By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – The owner of a 20-acre tract of land near the intersection of Butler Road and Mission Hills Road has withdrawn its request to rezone the land to allow for a proposed 132-home development, City Council members announced during an Oct. 15 meeting.

Council members voted unanimously during the meeting to withdraw the rezoning request from Alamerica Bank, which owns the property and was planning to work with Rausch Coleman Builders to develop the land.

The council originally was set to vote on the rezoning during its Aug. 27 meeting, but the matter failed due to the lack of a second after several Alabaster residents expressed concerns about residential development along traffic-choked Alabama 119. During a Sept. 10 meeting, council members voted unanimously to reconsider the rezoning and set it for a public hearing on Oct. 15.

In June, the Alabaster Planning and Zoning Commission voted to recommend the council rezone about 20.5 acres from a combination of R-7 townhouse district and B-3 community business district to R-4 patio and garden home district.

The Oct. 15 meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at Alabaster City Hall, and the council will consider rezoning the land with a stipulation no more than 135 homes be built on the property in the future.

If the rezoning had been approved by the council, it would have allowed for a new 132-home development connected to the Grande View Gardens neighborhood. No development would have been able to move forward on the land while the city’s yearlong residential building moratorium, which went into effect on Aug. 27, is still in place along the Alabama 119 corridor.

Council members previously said rezoning the land could be beneficial to the city in the long run, as the property’s current zoning allows for higher-density development than would be allowed under the R-4 zoning.

Under the current zoning, a developer would be able to build 55 single-family homes, 104 townhomes and about 40,000 square feet of commercial space. The 132 proposed garden homes under the R-4 zoning would have been similar to the existing homes in the Grande View Gardens subdivision, according to the Planning and Zoning Commission.