Despite an unfavorable recommendation by the city’s plan commission, 125 homes will be built on a 57-acre property off of Westview Drive on Franklin’s northwest side.
The Franklin City Council on Monday unanimously approved a rezone of the property.
The rezone, to RS-2 from RS-1, allows for denser, smaller lots. Flagstone Properties requested the rezone to make the future development more profitable, said Stefan Kirk, an attorney for Flagstone. Under previous zoning standards, the developer could fit about 104 homes on the property, he said.
The rezone came before the council with an unfavorable recommendation by the Franklin Plan Commission. The plan commission considered the rezone across two meetings before voting 6-5 to send it to the council with an unfavorable recommendation.
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Four nearby residents also attended Monday night’s council meeting to share their concerns about drainage and traffic. They had previously shared those concerns in letters and in-person with the plan commission.
A prospective layout for the future development includes 125 homes and a 17-acre common area to include green space, a large stormwater retention pond and a walking trail that would tie into a future extension of the Franklin Greenway Trail, according to city documents.
Lot sizes will be at least 10,000 square feet, but would be an average of 11,392 square feet, Kirk said. This is roughly 1,000 to 2,000 square feet larger, on average, than lots in the nearby Cumberland Trace and Cumberland Trails subdivisions, city documents show.
The new neighborhood would not have its own access point to Westview Drive, but would be accessed through Cumberland Trace and Cumberland Trails, according to preliminary plans. Current stub streets on Pamela Drive and Crabapple Drive would be extended into the neighborhood but not widened to accommodate additional cars, plans show.
Kirk argued that the change between RS-1 and RS-2 would not be a “material difference” between what the city envisioned for the property and the proposal. Stub streets were built into the existing neighborhoods with the intent to extend those for future housing developments such as this.
Residents disagreed. Three of the four remonstrators said the additional 21 homes that are permitted with RS-2 zoning would bring construction traffic in the short term, and additional residential traffic in the long term. Both types of traffic would be too much for the streets to handle, they said.
Drainage was also a concern. Residents were concerned the additional runoff from new homes and roads would cause the nearby creek to flood more than it does now.
But Flagstone says the pond and added greenspace would take care of the runoff from the development and alleviate current drainage issues. The pond would be designed to take in run-off water and release it into the creek slowly instead of flowing into it naturally under current conditions, said Dane Waltman, project manager for Flagstone.
The development would also be subject to a review by the Johnson County Drainage Board.
Several council members had questions about home prices and which builder might erect the homes, but Waltman told the council no builder has signed on yet.
Though no builder has been announced, Waltman is associated with Arbor Homes. Waltman and his partner for Flagstone, James Fisher, are also associated with Fisher Contracting and Excavating, a Trafalgar-based company that was purchased by Arbor Homes last year.
Council member Chris Rynerson, who also sits on the plan commission and had voted against the rezone, voted yes this time after he talked with planning and engineering staff and visited the property.
Some plan commission members at the January meeting likely voted the way they did thinking it would stop development of the area altogether, Rynerson said. However, the vote would only stop a rezone of the property, and any other developer would be free to submit a proposal under current zoning standards, he said.
Multiple council members said they sympathized with the residents’ concerns, but found that the plans as presented would do enough to mitigate those concerns. All six council members present approved of the rezone. Council member Bob Heuchan was absent.
Flagstone made several commitments, including following the city’s architectural standards, anti-monotony, minimum two-car garages and connecting the neighborhood trail to the Franklin Greenway Trail.
