With development in the county increasing, the county Planning Commission recently recommended approval of a number of applications for zoning changes.

At the planning panel’s June 9 meeting, it voted 6-0 to approve a reduction in a required setback for La Petite Academy, a day-care center east of Tesson Ferry Road and south of Kempf Drive.

Neighbors of the day-care center have unknowingly built fences that impede on the day-care property. The day-care center is willing to adjust the boundaries of its own property to give those neighbors the property within their fences, but to do so would reduce their setback from the required 45 feet to 30 feet, county land-use manager Gail Choate said.

In other zoning news, the County Council earlier this month approved a boundary change for Cor Jesu Academy that allows it to expand its school and add a gymnasium on 10.2 acres it purchased last year.

The council approved the change with a 5-0 vote. Chairwoman Hazel Erby, D-University City, abstained in a week that she clashed with the bill’s sponsor, 6th District County Councilman Steve Stenger, D-Affton, about diversity bills she sponsored. The change was recommended for approval by the planning panel last month 5-0.

Last week, Stenger held a bill that would grant a variance to Joanne O’Keefe for a medical office at Tesson Ferry Road and Kempf Drive.

So far, the medical offices have been limited to a monument sign rather than a pole sign, but O’Keefe requested a pole sign instead. The panel recommended approval of the change 5-0, and Stenger held the approval at the council level last week.

In other approvals that await action at the council level, the planning panel voted 5-0 to recommend approval of a proposed change to C3 zoning at Lindbergh Boulevard and Elm Park Drive that would allow a commercial development at a former hotel. The commission reserved the right for architectural review of the plans.

The panel also recommended approval of a drive-through for a Jimmy John’s at Mehltowne Plaza 6-0 last month.