Hundreds of Oakville residents turned out last week as the County Council voted to send a government-subsidized elderly housing complex back for reconsideration of the site’s zoning, but back in Oakville, they saw no slowdown in the pace of bulldozers at 6050 Telegraph Road.

“I have not been told that we plan to stop construction at this time, no,” said Karen Twinem, spokeswoman for the developer, Ohio-based National Church Residences.

The County Council voted June 11 to ap-prove a resolution directing the Planning Commission to conduct a public hearing on returning the property’s zoning to R-2 single-family residential, more than a year after the rezoning was unanimously approved.

The project initially saw no opposition, but residents who learned of the development when construction began in mid-May believe they received no notice of the Planning Commission’s public hearing in April 2012.

The county could be sued by the developer if it went forward with the unprecedented re-hearing of a rezoning matter, County Executive Charlie Dooley said at the June 11 council meeting.

“The council cannot lawfully go back and take away the development rights they already gave to the church for this project; but this is a council issue,” he said. “The county executive doesn’t have anything to do with council resolutions.

“I certainly hope there can be some resolution to this problem that doesn’t end up costing the county — and ultimately the citizens — millions of dollars in lawsuits for the developer.”

Twinem said, “As I believe the county executive indicated, there’s a lot of indications that this is probably illegal. It was approved unanimously more than a year ago by both the zoning commission and the county. Everybody who voted (against it) voted for it a year ago, so I guess you would say that it’s unusual, for sure.”

The site of the development borders Goddard School, a preschool for children ages 6 weeks to 6 years, as well as the Tori Pines Commons mini-strip mall and, bordering the back of the property, the Monastery of St. Clare, a convent.

The owner of the preschool next door, Cindy Pyatt, said she expected the developer to stop construction after the vote, but she is still “hopefully optimistic” about the prospect of stopping the development.

“I think it was huge that we were able to get five council people who heard, and obviously had to feel, the concern in the room in order to agree to it,” she said.

National Church Residences, which is the country’s largest developer of nonprofit housing for the elderly, already has invested more than $1 million into the Oakville project, Twinem said.

Half the money went to buy the land and the other half has gone to architect fees, third-party studies and construction.

Construction is funded through a $6 million capital grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.

The nonprofit developer is working on its response to the vote and has “reached out to everybody in the community in terms of the leadership” in advance of the hearing, Twinem said.

Twinem was out of state when she talked to the Call, she said, and did not know which community leaders the company had approached.

The Planning Commission will conduct the public hearing at 7 p.m. Monday, July 15, in the County Council Chambers at the Administration Building, 41 S. Central Ave., Clayton.