The Jefferson County Council on Monday approved a 200-home subdivision development in Imperial on its first reading, but only after adding new stipulations the developer must follow.
The council voted 6-1 to approve the petition brought forth by JSS Land Development LLC of St. Louis to rezone the 92-acre property at 3890 Lions Den Road for the development called Lionstone.
Councilman Charles Groeteke (District 4, Barnhart) voted against the petition in the preliminary vote. The council will vote at least two more times on the issue before it’s approved and passed.
The proposal calls for the property to be rezoned from the lower-density single-family (R20) zone district to the higher-density planned residential (PR1) zone district and asks for approval of a development plan.
At an August Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, where the petition was first introduced, neighbors to the Lions Den property took issue with the development plan, citing concerns with flooding and the high density of some of the lots.
If Lionstone were approved, the neighborhood would include 200 homes on a variety of lot sizes, from 5,000 square feet to 15,000 square feet, and 50 acres of common space, including a 1-mile walking trail, playground, dog park and wildflower preserve. The subdivision would have two access points onto Lions Den Road.
At the beginning of the meeting, county staff said the subdivision developers had previously submitted a proposal for 237 homes on the property earlier this year. After staff raised concerns to the developers, the proposal was withdrawn and rewritten with fewer homes and more common ground.
In spite of these changes, some of the homes would still be built with only 40-foot-wide lots and one-car garages. With the streets being 28 feet wide and parking allowed on only one side, Councilman Billy Crow (District 2, Arnold) and Councilman Bob Tullock (District 7, House Springs) raised concerns that street parking might be hard to come by in certain sections of the neighborhood, and emergency service vehicles may have a difficult time accessing the area.
Crow introduced two amendments to the petition at Monday’s meeting, adding stipulations that the developer must abide by if they are to build Lionstone. The council approved the amendments unanimously.
“Each single-family dwelling shall include a functional, fully enclosed attached garage with a minimum capacity of two passenger vehicles side by side,” Crow said, reading his amendments aloud. “No building or structure shall be constructed within the area identified as the 0.2 percent chance floodplain or the 500-year floodplain.
“That will go back to what the original intent was and what the staff brought (to P and Z), because the whole point is to stay out of the floodplain, where P and Z adjusted it to make it ‘encouraged.’”
Tullock said he sat in on P and Z’s August meeting, where the commissioners voted 5-4 to approve the Lionstone development. He said the developers were initially told by county staff they “must” not build within the 500-year floodplain, but one of the commissioners suggested they instead “encourage” the developers to not build within the floodplain.
“I’m in full support of making it a requirement,” Tullock said of Crow’s amendment.
Councilman Tim Brown (District 6, De Soto) said he’s listened to all the evidence provided for the Lionstone petition and is familiar with the county’s unified development order, which stipulates what developers can and can’t do in the county.
“Sometimes when you review these (petitions), you may not like certain things about it, but when you look at it and apply the regulations that we set forth or we have conditions and those conditions are met, I don’t really have much to go on to say I can’t support it if all of these things are met,” he said. “But I will be continuing to review this over the next two weeks up to our next meeting to see if there’s anything that I may have missed; I might bring it to this council for any further amendments.”
The council will likely vote to perfect and finally pass the Lionstone petition at its next regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 28. However, if the petition is further amended at the Sept. 28 meeting, the council will likely vote to finally pass the petition at a future meeting in October.
Because a public hearing regarding the petition was already held in front of the P and Z commission, people at the council meeting are only allowed to say whether they are in favor of or opposed to the development.
At Monday’s meeting, 19 people spoke in favor of the subdivision, and five people spoke against it.