Caudle reports on Greenland's land-use plan in The Morning News

The Morning News

Local News for Northwest Arkansas


Greenland Land-Use Plan Ready For Council

By Bob Caudle
THE MORNING NEWS
GREENLAND -- A land-use plan for Greenland sailed through a public hearing Monday night with relatively few questions.

The show of public support means the Greenland City Council should receive the land-use plan and a master street plan at its Aug. 11 meeting.

Once aldermen accept the two plans, the council can lift a moratorium on construction in place since early last year.

"I think this is probably the best thing that's come along in a while," said Michael Johnson, a Greenland resident and former planning commissioner.

"It seemed like we were deadlocked in the 1990s between property rights and conventional use," he said.

Bill Keathley, who lives in the Tontitown area but owns land in Greenland, also liked the proposal.

"I think they've done a very good job," Keathley said. "The Planning Commission has done a very good job of getting past what's been holding things back."

The commission completed the job in six months, said commissioner Brenda Reynolds.

"We did in six months what an outside firm said would take a year to do," Reynolds said. "What really spurred us on was that they wanted $100,000. We did it for free with the help of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission."

This is the first updated land-use plan for the city since 1985, according to Wayne Cox, the chairman of the commission.

"We had a public input meeting several weeks ago, we took all that input and this is what we came up with," Cox said. "The main thing we did was add zoning levels. Previously, we had only one residential zone and one commercial zone."

The new map outlines planned zoning for the area around the Interstate 540 interchange -- something that didn't even exist on the existing 1985 land-use plan.

The map shows land around the interstate interchange as thoroughfare commercial with an industrial zone southwest of the interchange.

Planners basically laid down an overlay for U.S. 71 through the city of town, zoning it the Highway 71 Business District. The district provides for low-impact, pedestrian-friendly commercial development along with mixed-use residential development.

"We also have a landscape ordinance, a sign ordinance and new design standards on the board," Cox said. "We've made a lot of changes in the past six or seven months to try to increase and protect people's property values."

Cox said the board met two times per week during the past six months and averaged, as a group, 250 hours working on the updates.