After repeated trips back to the drawing board, the Swanson Trails subdivision finally has the rezoning it needs to go forward.
The Portage City Council gave its blessing Tuesday for the 80-acre subdivision on the northwest corner of Swanson Road and County Road 700 North.
Council members Ferdinand Alvarez and Melissa Weidenbach voted against it. Penny Ambler was absent.
Lennar Homes of Indiana plans to build 225 single-family homes on the site.
The project went through more than half a dozen iterations as the developer responded to requests from city officials and residents.
Among the pleas was to preserve much of the wooded area.
“If we just did a cookie-cutter residential subdivision, we could get 313 homes on the property,” attorney Todd Leeth said. That could have been done without a zoning change, removing most of the trees in the process.
With the current design, 33% of the acreage will remain open space, he said.
That 26.7 acres of open space compares to just 1.6 acres for neighboring Arvilla Acres and Brookview subdivisions.
The latter two subdivisions have only detention areas, while Swanson Trails will feature tree preservation, walking trails and a park with fitness court, Leeth said.
Swanson Trails will have 2.79 lots per acre compared to 2.85 for Arvilla Acres and 2.89 for Brookview.
Mayor Austin Bonta said the city is talking about whether to maintain a portion of the park for public use by all residents, not just those in the subdivision. Because walking trails are so difficult to maintain, however, the city would be likely to take over just the playground area.
Bonta said Lennar wanted to be a good neighbor and agreed to make many changes to be responsive to the city and its residents. When the Plan Commission didn’t have a quorum last year, Bonta invited residents to City Hall to hear their concerns. Leeth and his client showed up uninvited to hear those concerns and further refine the plan.
“We had so much feedback about saving the woods,” Bonta said.
Leeth said a lot of residents were concerned about multifamily housing. “We made it crystal clear that that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about two different lot sizes and 100% single-family detached homes. These are residential subdivisions in every sense of the word,” he said.
Council President Victoria Vasquez thanked Lennar for making so many changes, including implementing her suggestion of larger lots backing up on natural areas.
“I appreciate you putting the park in the center of things and not next to major roads like other subdivisions,” Councilwoman Gina Giese-Hurst said.
In other business, the council approved new rules on contractor licensing, implementing suggestions from the Greater Portage Chamber of Commerce’s Public Policy Committee.
Planning and Development Director Tom Cherry said Portage has lost a lot of small businesses to surrounding cities and towns, so these new regulationslevel the playing field.
No longer will a business have to hire a general contractor for things like painting or changing the flooring. Those don’t affect public health or safety, Cherry noted.
The council also approved an ordinance clarifying that residential driveways have to be concrete when a sidewalk crosses the property. Businesses don’t have to follow that rule, allowing parking lots to be asphalt instead of concrete.
Homeowners can seek a waiver by going to the Board of Zoning Appeals.
The council also approved having the Board of Works establish a list of vendors for boarding up properties, functioning much like the towing list. When there’s an emergency and a property has to be boarded up, the dispatcher will notify the next vendor on the city’s list to handle that task.
A proposed ordinance dealing with consumer use of fireworks, focusing on their proper disposal, was sent back to the Ordinance Committee to address enforcement logistics.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
