Agile rephases Sundance Pointe subdivision phase 1 plans

Smith, addressing the council at a regular meeting on May 8. “The market has been more normal, or worse than normal, and there is a lot of uncertainty around interest rates and things like that, so we have decided that it is a better business decision to break the 79 lots into two phases.”

 Smith said following the original plan would take, “multiple, multiple years to get through,” adding that the rising cost of doing business, including the price of material, such as pipe and asphalt, was a contributing factor in the decision.

 “The other thing that really impacted the phasing is [that] development costs in the past two years have almost doubled” he said. “Just about every single thing you buy to develop land has all gone up a dramatic amount.”

 Smith said phase 1A will begin as soon as engineering and construction drawings are approved, which should be very soon. He added that important components that were projected to be long delayed have suddenly become available, helping move the project forward sooner than anticipated.

 “Originally, there had been forecast a transformer shortage to where we weren’t going to get [electrical] transformers until fall of this year,” he said. “They came in about six weeks ago, or something like that, unexpectedly, and so our plan is to move forward with it as soon as we get engineering plans approved.”

 Smith said work on phase 1B will be determined by the market and how quickly houses in phase 1A sell.

 “Typically, we like to be sold between half and two thirds of a phase before we move forward and start the next one,” he said. “So, it’s a little bit difficult for me to determine how long it’s going to take to sell 25 to 30 lots in phase 1A; hopefully a year, but only time will tell, really.”

 Since phase 1B will not be developed under the original plan, those acreages will continue to stand vacant. Agile will be required to install curb, gutter, and asphalt for that phase at the same time it is being installed for phase 1A. Agile will not be required to install sidewalks for phase 1B at that time. Both phases are directly adjacent to Ninth Street.

 In the meantime, Agile says it will take measures to prevent overgrowth on the vacant land.

 “It can’t be farmed due to how the water runs on it and how small it is, so we plan to maintain it,” Smith said. “We will pay someone to disc it or spray it for weeds. The other thing is, I feel we have a much bigger financial incentive to keep the weeds under control in phase 1B because we are going to be selling houses in phase 1A and people aren’t going to buy houses if there are weeds that are eight-feet tall, right across the road from them or they are blowing into our brand new houses that are built.”

 For more information on Sundance Pointe, visit www.SundancePointeID.com.