The City of Hastings has multiple housing developments being built and in progress, with the council and
city staff working on two larger projects, among other smaller ones that will go before the council later this fall for approval.
Community Development Director John Hinzman was featured on Community In Depth on KDWA and said one will be north of Hastings High School.
“One of them is a new development out north of the high school between Featherstone Road and County Road 42. That’ll be the extension of General Sieben Drive all the way up as well, called Pleasant Valley Farms. This will be about 380 new homes, most of those single families, and some townhomes in there as well. Done by a really great developer who did Cobblestone Lake and Brandtjen Farm out near Lakeville. Does some really high-quality development, lots of great amenities. So that’ll go through entitlements this fall. They should be starting construction of the first edition in the spring, and lots available after that.
Hinzman said there will be plenty of amenities included in that new development.
“The first phase of development will be about 50 homes, and they’ll start the construction of infrastructure next year. Homes for sale at the end of the year, and then all depending on how quickly the demand is. And one of the cool things about this one too is we’re going to create a new city park in this development that’s really going to be neat. It’s going to be a three-acre park with 10 acres of open space around it and some great trail connections to it.”
The second development being worked on has taken a longer time to get going, said Hinzman.
“Working on another one right now that’s been ongoing for a number of years down at Highway 316 and Michael Avenue. That one is a new owner of the property. They’ve submitted plans for about 160 single-family homes and some twin homes on the site as well, called Walden in Hastings. So that’s going to be going forward this fall as well. Probably going to planning commission September-October—that time frame. They had a plan originally different developer that had much more density in it something more about 450 homes, so this is about the same layout but primarily single-family homes with a few twin homes in it.”
Hinzman said in addition to housing, the city is expanding street access to a popular ongoing development.
“Northridge is going to be continued west of General Sieben Drive. This is the last phase of the Heritage Ridge development, so there’ll be another 40 lots created in the next couple of months here. So, new home lots for construction there, and with Heritage, they’re completely out of lots for development, so there’s high demand over there.”
In order to keep Hastings growing, the possibility of annexing land is in discussion.
“What we’ve done in the past is we’ve annexed land as we’ve grown. When you look at the city boundary versus where the area of the city is developed, it’s pretty much the same thing. So any really new areas or vacant land is within townships right now, and we wait for farmers or landowners who desire annexation to approach us to see if we would be interested in it. One of the things we don’t do is we don’t go out and try to incite folks to sell. It’s more we want to be prepared if people want to choose to sell that we can plan for the development of the property.”
Hear the full interview on community in depth on KDWA and online at kdwa.com.
[Click the soundbite to listen to the report.]