MIDLAND, Texas — It was standing room only inside Midland's City Hall Council Chambers to start the January 14 city council meeting.
The large turnout was for one particular item on the council's 45 item agenda - Item 32.
The decision at hand was a zone change for the nearly 20 acre lot sandwiched between Princeton and Cuthbert in the city's 4th district.
The proposal for the zone change came from the Midland Community Development Corporation. The organization owns the land,and are looking to build a 200 unit two-story apartment complex named Hillcrest Village.
Prior to Tuesday's meeting, 12 acres of that lot were zoned for single family housing, the other seven plus acres are zoned for multi-family housing.
It's an unfortunate circumstance according to Lori Blong, the councilwoman for Midland's Fourth District.
"This was zoned really inappropriately for that neighborhood. It was for a four story multi-family housing addition the middle of this neighborhood, so I elected for a two story low density multi-family option," said Blong
During the public hearing, numerous residents of the effected community spoke out against the proposal.
Their concerns ranged from traffic, privacy and property value.
Representatives from MISD, the Midland hospital district and MCDC took to the podium to speak in favor of the project.
The divide between the sides is unsurprising to Midland's new mayor Patrick Payton.
"The council did a good job of doing their homework, talking to citizens, knowing that they were gonna make half of the room upset and the other happy," said Payton.
The proposal for Hillcrest Village is tied to the expectation that the complex will provide affordable housing for employees of MISD, Midland Memorial Hospital and first responders.
A promise board members for the MCDC like Brad Bullock intend to uphold.
"So one of our foundations have hired an attorney that specializes in land usage restrictions to make sure we document it, that the land is used in the way we've stated repeatedly in these meetings," said Bullock.
Though after more than an hour of back and forth in the hearing, the ultimate decision came down to the city council and the zone change passed with unanimous approval.
Lori Blong won the race for District Four in last year's election. She met with many of those concerned neighbors last week, and while she intends to be their voice, she also stands on her principals.
"One of the things that were important to me are property owner rights so if we are gonna have property rights then we need to give owners the option to build what they want," said Blong.
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