Town elevates commercial, industrial, residential buildings’ masonry cladding targets

Source: Texas Masonry Council, Cedar Park

As Central Texas experiences what many predict will continue to be a stormy spring, Cedar Park, Texas, has adopted standards for new construction, which officials hope will better protect its citizens and the tax base, according to the Texas Masonry Council. The Cedar Park City Council has voted to raise minimum masonry requirements for new industrial and commercial buildings and for some new residential units. At its regular meeting on April 12, 2012, the Council voted 5-1 in favor of the new masonry standards.

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Texas town’s zoning ordinance puts masonry front and center

Sources: Texas Masonry Council, Houston; CP staff

Following the lead of peers in cities across the Lone Star State, officials in Houston-bordering Bellaire have determined that clay, natural stone, or glass block masonry will be a predominant exterior building material.

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Pro-masonry ordinance withstands NAACP, NAHB federal court appeal

By Don Marsh, Editor

As he promotes “freedom from over-regulation and over-litigation” in his new book, Fed Up, Texas Governor Rick Perry should smile at local government power as exercised just outside his state capital and validated in NAACP v. City of Kyle. Plaintiffs in the case, examined here in June 2009, have failed again in their challenge of Kyle, Texas, zoning standards requiring cement or clay-based cladding for new single-family homes.

A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (Houston) panel determined a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People- and National Association of Home Builders-anchored coalition lacked legal standing in its claims the city’s ordinances violate the Federal Fair Housing Act (FHA). In a ruling last month, the Appellate Court essentially affirmed a March 2009 U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas (Austin Division) decision denying plaintiffs’ pursuit of relief under the Act. The NAACP/NAHB coalition failed to present the latter court evidence of how the Kyle single-family home building standards discriminated against African-Americans or Hispanics.

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