Council postpones decision for CM Allen land
The San Marcos City Council decided to postpone a decision as to what would be done with the empty land on CM Allen Parkway in the Downtown Area Plan at their regularly scheduled meeting Monday.
They voted six to zero, with one council member absent, to approve the rest of the Downtown Area Plan. The Vision SMTX Comprehensive plan was postponed until the January 16, 2024 meeting in a six to zero vote with one member absent. Both plans are meant to be a vision for the direction of the city and are not mandates.
For the CM Allen riverfront property, there were three options from which the council could choose: Option 1 involved development, Option 2 involved dedicated Greenspace and Option 3 was a blend of both development and greenspace.
The council voted for Option 3 at their last regularly scheduled meeting. There was an outpouring of public comment in support of Option 2.
For the Downtown Area Plan, San Marcos Mayor Jane Hughson said she thought the CM Allen Parkway decision would require more analysis to support the decision.
She wanted to stress that Option 1 is what is already possible for the landowners and Option 2 or 3 would be more of requests.
“Personally I’d like to do a little bit between 2 and 3,” Hughson said. “I think it’s going to take a lot of thought, and this is incredibly important to our community.”
San Marcos City Council Member Jude Prather said that he believed Option 3 was the best option to address the needs of the city.
Director of Planning and Development Services Amanda Hernandez made the recommendation to remove the CM Allen Parkway Options from the Downtown Area Plan.
“Maybe we kind of break out the CM Allen frontage knowing that it’s important for a variety of reasons and study that separately outside of the downtown plan,” Hernandez said.
Hughson tabled the item until later in the meeting so that staff could incorporate direction to the rest of the plan, and it could be voted on in its entirety without the CM Allen Parkway portion. The council voted six to zero with one absent on an amendment to remove the CM Allen Parkway land from the Downtown Area Plan. The Downtown Area Plan, without the CM Allen land portion, was passed in a six to zero vote with one absent.
For the Vision SMTX Comprehensive Plan, San Marcos City Council Member Alyssa Garza made a motion to postpone the decision, which was voted for six to zero with one absent.
“I don’t feel prepared to make such a big decision given that many of our neighbors reached out with very different perspectives,” Garza said, adding that she feels there needs to be more community awareness and opportunities for input.
San Marcos City Council Member Saul Gonzales agreed and added that more time for a project of this caliber couldn’t hurt anything.
Prather said that he didn’t want to postpone the item but there were concerns that he’d like to address.
“Are some of these edits toward the end going to affect those kinds of developments with multiplexes,” Prather said. “I’m at the point now where if we could just make a few more amendments to this I think … a lot of work’s been put into this to get this to this point where it’s at right now to go ahead and vote on it.”
Garza said she had some amendments planned and was ready to vote, but she received a large amount of feedback about the comprehensive plan from the community in the past two days. She proposed Jan. 16, 2024 for the date that the council would cast the vote on the VISION SMTX Comprehensive Plan.
“I honestly haven’t even finished reading some of the emails,” Garza said. “I don’t have a lot of confidence in those amendments that I had brainstormed.”
The council created a committee to discuss community feedback and the plan before the Jan. 16 meeting. The committee is composed of San Marcos City Council Member Shane Scott, Hughson and Garza, which was approved six to zero with one absent.
For more information on both plans for the vision of the city go to visionsmtx. com.
