The city of Norman held a pre-development meeting Thursday to discuss the creation of the proposed Sooner Village district located on the southeast corner of Highway 9 and Jenkins Avenue.
Sooner Village is intended to be a mixed use area that will include hotels, apartments, townhouses, corporate spaces, storage spaces and shopping.
According to Sean Rieger of Rieger Law Group, the preliminary plat is a 56-acre tract of raw land. The meeting held an open forum for residents neighboring the area to voice any potential concerns or questions they had regarding the planned development.
Residents primarily questioned Rieger on the logistics of stormwater drainage and how it would affect the surrounding area.
Rieger said every applicant follows the same stormwater drainage criteria when proposing a developmental plan.
“Whatever the engineers have to follow is our standard. We're really not allowed to engineer differently than the engineering criteria, so what we consider is what the city of Norman requires us to do with the stormwater flow on and off the property,” Rieger said.
Residents asked Rieger how much stormwater drainage would flow into Bishop Creek.
According to the civil engineer of the project, a majority of the drainage would be contained in the detention ponds within the developmental area, but 35% would be bypassed into Bishop Creek.
Residents also asked how they planned to preserve open space and green areas and protect wildlife.
According to Gunner Joyce of Rieger Law Group, the entire area is zoned industrial, which wouldn’t allow for any limits on construction on green space, but by doing it as a planned unit development the already existing green space is locked within the development.
The proposed development will go to the Norman planning commission where the committee will decide whether to recommend the development to the city council.
This article was edited by Alexia Aston, Taylor Jones and Peggy Dodd.
