Board approves Oak Grove High School site plan revisions, with conditions on stormwater and light studies

The Board of Alderwomen on June 2 approved an updated site plan for Oak Grove High School and Oak Grove Primary School parking expansions, with building permits contingent on an updated stormwater study and a photometric (lighting) study.

City planning staff told the board the Oak Grove School District’s renovation is funded by a voter-approved bond and includes an auxiliary gym addition, exterior material updates and expanded parking at both the high school and primary school. Matt Randall, city planning staff, said the application "meets the general requirements of the UDC and therefore recommend[s] approval," subject to the studies.

The site plan originally proposed removing a row of mature trees along Oak Ridge to make room for parking. Planning and Zoning Commission members and nearby residents raised concerns that newly planted trees would take decades to match today’s buffer. In response, the district and its engineers submitted a revised plan that shifts parking west, preserves the majority of the existing tree line and increases the number of added parking stalls.

Brandon Hart, president of CEDC, the civil engineering firm on the project, said the revised layout moves curb lines roughly 30 feet away from the tree stand and leaves the trees largely intact. "We were right now probably about 5 feet off the tree line," Hart said, adding that some pruning may be necessary but the overall stand will remain. He described the traffic pattern as a southbound one-way with a 14-foot bypass lane so vehicles and emergency vehicles can pass. "What it would be is it'd be southbound 1 way, and then there's a bus drop off," Hart said.

Hart told the board the design change also allowed the district to convert an open ditch north of the track into an underground stormwater detention system, freeing that area for additional parking while addressing erosion concerns flagged by the city’s third-party reviewer, OWN. Staff said OWN reviewed the submitted detention report and recommended approval.

Staff reported parking counts and changes in the submission materials. In the initial site plan staff said the east and south expansions added 48 parking spaces to bring the high school lot to 374 spaces, including 10 ADA spaces; earlier-approved north expansion work was expected to bring total campus parking to "600 plus." The revised plan increased the new additional stalls in the updated layout from 61 to 90, according to the presentation to the board. For the primary school, staff reported 127 new parking spaces in the proposed expansion (the presenter later noted a subtotal of 146 if counting 20 spaces already built and six ADA spaces from a prior plan).

Staff also recommended approval of alternate exterior materials (metal accent pieces) as permitted by the Unified Development Code (UDC). Pam Pope, the board’s planning and zoning liaison, told the board she appreciated that the district had "took our comments to heart" and that the lighting samples included in the packet alleviated earlier neighbor concerns about light spill. Hart said the fixtures are recessed cutoff lights intended to push light toward the building and away from nearby houses; with the revised layout, he said light poles would sit farther from property lines and likely register "0 foot candles" at the property line.

After brief questions from Alderwoman Melissa Johnson about traffic flow during events, and assurances that a bypass lane and bus drop-off are part of the design, Alderwomen moved to approve the modified site plan. The motion passed on a voice vote. The board’s approval conditions require the district to provide an updated photometric study and an updated stormwater plan acceptable to city staff and the city’s third-party reviewer before issuance of building permits.

Next steps: the district will finalize and submit the updated stormwater and photometric studies for review by staff and OWN; staff indicated building permits will be held until those documents meet code requirements.