(Seguin) — The Seguin City Council Tuesday night approved a general land use plan and zoning change request that could pave the way for a major new retail development on the city’s northwest side, including a new Walmart Supercenter. The proposed multiuse development would be located at the intersection of State Highway 46 and Pecan Parkway, in an area south of Rudeloff Road.
The council heard from citizens both for and against the project before spending a couple of hours asking questions and debating the proposal.
James McKnight, of the municipal and land use law firm Ortiz McKnight, represented the developers during the council meeting. He offered an apology for perhaps prematurely revealing that Walmart wanted to build at the site.
He says he hopes that doesn’t take away from the fact that this is an exciting project. The new Walmart would be different from most of its existing stores and represents the next generation of supercenters.
“It’s really unfortunate because, it’s the opposite of what we wanted to show about this site, which is that we’re really excited. We’re really excited about what’s really going be a flagship high class development,” said McKnight. “We are under contract to work with Provident (Realty Advisors), who we have worked with on other stores. They are a developer that we’ve actually worked with. closed on a property, and started a property in Liberty Hill, outside Austin. So, they’re somebody we work with, they develop other parts around the Walmart site. The information that I’ve gotten about the Walmart is…it’s the store of the future. That’s what they’re calling it. It is the newest prototype. There’s a prototype in Cypress that has been opened. This is supposed to be like that.”
Thor Thornhill, president and CEO of HMT Engineering, was also on hand to help answer questions about the proposed project. Thornhill says Walmart is just part of what’s planned for a much larger retail development.
“We keep talking about the big box (store). The big box is just one component of this. It is (a total of) 179 acres. It’s one component on…15 acres. You’re talking about 12 restaurants and pad sites, maybe an Academy or a Dick’s Sporting Goods. There are sites for those. So, you’re talking about a lot of different uses. You’re talking some nicer restaurants, some strip centers, all kinds of things,” said Thornhill.
Walmart and the developers are very interested in the site, but there are still some significant issues to work through. The general land use plan and zoning change were a big part of that process. Thornhill explained the steps involved in moving a development like this forward.
“The first thing you do is put a project under contract. So Provident did that. Then you try to find buyers. Provident found their big box buyer. Then the buyer has to get the zoning. If we don’t get the zoning, Walmart cancels the contract, game over. That’s how it works. The next phase is when they start spending about $500,000 in geological and engineering and traffic study. We’ve actually done a 200 page traffic study already, in case you are asked about it. You don’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars until you have the proper land use to be able to even consider the site. So, zoning in every city across the country, that’s what happens first, day one, because you can’t even plan out a site and do too much…the zoning in every case always comes first,” said Thornhill.
The council voted 8-0 to approve both the zoning change and the land use plan, but that vote came after a couple of hours of deliberation. Questions were raised about when city staff knew Walmart was the interested company and why that information wasn’t shared with the council before the proposal appeared on the agenda earlier this month.
There were a number of back-and-forth exchanges on the issue, with the developers and city staff assuring the council that nothing was being hidden and that the confidentiality was simply part of the economic development process.
As the discussion continued, City Manager Steve Parker pushed back against repeated questions from Councilman Paul Gaytan about when the city knew Walmart was involved. The answer appeared to be about two months, but Parker says city officials were asked not to reveal the company’s identity, which he says is not uncommon for economic development projects.
“We purposely never would hide anything from you and it’s insulting to think that we would do that. I promise you, we would never ever do that. But we also want to make sure that we are doing our job as economic development people to make sure that these developers can trust us and until the retailer or whoever it is or the landowner says it’s okay. We do not release that information. But if it’s something where it’s critical and we know that they’re definitely coming or we know that we’re asking you to give an incentive, you will have that information before anybody else. I can assure you that,” said Parker.
Gaytan says he wasn’t necessarily opposed to the project, but he didn’t like that the council and the public were not informed about what was actually being proposed for the property.
“I didn’t like that we were voting on something that was going to affect people and they didn’t know about it. That’s not right. And so when I was walking out, Attorney McKnight told me, ‘hey, we never told the city administration not to tell y’all.’ So, then I was like, what is going on? That’s why I’m asking these questions. It’s not to insult the city manager. It’s not to insult city administration. We are the elected officials. We need to know. We need to ask questions. You just don’t put something in front of us and say, vote on it. And then you tell us whenever that it was for a Walmart. That’s not okay,” said Gaytan.
Seguin Economic Development Director Alora Wachholz reassured the council that there was nothing unusual about the process. She says staff presented council members with what they knew about the project at the time.
“There’s a difference between whenever a company comes in and is doing what we consider kicking tires, right? But they’re not committed to a site. When a company comes in and they have a plan, a site plan, and they actually are committed to purchasing the property, (that’s different). This was presented to us as Walmart kicking tires on a site. The request and what we learned about it was can they rezone it for the use? And I’ll stand before you and say we have a proven track record of bringing to you critical information about commercial development as soon as it becomes real and it passes the threshold of kicking tires. I can’t do my job if I have to bring you every single opportunity that’s kicking tires on property, because it happens every day all the time with all sorts of users,” said Wachholz.
The unanimous approval from the council came after a handful of restrictions were added to the land use plan. Councilman Jim Lievens, who represents the area, laid out the items that were added to the plan. The restrictions are designed to provide additional protections for nearby property owners.
“Limiting multi-family to 30 acres. The western end of the property, we talked about the 100-foot buffer. And then in the event that a big box retailer is located along Pecan Parkway, the back end of that, along Pecan Parkway, then it will include the subdivision perimeter wall guidelines,” said Lievens.
The project remains in its early stages, and several critical issues will still need to be addressed before construction could begin. Those include the proposed expansion of Pecan Parkway and improvements to State Highway 46.
Walmart is said to have chosen the site because of the rapid development occurring in that area. There are currently about 17,000 new homes in the pipeline across Seguin, with roughly half of them planned for this part of the city.