An established pattern appeared on the agenda of the Jefferson County Commission’s committee meeting Tuesday as not one but two items sought zoning changes for residential development in McCalla.

Development Services Director Josh Johson said development in and around the unincorporated area in western Jefferson County has made it a popular target for developers seeking to build residences.

“You’ve got the hospital (UAB West), Smucker’s (and) there’s a new industrial site out there,” Johnson said. “It was a spec building but now they’ve got an occupant in it. That, plus increased production in JeffMet (McCalla) just with the existing tenants that are already there. And from what I’ve heard, even Mercedes in (Vance) is expanding again.”

The development services director said cellphone GPS activity shows that there’s a pretty even distribution of persons living in McCalla driving to various destinations, including downtown Birmingham, the Mercedes plant in Vance and the Jefferson County Economic & Industrial Development Authority’s JeffMet McCalla industrial park campus.

“I’d probably say roughly 30% or so in some of those subdivisions are working out in the Tuscaloosa area,” Johnson said. McCalla is “just ideally located and it’s getting a lot of development pressure due to the employment in the area.”

While McCalla is not a town, it is taking on the characteristics of a boom town.

“It is developing at the rate of a town and that comes with growing pains,” Johnson said. “That’s kind of the thing we’re trying to manage. How can McCalla grow sustainably so that we can provide workforce housing without overwhelming the school system, overwhelming the road network and all those different things (like) the sewer system, all those things that are critically important to the quality of life.”

The development services director wants to avoid the problems of trying to retrofit an area after it has grown unabated.

“With the new Comp (Comprehensive) Plan and our new zoning ordinance once it gets adopted, we’re trying to let that be the sort of the standard and trying to have more workforce housing, plus commercial retail, so people live, work, shop, play and recreate – all those things – within Jefferson County,” he said. “We (want to) create that circular economy. It’s not ideal for people to drive from Calera to McCalla to work and vice versa. We’re trying to create a more tighter-knit geographic area.”

One zoning item on the agenda was a carryover from prior requests for rezoning. That developer initially hoped to build garden homes on Lou George Loop.

“Now he’s at R1,” Johnson said. “We went from like 35-, 40-foot lots to 75-foot. Some were 80.”

Said Joe Knight: “We’ve been back and forth a couple of times on that one. I think the developer has worked pretty well with us.”

The other McCalla zoning request is from a developer who wants to add 59 residential lots to Arrow Wood, an existing garden home subdivision. While the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval, Johnson expressed concerns, including plans to tie into a private wastewater system that has generated concerning media reports.

Each of the zoning requests was moved to the agenda for the commission’s regular meeting Thursday.