The San Antonio Zoning Commission on Tuesday delayed voting on a request to add an industrial overlay zone to almost 20,000 acres of land surrounding the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas plant.
The rezoning that could restrict development in the area comes only a day after it was disclosed that the automaker is planning a $500 million investment in its Southside plant, adding more than 400 jobs.
In response, Bexar County Commissioners signaled Tuesday that they could put together an economic development incentive package for Toyota worth $14 million in property abatements and grants.
The zoning change and Toyota’s potential plant expansion are two separate actions and are unrelated, said city spokesman Brian Chasnoff.
But a request by the City of San Antonio to add a new Industrial Compatibility Overlay District, ICOD-1, to the existing zoning surrounding the Toyota factory, remains in question as area landowners and residents say they were caught off-guard by the proposed rezoning.
The ICOD is intended “to limit potential health, safety, and welfare conflicts between heavy industrial uses and surrounding commercial and residential uses,” according to documents submitted for the zoning change.
The overlay would be the first ICOD in San Antonio and similar to other such overlay districts in the unified development code, said Rudy Niño, assistant director of the city planning department. Examples include the airport hazard overlay district and the various military protection overlay districts.
“We know that heavy industrial uses are important to the diversity of the economic base of San Antonio,” Niño said. “Thus, a purposeful and orderly transition of uses surrounding heavy industrial areas offers multiple levels of protection,” for public health and safety and ensuring economic vitality.
After community pushback, commissioners voted for a 60-day continuance, agreeing to hear the case again at a July 16 meeting.
Starbright agreement
With dozens of Southside residents opposed to the rezoning filing into the Development Services building Tuesday afternoon and one zoning commissioner speaking openly against the proposed ordinance, conflicts over the issue boiled over before the hearing even began.
At a work session just before the hearing, commissioner John Whitsett told his colleagues that the rezoning request is an effort by the city to use the power of zoning as a backdoor effort to comply with the controversial Starbright Agreement.
In 2003, the Starbright Agreement gave Toyota the right to impose upon a 3-mile buffer zone surrounding the plant “appropriate land use guidelines that satisfy Toyota regarding use, density, setback and other restrictions.”
The agreement was part of the city’s all-out effort to ensure the automaker would select San Antonio for its Tundra plant and bring thousands of high-wage jobs and automotive suppliers.
But in the days leading up to the hearing, Whitsett sent numerous emails to various entities and the mayor advocating against the rezoning, said a city staffer, actions that could be considered an ethics violation.
During the work session, Deputy City Attorney Susan Guinn told Whitsett he should consider recusing himself from discussing the item if he could not be impartial and unbiased in considering the request.
Whitsett responded that he would not recuse himself and appeared on the dais for the hearing. He later abstained from the final vote, saying he would do so, “regardless of my rights to speak.”
Standing room only
It was standing room only in the hearing room as residents, developers and property owners lined up to speak in opposition to the rezoning overlay, holding copies of the hearing notification they had received in their mailboxes about the ordinance.
They were alarmed by the notice, which was required by law to state: “San Antonio is holding a hearing that will determine whether you may lose the right to continue using your property for its current use. Please read this notice carefully.”
The law required the city to send the notice to all 13,000 addresses in the affected area.
But some who attended said they did not receive the notice at all, or only received it two days ago. Many said they were unaware of public input sessions that Niño said were held by the planning department on April 23 and April 30, raising suspicions about the process.
“When we rush something of this magnitude, it seems like we’re really trying to push the agenda of somebody else and not the people that we represent,” said Lorenzo Segura, who said he grew up on a family ranch in the area. “It seems like somebody’s about to get robbed.”
A former member of the zoning commission who lives near Toyota said the process should be slowed down to allow more time to talk with landowners. As a land surveyor for 30 years, Patty Gibbons said she has “worked on 4,000 dreams — people who have land, people who have ambitions and ideas and innovations and creativity,” she said. “Everybody has it when you own land, not just Toyota.”
Developer Fermin Rajunov’s 34-acre property sits within the Toyota plant buffer zone where development is controlled by Starbright. In December, Rajunov filed a lawsuit against the City of San Antonio and Toyota over the 2003 agreement that gave the automaker rein over how property surrounding the plant is used.
David Prichard, an attorney representing Rajunov, said the city and Toyota filed motions to dismiss the case based on lack of jurisdiction, and the judge dismissed those motions. The city has until Friday to appeal the decision, Prichard said.
Rajunov also attended the hearing. “It is my hope that, together, we can steer the course of our Southside community toward justice and fairness for every landowner, not just one Toyota,” he said. “Why don’t they focus on building great cars instead of hindering our developments?”
Prichard also said the process has been rushed and asked for a delay. “Toyota is a good corporate citizen,” he said. “[But] so are all these people out here and so are all the other 13,000 people that are affected by what you’re going to do today.”
Stephanie Reyes, executive officer of the Real Estate Council of San Antonio (RECSA), said the developer advocacy group has been working with the city over the last few months on the proposed language in the zoning ordinance.
RECSA has attempted to minimize the impact of the ordinance so that developers with projects currently in the works would not be affected, she said. But the group has stopped short of endorsing the zoning overlay.
“It does have a negative impact on affordable housing and, of course, we represent several affordable housing developers,” Reyes said.
Several people who attended Tuesday’s meeting said they didn’t understand what the notice meant and whether the rezoning would increase their property taxes. (It does not.) Throughout the hearing, planning managers left the room with residents to offer details or explain the process one-on-one outside of the hearing.
Andrew Nicholas, who said his family has owned land within the buffer zone for 80 years and has sold property in recent years to developers, asked how the city determined the buffer zone. That question and others have so far gone unanswered by the city, he said.
The rezoning effort looks a lot like “contract zoning,” Nicholas said, a possibly illegal practice that could provide a commercial entity with veto power on development requests within a buffer.
A woman who said she farms the land where she lives off Farm-to-Market Road 2537 made an impassioned plea for “things to stay the way they are.”
“If I want to build another house, I’m going to build another house, I’m going to build another barn to put my equipment in,” said Debbie Rodriguez. “I wouldn’t be able to do that.”
Many residents complained of the noise and traffic generated by the plant and other development, and one man said that if Toyota wants to control his property, the company should buy it from him.
Segura agreed: “We still farm and ranch — my father and uncle are 81 and 82 years old, holding on to something that is going away for that part of town.”
‘Some good points’
There are two zones in the overlay, with slightly different limits.
Zone A includes the auto manufacturing use property and extends for one mile from the boundary of the property. It limits new residential and commercial uses. Zone B extends one mile from the boundary of Zone A and limits new residential and residence-based uses.
The rezoning overlay proposed by the city would allow homeowners to repair and enlarge existing residences but not build accessory dwelling units, subdivide the property or operate a short-term rental or assisted living center. Undeveloped, platted lots could be developed for housing but could not be subdivided.
The zoning regulations do not apply to people who live in Bexar County but outside the city limits, Niño said.
“There were a lot of folks that made some good points about the experience that they have today in this area related to the impact of large-scale business and industrial in this area,” Niño said, echoing residents’ concerns about increased traffic, heavy trucks, noise and congestion.
“Those are things that we are concerned about potential future residences having to deal with, but on a much larger scale,” he said. “So the ICOD isn’t something that we as staff created over the course of the last few months.”
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The ICOD is associated with the years-long development of the city’s Texas A&M-San Antonio Area Regional Center Plan, which is part of SA Tomorrow, he said.
One of the plan’s guiding principles is related to development adjacent to heavy industrial areas “to ensure appropriate transitions between future development and industrial area in the area.”
That plan was presented to a council committee on Monday and will go before the full City Council for approval on June 20.
Niño pushed back on the suggestion that the city had turned over its planning authority to Toyota. In the last eight years, there have been 30 property rezonings in the area, he said. “So to state that the city has delegated our authority to do anything, it just is not true.”
Commissioners urged city staff to hold additional public input sessions.
“The fundamental question that we should be asking … is who are we developing for? Which continues to be absent in industrial zoning cases in particular — we see it all the time in District 2,” said commissioner Taylor Watson. “I think there’s a lot of evidence … that we did not do that in this case.”
Commissioners will hear the case again at their July 16 meeting, which starts at 1 p.m. at 1901 S. Alamo St. The ICOD rezoning item will be delayed until 6 p.m.
