by Andy Sevilla
Developers of a truck stop that Kyle council members rejected last year are back in action asking the elected officials to reconsider and bless their project on the southern edge of the city.
The developers have scaled back their original plans and are now proposing fewer truck parking spaces and the removal of the recreational vehicle park that housed several disadvantaged residents in the city. The project is now coming to city leaders in the form of a Planned Unit Development District (PUD).
A PUD district is a zoning overlay tool intended to provide flexible, alternative procedure to encourage imaginative and innovative designs for the unified development of property in the city, according to Kyle planning department documents. The development must remain consistent with city code zoning and accepted urban planning, with overall mixed-use regulation and guided by the city’s comprehensive master plan.
Last August council members refused to rezone the 47.74-acre tract from agriculture (AG) to retail services (RS) and recreational vehicle park district (RV), which would have paved the way for the developers to begin the process of constructing their proposed truck stop west of Interstate 35 and north of Yarrington Road, adjacent to the Blanco Vista residential development.
With the council’s denial, the project was effectively rendered dead for 12 months per city rules, which state that a denied rezoning request cannot be brought back to council for a year, unless council members grant a waiver.
On Nov. 7, the council approved in a split vote the developer’s waiver to the one-year waiting period to request rezoning. The wheels began moving in March and PGI Investments – the developers – and Council Member Becky Selbera met with the city’s planning department to submit an application for a PUD.
The developer is proposing an 18,000 square-foot truck service center with 221 truck parking spaces and a 14,000 square-foot convenience store/restaurant, according to city documents. The development will also have 11 total proposed lots – ten commercial and one multifamily (28 units per acre), to include restaurants and hotels.
The proposed project is situated in a Regional Node and in the New Settlement Community District. The character of a regional node should have regional scale retail and commercial activity complemented by regional scale residential uses, according to the comprehensive plan. The node should represent the character and identity of Kyle, and signal these traits to the surrounding community, the plan states.
Regional nodes located along I-35 should be designed as entryways into the city with elements that are symbolic of Kyle and serve to attract travelers. The primary goal of the regional node, however, is to capture commercial opportunities necessary to close Kyle’s tax gap, the plan states.
The city annexed the 47.74-acre property on Oct. 20, 2009, and it received its current interim designation of AG.
Last year the developers insisted on keeping the Plum Creek RV Campground, but the city’s comprehensive master plan identifies RV zoning as not recommended for the city’s New Settlement District and Regional Node, thus the RV rezoning request for 10.37 acres of the property failed on the dais.
Now, PGI Investments is seeking an RS rezoning for the whole tract. The city’s Planning and Zoning Commission could take the PUD request up as soon as Sept. 24, and the council could see the matter before them at their Oct. 1 meeting.
