By Hannah Curran, Editor
JEFFERSON COUNTY — Two hundred and fifty apartments may potentially come to a parcel of property located on the interstate side of Service Road in unincorporated Jefferson County near the Echo Hills neighborhood. This has created concern for Clay schools which are already at capacity, and Trussville traffic.
Easterwood Apartments in Gardendale (Photo courtesy of Dobbins Group website)
Bill Dobbins, Founding Principal of the Dobbins Group, said that the potential apartments are still in the planning stage, but they would be “luxury apartments.” The Dobbins Group just finished the Easterwood Apartments located in Gardendale.
“We’re a long way from starting; we’re just in an exploratory stage at this point,” Dobbins said. “They’re very nice, upscale, on the upper end of the market. They’ll have a clubhouse, pool, and a very nice amenity package.”
Dobbins said that the apartment’s price range would start at about $1,200 and go up to almost $3,000. In addition, a second piece of property south of the apartments would be developed in the future for single-family homes.
Dobbins said they haven’t started working on that project, but they are purchasing that piece with the apartments. A third parcel of land that has not been purchased could eventually add to the development.
Jefferson County Board of Education member and City of Clay Manager Ronnie Dixon said that the children who are school age would “shoehorned into the Clay-Chalkville feeder pattern, and there is simply no room.”
“There’s just no possible way that an apartment complex should fit into a space between Trussville and Clay,” Dixon said.
Dixon explained that every school in the Clay-Chalkville feeder pattern is at capacity. The Clay-Chalkville feeder pattern has approximately 750 students at Bryant Park, 750 students at Chalkville, 750 at Clay Elementary, roughly 1,100 at Clay-Chalkville Middle School, and roughly 1,400 at Clay-Chalkville High School.
“We just built me Bryant Park Elementary two years ago,” Dixon said. “That was to relieve crowding in Chalkville Elementary, so we reduced the student population at Chalkville Elementary from roughly 1,000 down to 750, and we then inherited the children that live in Grayson Valley that for 14 years had been bussed over to the Pinson feeder pattern. They were put where they’re properly supposed to be in the Clay-Chalkville feeder pattern.”
Dixon said that where the proposed location is said to be, all of the school-age students would be zoned to Clay Elementary, Clay-Chalkville Middle School, and Clay-Chalkville High School.
The proposed apartments would also fall under the Center Point Fire District. Dixon said that one of the things that would affect an apartment complex would be the height of the structure in consideration of the ladder truck.
“I, of course, haven’t seen any kind of drawings or anything as far as the structure, but Center Point Fire District has already approached the four cities in the unincorporated area that they currently cover with the idea that they need a new 75-foot ladder truck and the cost of that one truck is a million dollars,” Dixon said. “So if they built a three-story structure, I’m sure the height of that truck would have to increase from 75 to 100 feet, which would mean the cost would increase.”
“It’s a great location,” Dobbins said. “We obviously like Trussville; it’s a very desirable place to be.”
The proposed apartments would have layouts for one, two, and three bedrooms, but Dobbins said the two and three-bedroom apartments are geared more toward roommates.
Dobbins added that the apartments don’t cater to children and would not have playgrounds on the property.
“If a family wants to live there, obviously they can, but what we have done is designed it to where it works much better for people that are singles or roommate programs,” Dobbins said. “We got a really nice pool, fitness centers, and co-working areas; it’s all set up for that. What we don’t have are playgrounds and kiddie pools and all the stuff that goes with a different target.”
Dobbins said their target is the “just out of college student to 35 years old,” but there is nothing to say that families can’t live there.
“That was our primary target in Lakeshore and in Homewood,” Dobbins said. “All over the southeast, where we develop, that is our target. We really don’t go after families, but the reality of that is that that’s not really the way apartments are designed anymore. It’s not that we’re against families. It’s that families want to live in houses. They don’t want to live in apartments.”
Jefferson County Commissioner Joe Knight explained that the property was zoned R-4 Multifamily by the county in 1971.
“I’ve done a historical search on it,” Knight said. “The planning and zoning board denied their request, and then the Commission overruled the planning and zoning board and put it on there in 1971.”
Trussville Mayor Buddy Choat said he was made aware of this project about a month ago, and was immediately concerned with the potential traffic impact on Service Road. Choat said he was told the original plan was to have three phases. He said the first phase is 250 units, the second phase is at least 250 units, and the third phase is 21 single-family lots.
“We were not happy with the traffic study that was originally done, and requested a second study be completed,” Choat said.
According to Dobbins, a second traffic study is in the works and will be submitted to the city of Trussville in early September.
