• Site description/location: The 106 acre Belterra Commercial Site is roughly bounded by HWY 290, Belterra Drive, Trinity Hills Drive and Nutty Brown Road. It fronts the south side of HWY 290 between the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) office and Belterra Drive.
• The 106-acre commercial tract is shown in the illustration below as “Mixed Use”.

The design process used to develop the concepts presented in this plan is the product of a concentrated site analysis performed by our award-winning team of design consultants. The product of their site analysis was a set of guiding principals to ensure development of the tract is congruent with the natural character of the land.

These guiding principals set forth by the site analysis are:

1. Honor the site’s Environmental constraints

• Hydrology/Stream buffers
• Vegetation/Large stands of native trees

2. Preserve the Hill Country feel of the site

• Preserve hill tops
• Provide buffers along internal and external roads
• Preserve views

3. Integrate the site into the development so that it flows seamlessly from the residential development and minimizes impacts on our residents

• Provide controlled access to the site
• Tie green belts and trails in to those already established for Belterra
• Buffer the most dense commercial areas from the existing residential development.

The following drawing (Exhibit 1) shows proposed open spaces and view corridors drawn over an aerial photograph.

Our designers used the guiding principals identified above to set up a transportation and site access plan that shows how people would likely enter the site. The following drawing (Exhibit 2) shows how vehicles and pedestrians might access the site.

• “Public”- meaning vehicles that would likely arrive to the commercial site from outside Belterra.
• “Neighborhood”- meaning vehicles that would likely arrive to the commercial site from inside Belterra.
• “Pedestrian”- meaning interconnectivity of the commercial site access to the neighborhood greenbelt and trail system.

• The main public site access point is on HWY 290 aligned with the entry at Ledgestone. This access provides the best visibility into the project, and due to it’s location across from the driveway to Ledgestone, it would likely be signalized at some point in the future.
• Additional secondary public access points on HWY 290 would likely be “right in/right out” access points.
• The primary neighborhood access is on Belterra Drive with a secondary neighborhood access point on Trinity Hills. Neighborhood access points would be designed to discourageoffsite traffic from entering the Belterra neighborhoods.
• Pedestrian access will be tied to the existing trail system and sidewalks.

• The most dense retail uses should center on the portion of the site adjacent to the TxDOT site where visibility is best from HWY 290, where heavy uses would be most isolated from the existing residential areas, and where traffic could easily circulate between the commercial site and HWY 290.
• Office and lighter retail uses should be predominate in areas west and south of the heavy retail uses.
• Any multiple-unit residential uses such as brownstones should be located on the remaining areas to act as a buffer between the commercial uses and the existing residential areas.
• The open spaces along drainage ways and within the sites provide an excellent opportunity for public use.

Back