College Station's City Council on Thursday cleared the way for Savannah Oaks, a master-planned community on about 1,267 vacant acres in the southern part of the city, and gave the city its first written definition of a data center. Both votes were unanimous, according to the city's live blog of the Oct. 22 meeting.
Savannah Oaks
The rezoning changes the land from Rural and Commercial Industrial to two planned districts: about 1,104 acres of Planned Development District and 162.6 acres of Planned Mixed-Use District. The land lies east of Nantucket Drive and State Highway 6, with the Pebble Creek subdivision on one side and Southern Pointe on the other. Plans call for single-family homes, apartments, commercial space, parks and trails.
Base zoning in the larger district is General Suburban plus Natural Areas Protected. The mixed-use piece uses Multi-Family and General Commercial, again with Natural Areas Protected. The land was zoned A-O, later renamed Rural, when the city annexed it, and part of it was designated Commercial Industrial in 2007, the city said.
In a second unanimous vote, the council amended the Thoroughfare and Active Transportation master plans to fit the subdivision. The changes realign four planned thoroughfares and reclassify two, drop a planned grade-separated crossing for bicycles and pedestrians, move the route of the future Alum Creek shared-use path, and replace some planned bike lanes and sidewalks with shared-use paths.
What counts as a data center
The council amended the Unified Development Ordinance to define a data center as a structure, or part of one, bigger than 5,000 square feet that is used mainly for computer or network equipment that collects, stores, manages, processes or transmits digital data. The amendment also updates the use tables that say which zoning districts can allow one.
Through the conditional use permit process, the council can attach conditions such as buffering, screening, lighting and noise limits when it considers a specific site, the city said.
