Friendswood wants large lots to stay large

Friendswood plans to host a town hall meeting to discuss the potential rezoning of homes in large-lot subdivisions.
The city is interested in changing the zoning of those homes from single family to single-family estate, Mayor David Smith said. That would mean that such properties could not be divided into less than two-acre tracts of land, he said.
During its meeting Monday night, City Council directed city staff to set up a town hall meeting to discuss the possible zoning change, Smith said.
It's a protection measure to keep speculators from going into these estate type areas and splitting up the land into small tracts of land," Smith said.
The city's large-lot subdivisions include Windsong, El Dorado, Central Park and Mustang Meadows, Smith said. They also include deed-restricted subdivisions like Polly Ranch, he said.
Deed restrictions can run out, so that can cause a problem later on in the future," Smith said.
Smith said it is his idea to explore the change.
This would protect those areas' quality of life," Smith said. That's pretty much the reason why those people moved there. They wanted to have more of a country feel. They wanted to be very much suburban. This would also allow us to influence what our community looks like and what the population will eventually be."
Smith said he is already aware of some homes whose properties have been purchased by developers and subdivided to build more homes.
As property values go up in the area, it's going more and more tempting for these properties to be split apart," he said. By controlling that and reducing the impact that it'll have, we'll actually reduce the overall potential population of the city. That speaks to quality of life, traffic congestion, and the need to provide services to more people."