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Filling In
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St. Charles
County developers face challenges as large parcels become scarcer.
By Kevin Kipp
It’s nuts in O’Fallon, Mo. But the tunnel is finite, and the train’s
headed west.
“We’re averaging 1,400 new single-family homes each year,” says
city manager Patrick Banger, “roughly one in three of all [such]
homes in the St. Louis area.”
Above:
It’s still a sunny day in St. Charles County for developers.
Pictured (left to right): Keith Hazelwood of Hazelwood & Weber LLC;
Hal Bartch, president of civil engineering firm Pickett, Ray & Silver;
and O’Fallon city manager, Patrick Banger.
Banger says the growth is tapering off, and he expects “the explosion
to end by 2006.”
Then he expects the city’s population to move into the neighborhood
of 80,000 souls, up from the mid-’50s now and 34,000 in 1996.
That’s a lot of neighborhood, and O’Fallon’s experience is only
normal in St. Charles County. Cities like St. Charles and St. Peters,
even the little village of Cottleville, know the feeling. Who could
doubt that Wentzville is next?
And each neighborhood-to-be requires preparation before a single
shovel of dirt is pitched in earnest. Call it pre-infrastructure.
“We get involved at the conceptual planning stage,” says Hal Bartch,
president of civil engineering firm Pickett Ray & Silver. “Developers
ask us what they can do on, say, 50 acres. They’ll want to know
how many lots can go in, what kind of yield they can anticipate.”
The answers are a little more complex than superimposing grid-on-plat:
50 acres divided by half-acre lots...100 lots.
“We give them as much existing conditions information as possible,”
Bartch says. “What are the constraints to development, if any?”
That includes everything from zoning to utilities, by which civil
engineers mean water (into households), storm (carrying away rain),
and sanitary sewers.
PRS also develops grading plans, and figures out what to do with
elements like dry creeks, small streams and the tree lines that
border them. And they design systems, like roadways, needed to service
sites. And they design utilities.
“The farther they are, the more expensive development likely will
be,” Bartch says. “Water is easier to get to than sewer, because
water is pumped under pressure. With sewers you have to follow the
topography. It’s a gravity situation.”
Youknowwhat flows downhill.
Banger says his city will invest $31 million in utility infrastructure
in the next few years: $18 million in a municipally owned water
treatment plant and $13 million to expand wastewater treatment facilities.
He points out that the “water and sewer mains to reach these plants
are funded through user fees, not state not federal money.”
The civil engineers’ answers are important Banger says, because
“every ounce of concrete in the developments is paid for by the
private sector.”
Geotechincal services, like those provided by SCI Engineering, inform
many of these answers.
“‘Geotechnical’ essentially implies evaluating soils through test
borings and test pits,” says SCI president and CEO Bill Green, whose
Vietnam War stories sound like a cross between MASH and Catch-22.
“We run a variety of field and lab tests to determine the characteristics
of the soils on that land.”
Green’s results recommend design for foundations, floor slabs, pavement,
retaining walls design, retention or detention basin design...“any
earth-related construction activities.”
Consider how soil’s permeability would impact storm water’s flow
away from a site. SCI makes computations to establish the appropriate
grade. Or how soil density affects a location’s ability of support
pavement vs. homes vs. Class A office space.
“When we design cuts and fills,” Bartch says, “we need to know how
deep or how shallow the rock is. That’s where Bill helps us. Or
with the nature of the soils. For instance, in western St. Charles
County it is high in plasticity. He let’s us know where.”
The problem with high plasticity, Bartch explains, is that the soil
expands significantly when it gets wet. You don’t need an engineering
degree to imagine what a good soaking would do to a foundation.
Bartch says gravel solves the problem.
“It’s unusual to have uniform soil conditions throughout a site,”
Green says, “but they usually aren’t so different that one foundation
can’t do the job.”
SCI solved one such site for a school by supporting it on a combination
of spread footings (pads that support a single, usually interior
column or a wall) and drilled piers, penetrating to rock and capable
of handling higher loads.
Engineering has become increasingly tricky, Bartch explains, “because
the ground that remains, at least in the Golden Triangle has been
passed over before.”
The Golden Triangle is that portion of St. Charles County bordered
on the north by Highway 370 and Interstate 70, on the south by Highway
40/61, and on the east by the Missouri River. Wentzville finds itself
at the western point, where the highways meet.
“The flat ground has already been developed and what’s left is rough...flood
plains, floodways, and heavy contours with a lot of rise and fall,
the very reasons it wasn’t developed in the ’80s and ’90s,” Bartch
says.
That means in-fill development. The problems are a little more difficult,
he says, whether engineering or regulatory.
“Years ago,” Bartch reaches back, “with a lot of ground available
the biggest problem was to change zoning from agriculture to residential
or commercial, something denser. The population has grown so much
that any vacant parcel has a neighbor who doesn’t want to see it
rezoned.”
He explains that he is ceding zoning work to attorneys. For one
thing, “they’re doing more of everything. And a lot of issues go
to court if there’s a break down. So where conflict is possible,
there’s attorneys. And with TIFs and PUDs [planned unit developments],
zoning is getting more sophisticated.”
Best of all, Bartch forgoes the evening meetings of zoning commissions,
reserving that treat for friends like real estate attorney Keith
Hazelwood, of Hazelwood & Weber LLC in St. Charles.
“We played handball against each other for 20 years,” Bartch jokes.
“It’s payback for the games he won.”
“Clearly we have a couple of dynamics going on here,” Hazelwood
says, eschewing retaliatory remarks in favor of measured summation.
“One is the implication of being the one county in the United States
that has two major rivers flowing past it. We have a great deal
of land in flood plains. You also have terrain that becomes Ozark
foothills south and west of 40/61. These environmental circumstances
mean we’ve remained focused on the Golden Triangle.
“Secondly, as the area in the county that has been best suited to
development,” Hazelwood continues, “the Triangle is increasingly
full. Less land, more people. And the more people you have in an
area, the more neighbors you have show up to say what they want
done with nearby ground.”
Hazelwood also points to a “paradoxical situation. A lot of the
farmers who have been in the county for generations are disappointed
when they see growth and development nearby. But in many cases,
selling their ground amounts to their 401k plan for their senior
years.”
It’s nuts in O’Fallon.
Kevin Kipp runs Bubble Communications, a creative services and
community relations firm in St. Charles. |
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