The City of Powell could soon grow a little bit bigger.

Next week, the city will begin formally considering a pair of annexation requests that would bring more than 33 acres of rural Park County land into city limits. 

One request would extend Powell’s boundaries to the south for a new residential subdivision while the other would stretch the city to the north to potentially accommodate a community recreation center.

Just south of Monroe Street, developer Erik Petersen is preparing to begin construction on his new Autumn Grove subdivision. The subdivision could eventually grow to include 200 homes, Petersen has said, but his current request to annex 13.7 acres will cover just the first two phases and 69 lots.

Though the land has yet to be annexed, city leaders decided last year that they would install a new $500,000 sewer main to accommodate the added sewage from Autumn Grove and any other subdivisions that may be constructed in the area. Petersen expects to spend $390,000 installing required infrastructure, city documents say.

Meanwhile, Park County School District 1 is seeking to annex a roughly 19.6-acre parcel of land that sits just west of Powell High School. The property is currently a farm field, but there have been preliminary discussions about it one day hosting a rec center. Powell Recreation District leaders have spent years discussing a new multipurpose facility, and the school district property north of Seventh Street has been identified as a potential location.

No decisions have been made, but the district decided to move forward with annexation. At an October meeting, Powell Planning and Zoning Commission member Shane Shoopman said that approach made sense.

“It’s a good idea to get it rolling so you don’t get hung up” if and when plans are ready to move forward, Shoopman said.

Although the nearly 19.6 acres would technically shift from Park County into the City of Powell, nothing would change on the ground. Rob McCray, the school district’s support services coordinator, told the planning board in October that the district would continue leasing the field to local farmers for the time being, “so there will be no change.”

The Powell Planning and Zoning Commission is set to consider both the school district’s and Petersen’s annexation requests at their 7 p.m. Monday meeting. The Powell City Council will then take up the requests at their Feb. 2 meeting, at 6 p.m.

Annexation requests tend to be straightforward. However, the council just finished a monthslong debate over a request to deannex two lots at the far end of East Seventh Street, east of the high school and One Health’s clinic.

After going back and forth with the landowner, Mike Birdsley, the council agreed to remove the 5.8-acre, mostly undeveloped eastern lot from city limits while leaving the 4.1-acre western lot in the city; that western lot has already been developed to city standards and holds a set of Birdsley’s Dash Storage units.

The council unanimously gave final approval to the deannexation compromise during their Monday meeting.