After nearly a year of public meetings with landowners and stakeholders, the Leander City Council is in the final stretch of approving the final version of the city’s 2,400-acre transit-oriented development (TOD) land use map and Smart Code regulations.

At the July 3 council meeting, city staff presented three different versions of proposed TOD maps, with the difference being the area within each that would be subject to the Smart Code, a modern zoning model that is used to create walkable neighborhoods. The council ended up approving a hybrid map, which they refer to as “version D.” Version D has approximately the same total area as the option B map but changed some of the boundary lines subject to Smart Code. It eliminated an area south of FM 2243 and added an area north of San Gabriel Parkway between U.S. Hwy 183 and 183-A.

The land use map will go back before council for final approval on July 17.

The version D map dramatically shrinks the area within the TOD that will be subject to the Smart Code. Of the 2,400-acre TOD, only 550 acres will now be subject to Smart Code zoning. The original Smart Code area was 1,500 acres. The change was made largely due to feedback from landowners, who felt the Smart Code zoning was too restrictive, according to Tom Yantis, director of development services for the city.

“They considerably shrank the area subject to the Smart Code with these revisions.” Yantis said. “It’s a third of the size that it started out being.”

But the council has held on to its original vision of having a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use development surrounding the Capital Metro train station.

“Throughout the process they very much maintained the vision of having a walkable area around the train station and in close proximity to it,” Yantis said. “So that is maintained in this map.”

Much of the original area included in the Smart Code will now return to more conventional zoning, with some additional requirements, which will allow for more traditional, suburban-type development.

“Outside the area subject to the Smart Code, but still within that TOD boundary, the rest of the area is what we call the conventional zoning sector, and it is subject to our conventional zoning ordinance with some additional standards,” Yantis said.

In addition to approving the land use map, the council will also approve changes to the Smart Code requirements.

“The main objective of the changes to the Smart Code were to get us to the most current version of the code,” Yantis said.

“It’s a model code that’s used throughout the country,” he explained. “The model that we adopted in 2005 was one of the very earliest versions of it. Over the course of the last nine years, there have been a lot of updates and improvements to it. So a lot of the work is just bringing us up to speed with the latest and greatest version of the code.”

In addition to updating the code, the council will also consider a number of additional changes in response to feedback from landowners and developers. Those changes include reducing minimum building height requirements, reducing minimum density requirements and eliminating requirements for a certain mix of residential uses.

City staff also made some adjustments to allow for the placement of parking areas on certain street types, as well as streamlined the architectural and signage standards.

“We essentially made the code more flexible to try to respond to those concerns,” Yantis said.

“So there’s really a whole host of things that were done to try to respond to the feedback that we got with regards to the existing code being too inflexible for development,” he added.

Once the final map and zoning requirements are approved at the July 17 meeting, the city can move forward with marketing the TOD to developers. Yantis said Village at Leander Station, a 9.7-acre residential project on the northeast corner of Hero Way and Mel Mathis Avenue, is currently being platted. It will include approximately 225 multifamily units. Yantis said he’s also hopeful that the bond election for a new ACC campus will be approved in November.

“Hopefully we’re now in a position to really see development occur in this area,”Yantis said.