[0:00] Would you like me to call the meeting to order at 508, long range planning committee July 8th?

[0:12] Yes. And our only item of business is 71 be rezoning project.

[0:27] And this

[0:28] so much. I have a presentation for you all. So this might take up a little bit of the meeting time,

[0:38] but I've got a lot of time before my next commission meeting.

[0:55] So I've got quite a bit for me in your

[0:57] email. Hopefully you've had time to have a look. If not, no fear. I'm going to go over all of it now.

[1:03] And then if I need to swap out of the PowerPoint at some point and bring up documents so that we can view those more closely or with more of a Zoom, please know that I'm happy to do that.

[1:15] So just a little bit of background on why we're doing this in the first place, just starting this conversation on the same page.

[1:22] We have been working on a 71-B rezoning project really since, kind of end of last year, when

[1:29] the Council reconfirmed VRS resolution that they wanted staff to pursue a project that

[1:35] we'd at least investigate or look at rezoning.

[1:38] What a lot of people think of as College Avenue, which is really College Avenue and South

[1:43] School Avenue, or the Old Highway 71-B corridor, which was in the state's possession until 2020.

[1:49] now it's ours and so this is a component project of a much larger umbrella set of projects

[1:55] that up to this point have mostly been street improvement projects and so a lot of people

[2:02] think about this as the 71 be project in itself that if you haven't been in Fayetteville

[2:08] or haven't been part of planning and public works in Fayetteville for the last 20 years this

[2:14] really started with the adoption of the Fayetteville downtown master plan which is kind of a landmark

[2:18] planning document for us. Two years later we got adoption of City Plan 2025, and so you hear us

[2:25] talk about City Plan 2040 because that's our current comprehensive plan, but City Plan 2040 was

[2:31] predated by City Plan 2025 and City Plan 2030 that began to set all of these priorities and goals in

[2:38] motion that resulted in what we have today. 2010, we got our new urban zoning districts adopted by the

[2:44] City Council. So that's when your urban thoroughfare UT zoning happens. So that's about 14 years

[2:49] old now. And that came out of the vision for on the City Plan 2025. So if you've ever wondered

[2:55] where all this stuff came from and how long this has been with us for about this long. And then we

[3:00] got the adoption of City Plan 2030 and 2011. And then in 2017, a rezoning of a portion of college avenue,

[3:08] it's the Maple Street to North Street section. You'll see it on the map is the purple coming out of

[3:14] downtown kind of northward that happened and so that's been what seven years

[3:20] now that we've had that rezoning in place and that rezoning was meant to go

[3:25] with street improvements that were made at the time to get the sidewalks in

[3:29] and the lighting in that y'all would be more familiar with today. So 2019 we did

[3:34] the 71 B corridor study given that wrapped up in final that has an entire web page

[3:39] on the city's website dedicated to it and then also city council resolution

[3:44] approving an implementation work plan. So then we start talking about bond money and a big

[3:49] amount of bond money and so some pretty substantial funding in the millions of dollars going towards

[3:55] street improvement projects. We've also been leveraging federal transportation dollars for that.

[4:00] So lots of federal money that doesn't cost us, lots of our own money as well and then you also get

[4:06] the adoption of city plan 2040. I think that was technically at the very start of 2020.

[4:11] 2020 was the big year. We bring Highway 71B into our ownership and then we take

[4:17] responsibility for it and that gives us so many more options because state

[4:21] highway design standards are very different than the city of Stadeville's

[4:25] street design standards. So you go from having a right angle in a lot of

[4:31] driveways for businesses that are not very fun and you have to kind of distance

[4:36] requirements between driveways that are very different from ours and so that

[4:40] That was really the impetus to begin doing a lot of what we're talking about today, but

[4:45] then as you all know, COVID happened and so our ability to work with our community on

[4:48] these things was quite a bit hampered by that.

[4:51] And so in the meantime, you see a lot of design work for the Applebee Plan B Rolling Hills

[4:57] connection and then also the design work and then construction work for the Archvold Yel Safety

[5:02] Improvements and that's now Nelson Hackett Boulevard, but you'll see the project title

[5:06] this archivald y'all stole since that's how it was good, and what it was begun as.

[5:11] And then now in 2024, we've got our 71B Resonant Project underway, and then I understand

[5:18] that the North to Sigmore Street improvements are very close to being ready to go.

[5:23] And so what's exciting about this, I hope that that would be done before I brought the

[5:27] Resonant.

[5:28] So people can see the work, and then they could also understand why we're doing this, and

[5:32] we're still probably going to have to go first.

[5:34] And then people will see work and maybe that will be very encouraging as well.

[5:39] One thing that was really important about that corridor plan is a lot of the study work

[5:44] that was done to assess conditions.

[5:47] And I will tell you those conditions have not substantially changed because we've not

[5:50] seen a lot of reinvestment, slash redevelopment activity in the last five years.

[5:55] And so I feel fairly confident still bringing this before y'all.

[5:58] And why would we do street improvements?

[6:00] Why are we talking about investing millions of dollars?

[6:02] because look at all of these driveways that we have and all of these driveways

[6:07] are opportunities for conflicts and they mean reductions in safety for our

[6:13] pedestrians and cyclists. They also mean reductions in safety for our drivers

[6:17] and so how can we begin to address conditions that were created under a

[6:22] highway scheme and really make it into a city street and a lot of people have

[6:26] been working on this for a very long time. I have the privilege of being able to

[6:31] be in a position to talk a lot about it very publicly and also to help promote why we're making important changes

[6:38] But this is a lot of driveways on a very short stretch of roads

[6:43] This is just north to township and every blue dot is a driveway

[6:47] And I went through and checked today just to make sure I was telling you the right thing when I said this wasn't substantially changed

[6:53] And that is correct

[6:54] And so here we have township to mill sap actually have a count of these here shortly and so you can see what I mean

[7:00] But something that I thought was also really helpful to see, it's a pretty hefty plan

[7:05] document.

[7:06] There is a lot to read in that document, it's worthwhile, but just to hit some of the

[7:12] highlights behind why we would be putting these big investments in, this is an assessment.

[7:17] Again, there's not a whole lot of changes yet of existing sidewalks or sidewalks that

[7:23] are existing but need repair.

[7:25] And what's really telling are the gaps.

[7:27] the yellow areas where there's no sidewalk and then also the driveways come in

[7:31] as orange dots. And if you see how disrupted our sidewalk system is from

[7:36] Kato Springs to Rock Street and how incomplete our sidewalk system is you can

[7:41] begin to understand why people would not find this a walkable space. There are a

[7:45] lot of driveways to cross, there are places where there's not a complete

[7:48] sidewalk for you to be able to get through and so that doesn't give you a very

[7:52] great place to go. So if you want a walkable urban neighborhood, we're not set up

[7:57] for it, and believe it or not, we've got better sidewalk network on South School than we have

[8:01] between North and Township. Again, all of the yellow are gaps where we don't have sidewalk,

[8:06] and then the oranges driveways, and so you can see a huge stretch in here between Sycamore

[8:11] and Township in particular, where we're very little connected sidewalk. And so when we talk

[8:16] about that being a walkable urban neighborhood, we don't even have the infrastructure for that

[8:22] to be available to folks. And so that's what we're doing. We're building that infrastructure.

[8:28] We're about to get underway on that. And then it doesn't get much better, unfortunately,

[8:32] between township and Nilsap. So we're going to make a walkable urban corridor. And that's why we

[8:39] want to bring some rezoning in behind it to better support that being the outcome.

[8:44] I don't know if you all have had time to view the update. We had 799 responses to the survey,

[8:51] which was beyond my wildest dreams, not quite. My wildest dreams was 1,000. We got so close so between in-person engagement and online we probably had about 875 people with direct answers, but we did have way more people attend events than actually voted at events I noticed, so I think a lot of people just came to hang out with us which was really great.

[9:15] And then we had a lot of online engagement that didn't result in people submitting surveys.

[9:19] which could be for a number of reasons, but I'm still really pleased with how many people we were able to reach with this iteration.

[9:27] And so we gathered all of that input, looked at all of that input.

[9:32] I have a few different iterations of the spreadsheet, which have different versions of highlight on it.

[9:39] And so that was really important because the way that we asked the questions was really meant to get at

[9:45] Fayetteville, if you could create a zoning district, what would it look like?

[9:48] If you could look at this place and say, I want a specific set of outcomes, and I want

[9:55] to translate that to a zoning district, what would that be?

[9:57] And that's really what we tried to do, and that's your option three, that I'll go over at

[10:01] the very end.

[10:01] But we really did have to basically create their own zoning district.

[10:06] And then staff was pleasantly surprised with what Fayetteville created, so that was really

[10:10] pretty cool.

[10:11] But people had generally fairly strong one-way or the other vote patterns on this.

[10:18] So obviously not everybody agreed, nothing is a hundred percent.

[10:22] In fact, I think the closest we got was 98 percent agreement that people did not want

[10:27] storage units.

[10:29] So that was pretty solid, but much less agreement on things like drive-through restaurants where

[10:34] you have 58 percent of people saying no and 42 percent of people saying yes.

[10:38] And so some things were not quite as clear cut, but generally we looked at what is the

[10:43] majority vote on each issue, and then if you use the majority vote to craft a zoning

[10:47] district, what would that be?

[10:50] So we did, as a reminder, also ask a few other questions about travel preferences, and it

[10:55] turned out that a lot more people do drive cars than want to drive cars.

[11:01] So giving the impression at least that if people have the opportunity to bike and walk in

[11:06] those places where we don't offer them the sidewalk to do that safely, they would probably

[11:10] take that choice, especially with eBikes being so popular and much more readily available

[11:15] now.

[11:16] And then we asked a few other questions, specifically trees.

[11:20] You would think we don't really have to ask what they both thinks about trees.

[11:23] We hear about it all the time.

[11:24] We know.

[11:25] I think it's still really good to ask that question because it goes from kind of an antidote

[11:30] that you heard in public meetings to something that's a little more concrete and so I thought

[11:34] it was really important for us to try to capture that aspect of it and Melissa Evans is always

[11:40] like a really great advocate for making sure that we don't understand what people's preferences

[11:44] are and that we give them the opportunity to express that. So really good thinking on her part

[11:49] and obviously people are very supportive of seeing more trees, which is really right in line with

[11:55] what we hear a lot. So this is the current zoning. You see a lot of medium pink. You see also a lot

[12:03] of light yellow right behind it. So you have this really sharp divide between pink, not allowing

[12:10] housing and yellow only allowing housing up to 40 units per acre. And so very low density housing.

[12:16] And then we have a lot of industrial along South College or sorry, South School. And some of those

[12:23] are very specifically associated with sites that would need to have that. And some that industrial

[12:32] zoning is maybe not quite so specific for the use or not quite so specific for a large

[12:37] portion of the property and how it's used. So that gives us some kind of interesting options

[12:42] to look at as we move forward. And then the university's research park is zoned industrial.

[12:47] Even though a lot of their uses may not count as industrial be thought of as industrial but the

[12:53] university does not have to follow our zoning code because they're the state. So it gives us the

[12:58] opportunity to zone them other than they currently are with no penalty to them at this point

[13:05] in time, which is also super interesting. So if you want to see some stats on where we

[13:10] are, we're currently looking at a project area with just over 500 parcels and those are

[13:15] not equally dispersed at all between the two project sections north and south of downtown.

[13:20] So about four fifths of those are along North College and about a fifth are along South

[13:24] school. The acreage is about the same with a little higher proportion of acreage

[13:30] along south school. Those are larger properties generally. And then the bulk of

[13:35] the zone parcels are C2. And so 387 of those. And it's almost 600 acres. And so

[13:45] what's it like to rezone 600 acres of land in the middle of the city?

[13:51] We're all

[13:52] have a lot of other zoning of and so something I think it's important to point out and all kind of

[13:57] go back to when we look a little more carefully at the maps but most of the zoning that you see

[14:02] for the RO, the RSF4, the, well the rest just there aren't very many but definitely the RMF24,

[14:09] the NC and I think that RMF12 also, we have properties, they're described in the map as parcels but

[14:19] their properties that people own. And a lot of those at this point in time are split-zoned.

[14:25] So they share zoning and that may not really be something that the owner needs. And staff

[14:31] finds that kind of challenging. So say somebody comes into us and I say I want to do such and such

[14:35] with my property and maybe part of their property is zoned correctly for what they want to do but

[14:40] the rest isn't. And they may or may not be aware of that. And so I believe sometime in the last 20

[14:45] years, some of that C2 line along College Avenue along the east side in

[14:49] particular where a lot of properties are split zone C2 and RSF4, that was

[14:55] based on a kind of a buffered offset from College Avenue versus...

[15:00] This is being, like, described specifically by parcel. And so there's a lot of split zoning there that's related to a buffer distance, or, like, a set distance, then it is the actual, like, parcel configurations. And so that can cause some headaches for us. It's not that it can't be that way. Properties can be split zones, certainly, but it isn't always great when people are going to sell a property and they're trying to figure out what their entitlements are, or what is the line on which entitlements begin and end.

[15:27] And so there's a bit of zoning cleanup that staff is interested in pursuing that is

[15:33] not the same as re-zoning for the purpose of allowing housing for the first time.

[15:37] It's like a little bit of a side quest on this effort.

[15:40] And so one of the things that I want to do is get that cleanup kind of accomplished so

[15:45] I can talk that through with y'all and why we might want to do that while we're looking

[15:49] at getting all of this updated because some of those cleanup parcels actually may not

[15:54] be best suited to going into this new zoning configuration that you all

[15:59] decide on so much as things might need to be like more fully returned to a

[16:03] lower-density residential zoning that's more in keeping with the neighborhood

[16:06] that that parcels associated with. I don't have a count on that yet I need to get

[16:15] that though.

[16:18] It's like a few dozen at least. The 32 RSF4s probably are a big

[16:24] because there's probably not that much RSA 4 that actually fronts on college.

[16:28] Well in all the parcels on my count here, all the parcels that were split send, I went with the

[16:33] majority of what that parcel was, not whether it split. And so some of those C2s are actually either

[16:39] a combination of C2 and RO where they might be a C2, RO, RSF4, those are the ones I really don't like.

[16:46] Because I guess it's really messy and like there's not a real justification for RO because it's like

[16:51] in the trees on a hillside. It's not like there's a building there and they need that entitlement

[16:56] or they're building and they're used to stay. It's just like now there's just a bunch of trees

[17:00] and this is kind of some messy remains from 70 years of zoning. Pretty offices. Yes, sure.

[17:07] Treehouse offices, only. That would be pretty awesome. So a lot of that is not even in a way that I

[17:13] could probably very accurately describe to you like what the what the percentage of split zoning is

[17:18] because I was making choices about how I categorize those.

[17:23] It is 4.3 miles in total, and the whole reason I began to look at that

[17:27] is because I wanted to know how many curb cuts per mile we had on average,

[17:32] because I started to get really interested in that

[17:34] and Commissioner Brank had asked a question about it previously,

[17:39] and just kind of wanting to assess where we were with that.

[17:41] So in our 4.3 miles, we have about, this is very loose,

[17:46] because it changes more quickly than anything else.

[17:50] But I think we have about 576 businesses,

[17:53] the bulk of those together on North College

[17:54] and you have multiple businesses per property,

[17:57] but not to the extent that I thought.

[18:00] I thought we would have more businesses compared to properties

[18:03] and we don't, we just don't have about 70 more in my account.

[18:08] And then curb cuts, though, we're doing about 65 curb cuts

[18:12] a mile or one for every 81 feet,

[18:15] which is not, not ideal for all of our walkers and bikers.

[18:22] Try walking some of that, it's not fun.

[18:24] You're in a bit of a ditch.

[18:26] So we can put numbers to, it's not fun, right?

[18:29] If you're in a wheelchair or a mobility assistive device,

[18:32] this is a nightmare for you.

[18:33] I saw some kids biking across some of the curb cuts of their day

[18:36] just like, and they went into a ditch through a parking lot

[18:39] and I was like, you're older than me.

[18:41] All these urban adventures that you can have a bit of a thing.

[18:45] How do we filter those properties when they have a business that's active?

[18:49] So I'm

[18:55] working on that actually because I get the information for multiple different

[18:59] things and I'm working on putting it all together in GIS.

[19:03] So we have a layer, this is kind of funny, we have a parcel layer and so that's the properties

[19:09] that people have.

[19:10] That's not very difficult but then we have business license information that has addresses

[19:16] and parcel numbers, but it lives a little bit separately

[19:19] in a separate system.

[19:20] And so if you go to get a business license,

[19:22] you're in that system.

[19:25] And all the different layers that I use to map

[19:27] don't come out of the same system.

[19:29] So I have to go grab that

[19:30] and I have to put it in what I'm doing.

[19:32] And then I have to, there's a different way to get

[19:35] like more intense information about the businesses.

[19:38] I don't want to know all the specifics,

[19:40] but I need how do the city move like the two new planners?

[19:44] How does the city have these?

[19:45] You have to wait until somebody comes in to read your ballot.

[19:48] And then you say, you can only have one curb cut.

[19:51] You've got to consolidate.

[19:52] Well, if you have two and they want to try through.

[19:54] And so we start on this project,

[19:56] and we go change a bunch of peoples.

[19:58] And then I have to kind of take that business listing,

[20:01] try to figure out everybody's contact information,

[20:03] and then I get to go show up and say, hey,

[20:05] remember that thing we said we're going to do?

[20:07] We're doing it now.

[20:08] I hope you remember me from two years ago.

[20:10] Or it might be new people.

[20:12] And so I'm introducing this information all over again.

[20:15] So that's kind of exciting, but it's,

[20:21] I'm just kidding, it kind of does right now.

[20:24] Oh, it's blank still here.

[20:25] I

[20:29] think he always tells us about case law and everybody gets a right to a curb cut on their

[20:34] frontage.

[20:36] That's the property on or though, right?

[20:39] It's not every business gets to have a curb cut.

[20:42] No, because the businesses are like somewhat agnostic to the property itself.

[20:46] And so like the property has to, and that's why we're able to reduce people down to one

[20:54] curb cut, but we can't put them in a no curb cut situation when we come through and do

[20:58] a project.

[20:59] So whether we do it or whether they have to do it on their own redevelopment, typically

[21:04] we have to maintain at least one, or they have to be allowed at least one on a redevelopment,

[21:08] but businesses don't have property under rights, and they don't have property under entitlements.

[21:15] But there's still very important, and there's more of them than there are even property owners.

[21:21] And so our need to communicate that successfully and to evaluate impacts is still there, especially

[21:27] when we talk about use units.

[21:30] I could not identify a single property with the homestead exemption in our project study

[21:35] area, so it does not look like we have any owner occupied residential properties.

[21:39] Any residential properties that we do have appear to be runner occupied.

[21:44] And so that's coming out of tax information.

[21:47] It doesn't, there could be a scenario which people are not filing their homestead exemptions.

[21:51] I hope that's not the case because you're losing out on some savings there.

[21:54] But at least in the records nothing is coming up as being an owner occupied or homestead property.

[22:00] Which is really helpful to know because that sometimes is treated a little bit differently in Arkansas than the non-homestead properties.

[22:09] And so just because this gets asked, so I thought I'd go ahead and show y'all what it

[22:15] looks like out of all those properties, 315 are Fayetteville owners.

[22:20] So the vast majority are Fayetteville owners, 419 and other 100 are owners within Northwest

[22:26] Arkansas.

[22:27] And then only 50 are out of state owners on the entire stretch could not identify a single

[22:32] Honor of Record on South School that was outside of Arkansas, but we could identify 50

[22:38] on North College and those tend to be Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, California that generally

[22:47] closer in, but in it ended up being, I think it's well over a dozen states that represented

[22:50] in ownership records.

[22:52] Are they identifiable owners or some of those like REITs and things that you don't really

[22:58] know within the day?

[22:59] Most of them are company names of some kind.

[23:02] Like national companies that have a location here type of thing?

[23:05] No, property holding companies that may not be identifiable immediately with an individual,

[23:11] but also may not be identifiable easily with a corporation or like a well-known brand.

[23:17] And then so we have a lot of parcels, but we only have 324 unique owners currently,

[23:27] and so

[23:29] So it has a higher proportion of unique owners than North College does.

[23:34] But of that unique owners, I'm guessing some of them could be LLCs that at the end of

[23:41] the day are actually owned by the same person.

[23:44] It's just they have a different legal entity that owns the property.

[23:49] So I checked addresses just to see what the comparison was for unique addresses versus

[23:53] unique names and they're almost identical, which I did not expect.

[23:59] And then if you look at it, we have a different mapping tool, so when somebody has to notify

[24:06] for public hearing, do their notification if your staff say they didn't complete their

[24:10] notification requirement, we have a map for that.

[24:13] So using that map to try to figure out every address that was possibly within this project

[24:19] study area, there are 809 kind of potential occupants there.

[24:25] I think the reality of occupants is much lower, but like the addresses within our system

[24:32] that we potentially identify as somebody that we can be in communication with, the

[24:35] email is 809.

[24:39] So it's a lot,

[24:43] this is just as many, well a little more than surveys I got, so take that

[24:48] how you want.

[24:51] Here's our resounding options, and here's how I came to this.

[24:55] So the 71 B corridor plan actually already proposed using the urban thoroughfare zoning

[25:02] district.

[25:03] So what would it look like to just carry forward with that?

[25:06] Now they did propose that you could use that zoning district with a bunch of different

[25:11] modifiers on it.

[25:12] So you could have urban thoroughfare 1, urban thoroughfare 2, urban thoroughfare 3, and just have different

[25:16] iterations of that based zoning district.

[25:20] If you want to drive planning staff crazy, that's a great idea.

[25:23] We might lose our minds on that one, but it's an idea and I wanted to pursue that because

[25:29] it's kind of the original idea of what we do and it was the original proposal.

[25:34] Second proposal or option two is going to be to use a more restrictive zoning like a

[25:38] downtown general or Main Street Center to move closer to that pedestrian-oriented dense

[25:43] urban development that deprioritizes cars and that would begin to implement the Tier Center

[25:48] concept via a node and core door zoning approach and so I've got that currently mapped as two separate zoning

[25:55] districts you're not limited to it's mostly to begin to get this idea on paper because it's a lot

[26:00] easier to discuss once it's on paper than it is just a thought in my head and then third option

[26:05] and the one that I'm probably currently the most excited about just because I think it's quite novel

[26:12] for Fayetteville at least is to use the survey results to form that new zoning district and demonstrate

[26:17] that we were responding to public input.

[26:20] So if you want with the urban thoroughfare option, and where that originated, if you want

[26:25] to see that in the plan, it's on pages 123 and 126.

[26:30] And so it talks about, most notably, the C2 district predominant along College Avenue.

[26:37] So I'm not coming up with any of this.

[26:39] I wish I could tell you that I'm the planner that thought this all up, and nobody, no, I'm

[26:43] just bringing forward something that a lot of people have worked on for a long time.

[26:47] But it says C2 doesn't provide the requisite flexibility essentially to do what we're

[26:53] trying to do with this corridor in addition to the existing form-based provisions in the

[26:57] Fayetteville UDC.

[26:58] It may not be complete enough to execute the corridor urbanism concept fully, which I thought

[27:03] was kind of interesting.

[27:04] So they talked about sub districts, etc.

[27:07] But really going with this general based zone to cover the entire corridor was the suggested

[27:11] approach and again that was the UT zoning and remember in this is not like brand new but it's

[27:17] new enough that we wouldn't have used it a lot back in 2017-2018 when these are being discussed.

[27:23] That zoning district would have been about seven or eight years old at the time and then this is

[27:27] something I wanted to highlight for you all because it's going to play a big role in our conversations

[27:31] about which zoning district is the right zoning district and it addresses a number of stories

[27:36] specifically on page 126. The typical maximum height for buildings along the 71-B corridor

[27:42] should be three to four stories. This may increase in specially designated areas,

[27:48] and then it talks about inselected urban nodes or sites within sub-districts,

[27:52] freestanding buildings up to seven stories consistent with existing UT district standards

[27:57] may be considered for compatibility with surrounding design character and impact on residential areas.

[28:02] So it's thinking about a three to four story building height along the corridor sections and then up to seven stories

[28:09] Kind of in these nodal areas what we generally refer to or have mapped as the tier centers

[28:14] So if you did an urban thoroughfare

[28:17] It's already in a zoning district. It's purple

[28:20] So I put purple on the maps in the project area just to get this conversation about urban thoroughfare started and this would be

[28:29] just a complete application of a single zoning district and so everybody would

[28:35] go into having the entitlements that you do under urban thoroughfare. You could

[28:39] go up to seven stories. It doesn't reduce a lot of the uses that are allowed

[28:44] in C2 but it does add the housing options of single family, two family, three and

[28:49] four family, and multifamily. The only housing type that it wouldn't add into

[28:55] there is manufactured housing, which is usually a contentious issue is not necessarily

[29:01] a goal of this resounding to get manufactured housing back on the table, but it is something

[29:07] that I think we need to continue to think about as a potential solution, but it does tend

[29:11] to get a lot of pushback and it has for a long time.

[29:13] You can read a lot of council meeting minutes over decades that talk about that again and

[29:19] again.

[29:19] Yeah, Commissioner Brink, you have your hand up.

[29:24] Yeah, because I don't have code in front of me,

[29:26] do you know what the top of your head

[29:27] is like what defines manufactured housing?

[29:30] Is it, you know, it comes in on a trailer

[29:33] or granular

[29:37] does it?

[29:39] Yes.

[29:47] Our code uses the HUD, not

[29:59] the same thing.

[30:00] It's a modular or prefab. It's a different, it's a very narrow definition of. Yeah, even a tiny home on a trailer is not necessarily a manufactured house. And then because that was incorporated into our zoning district, then districts that allow manufactured housing would specifically allow that housing type, but also you would be constrained only being allowed to use that housing type in districts that allow it.

[30:27] A

[30:37] little more complex, but I think definitely worth the conversation, and hear me out.

[30:43] I know we talked about downtown general, we have that recommended to us.

[30:47] Staff has been looking at that and decided to begin with Main Street Center for a couple

[30:52] of particular reasons, not because we don't like downtown general and not because we don't

[30:57] like the idea.

[30:58] I think it's really a very clever idea, actually.

[31:01] But when we looked at the differences between downtown general and Main Street zoning, our

[31:06] Our current planning team pointed out a few really important things to me, which I'm

[31:10] very grateful for.

[31:12] One of those is that Downtown General and Main Street Center were both initially imagined

[31:18] as and continue to be imagined as downtown specific zoning districts, and they both have

[31:23] home protection requirements attached to them.

[31:26] So if you are going to be building next to a single family residence and a lot of these

[31:30] properties touch single family neighborhoods, you are going to be limited in building

[31:34] high at the same way that you currently are downtown.

[31:37] And so then there's this question of, okay, will do you address home protection requirements

[31:42] and try to use one of those zoning districts outside of the downtown where that really wasn't

[31:47] imagined to be when that was adopted, or do you just say, okay, well, that is its own problem

[31:53] that we'll deal with when we really get the downtown master plan and when we get to that process,

[31:57] and we'll just take a different approach to it. Knowing that, we still kind of put MSC together

[32:03] in these nodes, but one of the biggest reasons, I'm a little bit no fun sometimes, one of the

[32:10] biggest reasons that I started with Main Street Center in downtown general is because when you look

[32:18] at what is allowed in C2, i.e. what's allowed on most of there and what is not allowed in downtown

[32:24] general, your entitlement reduces way more with downtown general and our city attorney has been

[32:33] consistently cautioning our council recently about reduction in property values caused by

[32:40] a loss of entitlements.

[32:41] And so I'm not saying that that conversation's not on the table.

[32:44] I'm just saying staff is being a little bit cautious what we're willing to start laying

[32:48] out for that specific reason.

[32:50] Can I ask a question and I, so I don't know the answer.

[32:53] So, on the home protection, is that based on a part,

[33:01] abouting parcels, adjacent parcels, or is it X number of feet within a single family

[33:08] home?

[33:09] I think it's a buddy.

[33:12] So, if you're, so the, so that would really wipe out a whole bunch on the quarter, all the

[33:16] areas that back up to RSF-4, even though the parcel is 20 acres and they could put it all

[33:23] up at college and have plenty because of the parcel of blood, so it would come into

[33:27] my life.

[33:28] Got how many feet is it?

[33:30] Yeah.

[33:30] That may not affect it as much.

[33:32] Just the, you know, the setbacks not.

[33:40] I thought it was a height.

[33:41] It's only the height within the feet.

[33:44] Okay.

[33:45] That was what my question was.

[33:46] It's not.

[33:47] It doesn't affect the entire parcel.

[33:49] It's just within a certain distance.

[33:51] It does.

[33:52] Yes.

[33:53] It does affect the entire parcel.

[34:01] So if you want to bring home production requirements with you and we worked out that that

[34:05] really wouldn't be a big concern. If you don't want to see that evaluated more carefully

[34:09] and more specifically, I can certainly do that, but I had forgot that that was even going

[34:14] to apply until thankfully current planning reminded me.

[34:21] Well, it seems like my gut, I would want to look at exactly what it says, because my gut,

[34:26] when the other map, when we saw all the pink, then our butts, all the yellow, is, and when

[34:33] When we have all those tiny little parcels, I would think we might want to have some type

[34:38] of home protection because we're abutting all of that single family, but the question

[34:42] is it might not be, it makes sense to be at the same that we have downtown.

[34:50] Does that make sense?

[34:53] The height, so there's a 15-foot setback, and then you would have to probably do some kind

[34:58] of buffer with your large scale, but there's also a height limitation within,

[35:05] and that may

[35:06] be a...

[35:07] But that's what I would want to understand.

[35:10] If bringing what we have for downtown forward

[35:13] is really a problem or not.

[35:16] But otherwise, I think we just have to be cognizant

[35:19] that there's a whole bunch of commercial zoning

[35:21] that immediately but single family zoning

[35:25] and the ability to come in and say, yeah,

[35:27] you can go to seven stories right over this person's house

[35:32] has a potential to be a giant political bomb.

[35:35] Well, you don't see it in the zoning map, but the orange is effectively single-family as well

[35:41] So it's not zone single-family, it's zone RMF-24, but those are single-family neighborhoods. And so you kind of need to, you know

[35:47] It's not just the east side, it's also the west side where we have

[35:51] Single-family residential directly at budding these so that's where you lose some of that hill

[35:56] You know elevation changes that might mitigate for some of that and then get into you know areas where it's much flatter and

[36:08] So my thinking is I would want to have a more clear understanding if exactly what the

[36:12] home protection is in downtown but not to say immediately we don't want any home protection

[36:18] as we go up the corridor because I just I think we

[36:24] need to be cognizant and maybe it gets

[36:27] called something different.

[36:28] We've done something that we call the neighborhood manners which is if you're a budding

[36:32] neighborhood then you have to have slightly different standards so whether or

[36:37] not it could be the same as downtown or not.

[36:44] Other things this begins to work

[36:46] out and we when at some point need to get specific like which parcels would be

[36:51] in which zoning district if you want to do a multi-district approach and so this

[36:55] is a very rough attempt at kind of clustering those blue or what would be in

[37:02] in this kind of instance Main Street Center,

[37:04] around areas that have been identified

[37:07] in this growth concept map is like these nodes of density.

[37:12] But those are like beautiful, perfectly round circles

[37:17] and parcels are not beautiful, perfectly round anything.

[37:21] Typically, they're like very bizarre polygons.

[37:24] Some straight lines and some, it's hard to follow.

[37:28] We were trying to overlay it with like a measuring tool,

[37:31] it gets really fun. I took a few liberties with this and you'll see a lot of those nose

[37:37] are shifted west because the parcels tend to pull that kind of mapping to the west either

[37:46] because of the way that they're grouped by uses or similar commercial use scales or because

[37:51] you've got larger parcels on the west side typically than you do on the east side and so

[37:55] So something to consider is like how this growth concept map gets implemented and the

[38:01] effect that they have once zoning is applied to actual land par souls versus like in a concept

[38:07] that's just kind of loosely drawn out.

[38:10] So it doesn't look exactly like the growth concept map because it doesn't apply exactly

[38:16] that same way.

[38:17] But I think that's certainly discussions that we can have and then you start to get into

[38:21] like what are like reasonable boundaries to use? Is it major streets that serve as boundaries?

[38:27] Is it you know certain types of like neighborhood street configurations that begin to serve well?

[38:32] Is it like properties or is it really properties that have an opportunity or present what seems

[38:38] like the best opportunity to be aggregated into larger, developing sites so that you could get some

[38:44] of those larger urban scale buildings instead of some of these smaller buildings that we currently have?

[38:48] So it takes quite a bit of, I think, imagination to think through this particular exercise.

[38:56] And then finally, I

[39:00] hope you'll notice some of what we did here.

[39:06] So if you ask Fayetteville, and I should, Jessie's not here, so I should represent this

[39:11] for her, she thinks that the new name should have corridor in it.

[39:15] So rather than urban general, maybe it's urban corridor.

[39:18] I'm not opposed to that at all.

[39:19] So we have some naming to do.

[39:21] I prefer not to put that out to a survey, we certainly can, but if anybody has ideas for what you would name a new zoning district, I'm using, I might switch to urban corridor for our next meeting, but they're kind of meant to be the same thing.

[39:36] But here's what we did with it that I'm kind of excited about, and I'm really looking to hear what we all think.

[39:42] We took the votes and then kind of put them together looked at what is currently allowed

[39:49] in C2 and what would it look like to add housing, made some decisions about not excluding

[39:59] some of the uses that people told us they didn't want to see, but rather looked at either

[40:04] keeping them conditional uses in a lot of instances because that does give a lot of opportunity

[40:11] to review, but how would you build this? How would you lay out your site? How would

[40:15] you provide for compatibility with surrounding uses and surrounding properties? And it gives

[40:21] people the opportunity to make a good argument to you all about why they should be allowed

[40:25] to do that thing because they can do it in a much more context-sensitive or a way that mitigates

[40:31] or minimizes some of the negative effects that we're looking to control for. And so you'll

[40:35] see rather than taking out transportation trades and services and gasoline stations and

[40:41] drive in, drive through restaurants, which we got a lot of, a lot of no votes,

[40:45] a lot of people didn't want to see that, and that seems very reasonable, but

[40:48] rather than removing them completely because we do have a lot of those uses on

[40:52] the court or make them conditionally used so that people can show you how they're

[40:55] going to do it better, or how they're going to do it in a way that gets us closer to

[40:59] our goals, and that still kind of keeps us in the realm of people could still do

[41:04] that, they're not completely losing an entitlement, but they are going to have to

[41:06] to do better in terms of getting us there.

[41:10] And then this is where it gets really wild,

[41:12] is we looked at putting, I think this is the wrong version.

[41:18] But we looked at putting single family and two family

[41:22] dwellings, not as by right but as conditional uses

[41:26] in the zoning district.

[41:28] And so it turns our typical approach to housing on its head

[41:32] and says, you're going to have to make a good argument to us

[41:34] about why you're building single family and two family housing but let's say

[41:38] somebody does like a really dense development that does cluster housing

[41:42] really successfully or something else that y'all would find a really good way

[41:46] to put that type of housing along the corridor they should be giving the

[41:51] opportunity to do that right people can solve that problem probably really

[41:54] successfully but what we probably don't want is a large lot single family home

[41:58] being flopped down on here and this gives us the ability to say that's not what we're

[42:01] trying to do, and if you were going to do multi-family, you could just do it by

[42:05] right. And so that was kind of our compromise, I guess, on not wanting to say

[42:13] no to any kind of housing really, but also just not wanting to get a typical

[42:18] suburban subdivision outcome in a place where that's not what the goal is. I think

[42:24] this is completely new for Fayetteville zoning code. I love it. I have a couple of

[42:29] question. Okay. That was my favorite out of all of them. I think it does. I mean, I think

[42:34] it achieves a lot of what we want to do. I'm not crazy about, you know, allowing continued

[42:39] conditionally used for the gas stations and transportation trades, but I'll also understand

[42:43] that there's probably some legal implications of not allowing it at all, and that you would

[42:49] potentially be decreasing the value of this property. So I get why we did that. I love the

[42:54] single-family, two-family, it's conditionally used. A couple of the questions I

[42:59] had, so on the not permitted uses, I just need a refresher on what is like

[43:07] a non-conforming versus like, so if you go and you do a mass rezoning, like,

[43:13] and there are adult live entertainment businesses and that's not permitted or

[43:17] those non-conforming uses, like those can stay, they just can't. Okay, you don't have

[43:21] I'm in and rezone, or well, I don't know.

[43:24] As long as they don't close for more than six months.

[43:26] Yeah, so you can continue, you can change owners,

[43:29] you can change businesses.

[43:31] You can, so somebody could close

[43:32] and then another business, the exact same type

[43:34] could open up as long as they did it in six months.

[43:37] You can even expand up to a certain point.

[43:40] But you can't put new ones in where they haven't previously

[43:44] existed or been existing.

[43:46] And so the conditionally use option is basically

[43:49] what would allow you to continue to have new of that use,

[43:54] whereas not permitted would not allow you to have new of that use,

[43:58] but everybody already operating could keep going until they stop

[44:01] and kind of lose their entitlement after they're closed for six months.

[44:07] Yes.

[44:08] And then with the building height, so we have it at seven,

[44:13] is there could you request a variance for a higher,

[44:17] like a taller building height?

[44:19] We should talk about that.

[44:21] You really couldn't get a zoning variance for it because then it's a zoning variance on a development variance.

[44:27] So it doesn't go to y'all, it goes to boredom adjustment and then you're having to make a hardship case.

[44:31] And who's going to be able to make a hardship case.

[44:33] So that's where we have a lot of staff conversation about that.

[44:40] And decided ultimately to start with, let's start with where UT is because that seems to be a good discussion point.

[44:46] But my preference is to allow even taller buildings, and I know I'm saying that

[44:52] and a lot of people would not appreciate hearing me say that based on the comments that we've received.

[44:58] I agree because I think some-

[45:00] These parcels are fairly small, and if we're trying to get dense housing, they're going to have to go up. And seven stories is not that tall. And parking. Yeah, if you're going to have to do parking underneath or whatever it is. It was ground floor commercial. Exactly. You're going to have to go higher. And so I just, I would like to figure out a way to maybe allow potential. I know people, and most people who weren't in planning would develop and initially hear, you know, that increased height, and it's just alarm bells and freak out.

[45:28] But like it can be done really well. I'd like to potentially see a way to allow additional height.

[45:34] I don't know how to do it because like you said it would be if it's a zoning variance.

[45:39] It's not something that we would consider. So that was my only my biggest issue there.

[45:44] And then I think my last question is like are you still you may still be trying to figure this out.

[45:50] But is the intention to go in and do mass rezoning for these parcels or is it to kind of do it, you know, individually or like, what if someone fights you on it?

[46:02] Like, what is, you know, how is that going to?

[46:06] Good question.

[46:07] So some that

[46:12] I'm showing here may not ultimately be rezoned because on close inspection of what it's currently zoned to, its owner is and what it's uses, we may find that there's not a good argument to rezone it.

[46:25] for a variety of reasons. But the general approach is we need to allow housing here because we need housing to go here.

[46:32] And so kind of, I think the next step is like an individualized assessment, which I've got the spreadsheet set up to do.

[46:39] I just haven't gone through each individual parcel, each individual owner, each individual business and done all that. That's my next week's project.

[46:47] And so there should be like a refined version of this that comes back to you all next month and says,

[46:53] Okay, now that we've kind of like refined what we're looking at, here's where the

[46:57] sustaining shakeout is like who would recommend changing and then if there's

[47:01] anybody that we wouldn't for whatever reason that is. What I also need to do in

[47:06] the next month is begin more directly contacting business and property owners and

[47:11] saying here's what we're looking at because it's very what I don't want to do and

[47:15] what I haven't wanted to do is go to people with a vague concept and say we're

[47:18] gonna reason you and have people not have any details for that. So after this

[47:22] conversation, all the much better idea of what we may actually be looking at, how would

[47:26] that impact you?

[47:27] If you're a drive-thru restaurant and y'all been very clear, we don't want to continue

[47:31] with drive-thru restaurants, then I need to start, you know, preparing people for the reality

[47:35] that they might be looking at a recommendation that would not include their current use,

[47:40] and they need the opportunity to be able to speak to that, right?

[47:44] But until I know that that might be the case, that's a lot harder to communicate, so there's

[47:48] lot of communication that's happening next that gets into individually. And for everybody

[47:53] I've already met with, that's like, we're good as long as we can do this. Like, I have

[47:58] that accounted for, so I can look at, you know, kind of your general discussion and say,

[48:03] okay, well, what they're doing would be allowed in any of these options. So there's no, so

[48:08] it's like, how many properties do we have that there's no real impact because their situation

[48:12] isn't going to change? But then how many properties do we have or there are going to be real impacts

[48:16] to what their entitlements are compared to their use, those probably need a lot more direct

[48:20] communication, honestly, than people who are going to need more of a heads-up, your zoning

[48:25] is going to change, but this isn't going to materially affect you, unless your plans

[48:29] were to do one of these things in the future that we're looking at no longer allowing.

[48:33] So this is where that becomes, like, a friction point for you.

[48:36] And then if people don't like what this is, hopefully enough people have heard about this

[48:41] by now, and we're still getting word out to people for the first time.

[48:45] But hopefully people have heard about this by now and they know that some things coming

[48:49] so that when I approach with communication and say I want to make sure you're really

[48:53] aware because the next step after that is you're getting a letter.

[48:56] And so when we send out all these letters that either we're looking at rezoning your property

[49:01] and there will be a public hearing or we're looking at rezoning a property that is close

[49:04] to you and you need the opportunity to comment so all these residential neighborhoods were

[49:08] looking at changing the commercial entitlements that are near you do you want to let your

[49:13] thoughts be known to the planning commission and so but I would rather try to get that initial

[49:18] hey here's what we're looking at out before people are getting official letters of the

[49:22] mail and so but that's the refining process if I'm answering your question now I know

[49:27] that was kind of broad but that's the refining process of trying to get an actual exhibit

[49:32] map that identifies individually each property and then what it is and what it will be so

[49:38] that that's all very clear because what I don't want to do is go through all of this effort

[49:43] and then forget a few parcels, right, miss a few parcels or and so what you all will

[49:50] get in the next iteration is going to be a lot more kind of blown up in detail than

[49:53] this very still very general approach that you've seen illustrated for you.

[49:59] So I generally agree that option three is the best, but I have a giant caveat because you've

[50:06] It's grown out a couple of things like ground floor retail.

[50:11] Like

[50:14] about option two is that we're not saying this is one size fits hall, everything

[50:19] is the same for the whole corridor because that is really scary to me that we're saying,

[50:25] okay, this is all one zone, it's all the same development standards and if we're wanting

[50:30] ground floor retail we cannot support ground floor retail through all of this area.

[50:36] So it seems like we need to have at least like two categories and whether it goes back to

[50:44] the tier centers which is probably the most logical thing to say okay in the tier centers

[50:50] we want to say ground floor retail or whatever the parameters are and in the other areas

[50:56] we say you can do ground floor retail or you can do 100% residential or 100% office give

[51:02] them the flexibility to let the market decide but it just seems like this is a huge area

[51:09] to say it's all the same. I think the only argument that I would make is what Britain brought

[51:15] up earlier is if you're going to start restricting parcels that already have entitlements that allow

[51:21] them to do things then you're going to get sued probably. So what I'm saying is we're not basically

[51:28] they all can do retail in office, so we're not saying you can't do that, but if somebody

[51:33] comes in and they want to be 100% residential, are we ready as the city of fate? Well, they'll

[51:39] say everybody's got to build ground floor retail everywhere, because I can show you a whole

[51:43] lot of places that that is a disaster and they have empty ground floor retail space sitting there.

[51:50] That's not what this is saying there, right? You could do all residential if you got a condition

[51:53] you, right? We haven't talked about development standards at all. I guess

[51:57] our Britain throw out. Yeah, we want to have parking. We want to have

[51:59] ground floor regels. So in order to justify more height, yeah. But that's

[52:04] the only justification I can see for going up is like, well because we're really

[52:09] not getting a lot of it in the city, right? Like the thing that we're getting

[52:12] right now is one story office buildings and one story drive through banks.

[52:15] Right. And one story drive through restaurants. So like

[52:17] the development demand pressure for like eight story buildings doesn't exist.

[52:24] because that's like a no man's land of life.

[52:27] And maybe that's it.

[52:29] Where we get some nice streets and nice street lights in there and everybody's like,

[52:32] oh, we see it in their own way.

[52:33] I'm concerned and we haven't talked about development standards all right now.

[52:37] We're just talking about the land use.

[52:38] And so that's a really big question.

[52:41] If we're saying everything in here is the same no matter if you're 200 yards off of college avenue

[52:48] or if you're right on the front of it, but I think option three is the best if we are paying attention.

[52:59] It could also be to the tier centers, get to go to nine stories in the other areas, go up four,

[53:05] or something. It just seems like we need to have some kind of distinction that we're not trying to say,

[53:11] all of this is the same. Okay, I think that's really reasonable. Yeah, so you both

[53:17] brought up like most of the things I was going to say anyway but just to clarify

[53:20] a few things I really like option three or the same reason I think like doing

[53:25] something new that covers what we want to do rather than trying to shoehorn

[53:30] stuff that we already have is a better approach honestly to trying to do

[53:33] something make big leaps you've got to do big chances and do things as far as

[53:39] the naming just to get that out of the way. I guess fine.

[53:42] I mean, urban corridor, I got a third one right.

[53:45] The main thing about urban corridor, though, is I thought of that tube, but I thought there's

[53:48] also urban thoroughfare, and it basically means the same thing, and then we're like,

[53:52] why do you have the tube?

[53:54] And not that it matters, but it's just kind of funny, like, you have urban corridor, you have

[53:57] urban thoroughfare, it's, you know, so anyways, it doesn't matter, it's also fine.

[54:01] What do you want to hear us talk about a lot?

[54:03] What term do you have to begin with?

[54:04] I was like, what do you resonate with?

[54:05] I was like, what do you resonate with?

[54:05] Uh, that's kind of negative connotative, too.

[54:08] That's right.

[54:09] It's just ironic.

[54:10] How about it?

[54:11] is they're like, why? Why? I don't know.

[54:13] Do you think it's very bad about that?

[54:15] Yeah, the tear center differentiation

[54:16] is something I thought about for sure of like,

[54:19] do we want to like, collapse it down to the same zoning?

[54:23] Honestly, the more I think about it,

[54:25] I don't think it's a big deal.

[54:26] I think like, just seeing any investment of this type in this area,

[54:31] I'm cool with along any of that quarter, honestly.

[54:34] You know, making it harder for you to do things in certain areas,

[54:37] I'd rather just see something happen.

[54:39] like we can't put barriers everywhere because people need to do this and they're not going to do it for a long time

[54:44] even if we reset. So we should just kind of let it happen. That's how I think on this.

[54:53] In terms of the height, I do would like to see more height allowance, but in order to offset some of the concerns,

[55:00] is there a way to tie it to like, you know, I know we have a downtown master plumber,

[55:04] or downtown design standards.

[55:05] Can we have a design standards or whatever?

[55:09] You know, where it's something that's tied,

[55:12] you change the development code along with these changes

[55:15] as a single package that you push through

[55:17] so that you don't have to go through it twice.

[55:19] And they're tied somehow.

[55:20] I don't know enough about this to know how that works,

[55:23] but like if you can have stepbacks in buildings,

[55:26] it's, you know, if you go over a certain height

[55:27] you have to step back so that you get more sunlight

[55:29] to the ground, all those kinds of things.

[55:31] I don't know how you tie it to these zoning districts, but I'd like to see that as a package

[55:36] so that we have, we don't just do the zone, we actually say this is how we want it built.

[55:41] And that might be rewriting the UEC, I don't know.

[55:43] I like to do the tier centers like allowing the additional height potentially in tier centers

[55:47] because those are going to be further away from residential areas and then maybe adding

[55:51] the home protection would help with some of the concerns, but I mean, I agree like the

[55:56] The more you restrict, the less we're going to get what we want and you know, I

[56:03] Generally would say let let them let the market aside, but you know, if we have to restrict it to your centers

[56:08] Might be a good idea to do although because this new zoning district has what we wanted to have in the definition of it

[56:15] The market will decide but it's also in the confines of what we have allowed which is much different than just letting the market decide everything

[56:22] So I think there is a healthy balance here that I like

[56:26] and I love the conditional use of options that you have because I really think that allows us to look at a lot of stuff before it happens and really get tight.

[56:34] That seemed to be one of the biggest asks we've been hearing is people want to know what's happening, idea public hearing, and they want scrutiny on it.

[56:44] And so we were looking at like could you satisfy that through the conditional use process so that you're not

[56:51] Shedding people out of the option, but you're asking you have a way to ask them to do better

[56:57] When the better outcome is what the community is saying if they need and not just people being able to do something

[57:04] Without that scrutiny

[57:06] And I think if the development standard if there were some distinctions and the one big thing that we're all afraid of on the

[57:14] drive through the gas stations and the car washes which maybe we've got them all built

[57:19] is as you could say you know those could be excluded in the core you know the

[57:24] tear centers but then they would still could have the conditional use in other areas

[57:28] I mean it seems like the ability to just say they're not going to be allowed

[57:34] anywhere I've heard a community you said they're putting them all only allowed in

[57:38] their industrial districts which I don't know how long that's going to hold up but

[57:42] I think it's going to be a little bit of a hurdle because there's going to be business

[57:45] centers and it's your centers that are going to say you're restricting, you know, what

[57:50] I, you're decreasing the value of my property.

[57:52] I think the conditional use is the best compromise and you're probably still going to get some

[57:57] pushback, but at least there's, you know, it's a compromise for us.

[58:03] Well, as we think about, like, what is, like, it looked like to make a really big transition.

[58:08] We didn't do this in a couple of years like we've been doing this for 70 years and so

[58:14] I don't know that I see this as the end-all be all so much as like this is a huge moment of transition

[58:20] To go a different direction that's gonna need a lot more transition points as we begin to make that like really big

[58:25] Shift and so like but we're also like not driving a speedboat, right?

[58:30] Like you can want the speedboat around like it is split and with a cruise ship around and that's like the scale of what we're talking about

[58:35] So I have a lot more confidence, our ability to, like, iteratively make these changes in these transitions as we work through this

[58:42] versus trying to quickly, like, just overturn everything.

[58:47] But I think we have, and I really appreciate our planning staff so much, for making some, like, pretty bold choices to set a different course in

[58:55] kind of the way that they've cleverly thought through, just use units.

[59:01] using our existing code right because if we have all these upcoming opportunities to continue to

[59:06] refine that we're going to use those that's really good because we can continue and a lot of this

[59:10] is based on taking information in not just in this survey but we hear this all the time with you all

[59:17] and we hear this with the council and we're constantly thinking about how can we respond what people

[59:21] are asking us to do the next time we have the opportunity to make a decision on that and I think this is

[59:26] that decision point. I wonder, you know, how much, you know, if you get, let's say you get

[59:31] 80% of the property owners to be like, yeah, I love this, and 20% don't. Like what's the threshold

[59:37] at which, well, I guess it's up to the council, right? It is up to the council. It's like, what is the

[59:41] threshold at which you go? I don't care. You know, I know you have concerns, but like we have,

[59:46] we have a majority. I don't know what that is. I guess that's not for us to decide, but we're going

[59:50] to find out. It's a reason we took a resolution to the council to go forward. Yeah, and hopefully we

[59:56] We would do this all in one thing.

[59:58] We're not trying to do it piece.

[1:00:02] I'm trying to think you have a patchwork quilt of weird zone, yeah. Well, in, too, you know, if we go all the way back, if you look at what's on the screen right now and it's like really vivid blue, which I didn't on purpose, because it just shows off really well. But if I back it up to what we have currently, you're looking at almost the same thing just in a different color. That's true. So there's, it's not like we're, you know, if anything,

[1:00:29] And what we have now is a little, like, it's a pink patchwork because it's like four different

[1:00:33] pink zoning districts. And then it's a lot of gray in an area that doesn't have to pay attention

[1:00:41] to our zoning anyway. Ha, ha. Let's change it. And so, yeah, you're really, you're already there,

[1:00:48] you're just there with something that doesn't satisfy your community. The big sales page is to say,

[1:00:55] you get more uses than you currently have. But then the thing is but wanting

[1:01:01] them to have a higher bar on the quality of development.

[1:01:05] Have a seven-story gas station.

[1:01:07] No. Or a seven-story car wash.

[1:01:09] But I don't know if you like the little times where it's like the drive-thru restaurant

[1:01:13] and then the gas station and then it's going to have a cool accident.

[1:01:17] I will tell you this.

[1:01:19] It was interesting. You made the people freaked out on the mini storage.

[1:01:22] And I don't know if we have many storage to find because as you intensify what I have seen is you just say

[1:01:29] You can't put the storage units on the ground floor

[1:01:31] They can't have garage doors and people start building multi-storey internal

[1:01:37] And they don't need to use it. They're very fancy. They're all in here.

[1:01:40] So that's where I have these storage buildings.

[1:01:42] You got more people living in high-rise apartments and condos than they have.

[1:01:46] They want somewhere close by that they can keep their extra stuff.

[1:01:50] Yep, that's true.

[1:01:52] And one more question, I've got to run, is there?

[1:01:56] So we talked a little bit about design standards.

[1:01:59] And I saw that we would be using some current design

[1:02:03] standards.

[1:02:04] Is there, I don't know, this is later,

[1:02:06] but is there a conversation about like mentioned,

[1:02:10] I mean, or redoing those design standards specifically

[1:02:13] for this district, like creating design standards

[1:02:17] that would be specific to the district?

[1:02:19] So that is a conversation I want to have next month with you all like this was the like okay big picture

[1:02:24] Yeah, has everybody feel if if they it will create a zoning district for us like has everybody

[1:02:30] What's the reaction? I honestly had no idea how you were gonna react to it

[1:02:35] I didn't think I was gonna have a very good result and then I put it all together. Thank you Donna

[1:02:40] in Donna spreadsheet and went I

[1:02:43] Think it's actually works pretty well. It needs some refining and it needs some work

[1:02:46] but it starts off pretty well. And so what I want to get it next is the detail. And so what would it look like to do a zoning overlay to control for some of these things?

[1:02:56] What would it look like to do a development overlay so that we're adding those requirements on top of this like more general approach? And that way by the time we get a package together, it's considered those things, but kind of iteratively we're not trying to just like do all of this in an hour and a half and everybody's like, what would I just do?

[1:03:14] And now you'll have, you know, a month to think about it and have some documents and then

[1:03:19] I'll get you all another set of documents in about two weeks that'll basically just pile

[1:03:23] on to what we're looking at right now and see how could we implement some of what you'll

[1:03:29] talk about in a more nuanced way that I think would get us something really successful and ultimately

[1:03:34] like very urban.

[1:03:36] Yeah.

[1:03:36] So I think that's one of the things that I've been doing to you before that I think we have to address is

[1:03:44] What the appropriate build to should be as the zero to 30 in means you end up with nothing and zero if all it is is 12 feet

[1:03:55] Is not enough space for people to have residential units on the ground floor of college avenue because right now, right?

[1:04:04] it's six feet of tree planting and six foot sidewalk and then the building

[1:04:09] there and that's like that's a really tight pedestrian space on a big

[1:04:14] Hawking Road. So you want it to be something more like a distance not zero back to

[1:04:20] something else? Yeah I think especially if we want the ability for them to have

[1:04:26] front yard space for residential units or whatever it's just it's a we have so much

[1:04:33] flexibility it's like we couldn't commit what we were trying to achieve. I think that's like a problem with urban

[1:04:39] third. If a developer came in and wanted to build something and wanted to provide,

[1:04:45] frontly still could with that build too. So I guess if they thought it was beneficial to selling those

[1:04:50] units or would

[1:04:54] anyway, but you want to require it. Whether they're maximizing their buildable area

[1:04:59] and shoving it to every edge that they want. Knowing that people weren't in any way, just because

[1:05:04] there's a housing grant because it's there. I mean, if you're going to do

[1:05:07] apartments that open right onto a street. Yeah, but that's what our first day

[1:05:12] that and what our current state of require. And so that's like, okay, well, do you

[1:05:16] tackle that through bullseye or do you tackle that through something that

[1:05:19] controls for that? I think we have to be cognizant. Because right now we're

[1:05:24] telling people when they build apartments on MLK, that all the ground floor units

[1:05:29] it's have to have doors and they open up on to a five or a six-lane road and it's a less

[1:05:39] than desirable design set up but it's what our standard for what

[1:05:52] these

[1:06:00] ride-aways are

[1:06:00] so massive today but we were told that we weren't moving the curves no no I know I just

[1:06:09] think about in terms of that urban design and

[1:06:19] the building adjacent to the street or or getting into

[1:06:23] another zoning element, which is that minimum buildable street frontage, like how much your building

[1:06:28] can be right up in that space. I don't know, because I get angsty about something about 150 feet

[1:06:35] between building. I would love to get more tree planting area in the right of way since we now own

[1:06:40] it, but we were told that the curb's weren't moving. And so that means if the road's going to be that

[1:06:46] why and someone's going to feel that zero that means you come out your front door literally 12 feet

[1:06:52] from people driving really fast. Yeah I'm not disagreeing with you. For me it's that that tension

[1:06:59] between how much right away and how much space we already got called up there. Yeah big development

[1:07:04] centers can go a long way and think

[1:07:08] if it's if they're not serving us for this purpose we need to change

[1:07:11] them. Especially if it's I mean yeah anyway but I just I don't I think we just have to be very calm

[1:07:17] that of that and what our current standards are.

[1:07:23] We have some weird student housing buildings with doors

[1:07:26] that no human being has ever helped

[1:07:35] me.

[1:07:36] Thank you all very much.

[1:07:39] Stay tuned for the next round,

[1:07:41] which I should have in your email in about two weeks

[1:07:44] so that you'll have it all ahead of.

[1:07:47] If you have ideas in the meantime, let me know.

[1:07:50] I'm going to also work with our communication team

[1:07:53] on kind of a second round of capturing feedback on this before you'll get feedback at a public

[1:08:01] hearing in your regular Monday night cleaning commission meetings. And I want to say next

[1:08:05] meeting Matthew K. Best to speak because he's been totally silent on all of this and I know he has

[1:08:10] opinions.

[1:08:14] Yes, I would shut up. So I'm going to fight for it. Oh, wait.

[1:08:28] Why I never noticed it was written that way.

Long Range Planning Committee 7.18.2024

Transcript