ST. CHARLES COUNTY — A St. Charles County panel has endorsed a developer’s revised plan that would cut the number of homes on a portion of the Tall Tree subdivision site rejected last year.
The county Planning and Zoning Commission voted 4-3 Wednesday night to support a rezoning for Lombardo Homes of St. Louis, which wants to put up 120 homes on the southern part of the Tall Tree site near the August A. Busch Memorial Conservation Area.
The plan, which now goes to the County Council, is a reduction from the roughly 270 homes proposed for the 137-acre segment a year ago.
The planning panel’s endorsement came despite criticism from many residents who said the project, dubbed the Highlands At Busch Wildlife, still would be too dense for the rustic, forested area.
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“This part of St. Charles County is rural,” Catherine Burns, who lives nearby, said in an email to the commission. “Most home sites are 3-to-5 acres. Let’s keep it at that.”
Opponents, some of whom spoke at the meeting Wednesday, also warned that the subdivision would add to traffic congestion on nearby Highway DD and other two-lane roads.
Last year’s Tall Tree plan, by KM Investment Group IV, had initially envisioned putting up 556 homes on a 356-acre site.
That project would have been the largest housing development built in unincorporated St. Charles County in recent years. A revised plan from KM ultimately was turned down by the County Council.
But the Planning and Zoning Commission staff, in recommending approval of the current Highlands proposal, said it would include less than one home per acre and comply with the county’s master plan.
Nearly half of the 137 acres would be common-ground areas that would either include trees or flood plain area near Dardenne Creek, with homes clustered in varied lot sizes on the remaining acres.
“Forty-six percent of the property is going to be basically untouched,” Drew Weber, an attorney for the developer, told the commission.
He said Lombardo had worked hard to reduce the density and make other changes in response to the outcry against last year’s plan.
Weber said the new proposal calls for four 3-acre lots on the southern end of the tract, lots of more than 2 acres along DD and lots of between a quarter-acre and a half-acre in the interior, Weber said.
Bill Carrier, a leader in Citizens for Smart Growth in St. Charles County, which strongly opposed last year’s Tall Tree plan, said the current proposal is an improvement but that the group continues to have concerns, including about the mix of lot sizes proposed.
Carrier also complained about Lombardo’s intention in coming months to seek approval from O’Fallon of a more dense project on the northern part of the former Tall Tree site. Lombardo’s president has said the builder wants that area annexed into the city.
Carrier said the projects taken together would be “a single combined assault on our community.”