A proposed subdivision in the City of Petal that would add more than 700 homes has hit a slight snag in plans, as the city’s planning commission recently decided to recommend the denial of three requested variances to begin that project.
Because of that decision – which was made at the commission’s January 9 meeting at Petal Civic Center on South Main Street – the matter will now go before the Petal Board of Aldermen at its January 16 meeting, where board members will decide whether to vote to uphold the commission’s recommendation. The subdivision, which would be developed by D.R. Horton, would be located on a 257-acre parcel off Trussell Road south of Mississippi 42 and Petal First Baptist Church.
“This is a standard procedure; (officials) have done it hundreds over the decades,” Ward 5 Alderman Drew Brickson said. “The planning commission made a decision to deny all three (variances); so therefore, that’s their recommendation to the board of aldermen, and the board will either take the recommendation under advisement or approve the ordinances or deny the ordinances.
“Sometimes the board (of aldermen) agrees with their recommendations and supports them, or (elsewise) we can say that we don’t like that decision as aldermen.”
The requested variances which the commission recommended to deny include:
- A request to install surface ditches with proper gradients to natural outfalls instead of curbs and gutters, with drop inlets and storm drains underground;
- A request for a variance of the 75-foot minimum lot width in favor of a mixture of 70-foot and 80-foot-wide lots; and
- A request for a variance of the minimum 15-foot side yard setback in favor of a 10-foot side yard setback.
If aldermen do choose to uphold the planning commission’s recommendation to deny the variance, developers would then need to go back to the drawing board to iron out any potential issues.
“If we deny them, they’ll go back in their drafting room and say, ‘we have to do curb and gutters, so let’s look at how much that adds to the project,’” Brickson said. “They might have to redraw the parcels and the maps, and all that turns into basically a geometry problem.
“They might have to go back and do lot of work and engineering, and that’ll cost them a lot of money to get on the ground and do that. And then they’ll have to evaluate whether it’s a worthwhile project to continue.”
More than 100 attendees showed up to the meeting at the civic center, including D.R. Horton developer Jeff Diamond – who spoke in favor of the project – and several residents who spoke out against it.
“We have not entered the design phase on any of this yet; we’re simply looking for a couple of variances to guide us through that design process,” Diamond said. “But this is a long process – even if things go the way I would like them to go over the next week or so and these variances are offered, we still have boundary surveying to do, we still have topographic surveying to do, we have drainage calculations to do.
“Just those things alone probably get us to the end of the year in 2024. I think you’re looking at, even if the weather cooperates, nine or 10 months of construction, and it could be as much as 12 to 14 months of construction. I think the earliest you would see requests for Certificates of Occupancy would be really close to the end of 2025.”
Jerry DeFatta, who serves as chairman of the Petal School District Board of Trustees, said he is concerned about the number of residents the proposed development would bring to the school district. DeFatta said over the past decade, the school district has grown by approximately 50 students per year, which officials have been able to accommodate because of the “slow but steady” growth in the city.
“The key here is ‘slow and steady,’ and what we’re talking about here tonight is anything but ‘slow and steady,’” DeFatta said. “If we just take the D.R. Horton property we’re talking about here tonight, you’re looking at 714 homes over the next six to eight years. If you look at the number of children the average family in America has, which is 1.98, and say that half of the 700 homes (in the proposed subdivision) are filled with two kids that are school age, that’s going to add 53 kids per grade.
“That’s two classroom spaces and 26 teachers that we’d have to hire. Simply put, the educational experience in this community would change. We’ll be putting ourselves in a situation where we won’t be able to go back to the taxpayers and ask for more bond money … so there won’t be an opportunity for more bond money.”
