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Grandfathering and the new tree ordinance
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What is grandfathering? |
They allowed an additional 25 days for developers to grandfather projects from the new regulations. For school districts Council was even more generous, giving them until January 1, 2011.
All told, the cTc identified nearly 4,100 acres of land as potentially grandfathered from the new ordinance. This is about 4x the size of San Antonio's entire downtown area.
This 4,100 acres includes only projects submitted between January 1 and June 1, 2010. It does not include thousands of acres of yet-to-be-started projects grandfathered prior to 2010. It also includes school district projects expected to be grandfathered before the January 1, 2011 deadline.
Developers are allowed to sit on their grandfathered permits for years and even decades before starting construction. Consequently, it could take quite some time before a significant percentage of projects are built according to the new ordinance.
This chart shows the number of permit applications filed each week during the period January 1, 2010 through June 1, 2010. As you can see, filings spiked the week the ordinance passed, as developers rushed to get their foot in the door. Another peak occurred just as Council's 25-day grace period was about to expire on June 1st.
It is also instructive to see who filed for the grandfathered permits. While many developers submit their own applications, most turn to lobbying or engineering firms for this.
One lobbying outfit, the Brown and Ortiz law firm, was far and away the winner when project acreage is considered. Nearly half of all the grandfathered acreage was submitted by this one firm.
Most of the applications were filed for rapidly growing parts of the City. As the map below shows, many permits were for projects near Stone Oak and the congested US 281 North/Loop 1604 area.
The Edwards Aquifer Recharge zone was particularly popular, attracting nearly 1,500 acres of grandfathered projects and about 42% of the total number of submittals. A large number of permits was also obtained for developments near Loop 1604 and SH 151 in the Sea World/
Detractors of the new ordinance claimed that it would penalize south side developers and force development to the north side and over the aquifer. If this were true, one would have expected developers to inundate the city with applications to grandfather south side projects.
In fact, only 2 permits for development south of US Highway 90 were sought, and both of those were routine (not “beat the clock”) filings related to the existing Brooks City Base development.
City Council was especially generous to school districts, effectively nullifying the new ordinance for the foreseeable future in at least 3 ISDs. This is due partly to the additional 8 months of time they gave ISDs to get grandfathered, and partly to the way the City recognizes grandfathering for ISDs.
As a result, schools that won’t break ground for many years are grandfathered out of the new rules. Below we have listed many of the school projects that may be grandfathered.
$535 million worth of projects including:
$515 million for renovations of its schools and the Alamo Stadium and Convocation Center plus another $58 million worth of renovations at its high school.
$198.8 million worth of new facilities and renovations including:
Grandfathering data were obtained from open records requests and other public information. Projects permitted through CoSA Fair Notice Applications, SAWS Utility Service Agreements or included in school district bond issues were analyzed. We are also making available our Access 2007 database with comprehensive information about the reported projects.
No acknowledgement of any entitlement to avoid compliance with the the 2010 Tree Preservation Ordinance is expressed or implied.
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