Part 2 Special Series - 2 Articles By John Tedesco Express-News Staff Writer Dig up an old plan, get vested But records show the developers began cutting down 600 acres of trees in August 2001, the same month the city signed off on their exemption to the tree rules...Today, homebuilders who bought parts of the property from Powell and Denton are preserving the 400 acres and wiping out much of the remaining forest, grinding the landscape to bare limestone for 2,000 homes. See 2nd article: Priced out of protection
Dig up an old plan, get vested 10/17/2005 John Tedesco Express-News Staff Writer
The year was 1984. The Soviet Union boycotted the Summer Olympics, Ronald Reagan trounced Walter Mondale and a feisty old woman on TV asked, "Where's the beef?" It also was an era of lenient city codes, making it an ideal time to launch a dense, 2,000-home subdivision in far North Bexar County. San Antonio developers Lloyd Denton Jr. and Gene Powell hadn't actually drafted plans for the site in the 1980s. In fact, they had no connection to it until they bought the rural property in February 2001. But like other developers in San Antonio, Powell and Denton steered clear of modern land-use rules by researching the property's history, finding an old plan filed by someone else and claiming it as their own. A review of city files suggests this method has been used to avoid city codes in scores of projects dating as far back as 1908. A Texas "vested rights" law allows the exemptions to transfer between property owners, if the original owner filed virtually any kind of land permit... See Express-News for full article Dig up an old plan, get vested
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