Edinburgh council approves mixed-use rezone

Plans to develop 18 acres northeast of State Road 252 and U.S. 31 in Edinburgh are moving forward.

Edinburgh Town Council members unanimously approved rezoning and plating the land to for a mixed-use development as requested by Indianapolis-based MLS Partners, LLC. Five large lots will be used for commercial spaces, ranging in size from about one to 6.6 acres, while five smaller lots, each no less than 0.2 acres, will be reserved for residential properties, according to town documents.

Next, developers will be able to submit proposals for the land. More details about residential and commercial properties won’t materialize until those proposals come in and town officials review them. Speculative buildings won’t be constructed on the land, interim town manager Wade Watson said in January.

There was no public comment on the rezone proposal during the January or February town council meetings when council members discussed it.

Town officials see the empty space as an opportunity for both residential and commercial growth on the north side of town. Right now, most of the commercial areas outside of downtown are near the Indiana Premium Outlets or further south on U.S. 31.

With the rezone, two areas on the property will change from medium-low density residential, or R-3, to high-density residential, or R-6. A third area will go from R-3 to general business, a fourth from roadside business to general business, the fifth area will go from roadside business and R-3 to general business, and the final are will go from R-3 to roadside business, according to town documents.

Illustrations for the property show the largest area of land directly east of U.S. 31 and north of State Road 252 reserved for commercial use to fit as many as four general businesses and one roadside business.

Five lots on the southeast corner of the property near State Road 252 and County Road 650 East will be rezoned R-6 for high-density residential properties. Those properties can either be single-family, two-family or multi-family residences, but must fit the setback requirements of the 0.2 acre lots, Watson said in January.

The approval was dependent on MLS Partners meeting several conditions set forth by the Edinburgh Plan Commission. Those included providing a 20-foot utility easement around the perimeter of the subdivision and eliminating cul-de-sacs, to be replaced by connecting streets to accommodate emergency vehicle traffic, according to town documents.

Other conditions included limiting corner lots’ access from public streets to one driveway and requiring building developers to comply with building codes and clear rank vegetation. Any developers must also submit their construction plans to the Edinburgh Planning Department for review before the Edinburgh Building and Zoning Department issues a permit, according to the documents.

The land was originally platted into unincorporated Johnson County as the Heckman Village subdivision in 1952 before being incorporated into Edinburgh in 1978. For decades, however, the land remained largely undeveloped because of concerns of it being on a floodplain. But an elevation survey showed asphalt fillings installed sometime in the 1990s raised the base elevation of the land above floodplain level, according to an Edinburgh staff report.

A 2.2-acre area on the property’s northeast corner is labeled “non-buildable common area” on the preliminary plans and would be a detention basin to mitigate any potential flood risk.