By Katie Northcott, News Director
The Shelbyville Planning Commission approved the site plan for six, two-story townhome units at 812 Belmont Avenue.
The 0.45 acre parcel was rezoned and removed from Shelbyville’s Belmont Historic District just under a year ago. At the time, the plan was to build four townhome units on the property.
“I feel like we were lied to,” Council Member Josh Blevins said. “I have both minutes. This was presented to the Planning Commission as three to four units. It was presented to the Council January 2 with the exact same wording. … If this had been presented to us as six units in December, some of us would have voted the other way.”
Blevins expressed concern that the plan did not allow for enough open space to meet the minimum requirement.
“They’re barely hitting your open space requirement, and they’re using the sidewalk outside your front door, which is basically your front porch,” Blevins said. “I don’t feel like this meets our standards.”
Commissioner Dawn Gonzales expressed concern about the lack of natural run-off.
“Open space should be classified as pervious, and the sidewalk in front of the building is going to be impervious,” Gonzales said. “The impervious land, if you’re covering a lot of land, you’re not going to have a lot of natural run-off, and that’s the a good portion purpose [of the open space].”
Gonzales said the other purposes of open space are to provide spaces for children to play and space for other amenities.
“We keep getting all these little tit-for-tat developments that are not really considering where the children are going to be outside, where the people are going to play,” Gonzales said.
A developer explained that he did not know at the December meeting that the land could hold six units. The developer was able to fit more units by moving to two-story units. The development also made more sense this way due to sewer infrastructure. He thought the lying accusation was unfair.
The commission approved the site plan with a 5-2 vote (Blevins and Commissioner David McGee, II, opposed) with a recommendation that the developer consider additional distinctions to unit facades due to the city’s recently amended design standards.
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