Katy Council Approves Zoning for a Zipline Drone Delivery Hub

Katy’s City Council voted Nov. 9 to change the zoning in the West Ten Business Park planned development district so Zipline can build a station for delivery drones, Community Impact reported the next day. The Houston Chronicle, in an account published Nov. 11 and later carried by GovTech, said the vote was unanimous and described the action as a zoning amendment for a charging facility just north of Interstate 10.

The approval is narrower than a citywide green light. City officials told the Chronicle on Tuesday, Nov. 10, that the change covers only one parcel in that district. It is not permission, they said, to put charging stations elsewhere in town. Any later proposal would have to come back to the council on its own. The ordinance, the Chronicle reported, also sets fines that can run as high as $2,000 for each day a violation continues. Official minutes and a posted city agenda were not available for this report. The vote is taken from those two published accounts.

One site, a permit still to come

Community Impact located the proposed yard at the rear of the shopping center at 27240 Katy Freeway and put the tract at a little less than three acres. At that location, Zipline Development Manager Jason Drews told the paper, the company plans six towers, each able to hold as many as six drones. The Chronicle, drawing on the same meeting, described six charging structures on an underused part of the retail property and said the company had first suggested a different site before settling on this one with city staff.

A zoning change is not a building permit. After the vote, Community Impact reported, a Zipline government-affairs official said the company would apply for a permit from the city. Drews put the permit wait at four to eight weeks and construction at eight to 10 weeks after that, figures that appear in both write-ups. The Chronicle quoted company representatives as saying service might start in as little as three months if that work stays on schedule; the same story also said the service could be operating within six months. The company had not named which Katy businesses would take part.

What the council asked, and what it was told

Council members spent time on schools, weather and cameras, the Chronicle reported, even as they voted to approve the amendment. Paula Taylor, a council member who also teaches at Katy High School, said students already step out of class to collect app-based food orders, and she named Uber Eats and Grubhub as examples. Kerry McCormack, identified by Community Impact as a Zipline government-affairs manager, said school campuses are not on the company’s delivery list and, in the Chronicle’s account, told Taylor that students would not be able to get coffee that way from Zipline. Drews said public-school grounds are a keep-out zone and that the aircraft will not cross them. Community Impact, citing Drews, also reported that the company will not carry tobacco, alcohol or pharmaceuticals, and that it will not make drops at schools or sports fields or fly over them. The Chronicle added private schools and preschools to the list of places the company said it avoids.

Johnston Dietz asked how the aircraft would handle rough weather, hurricanes among them. In the Chronicle’s telling, the company said it keeps meteorologists on staff, can stop flights from two monitoring centers, and puts weather sensors on the aircraft. Paul Follis asked about cameras and privacy. The company said the cameras are used to steer and to see obstacles, not to watch people, and that recordings may be held for a time if something has to be reviewed after the fact. Katy Police Chief Bryon Woytek, quoted in both accounts, said police drone operations would not be disrupted by the service. “Nothing is 100% safe,” he said in the Chronicle’s version of the remark. “I would say this is as safe, if not safer, than delivered by a car.”

The company, as summarized by both papers, described FAA-regulated aircraft that can carry up to eight pounds, fly at 300 to 400 feet, and reach 70 miles an hour, serving about a three-mile radius. Customers would order through an app from a participating business; a drone would collect a pod and lower it to the customer on a tether rather than landing in a yard, according to those accounts. Those are the company’s descriptions, given at the meeting, not an independent test of the system.

Fort Bend County’s official Truth in Taxation record for the City of Katy lists the city’s address as 901 Avenue C, Katy, Texas 77493, and the main telephone number as 281-391-4800.

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