The changes reflected a position paper sent to the Belton City Council in February by UMHB president Jerry Bawcom.
Changes included defining a student living unit as each individual occupant residing in an apartment; requiring off-street parking in a ratio of 1.25 spaces for each student living unit; restricting living density to 36 residents per acre; and allowing the building height for university-owned residential units at three stories but limiting non-university-owned living units to 2˝ stories.
During a public hearing Bawcom spoke in favor of the changes and told the commission he greatly appreciated the recommendations made by city staff to ensure things built close to the university would be suitable.
Commissioner Chris Miller asked Bawcom what parking ratio the university uses for its own dorms and apartments. Bawcom said he did not know.
“We have adequate parking for our housing units,” he said.
Attorney Mickey Wade of Temple, representing the Marcel Group in Houston, spoke against the changes to the ordnance. The Marcel Group tried unsuccessfully in October 2007 to rezone 8.67 acres owned by the Lynch family from Agricultural use to PD-UC (Planned Development-University Campus) for a student apartment project.
Also speaking against the changes was attorney Jamey Secrest of Temple, representing the landowners, and Ginger Richardson, one of the landowners with power of attorney.
The Marcel Group made an initial proposal in October for a planned housing complex for 300 students in four-bedroom apartments. Plans called for 281 parking spaces making the parking ratios just under one space per student.
Wade said Marcel did not anticipate a need to examine the number of parking spaces when the plan was initially proposed. But when parking became an issue Marcel reconfigured the plan to include 300 spaces - or one space per student. This exceeded the city’s requirements of 192 spaces at that time.
When the request was denied by Planning and Zoning and the Belton City Council, Marcel had an option to bring the request back to the table but as has not done so pending an outcome of Tuesday’s public hearing.
“UMHB proposing a requirement of 1.25 spaces per student had no apparent reasoning behind it,” Wade told the commissioners.
Wade also said defining a living unit as a single student was unorthodox when standard terminology among developers and planners for a living unit is one residential unit or apartment.
Wade said Marcel engaged the firm of HDR/WHM Transportation Engineering to perform a parking study. Among college towns were Austin, College Station and San Marcos, where student housing had off-street parking requirements of ˝ space, ľ space and one space per student.
“As you can see one space per student is clearly adequate,” Wade said. “My position is that the university wants to own this property but does not want to pay the market price.”
Secrest said the insistence on a 1.25 parking ratio was a mechanism to kill a real estate sale.
“No other Texas city has this ratio,” Secrest said.
Ginger Richardson told the commissioners the one-car, one-student ratio was reasonable considering so many students use bicycles.
Ms. Richardson told the Telegram that UMHB in the past has offered the family $40,000 per acre. She said the Marcel Group contracted for substantially more than twice that amount at current market rates.
