Residents spar over proposal to promote bigger home lots
Web Posted: 03/11/2006 12:00 AM CST
Vincent T. Davis
Express-News Staff Writer
A proposed rezoning ordinance, which could increase minimum lot sizes of single-family homes and reject multiple-family units in a North Side community, has neighbors clashing.
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Yellow signs reading "Don't rezone my home" sporadically dot front yards in the neighborhood inside Loop 410, south of San Antonio International Airport.
Large homes built on spacious wooded lots populate the tranquil area where residents have lived for decades.
And maintaining that calm is at the heart of what the president of the Oak Park-Northwood Neighborhood Association called "the big battle."
Norris Yates, president of the association, cites a stretch of land on Sunset Place where 16 houses are slated to be built where three homes once stood, as an example of what his group is trying to prevent.
Helen L. Montoya/Express-News
The City Council is to vote on a proposed rezoning ordinance to enlarge minimum lot sizes for single-family homes in the Oak Park and
Northwood neighborhoods.
"We're not trying to change anything," Yates said. "We just want to protect the homeowners out here. We're fighting to keep large homes on large lots."
A letter from the association cites "dense development from developers" and "increased traffic congestion."
The group has held meetings and passed out letters addressing displeasure with the current zoning, which calls for a minimum lot of 5,000 square feet. New zoning for properties zoned residential would require lot sizes of
8,000 or 10,000 square feet. (mine is 24,400sqft )
Residents sporting signs of opposition in their front yards say zoning changes will take away their rights as homeowners.
Pat and Elsa Pogue have lived on their street more than 50 years. The Pogues remember when beyond a winding creek bed at the bottom of the hill was farmland. And the same rights that allowed farmers to divide and sell their land are the rights they say are in jeopardy if the ordinance is passed.
Pat Pogue, 78, whose family helped build houses in Terrell Hills and Alamo Heights, said there's nothing wrong with small lots. He said in the future he might want to subdivide his property and add a house in the back.
"It's not broken," Pogue said, standing in the shaded doorway of his home built on more than two acres. "They're trying their best to meddle in everybody else's business."
"I don't understand why they want a blanket rule for everybody," Elsa Pogue said. "Why can't they just leave things alone? When we die, our children may want to knock the whole thing down and start over."
Bill Wallace has a different perspective on what residents' offspring do when they demolish family homes. He said many live elsewhere and sell the land to developers, who build the multi-family dwellings that he's against.
"This is to partially restore it to what it was before the city changed the zoning," Wallace, 81, said. "We've been fighting this battle for 25 years. It's like fighting windmills."
Wallace, who said the zoning commissioners know him by his first name, has lived on his one-acre lot for 45 years.
Teena Larson is one of the residents who tore down her family home and built a larger 3,000-square-foot house in its place. She said her neighbors are contemplating selling their land to a developer who could erect a string of upscale condominiums.
"I'd much rather see a single-family home here than condominiums," Larson said. "I don't care if it's high-end luxury condominiums. We're trying to maintain the integrity and look instead of cramming in little houses into one large area."