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Town seeks to make development process better
By Chris Roark, croark@starlocalnews.com
Developers who have experienced difficulty doing business in Flower Mound may be happy to know that a committee has been established to examine the problems.
Flower Mound set up the Development Process Review Committee in July to review and propose any changes to the town’s development process.
Mayor Tom Hayden said the review is necessary based on feedback given by the development community in a recent survey.
“Flower Mound has the most aggressive ordinances in North Texas,” Hayden said. “And it ends up being prohibitive. We want Flower Mound to have standards, but we don’t want them to be prohibitive.”
The mayor points to several examples on how the town’s ordinances have stalled or stopped development in Flower Mound. One is Whole Foods specialty grocery store, which recently announced they are bringing a location to Highland Village.
“We ended up with Whole Foods officials saying it’s easier to build in Highland Village and just attract Flower Mound customers,” Hayden said. “As a result, we lose sales tax revenue.”
Hayden looks to the future Tom Thumb at the intersection of FM 1171 and Bruton Orand Boulevard as another example.
“They had to pull over a dozen permits for that project,” Hayden said. “The developer said, ‘Flower Mound permits me for everything.’ But there’s a 350,000-square-foot complex being built in Wylie, and their developer only had to go through one permit.”
Hayden also noted a requirement at Jimmy John’s sandwich shop in which the town required the shop buy a grease pit, which cost the shop $15,000, Hayden said. “They don’t even use a grease pit,” Hayden said. “We over-regulate to the point where we can’t do business in our town. And that has to change.”
The development committee is composed of 11 members, and it is a mix of developers, residents, attorneys and those involved in real estate: Von Beougher, Ken Hodge, David Watson, Kurt Buehler, Ron Crowell, Carol Kyer, Al Picardi, Marlo Senick, Si Simonson, Karen Wilkerson and Andre Zwilling.
The committee will be charged with reviewing the existing ordinances and identify any procedures that could act as a hindrance in the development process.
Other roles of the committee include suggesting modifications, creating a public review process and examining other communities’ ordinances to determine if their policy is one Flower Mound should follow.
“Our hope is to develop a new culture to encourage people to do business in Flower Mound,” Hayden said.
The committee had its first meeting Tuesday and took a broad look at its responsibilities but zeroed in on certain components of the process that could be tweaked. One of those was how to eliminate redundancy in the development process.
“We’re not trying to make the regulations easier,” Simonson said. “We’re just trying to work smarter.”
The committee will meet at 6 p.m. every other Tuesday at the Shirley Voirin Senior Center next to town hall. Simonson said the public is encouraged to attend to solicit input.
The plan is for the committee to update the council on the progress at a work session Sept. 20. Hayden said he hopes the council will vote on the first set of recommendations in October before moving forward with the next phase.
“This town council is committed to changing how business is done in Flower Mound,” Hayden said. “And we want everyone – the town staff included – to be on board.”
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The problem with committees is that they are often carefully selected to arrive at decisions already being supported by those who appointed them. Let's hope that this committee has been given the freedom to make decisions based on their own judgment resulting from careful study.
Flower Mound is considered a great place to live, notwithstanding comments from those who have had difficulty doing business here. High standards are certainly one of the major reasons for our top-ranking status in periodicals such as D Magazine. Hence, it's the residents that should be satisfied first, before trying to please those who come here merely to make money.
Those selected are among the most prominent and well-respected people in this community. Therefore, I think we can all feel confident that they will do the job with a view toward making our town an even better place to live. "