Design Review Commission backs modified landscape plate for Meadows at Clarus Ridge

The Collierville Design Review Commission on a unanimous vote recommended approval of a minor planned development amendment for the Meadows at Clarus Ridge subdivision that changes the approved landscape plate along Sycamore Road and East Shelby Drive.

Maria, the town planner, told commissioners that Cruise Development requested an amendment to the Meadows at Clarus Ridge PD pattern book to modify a reverse-frontage landscape plate where a roadside ditch makes planting and maintaining mulch beds and shrubs difficult. The 61.96-acre site is zoned R-1 (low-density residential) and lies at the northeast corner of Sycamore Road and East Shelby Drive within the Clarus Ridge at Cartwright Farms PD.

The amendment would eliminate shrubs and mulch beds in the roadside buffer and replace them with a double row of understory street trees. Steven Williams of Cruise Development, the applicant, said the change responds to erosion and maintenance problems: "it's just gonna push that mulch and wash it out," he told the commission, describing how runoff from an increasingly impervious corridor would degrade planted mulch beds.

Why it matters: the outline plan for Clarus Ridge at Cartwright Farms was recorded in June 2021 and the PD was approved through Resolution 20…