Sorrento Town Council annexes Orange Grove

• By JOHN MCMILLAN
• Advocate River parishes bureau
• Published: Jun 3, 2009 - Page: 3B

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SORRENTO — The Town Council annexed the 349-lot Orange Grove subdivision Tuesday.

The annexation is contingent on an agreement with the community development district, the body that controls the subdivision, being accepted.

The agreement states that the infrastructure in the subdivision will be turned over to the town when each final plat is approved.

The council and Mayor Brenda Melancon scrambled to rewrite the annexation ordinance during the meeting to cover a number of issues, including the zoning designation.

While Orange Grove is a single-family subdivision, it could not be zoned R1 because the subdivision is a planned unit development, known as a PUD, and no PUD is allowed to be developed in an R1 zone.

Thus Orange Grove was designated R2, but will remain a single-family subdivision.

Attached to the ordinance was an agreement with Orange Grove that the developers would pay the town $75,000 when the three lots that were going to be dedicated to a fire station are sold, and another $75,000 will be paid when five lots that were going to be dedicated to a clubhouse are sold.

Orange Grove developers had set aside those lots for a fire station and clubhouse when it was approved by Ascension Parish government, but now that it is going to be in Sorrento, the lots will be sold.

Tony Bull, the chief financial officer of Renaissance Development Group LLC, the developer of Orange Grove, told the council he planned to immediately develop 10 of the lots that are adjacent to the primary school the Ascension Parish School Board is building on land donated by the subdivision.

The development of other lots would depend on improvement in the economy, Bull said.

The annexation will add 173.04 acres to the town, of which 135 acres are in the subdivision, the mayor said. The subdivision is on La. 22 west of Interstate 10.

In other business, the council learned the Louisiana Rural Water Association found 44 violations in the town’s sewer system. All but eight have been rectified.