The Marthasville Board of Aldermen heard a proposal at their Wednesday, Oct. 21 meeting for building a total of 76 new homes over the next six years on property that is currently the southern portion of the former Happy Apples orchard.

The subdivision is being proposed by developer Northern Star Homes. Cameron Lueken, president of Wunderlich Surveying & Engineering, said the goal at last week’s meeting was to have a “30,000-foot-view conversation” about the possible subdivision. “We call this the sketch plan phase,” he said.

Marthasville aldermen approved a preliminary plat from another developer in July to begin building homes in a different section of the orchard, which would have extended Three Street further north. Lueken said it was his understanding that this previous plan is no longer moving forward. 

While the development outlined in the sketch plan presented last week would eventually connect to Three Street in 2029, extending it slightly to the north, the street would then turn to the west after just one residential lot to connect with Highway 47. Unlike the previous plan, the new one envisions starting construction from the lots closest to Highway 47.

The new sketch plan calls for building 10 single-family homes next year, followed by 13 more in a second phase in 2028, 17 in 2029, 10 in 2030, 14 in 2031, and 12 in 2032.

In response to a question from Alderman Chris DeVore, Northern Star representatives said lot sizes would range from 7,500 square feet up to 12,000 or even as high as 17,000 on some of the cul-de-sacs.

Besides the different street layout and starting point for home construction, the new plan also differs from the one presented in July in that it would not continue construction of homes in the same style as The Orchards subdivision directly south along Three Street, built starting in 1996.

Northern Star always builds homes with two-car garages and two additional off-street parking spaces, for a total of four off-street parking spaces, Lueken said.

“If you go over to Three Street right now, there’s no garages, there’s no concrete driveways,” he added. “It’s going to be a completely different product than what’s there now.”

The developer who submitted the July preliminary plat tentatively agreed to extend Three Street as a 40-foot-wide street with a 50-foot right-of-way, rather than 35 feet wide with a 40-foot right-of-way as originally proposed.

After some discussion last week, however, city officials appeared satisfied with Northern Star’s proposal for a 35-foot-wide street with a 50-foot right-of-way for some of the streets. Northern Star representatives noted that houses would not face the slightly narrower streets in the development, making it unlikely that cars would often be parked on them.

“I don’t think that’s the end of the world, a 35-foot-wide street,” said Mayor David Lange.

A bigger concern, however, was the projected impact on the city’s wastewater treatment facility, currently rated for 120,000 gallons per day.

“We’ve roughly got about 29,000 gallons per day of extra capacity right now, and those 76 homes would roughly eat that up,” Mayor Lange said. “The capacity of the lagoon would probably have to be increased for the DNR to be OK with us building additional houses.”

He noted that improvements have been made to the wastewater treatment facility since it received its current capacity rating. The city has added a fourth cell to the lagoon, which is 15 feet deep compared to the first three that are around three feet deep or less, Lange said.

“Plus we’ve moved the outflow from an unregistered stream to the Missouri River, which is one of the two best places to dump treated sewage to in the state of Missouri,” he added.

If the city makes the Missouri Department of Natural Resources aware of those upgrades, “I think they would increase the capacity another 30- or 40,000 gallons per day without doing any additional improvements,” he said.

Alderman Nick Lange noted that when the facility reaches 85 percent capacity, “that’s going to trigger a mandate where we probably have to look into how we’re going to manage or expand our future capacity,” and depending how the treatment lagoon is rated, it could impact progress on the housing development.

With a higher rating reflecting the upgrades already made, he said, the lagoon would reach 85 percent capacity in the second or third phase of the development.

“If it’s based on 120,000 a day without any other consideration, we’ll be triggered quicker, before this first phase gets even done,” he added.

Lueken said the phased approach Northern Star is proposing would give the city time to address the capacity issues at the sewage treatment facility.

Aldermen also brought up various other potential concerns.

“We’re going to be putting a lot of roofs, a lot of concrete, all that stuff on the ground,” said Alderman Gary Dixon. “Where are we going to put that so we don’t flood out somebody?”

Leo Meyer similarly said the city should require Northern Star to pay for studies of stormwater runoff, along with water and sewer service impacts of the development, and put up a bond. Lueken said those are all things the company is accustomed to doing.

“The city, since I’ve been here my whole life in the city limits, there’s been different developers that come in, and they start stuff, and then they don’t finish. And there’s still half dead-ends, no cul-de-sacs, rubbish and things sitting around town,” Nick Lange said.

In some cases, the city has later paid to connect streets or clean up parcels where work has gone unfinished, he added. “We want to support something here, but we just want to set the city up for success,” he said.

“I think we’re kind of on the same page,” said Northern Star owner Vic Hoerstkamp, adding that he doesn’t want to cause problems for the city. “If we can’t do it so everybody wins, then we’re not really interested,” he added.

“If we grant a preliminary plat to you, we’re going to put all the infrastructure in,” Hoerstkamp said. “Now, will all the houses get built? Well, somebody will have to come along and buy them, so I can’t guarantee that, but we’ll put all the infrastructure in and make sure that’s complete.”