KANNAPOLIS — Richard Simmons remembers stopping by the playground to swing on the way to school and returning home as a child in his small Texas hometown.

Now the Charlotte developer says he’d like to bring some of that feeling to a 30-acre “mill village”-type subdivision he plans on Camp Julia Road, using a proposed new subdivision ordinance.

“That’s the concept I see with the cluster development,” Simmons said at Monday’s Kannapolis City Council meeting. “There is a safe place, a place without a road running through it.”

But it looks like Simmons and other interested developers will have to wait until August, at the earliest, to find out if council approves the new ordinance he says will make his village possible.

Council tabled an ordinance Monday night creating regulations for “cluster” development, which would allow developers to use smaller residential lot sizes in exchange for setting aside open recreational space.

Already scheduled to meet in joint session with the Kannapolis Planning Board on Aug. 14, council will likely include at that meeting a work session on the proposed new ordinance.

“It may be one of the best ideas we’ve had to look at,” Mayor Ray Moss said. “We just need some time.”

The ordinance, which would be offered in all residential districts, would allow a developer to reduce a lot size by 40 percent in exchange for setting 30 percent of the total development aside as open space.

Of that open space, 20 percent would be improved for recreation by adding things like ball fields, walking trails, tennis courts and swimming pools. And 50 percent of the open space would be land on which houses could be built.

The ordinance also requires perimeter buffers and screening, open space between clusters of up to 30 houses and preservation of trees more than 4 inches in diameter in open spaces.

Advantages in using cluster developments, Planning Director Mike Legg said, include lower infrastructure costs, reduced demand for public parks, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods and potential wildlife habitats.

“That’s probably not likely in a smaller subdivision,”he said. “But if you get a several-hundred-acre subdivision, you could see some conservation of wildlife habitats.”

The city already requires 10 percent of land in a subdivision to be open space. Legg said clustering smaller lots could increase the number of houses in some subdivisions, even though they would be built on fewer acres.

For example a 100-acre subdivision in the city’s highest density zoning could yield 464 houses under current zoning and up to 590 houses with 20 percent of the total land left open and lot sizes reduced.

Several developers spoke at a public hearing Monday on the proposed ordinance. Some, like Simmons, praised it. One, Judson Stringfellow of Charlotte, who plans a subdivision off South Main Street just past Rodgers Lake Road, said it was too restrictive in some respects.

He asked council to consider reducing lot sizes by up to 50 percent in exchange for 30 percent of the land designated as open space, saying that not all lots could be that small, since they would necessarily be different shapes.

He also said a requirement that recreational areas be withing 1,320 feet of every house would prevent the kind of central area he plans with a pool, playground and clubhouse.

Council members had their own concerns as well. Although some current zoning districts allow 5-foot setbacks, Councilman Richard Anderson said houses 10 feet apart are too close.

He said his daughter lives in a Concord subdivision where houses are close, and he worries about the comfort and safety of residents in those developments.

“Honestly, I believe you could spit out her bedroom window into the bedroom window next door,” Anderson said. “And if one should catch on fire ... they’d be like dominoes.”

Other council members said they like the cluster concept. Councilman Roger Haas said it could encourage development on smaller parcels of land that already are served by water, sewer and roads.

“We put the developers farther and farther away, and then we have to build roads to get all those people to work,”he said. “My feeling is we should encourage higher density.”

Council adopted ordinances Monday requiring newly placed garbage bins to be on concrete pads with 6-foot-high screening and locking gates and setting new regulations for political campaign signs.