Tyler City Council is pictured here during a meeting on Aug. 14, 2019, at City Hall. (Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

The city of Tyler is looking at building an affordable housing development in a neighborhood near T.J. Austin Elementary School.

The development would be a new subdivision at the corner of Palace Avenue and Queen Street, near the fire station under construction on West Gentry Parkway.

The project has a long timeline. At a meeting at 9 a.m. Wednesday, the Tyler City Council will consider approving a $76,653 engineering contract, an early step in the process.

The money would come from a Community Development Block Grant, a federal grant that supports projects in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

The engineering work would involve designing the site plan, according to city engineer Lisa Crossman. Future work would include site grading, street design, and utility installation, before homes can start being built.

The land in question is a large plot that borders Palace Avenue and West Gentry Parkway. Fire Station No. 1 has been under construction since November on the southwest corner, and land is being set aside for a future fire administration office.

“It’s really fairly limited space that we have so the challenge is trying to get all of the amenities that we really want to provide to the future residents of that neighborhood and actually make them fit within that area,” Crossman said.

“We have some pretty decent preliminary layouts,” she said. “We haven’t really settled on the final layout, and we’re looking at not just the houses. We want to make sure they have adequate parking, adequate sidewalks.”

“(We’re) trying to make some green space areas for kids to be able to play, walking trails,” she said. “We want to make this a nice, really contained little neighborhood with the amenities right there available for the parents that end up living there.”

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