Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

Clara Schweigerstaffon the left hand side of the photo so this is the concept plan the potential applicant is proposing 260 to 280 residential multifamily units in a six-story building 458 parking spaces and structured parking and approximately 28,000 square feet of open space the existing 60,000 square foot office with 434,000 square feet of multifamily if this proposal were to be approved. So this is the layout of level one. I just wanted to point out here the garage entrance is on the right of this image from Democracy Lane. And this would be levels two through five. And then this would be the top floor, floor six. So staff met with the applicant and provided preliminary feedback. Staff recommends following the small area plans recommended six-story building height for the site.

James FeatherAdmittedly, yep I mean, it's really a question for The small area plan, which we have The concept of revisiting our small area plans Down the road My observation is when I look at the Land uses in Old Town what's being proposed is consistent with what we've currently got in the small area plan which is residential in that block so we can't say it's inconsistent with what we said at the time when this was developed we realized the small area plans a little dusty at this point it's

Matthew Riceblue yeah in this case there's a whole lot of vehicle passageways and traffic through and the sort of ambiguous future open space no longer exists it is underneath kind of actually I should restate that it doesn't exist yet because the kind of east side which hasn't been redeveloped would contain part of that open space but my thinking generally here is that I don't frankly prefer a huge amount of inter parcel vehicular connections to the extent that some of the rendering show I would love instead to see some aspect of this pedestrianized so to have larger plazas larger corridors in our small area plans those are all sort of a bright yellow color and shows those plazas scattered throughout this kind of northern section of the Old Town small area plan and it

James FeatherThe third and final work session is an introduction and discussion on draft small area plan zoning ordinance amendments, the long-awaited discussion for getting our zoning ordinance to catch up with our small area plans.

Paul Nabtistaffthat negotiation process facilitate mixed use development and make sure it's guided towards where it's specifically recommended in the small area plans and that reasonable expectations for what should be provided are identified in the zoning ordinance and this is done through the next item introducing development frontage types which have not just a use component as we talked about with number three but also a design component which you'll see in this draft has recommendations on in terms of how buildings are designed to the ground floor not just what the uses are establishing minimum criteria for defined open spaces this was go beyond what we typically have in the zoning ordinance and that we're defining what

We're not sure how that will work yet. But essentially, you cannot request your site be rezoned to an activity center district unless you are in one of these areas. If you're outside one of those areas, as we talked about earlier, the CU will still be an option, and there's a separate process for that. Proffers are permitted through this process because they are in our activity centers where we have small area plans. It makes them exempt from the state legislation that makes proffers challenging, and so that is something that we'll be thinking about with this process. process. What is yet to be determined is how these defined areas relate to our existing overlay districts, primarily the historic overlay district and the transition overlay

but that being said i mean the floodplains these were all acknowledged and we were developing the small area plans that they can they can move on a property-by-property basis. We've been talking,

It wouldn't have to. That's up to us. If there's concerns about specific ones. I did want to point out, I should have mentioned in the beginning, the way the wording is that it would apply to small activity centers with adopted small area plans. TO PICKETT AND MAIN UNTIL SUCH TIME THAT THAT HAPPENS. BUT IF THERE ARE CONCERNS ABOUT OTHER ACTIVITY CENTERS, WE'D LIKE TO HEAR THAT.

Kirsten Lockhartsort of like rudder steer here, is our goal with this to make applications cleaner from a reviewing perspective, or is our goal to make applications more likely to conform with our intentions for these small area plans?

Paul NabtistaffYes. Yes, it is both. Cleaner is the main goal. However, as we've gone through this and, you know, our consultant has done a really good job at identifying issues we didn't even realize we had. And that's where this community benefits program came forward. And we'll see when we get later into it how the calculations are being tested and how we can modify them before we finalize this. That can be a way to communicate more clearly. Small area plans are intended to communicate clearly to developers what we want. but when we get it into code that will be a way to show you know you cannot do this unless you accommodate these specific things and so the added benefit is that we would get we think better development that is more in line with what the vision of the smaller plan is through a cleaner

some recently approved and recently built projects in the city. You can see the kind of variety that we have been working with. The two older ones, Scout on the Circle and the Point were both around 46-48 dwellings per acre. More recently, those also were both approved before we had small area plans more recently the n29 willowwood project it was approved at 88 dwellings per acre and davies at 102 dwellings per acre so we're not recommending anything here this is just for context as you look at what our what resulting densities could be so the land assembly incentive what is shown in the draft is that depending on the size of a site based on consolidated properties, density can then be increased with larger sites achieving

So we'll talk about a little bit of those, but I just wanted to make sure you're aware of that, because, again, as you read it, it might not be clear that you feel like you finished reading about the community benefits, but more will come up later, so just be aware of that. So the two elements, again, open space and transportation infrastructure. The first one we'll talk about is open space. THE BASE REQUIREMENT IS THAT ANY OPEN SPACES THAT QUALIFY FOR THIS HAVE TO GENERALLY ALIGN WITH LOCATIONS IDENTIFIED IN THE SMALL AREA PLANS. AND AS WE SAW IN OUR DISCUSSIONS TODAY, FOR EXAMPLE, THE OLD TOWN SMALL AREA PLAN HAS DEPICTIONS OF WHERE PREFERRED OPEN SPACES ARE. SO THIS WOULD HAVE TO ALIGN WITH THAT.

So I can see us getting some discussions with applicants about that. We might recommend looking at it more at a sliding scale, getting a certain number of units per area. And then I'll come back to that in a minute, but I just wanted to share both of these with you at once so you can see how they compare. Transportation infrastructure is the other one that we have set up in here. an applicant would provide, would receive benefits for providing contributions towards a street network the requirements are that it connects to the overall network, both the current and a future proposed network as shown in the small area plans it should meet or exceed the small area plan network, so if a property on the small area plan

then they would get four dwelling units for 100 linear feet. But as I mentioned, neither of those really meet within the small area plans. In most cases, we're calling for a six-foot landscape strip and a six to 10-foot sidewalk. find a way to adjust that and make sure we are getting what the smaller plans actually call for. In addition, we have a lot of cases. There is an example on the courthouse plaza you saw tonight where a street is proposed along a property line. Many times the city staff will support that and the applicant only providing part of that street recognizing that future development will provide the other side. So we would also like to find a way to adjust these numbers so if someone is providing part

density or no additional density then they are fitting more uses into a smaller building footprint which leaves more room for other things like open spaces and those types of things so as we didn't see it as something that we would want to disincentivize but we wanted to have a base height and have you have to earn the ability to achieve the taller height stone in the small area plans even if it's through a minimal effort by at least contributing to the community benefits program. It should be noted that the transitions and step downs and height are still recommended, so no more than four stories adjacent to a single family. And question to be remained is how to handle those locations where the smaller area plans recommend a height as smaller than five stories.