A Benedictine monastery will move forward with preliminary plans to create a new residential community in northern El Paso County that promotes open space conservation, representatives for the landowner said.

The Board of El Paso County Commissioners voted 4-1 last week to rezone the 49½-acre property west of Colorado 83 near the existing Benet Hill Monastery in Colorado Springs to create 26 single-family lots and a private business event center on about 5 acres of the property.

Most of the land — 44.4 acres, or 89% of the property — will remain designated as open space, said Vincent Crowder, the monastery’s property and building manager.

In efforts to promote open space preservation, the Sanctuary of Peace residential community will accommodate cluster development, said Dave Gorman of consulting engineering firm MVE Inc., representing applicant Benet Hill Monastery.

Twenty-six residential units will be combined into a duplex format, Gorman said. Fourteen one-bedroom and 12 two-bedroom single-story homes, approximately 1,200 to 1,500 square feet each, are planned, Gorman said.

A private event center will also be built for administrative use by the sisters of the Benet Hill Monastery, community residents and their guests, he said. The clubhouse will include four bedrooms for additional temporary lodging, and a shared, detached six-car garage.

The monastery will split property maintenance with the Sanctuary of Peace Homeowners Association once it is created, according to project documents.

To accommodate the proposed cluster development, the monastery requested to rezone the property, which requires a minimum 5-acre lot size, to a 2½-acre minimum lot size. Because the residential lots will be built in a roughly 5-acre portion of the property, the average lot size would be 1.84 acres, Gorman said.

“We wanted to take the opportunity to have a little bit more dense development, concentrated development, on the property,” he said.

The Tri-Lakes Master Plan, one document governing the area where the property is located, states overall densities should be “consistent with surrounding subdivisions.”

Because there are no 2½-acre developments to compare to the proposed Sanctuary of Peace community, the applicant argued in project documents, “the overall density of the affected development area and surrounding adjacent properties … is one dwelling unit per 3.9 acres, which meets the minimum recommended overall density of one dwelling unit per 2½ or 5 acres.”

“We maximize the economy and efficiency of land use with the clustering and preserve a large amount of open space,” Gorman said. “… This really does something that allows for a variation in what the normal development is and has a different kind of character compared to what surrounds it.”

Some commissioners raised concerns about smaller lot sizes, asserting they could set a precedent for future development in the area.

Longinos Gonzalez, the sole vote against the project, said he liked the idea of clustered development but did not support allowing lot sizes smaller than the 2½ acres required by the rezoning.

“Where it should be 18, 19 or 20 homes, it’s 27 homes,” he said. “Even though I’m generally supportive of the concept, it’s going to extremes for me.”

Gorman said the monastery put in place several checks to ensure the 45 acres designated as open space would remain undeveloped.

Benet Hill Monastery’s covenants require any changes to the development plan receive 100% approval by all community property owners. The sisters of Benet Hill Monastery are 1/27th owners of the property and own the open space, which Gorman said they never intend to develop.

“This is preserved in perpetuity,” he said. “… It’s really the covenants that are part of this subdivision and the desire of the monastery and the HOA for that not to happen.”

Crowder added, “The entire incentive for the sisters to own this property … has been preservation of the forest in its present state as much as possible.”

Barbara Faulkenberry, an adjacent property owner, said she supported the monastery’s proposal because it was the “best that is possible.”

“When this land became available to buy, all of us in the area were just heartbroken because of what could happen with builders,” she said. “My preference is this land not be developed at all, but that’s not realistic, so I support the sisters and their efforts.”

A single well on site will serve each of the 27 lots in the subdivision and a shared onsite wastewater treatment system — composed of four onsite systems — will serve the property, Gorman and Crowder said.

The community’s wastewater treatment system will be an advanced treatment system that will exit water roughly 91% pure and dispense it throughout the surrounding forest, they said.

The advanced system was another safeguard against future development there, Crowder said.

“Any future development would not be possible because it would infringe upon the current wastewater system,” he said. “We have done everything possible, short of a conservation land easement … to preserve it.”