P&Z grants permit for Honda dealership
Honda dealer works with city to save trees, beef up buffer with nearby homes
The Boerne Planning and Zoning Commission forwarded to City Council its unanimous approval of a special use permit for a Honda dealership being proposed along Interstate 10.
Situated between Nissan of Boerne and a vacant lot south of Regent Boulevard, the Honda dealership is one of two automobile sales lots planned on the 10.46-acre parcel.
Scott Crabtree, president of Pohanka Automotive Group of Loudoun County, Virginia, pitched the dealership plans to the commission at its Dec. 4 meeting.
The special use permit will apply to two separate lots on the land. The Honda dealership’s 29,845 squarefoot building will sit on 6 acres of land to the rear of the property, where it will have 371 inventory parking spaces and 60 spaces for customers and staff.
A second lot which includes a building footprint of 16,000 square-feet on 4.6 acres, occupies land nearest the Interstate 10 frontage road. There currently is no client determined for this lot. Planning and Zoning heard Crabtree’s presentation and approved five of the six requested variances. The one exception was a request for the reduction, from 55 feet to 35 feet, of the landscape buffer along the frontage road.
Crabtree told P&Z he met with a dozen Boerne city and business officials in April of this year, looking at seven sites before choosing the site at 31905 I-10 West.
Crabtree said he heard the requests to separate the dealership from the neighboring homes on Katie Court, directly behind it.
“We want the buffer between us and the neighborhood as thick as we can get it,” Crabtree said. He pointed out that the dealership scrapped 118 parking spaces to extend the buffer to a 30-foot depth.
“We want to do the right thing, and do it as well as we can,” he added. The reduction left them with the 371 spaces for inventory, prompting his comment, “I don’t think realistically and practically that you can make it much smaller. The parking spaces we have there are (what) we need for the operation of the dealership.”
Crabtree relayed Pohanka’s good neighbor policies, having poured $2.2 million annually back into the communities where its 1,200 lots and dealerships are located.
This project, he said, takes into consideration aspects of light reduction, noise reduction and recycling. In working to minimize the design's footprint, the Honda group yielded the 118 parking spaces, giving up over 14,000 square feet, increased the buffer from the neighborhood, and included plans for capture and treatment of runoff from the neighborhood.
Initially, Crabtree said, plans for tree abatement approached $899,000, forcing them to rework its plans. “We’re now saving 70% of the large heritage trees and saving 171 of the 318 standard and legacy trees. That’s 43.8%, above the required 41%,” he said.
Ryan Bass, Boerne’s environmental planner, said there are more than 300 protected trees on the site, adding to the existence of the buffer toward the Katie Court residents in the Boerne Heights/Boerne Crossing subdivision.
“We’ll verify that all the lighting components meet our ‘Dark Sky’ ordinance, with pole heights, compatible lighting, angled lighting,” Bass said.
The city’s Scenic Interstate Corridor Plan requires a 30-foot landscape buffer in addition to a utility easement, bringing the overall buffer to 55 feet. The auto dealership requested a reduction to 35 feet, 25 for utilities and 10 for landscaping.
“I think we can have the buffer protecting the neighborhood and protect our I-10 corridor at the same time,” P&Z Commissioner Bob Cates said. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable giving up those 20 feet on the front.”
The commission agreed and approved all other aspects of the special use permit.
Reference was made to the proposal going to a public hearing before City Council as early as January 9.
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