Decision On Hayden Subdivision Expected City Leaders Hope That Compromise Will Be Tone Of Meeting

The City Council should decide tonight what to do with a proposed subdivision called Virginia’s Place, which drew an angry crowd of residents to the council chamber two weeks ago.

City leaders hope tonight will be more about compromise than contention, with an amended proposal that could reduce costs to residents in the area.

The proposal calls for 34 single-family homes on nearly 10 acres, about a block west of Ramsey Road on Orchard Road.

Subdivisions are often controversial, but this one would require residents living between the subdivision and Ramsey to pay part of the bill for Virginia’s Place.

The proposal could draw a line, mostly symbolic, between Hayden’s past and its future. In the city’s core, staffers want to preserve Hayden’s rural feeling, but require urban building standards in the outskirts.

That notion strikes City Councilmember Nancy Taylor as not only odd, but humorous.

“It’s kind of backwards,” Taylor said, chuckling. “I think it’s absurd to try and get all the right of way and put in massive streets when it’s still a rural community.”

Councilmember Chris Beck favors wider streets, however, because they’re more pedestrian- and growth-friendly.

“Urban development in the city of Hayden is coming,” Beck said. “I think it’s a good thing.”

The subdivision would be built at the end of Orchard, which is currently unimproved, dusty and riddled with potholes. The residents who live in houses on that road now use septic tanks in place of sewer lines.

The original proposal would have required the developer, Copper Basin Construction, to pave the road, widen it and pay a portion of the cost to install sewers.

That would have cost Copper Basin as much as $60,000, president Steve White said last month. It would have cost residents up to $9,000 apiece.

The cost to residents isn’t what gives the council pause, however, because members agree that eventually people will have to pay for sewer hookups.

Tonight, the council will decide how to deal with that issue.

Engineer Charlie Gay has drafted a letter to White, offering a compromise.

Instead of widening the road from 24 feet to 36 feet, city staff is proposing 28 feet. As in the original plan, there would be curbs and gutters along both sides of the street, but a sidewalk only on the south side.

Most of the residents along that block live on the north side. This would avoid cutting into their right-of-way.

In addition, drainage swales will be installed on the right side of the road. Resident Bill Turbin has opposed swales in the past, calling them a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Sewers would still be installed along the road, according to the letter, though it did not address potential cost to residents.

Brian Marcus, the planning and zoning committee’s liaison to the city, said the counter-offer takes care of the committee’s problems with the city’s proposal: extending sewer lines east of Ramsey, and forcing Copper Basin to buy right-of-way on the north side of Orchard.

“It’s not a bad negotiation,” Marcus said. “If 28 feet can work, that’s fine with me.”

As for the larger question, Marcus agrees with Taylor that Hayden’s rural ambience should stay.

“They (at the city) say, if people are coming, we have to build for them,” Marcus said. “I don’t see the harm in leaving it the way it is. I don’t think we have to build a superhighway.”