacks aren't deep enough, the lots aren't large enough, the streets aren't wide enough," Arendt said, mildly ridiculing the orthodoxy of contemporary subdivision development. "Has this not stood the test of time?"
