District nixes building reconfiguration plan

New subdivisions cause delay

Avon Lake City Schools will postpone a plan to reconfigure the district’s elementary schools for 2019-2020, according to a news release.

Natalie Matthew, curriculum director for Avon Lake Schools, said recent discussions through the Avon Lake Planning Commission confirmed the continuing development of new subdivisions, prompting Schools Superintendent Bob Scott to make a recommendation to the Board to make no new changes at this time.

Scott’s recommendation will allow the district to obtain more accurate information in order to prevent a short-sighted solution.

Members of the B.E.S.T. (Building Excellent Schools Team) Committee made up of teachers, parents, administrators and school board members presented two options to the Avon Lake Schools Board of Education in June which proposed redrawing district lines for four elementary schools.

The B.E.S.T. Committee had settled on the community’s desire to emphasize neighborhood schools along with being the most feasible option in front of them, citing logistical considerations.

Scott said in the wake of a proposal currently before Avon Lake Planning Commission which could potentially

see houses going in by Summer 2019, it did not make sense for the district to move forward with the plan at this time.

The Planning Commission held an Oct. 2 public hearing on preliminary plans of the South Port subdivision to be located on the south side of Walker Road at the request of Kopf Construction.

“It’s one of the last big pieces of land left in Avon Lake,” Scott said. “And we know that there’s another one on the west side of town. It’s cleared and potentially ready to go.”

Despite the change in strategy, Scott said the pieces are still in place and ready when and if the district wants to pursue a reconfiguration plan.

“We talk with (the city) all the time and they have a process they go through,” he said. “And until that process is completely done, they can’t always give us concrete numbers.”

The recommendation from the district comes on the heels of a showdown at Avon Lake City Council on Oct. 22 between residents, members of Council and builder H.R. Kopf to another proposed expansion of the Legacy Pointe housing development on Jaycox Road.

The revised plan would expand the development to the southeast side of the existing residential development, east of English Turn and Heron Bay and south of Legacy Pointe Parkway.

The Planning Commission approved the proposal 7-0 on Aug. 7.

The ordinance’s third reading on whether to accept the recommendation of the Planning Commission ended in a 3-3 tie and a decision is pending discussion by the city’s law department.

The project would eliminate the original nine holes of Sweetbriar Golf and Pro Shop and add an additional 148 housing units prompting concerns about the city’s ability to support the project in various ways.

Some residents who reside nearby on Heron Bay, Legacy Pointe Parkway and Legends Row were in attendance and expressed numerous concerns about lot density, increased traffic and the impact the additional homes would have on the character of the community.

Legends Row resident Dana Kuhn said the proposal to add nearly 150 new homes to Legacy Pointe along with plans in the works to add an additional 80 homes to the Bridgeside subdivision and 75 to Waterside

Crossings lead her to question if the city can support this.

“This is going to be a major problem,” Kuhn said. “Avon Lake does not have the infrastructure to support this. And I wonder if the school system and the district has been acknowledged and talked about this.”

Kuhn said she only could speak to the human aspect of living in Legacy Pointe as a mother of three young children and traffic already is a concern.

“I watch my kids basically in the dark walking to the bus stop while people are speeding down the corner of Legacy Pointe Parkway and Legends Row,” she said. “People are speeding down 50 mph and my kids are walking to the bus stop.”

Prior to the vote, Heron Bay Resident Traci Finkelmeier asked Council to firmly reject the measure pointing to inconsistencies in the interpretation of the code regarding building density requirements and calling it a traffic accident waiting to happen.

“When you have a code that offers grey areas of interpretation, one method supports code, one method obscenely violates the code and you have an overwhelming

(number) people concerned about that very point, density, I think it’s extremely risky for the city to vote this forward,” Finkelmeier said. “Based on the grey areas of interpretation as it relates to density, an extremely flawed traffic pattern, and based on the overwhelming numbers of residents in this community that have expressed concerns over this very issue, I believe there is no choice but to vote no tonight.”

In response to the resident concerns, H.R. Kopf, president of Kopf Builders, said he was making a commitment to go back to the Planning Commission regardless of the vote’s outcome to address them.

In addition, he said the development has made substantive efforts to always follow the city code.

“I have never in my career gone to any council person and asked for their votes,” Kopf said. “And I’m not going to ask for it tonight.

“And the reason why is this: we’ve lived all these years in Avon Lake and we’ve developed in Toledo, Columbus and Florida. We’ve always gone by the code. We went by the codes. We went to all the department heads. We made all the proper applications.”

The recommendation from the district comes on the heels of a showdown at Avon Lake City Council on Oct. 22 between residents, members of Council and builder H.R. Kopf to another proposed expansion of the Legacy Pointe housing development on Jaycox Road.