YUKON, Okla. – It’s roughly 320 acres of farmland stretching from Piedmont to Mustang Roads and Britton to Hefner.
If a developer has his way, though, it will someday be Redstone Ranch, a neighborhood consisting of around 1,200 homes.
But, hundreds of residents have signed a change.org petition against it.
“There’s already a burden placed on city responders trying to get out to the rural parts of town,” said Brandi Reynolds, who started the petition. “I moved out here, and I didn’t want to live next to neighborhoods with 1,200 houses. You know, we moved out here to be rural.”
Highway 4 or Piedmont Road sees dozens of accidents a year.
All of the roads surrounding the proposed new development are two lane.
“We’ve had so many accidents and, because I live right here, I literally can hear them inside my home. So, I mean, I hear it, I see it all the time. People have died out here,” said Scott Brakefield, who signed the petition. “You get higher density, more possibilities for crime, and you still don’t get any additional police or fire.”
Residents are also concerned about the burden this could place on Yukon schools and nearby Surrey Hills Elementary, which they said is already crowded.
“We know it’s going to happen. It’s happening already. We grew 300 students this year alone,” said Yukon superintendent Dr. Jason Simeroth.
Simeroth said the district has done a demographics study, hiring an outside company to take a look at all proposed plats and how this will affect them in the next five to 10 years.
That may mean more facilities, but he said the developer of Redstone Ranch has offered to help with that.
“They’ve actually said that we’d like to donate some land for a school,” Simeroth said.
He, too, though, echoes the concerns about the safety of traffic in the area.
“That is a concern, and it has been for a number of years, the fact that it’s just a two lane road when it’s so well traveled,” Simeroth said.
City officials said Redstone Ranch’s plan has been through a vigorous process and nothing has come up that would cause them to deny it.
At Thursday’s Oklahoma City planning commission meeting, the developer will be getting a preliminary plat approved.
They will have to present a final plat in the future, and city officials tell us that could take years.
Protesting residents said they will be at that planning commission meeting.
“We’re definitely not going to stop as of Thursday if we aren’t heard,” Reynolds said.
