Board of Zoning Appeals
March 25th, 2025
Full disclosure, I was signed up to speak along with several other citizens from White House. Four people, including myself, spoke against the variance request made by Lennar on item #2. There were about 35 people in attendance. Every citizen brought up the issues with the land that were known when the original designs were drawn. You can watch the video of the meeting here. In all honestly, if you watch the video you will see me make eye contact and gesture toward the woman in red in the front row. She is NOT a Lennar representative. I mistakenly thought she was and subsequently apologized to her for gesturing toward her.
Item #1 was approved with the stipulation that they have 18 months to complete the project or the special exception is removed. The board did not want to leave that open for any other businesses as each situation needs to be seen on an individual basis.
Item #2- Luke Clausner(sp) is the new project manager representing Lennar. He spoke to the project and to the concerns raised by the citizens. The “park” in the 75 acres in question, will be preserved for the community in a passive park.
This passive park will be maintained by the HOA. It will retain the natural features and only walking trails, a couple of dog parks, and gazebos will be added. There will be no major structures added to this area. One citizen brought up the fact that Lennar could sell this acreage. Clausner stated that they cannot sell this property because it would interfere with the required amount of acreage for the density that they were approved for. He added that they will be fixing the drainage issues causes by the previous developer. Dolly Peay stated that they would need to do that no matter if they built homes or a park in this area. The manager agreed, yes they would. As far as the traffic concerns go, Lennar has met with TDOT and they will be required to place a traffic signal at 31W and New Hall Road as well as give money to the city “in lieu of” for work done to Union Road. Peay asked about a traffic signal there and city administrator Herman added that the city is in the design phase of moving Union Road to align with Pleasant Grove Road and the the money from Lennar would go toward that. Another concern brought up by the citizens was the density and where it was placed. If you look at the photo above, they are requesting the higher density in the blue toward the top of the photo on the left instead of down by the freeway. At the top, there are at least five properties that share a border with the higher density area. Clausner stated that Lennar would be creating a more dense buffer. Alderman Sisk asked at what point in the last 18 years has this land changed to require a hardship variance. Clauser said that this has always been a hardship and that the designers tried to combat that with a 25 foot tall wall and a 15 foot bridge. Peay asked why this hadn’t been brought up before. Clausner stated that he was not the manager before and has just come on to this project. He can only speculated that the cost between the time the project started and now has risen. Sisk added that if this is simply financial, it does not fall under a hardship. Clausner reiterated that he was speculating. Peay added that if the variance is approved, it takes this project back to a SRPDU which is what the city did not want in the first place. Denied
The project manager for Lennar stated his name and I have spelled it how it sounded. Apologies if anyone knows him and I have spelled this incorrectly.
I encourage you to use the link and watch the video of your citizens speaking. The videos are time stamped so you could also just listen to the discussion that takes place between the board and Lennar.