Developers of Littlewood subdivision just outside Vicksburg city limits off Lee Road will seek a chancery court ruling allowing recently purchased municipal property to be excluded from municipal limits, court records show.

A hearing set for July 9 before Chancery Judge Vicki Roach Barnes will determine whether Madison Ridge Road, the main access to the subdivision off Lee Road, can be extended into about 39 acres of property inside the city behind the development’s county-based first phase, according to court records and plaintiffs attorney B. Blake Teller.

Submitted March 17, the petition said excluding the property from municipal boundaries is in the public interest because the neighborhood’s developers can provide more affordable housing in Vicksburg.

Littlewood subdivision borders the city limits, southeast of Audubon Hills subdivision.

The acreage at issue consists of vacant timberland, which is a low tax-producer for the city unlikely to be developed because of city ordinances requiring additional entrances or exits to and from a public road, the petition says.

Homes in the existing, non-municipal neighborhood are valued at more than $300,000 and pay county taxes averaging $2,500, plus school taxes.

Vicksburg’s boundaries expanded into the area when it annexed in 1990.

Littlewood is one of several neighborhoods lining both sides of the city’s southeast edges. Another development off Lee Road in the county, Eastvillage, has sewer and gas service from city lines into homes ready to receive it.

Littlewood Development Company LLC’s listed agent, Ronald Taylor, could not be reached.