The Garrett Companies, a Greenwood-based developer, plans to construct a 16-acre apartment complex located at 374 N. Emerson Avenue in Greenwood. The 22-building apartment complex is named Oliver Springs.
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The Greenwood City Council approved a rezoning request for a potential apartment complex just east of Greenwood’s airport Monday despite traffic concerns from nearby residents.
The city council voted 7-2 Monday night to approve a request from The Garrett Companies, a Greenwood-based real estate developer, to rezone of approximately 16 acres of land located at 374 N. Emerson Avenue from industrial to residential multi-unit complex zoning for a proposed apartment complex on the site. Council members Bradley Pendleton and Michael Williams voted against the proposal.
The plan commission had previously issued a unanimous favorable recommendation for the rezoning earlier this month.
Plans for the apartment complex, dubbed Oliver Springs, say it would consist of 22 two-story residential buildings and a one-story clubhouse. The community would also include a pool, dog park, mail kiosk, small maintenance building, a trash compactor enclosure, a building with a dog wash and a stormwater detention area, according to city documents.
There would be 236 units with attached garages at a density of fewer than 15 units per acre in the complex, Ken Kozio, a representative of The Garrett Companies, told the plan commission on July 11.
This is the second rezoning request the plan commission has seen for an apartment complex on this site in the last eight months. The first proposal, by Indianapolis-based Muesing Management Company, failed with a vote of 5-3, with one member absent, city council vote in December.
Last week, several Maple Grove subdivision residents came out in opposition to the latest proposal during a public hearing at the plan commission meeting. Residents told the commission there is already too much traffic on Emerson Avenue and that apartments would make it worse. Others expressed concerns about how close the apartments were to their homes, and criticized the current design of Emerson Avenue.
On Monday, many of the residents who spoke at the plan commission hearing also came to the city council meeting to discuss the proposal, and several residents brought up traffic as a concern.
Dwight Howard, who lives south of the site, was concerned about traffic, saying it was a public safety issue for those along Emerson Avenue. While the road was designed to handle large amounts of traffic, Howard claimed the city’s decision to place medians in the center lane on Emerson Avenue undermined the road’s ability to handle large amounts of traffic. This is because the city allowed for more development along Emerson Avenue, increasing the vehicle count, he said.
Emerson Avenue was converted from a two-lane road to a five-lane road in 2003, and in 2018, the city rebuilt the road to add grass and trees in the median, along with new traffic signals, decorative street lighting and a 10-foot trail.
Howard also said Emerson Avenue did not have medians originally and that the city’s 2018 work “detracted” from the city’s original design of the road.
“The city of Greenwood has rapidly increased the daily commitments of vehicles to North Emerson Avenue,” Howard said.
R. Lee Money, an attorney representing the property owner and a former president of the Greenwood Redevelopment Commission, told the council he was confident that the city’s intent to prepare Emerson Avenue for more development was accomplished with both the 2003 and 2018 improvements. At the time of the first improvement, the RDC was still new and did not have enough resources to pay for the work that was ultimately completed in 2018, Money said.
“Quite frankly, I will tell you it was a cost element at the time,” Money said. “It’s my understanding that the city later, when the funds were available, determined that it was in fact safer to put the grass median and the limited turns on Emerson Avenue.”
The road is designed to exactly do what it is doing now, Money said. Gabe Nelson, the city’s planning director, later concurred with this assessment.
Other residents were concerned about the location of the complex’s buildings and how it would affect their properties. Resident Melissa Starnes was concerned the barrier between the subdivision and the complex wouldn’t shield her home.
“Where is this going to start with the apartments because my backyard is small, and I don’t want to live around apartments. That’s why I chose this (area),” she said.
Council member David Hopper proposed an amendment to prohibit the use of vinyl siding on the property, which the developer was already not planning on using.
Council member Michael Williams asked for a commitment to place a berm between the apartment complex and Maple Grove.
After discussing what the berm should look like the council decided to require a fence around the the development, a 40-foot buffer and an eight-foot berm. Amendments for the berm and a ban on vinyl siding passed unanimously.
Council member Brad Pendleton reiterated his concerns about public safety staffing, and said he did not understand why the council should add population to the city while public safety staffing was not growing at the same rate, he said.
In other business, the city council approved $4.9 million in tax breaks for two speculative warehouses in Greenwood’s Worthsville Road corridor.
Becknell Industrial plans to develop two approximately 150,000 square feet speculative industrial buildings on a 30-acre site located on Worthsville Road, east of Endress-Hauser and the railroad tracks. The developer plans to invest $40.2 million, including the land, as part of the project and is requesting roughly $4.9 million in two 10-year real property tax abatements, according to city documents.
The tax breaks were split up by building and were requested last month.
At least 30 jobs would be created through the project, and savings from the abatement would be passed from Becknell to the eventual tenant. About $5.7 million in taxes would be paid during the length of the abatement, city documents say.
The buildings will be similar in size and character to the speculative buildings Becknell built in the city’s Southtech Industrial Park, where the developer leased two buildings to Milwaukee Tool and NT Supply. They will also be marketed to light manufacturing companies, with a projected construction start date of May 2023, city documents say.
No one spoke out against the proposed tax break on Monday, however, during two previous city council meetings, Greenwood resident Randy Goodin, who lives along Worthsville Road, voiced concerns about more industrial development on Worthsville Road.
The council ultimately voted in favor of granting the tax breaks in two 6-3 votes. Council member Ron Bates, along with Pendleton and Williams, voted against the tax breaks.
