SouthPass development rezoning gets a walk from Planning Commission; Frank Sharp's zoning request must be appealed to City Council

Please click on images to ENLARGE photos of Frank Sharp at the Ward Four meeting Monday after the Planning Commission meeting. See the Ward 4 meeting and hear Sharp's comments at noon today on City 16 on Cox Cable.

Please click on Monday, July 28, 2008, images of Frank Sharp to ENLARGE.



Frank Sharp, founder of the Ozark Mountain Smoke House, talks about his steep Ozark Mountain land along the Farmington, Fayetteville boundary in Washington County. The Fayetteville Planning Commission failed to pass Sharp's request to annex his property as single-family one per acre and Sharp must appeal to the City Council if he wants the land annexed and zoned.
Currently, Washington County has the land zoned for one home per acre. Some members of the commission know the land and recognized that its best chance to be kept in something approaching the pristine condition Sharp has kept it for decades would be to zone it at a less dense level, possibly one home on 2 acres.
Aubunique comment: Sharp's property should be put in a perpetual conservation easement at city expense. It is a dream world that will not be replaced by any "mitigation" project if it should be developed in the future. I wrote about protecting Fayetteville's mountaintops in the1970s, and their importance hasn't diminished. Sharp has done his part to protect one of them. It is up to the City Council to make sure that Sharp's sacrifice of potential profit is not wasted.


The Morning News
Local News for Northwest Arkansas

SouthPass Annexation Moves Forward
By Skip Descant
The Morning News
http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2008/07/28/news/072908fzplanningcomm.txt
FAYETTEVILLE - Under the recommendation of the Fayetteville Planning Commission, SouthPass Development will pull 831 acres of rural Washington County pasture land into the city. The unanimous move by the commissioners was a first step for the nearly 1,000-acre single-family, multifamily and mixed-use development.
The annexation will require final and official approval by the Fayetteville City Council.
But the commissioners seemed to raise more questions than answers regarding issues such as transportation, the viability of retail or even how various uses across the planned zoning district community will ultimately unfold.
"Who would build a city of 11,000 people ... that has five ways of in and out, but they all lead to one road - Cato Springs Road?" wondered Jill Anthes, who serves on the planning commission. "No matter how many lanes we put out there, it's still one road."
SouthPass, planned for southwest Fayetteville west of Interstate 540 and south of U.S. 62, is set to unfold over 18 phases and 25-years, said Todd Jacobs, a planner with the design firm Appian Center for Design.
Phase I, which has a completion time of three years after it's begun, would include roughly 82 single-family homes and 350 multifamily homes, added Jacobs. Phase II is outlined as 50 single-family homes and 200 to 300 multifamily homes.
In its completion, the housing development will also include a 240-acre regional park - complete with soccer, baseball, tennis and other amenities. The ambitious development would have some 1,500 single-family and condominium units as well as more than 2,800 multifamily units, arranged on tree-lined streets in neighborhoods with names like Crescent Park and Kessler Mountain Bluff.
In addition, the community - which is billed as a small city in itself - would include 244,000 square feet of commercial and retail space.
But the concerns for the commissioners during Monday night's meeting - which was viewed as an introduction session - centered on basic thoughts around long-range traffic congestion on the project's access road from Fayetteville.
"Reading the booklet, it says some improvements will need to be made to Cato Springs Road, and I'd love to know what those improvements are," remarked Anthes.
Jacobs addressed the Cato Springs Road issue by saying it provided the best access to Interstate 540 and moves somewhat seamlessly into the University of Arkansas as well.
The zoning district proposal was tabled so these other issues can be studied more closely.
It's also still not clear how much of the cost for infrastructure such as sewer and water lines the city will bear. An already agreed upon resolution by the city and developer establishes a public-private relationship, particularly when building the new city-owned regional park. But the city must also foot some of the bill for other infrastructure needed on large segments of land annexed into the city.
"The city has not yet conducted a fiscal impact," Jeremey Pate, the director of the Fayetteville Planning Department, told the commissioners.
But that will be a matter for city council to wade through, say commissioners.
"I think that the city and parks department has expressed their intent to have this regional park and annexation," said Anthes.