Without the rebellion by developers that some expected, the El Paso City Council approved the major pieces of a new subdivision ordinance Tuesday that should change the way future neighborhoods look.

The new standards incorporate many smart growth principles, including wider sidewalks, narrower streets where possible, more cross streets to connect to other neighborhoods and make areas more walkable, more parks and landscaped ponding areas where possible.

The council will vote next week on the final product, a major revision of a complex, decade-old ordinance that took the city staff and a committee of developers, city planners, a neighborhood representative and a City Council member a year to complete after the city received recommendations from the Sefko consulting firm.

“Ordinarily this type of complete rewrite of the regulations does take many, many years to complete, but we have worked very diligently through an ad hoc committee that the City Plan Commission formulated in order to bring forward these recommendations to you in a 12-month period,” Assistant City Manager Pat Adauto said.

Gus Haddad, chairman of the plan commission, sought to assure the council, developers and public that the process was fair and balanced and that no interests had a disproportional influence over the committee or the results of its work.

“I believe the integrity of the process is perfected,” Haddad said. “I think the public was represented, and I think we were fair to all the members of the development committee whether or not they were on the ad hoc or anybody who came to speak. We treated them as equal partners.

“The City Plan Commission has recommended this ordinance and rewrite from the ad hoc committee to you.”

The commission recommended that the city work with the new ordinance for a year and then review any problems that may have arisen.

Eastridge/Mid-Valley Rep. Steve Ortega said the question of the developers’ heavy representation on the committee arose last week at a neighborhood association meeting.

“The concern was there was an over-representation from the industry, an over-representation from the (city) staff and an under-representation from the community perspective,” Ortega said.

Haddad said he thought committee member Charlie Wakeem, head of the Coronado Neighborhood Association, kept other association leaders abreast of the progress and adequately represented neighborhood interests.

“Those that we can learn the most from are those from are those that build our communities,” Haddad said, referring to developers.

Speaking personally, he said. “I have never once seen any member of the development community represent anything except the community’s interest as a whole.”

Wakeem said the committee needed no more public representation, offered his endorsement of the proposed ordinance as recommended by the committee and urged the council to approve it.

He showed photo slides comparing El Paso newer developments with their the “rooftop jungle” and wide, featureless streets on the East Side to the tree-lined avenues in Kern Place where narrower streets slow traffic and six-foot wide sidewalks allow people to walk side by side.

He noted that from 2002 to 2005, El Paso had the highest rate of pedestrians over 65 dying in accidents in Texas.

It wouldn’t cost much more to build better neighborhoods, he said.

Endorsements also came from Richard Dayoub, president of the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, and committee member Conrad Conde of the Conde Inc. engineering firm who called it “a good compromise,” parts of which he disagreed with strongly.

Quoting Confucius, Mayor John Cook said, “Compromise is the art of making no one happy.”

Byrd was the only member of the ad hoc committee to actively challenge many of the 21 major recommendations.

Most of the council’s votes were unanimous. Byrd gave up her objections on some and voted in the minority on the losing end of several.

The change that may be the biggest difference between today’s subdivisions and future ones was a committee-recommended requirement for a high level of street “connectivity,” based on a mathematical formula that will mean more cross streets, establishing a grid-like street pattern similar to older neighborhoods.

That is intended in large part to make it easier to walk to stores, schools, churches or other friends’ homes and to disperse automobile traffic as well.

Though some developers opposed it, no one spoke against that recommendation and it passed unanimously.

Byrd, Southwest Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Ortega lost a 4-3 vote on whether to allow developers of private parks in gated communities to receive a partial credit toward their obligation to build and improve public parks in new subdivisions.

Giving developers credit for private parks was the one compromise Cook requested.

Sidewalks were a big deal, and the council voted 5-2 to require five-foot-wide sidewalks instead of the four feet currently required or the six feet that Byrd and O’Rourke wanted.

David Crowder can be reached at dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or 915 351 0605