By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – A developer is looking bring a new subdivision to southern Alabaster, and took a significant step toward making the project a reality during a Dec. 15 city Planning and Zoning Commission meeting.

During the meeting, the Commission voted unanimously to combine four parcels of property into two parcels, and agreed to rezone a large tract of land adjacent to the Shelby County Airport from a mixture of agricultural and residential to entirely agricultural.

By combining the four lots into two lots, the Commission created a 182-acre plot, which will one may house the proposed Mallard Landing neighborhood, and an about 300-acre parcel now zoned as agricultural.

Because a previous developer planned to construct a neighborhood on the 182-acre parcel off Smokey Road near the airport in the mid-2000s, the land is already zoned as residential to allow for the new neighborhood.

During an interview after the meeting, Mallard Landing developer Jason Spinks said he acquired the property near Meadow View Elementary School from the original developer about eight years ago. The original developer cleared most of the land and completed some site preparation work, but never began construction on the neighborhood because of the national housing market downturn.

“We’ve done a lot of remediation to get the site ready to develop again,” Spinks said. “We are planning for the lots to be fewer, bigger and nicer than what was originally planned out there.”

Spinks said he is tentatively planning for the neighborhood to include 439 lots ranging in width from 60 feet to 90 feet. The development will include a mixture of house sizes, he said. Plans call for the neighborhood to have two entrances off Smokey Road – One near the Shelby County Airport and another near Meadow View Elementary.

The layout and number of lots for the proposed neighborhood is still preliminary, and the site plan must be reviewed by the public and the Planning and Zoning Commission before work can begin. As of Dec. 16, the developer had not yet submitted a site plan for the Commission to review.

Spinks said he is nearly finished constructing a house on the 300-acre lot, and will put the home up for sale at the end of January.

“We wanted to wait for the market to recover before proceeding with this development,” Spinks said. “If we don’t hit any bumps in the road, we look to have the preliminary approval in the spring, and start work soon afterward.”