Good Hope residents concerned over proposed housing development

Dec. 21—GOOD HOPE — A group of longtime residents and homeowners expressed their concerns Dec. 19 over a proposed housing development as the Good Hope Planning Commission moved to rezone nearly 30 acres on Mize Road.

The proposed development — submitted to the commission by Rausch Coleman Homes — would have 185 new homes constructed on the property. While only preliminary plans were submitted to the City of Good Hope, Senior Director of Acquisitions and Development for Raush Coleman Chris Moates said that the each of the homes would sit on its own individual lots and would consist of 1200- to 1800-square-foot patio-style homes with brick front exteriors.

Proponents of the development said that this additional housing would serve as a long-term solution for the area as it continues it's focus on economic development and would prevent the city from losing any of its annual funding provided by the Cullman County sales tax — which is calculated by using census population data.

Mayor Jerry Bartlett also said that as the area continues to grow, real estate has become a "hot market" and that many lifelong residents that wish to remain close to home after graduating high school are unable to do so because of the scarce market.

"We just don't have anywhere for them to live. We just absolutely don't have enough housing in Good Hope," Bartlett said. "We want to supply that. As we grow, we need to have those kids that are graduating a place that we can offer them in the City of Good Hope. That's what we are trying to do."

Nathalea Daniels — who has lived with her husband in the area for 36 years — told the commission that she is not against seeing the property developed, but that especially with recent flooding after the Exit 305 was completed and the fact that the proposed development would result in six homes on each acre of land, that the existing infrastructure was unable to handle that many additional homes.

"If you drive down Mize Road and Leonard Road, it's potholes on top of potholes. There's no infrastructure for 185 homes, it just simply will not work," Daniels said. "There's more to it than somebody just building homes. I'm not against developing the land, but I am against putting 185 homes on that small of a parcel of land."

Good Hope City Planner Corey Harbison said that he felt as though the current flooding was a valid concern, but that a large retention pond that the developer plans to install as part of the project will not only address any additional runoff created, but will also be a solution for the residents' current issues.

"The flooding issue is a very fair point, but the developer is planning to slope the entire site towards that retention pond. So, some of those issues that residents are currently facing may actually be solved by the development," Harbison said when speaking to The Times on Dec. 20.

Harbison said that plans to mitigate any additional runoff would need to be drafted by site engineers and approved prior to the start of construction and that there were several legal avenues available to the current residents if issues worsened as a result of the project.

Daniels remained undeterred in light of Harbison's reassurance.

"Sir, you don't want me to laugh in your face," Daniels said. "I have no confidence in your architects and engineers. I have seen what they can do to a property."

Other concerns were presented to the commission about the impact to local schools and the amount of police presence due to possible increases in crime — and that several residents simply just did not want to see their community change in such a way. In a letter submitted to the commission on Dec. 14, Eddy Hoenig wrote: "The planned development will result in the loss of the neighborhood's community character which has been an area of low density residential housing and farming for generations since the area was originally settled."

The largest point of opposition was in regard to traffic. With only two means of ingress and egress — both of which are small two lane roads — residents said that such a large development would create "chaos" for both current and future residents. In the same letter Hoenig later writes: "The existing roads that will service the proposed development [Mize Road N and Leonard Road] are not of adequate size and function to handle the increased traffic congestion that will result from such a higher density housing as is proposed."

Bartlett said that with or without the development, the City of Good Hope is more than willing to work with the current residents to widen the existing roads, but that those plans would involve the property owners' willingness to give up roughly 10 feet of their property to accommodate the expansion. Bartlett also said that the developer plans to connect Training Center Drive and Leonard Road in the belief that much of the traffic in the area will be alleviated.

"There's a lot of traffic that comes down Leonard Drive and goes down Mize Road North. Then they go on their way whether they go North, South [on U.S. 65] or they go into Cullman," Bartlett said. "When you open up Training Center, you're eliminating a good bit of traffic and who's to say it's not going to alleviate what we're doing here."

Representing his family as well as the Ben and Eddy Hoenig families in their absence, David Antaillia said that without any evidence to back these claims, any predictions of future traffic were moot.

"There's been no formal traffic study to prove that. So, the opinion of Good Hope that that will take care of the problem is no more than my opinion that it won't," Antaillia said.

After listening to resident's concerns, Planning Commission member Charles Gooch made a motion to approve the rezoning.

"Looking at it and listening to what was said, I think that this would be good for Good Hope, and I know there's the issue of infrastructure — but I feel like this would help with the infrastructure," Gooch said.

The motion was met with a majority approval by six of the nine members. Eric Phillips, Thelma Milligan and Domic Gil abstained from the vote saying that the felt as though they did not have enough information to make an informed decision.

The Good Hope City Council plans to take the commission's decision under consideration at its next meeting in January, and Harbison said that a meeting has already been held with the project's engineering firm to begin addressing the resident's concerns. Bartlett said that he and the city would make it a priority to address as many concerns as possible.

"We don't want to make anybody mad and we're going to work to alleviate these problems and try to solve it as fast as we possibly can," Bartlett said.

Following the conclusion of the Planning Commission meeting, the Good Hope City Council began its meeting. The council agreed to enter into an agreement with Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores that would offer a 10-year fuel tax abatement.

While the City of Good Hope currently has no such tax — and Bartlett said that he does not foresee the possibility of one in the future — the purpose of the agreement was to exempt the travel stop from any taxes that may be implemented by future councils for the next decade.