As land around Castroville is acquired, Mayor Darrin Schroeder and council members feel an urgency to get ahead of the sprawl by knowing what to require from developers. “We have a small window to take charge of our destiny,” he wrote to residents.
“If we are successful … this will be a model that a lot of smaller towns in and around Texas can utilize,” Oubre said. “There are a lot of places [that] really don’t want to become the suburban places of San Antonio or Dallas. They want to stay where they are but ‘place-wise,’ and this is that opportunity.
Michael explained how the City of San Antonio has applied zoning ordinances to help preserve historic structures by establishing historic districts. includes a dozen properties, is recognized as such by the National Park Service and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. The area roughly bounded on three sides by the Medina River is also protected as a state-recognized historic district.
The highway corridor — which has become home to chain stores, fast-food restaurants and gas stations — emerged as one of the biggest problems the mayor hopes to solve by reducing its visual impact on the city. Scott Ball / San Antonio ReportA similar effort to preserve the unique character of Castroville emerged 20 years ago when the Texas Historical Commission developed a plan with community input.
The first two will have the city focus on managing both infill development and development on land where no previous structures exist through form-based zoning — regulating land development to achieve a specific urban form. They also want to promote a mix of housing types and develop a set of architectural design standards and requirements.
In the meantime, Oubre is designing a proposed system of thoroughfares that would connect the suburban islands of development to one another and to the city center as Castroville grows. “Those are very important pieces and so we’re trying to get to that point, [and the council is] ready to do it,” he said.A teacher in nearby LaCoste, Nadine Kempf regularly gets caught in traffic traveling to work, the grocery store and her home in Castroville.
“We wanted them to understand what it means to us as a community for them to do things right, not to take shortcuts, not to think in terms of short-term gains, because we have to live with whatever they build,” Schroeder said. “Once they put that down, it’s going to be with us for the rest of my life and for generations.”Merit Commercial Real Estate began in 2009 assembling large tracts of land in Castroville and broke ground on a mixed-use development and neighborhood last year.
After recent meetings with the city, the developers have agreed to revise 70 acres of the original grid from a conventional suburban neighborhood layout to one that incorporates shorter blocks, multifamily housing with storefronts at street level, and alley-loaded home designs built to match vernacular architecture, Oubre said.
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