El Paso County’s subdivision building code might be remodeled

It might be remodeling time for El Paso County’s subdivision building code.

Experts believe about 50,000 new homes will go up in the far east the next 20 years.

The land is flatter and cheaper to develop.

Smaller, more urban lots are growing in popularity. But the County requires subdivision lots be at least six-thousand square feet.

If developers want to build smaller lots, the County will begin asking them to build more parks.

“We’re facing an increased level of urbanization that’s unprecedented in the unincorporated areas of the County,” said Precinct 3 advisor Jose Landeros.

Landeros laid down the ground rules for the proposed code:

At least 15 percent of lots would still need to be at or above the 6,000-square-foot standard.
Lots smaller than 5,500 square feet would have to be within a quarter mile of the park’s center

“Under the variance process, we’d be allowed to receive park line in exchange for the increased density of the lots,” Landeros said.

For every non-standard-size lot, there would have to be .01 acres of park space. And there would have to be at least an entire acre for all subdivisions of 50 or more homes — with any of them being non-standard lot sizes.

“It’s gonna be an interesting calculation for us to do,” Landeros said. “I’m not sure that’s its always gonna make sense for us to then go for the variance between the standard 6000 square foot lot but in some cases it probably will make sense.”

Bobby Bowling of Tropicana Homes says he’s concerned about the cost to taxpayers.

“The County doesn’t have a funding mechanism or really a parks department to maintain the parks in the long term. So how good are the parks gonna look a year or two after we’ve dedicated them,” Bowling said.

The County is working to partner with cities to maintain the parks.

Bowling does agree with the County’s move to address a growing trend.

Smaller, more compact lots and smaller, more compact streets, and better land utilization, that’s a win win for everybody there, it allows more yield, less infrastructure needs to be developed to serve more people.

People like Sonny Huitron of Northeast El Paso.

The father of five says small lots don’t offer enough place for kids and a dog to play.

Having a park available for families to use and pets to use would definitely take place of having a large lot, or large yard.