COUNCIL APPROVES LEXINGTON DEVELOPMENT

The Cape Girardeau City Council this week gave first-round approval of a new subdivision on the east end of Lexington Avenue.

G. Keith Deimund had requested the rezoning of a portion of the subdivision from single- to multiple-family residential.

The city's planning and zoning commission last month recommended approval of the request, but not until Deimund and neighbors of the proposed development agreed to a compromise.

Deimund had asked that the tract on the east side of Lexington, west of Belleridge subdivision, be given single-family, two-family and multiple-family zoning.

But by the end of the nearly three-hour commission meeting, Deimund agreed to a compromise plan that eliminated the multiple-family lots in the northern three acres of the tract and eliminated all but about 25 duplex lots.

All of the property that fronts Lexington will remain a single-family residential district, and the duplexes would abut a subdivision that already includes some two-family and commercial zoning. Initially, about half of the nearly 90 lots were proposed for duplexes.

But on Wednesday, Councilman Mary Wulfers also asked about the status of Flad Avenue, on the east side of the proposed development.

In Deimund's proposal, the back yards of homes in the east end of the subdivision would front Flad Avenue.

"No one will want to buy a lot that faces a dog pen, and that's what we're facing here," said Ray Miller, who owns a lot on Flad.

Flad is an undeveloped street, and Deimund said it's not likely abutting property owners will favor paving the street because of its cost, which would have to be billed to abutting property owners.

"I've talked with some of the people who live in that area, and I've talked with the church (that abuts on Flad) and they're not interested in paving that street," he said. "For me to pave that, would not only cost me a lot of money, but I'd lose at least three lots."

Deimund said there's a great demand for additional duplex properties in Cape Girardeau.

"I probably get one or two calls a week from people asking about duplex properties," he said. "There's a great demand for duplexes. Typically, the owner would live in one side and rent out the other."

Miller said he wasn't opposed to the subdivision, but that he hoped there was some way to approve Deimund's plans while "maintaining the integrity of the subdivision" where he owns a lot.

"I hope we can compromise the situation, so that Keith can build his subdivision without compromising the lots on Flad," Miller said.

In other business Wednesday, the council changed the language of two measures that will be on the April 5 city election ballot.

Voters will decide whether to extend the city's quarter-cent capital improvements tax and whether to issue revenue bonds to separate combined storm and sanitary sewers in older sections of town and make other sewer improvements.

The council also approved a measure to allow for construction of bridges over Cape LaCroix Creek as part of the Missouri Highway and Transportation Department's Mississippi River bridge route project in Cape Girardeau.