Planning Commission Deliberations on Zoning Map and Ordinance   10/18/2023

Jim, you know, working out, and I'm like, just getting up, and I'm like, oh, I can't talk anyway, I can't talk with them out of breath, and she just stops me, and like, my heart rate drops, I'm talking for 30 minutes, almost every other day.

Well, this is the materials that I scanned and sent you all about struggling.

No action on this tonight, right?

No, no action, but these were the

There's some mysterious- Yes.

So we have- I got a part of that.

I don't see this.

Which isn't specific to this evening, but some mail that you received.

So they tell us not to open things.

Can you just use your scanner and all of it?

You might be able to project it.

We're going to project it, too.

Even cheap paper.

Last time I actually printed a fancy paper for everybody.

Let's get low.

Did someone take my rock out of there?

Oh, no.

My OneDrive file didn't update, even though I had my computer on.

Hosea was just witnessing a OneDrive conversation with Jeanette, who were discussing about it not doing... Oh, it never worked in City Hall for some other reason.

I go through this whole process every time .

I heard you do development .

You don't have faith that we'll be out of here in two hours and your computer will last.

All right.

Let's begin the screen.

We have what we call the residential court neighborhood aid district, which is the district as opposed to overlay.

Missy, do you want to do logistics before we... Are you live?

Otherwise, logistics are pretty similar to what they need for.

So I'm going to start with the residential coordinator.

So for one unit coverage at 45, not 55.

In a case where you're either building on or replacing an extant structure, the footprint can be the lesser of 50% bigger than the building you just knocked down or 2,500 square feet.

So the main concern I would have there is that many of the lots in these areas are very small.

Yeah, hold that thought while I click some buttons and see.

We were not, due to the time constraints, we were not in a position to do much of a sampling.

you can go 50% larger than that extant dwelling.

So, and of course you can go in the height based on that footprint.

So the idea would be, I mean, are there some lots where 45% coverage you're saying might be too limiting?

My standards and size of the buildings shouldn't be tied to affordability.

Yeah.

Because RA is 3,000, it's our footprint, right?

The idea is to prevent McLansians.

So James, to see if I got you right, your squick is, if you're gonna build something that is, well, I guess this wouldn't apply to an existing homeowner who's just remodeling their house.

Yeah, exactly.

So 2,500 as a ranch is a big ranch, but it's not reasonable.

If you want to try to crank that back down on a long-level learning to 2,000, you're going to get a lot of people saying, I've got a 2,100 square foot thing I want to build here, and I can't.

Did we have a comment from Sharon that I hear that Sharon said something?

I am here if you want to hear from me, James.

I would never say no.

Yeah.

But I think I'm fine with the recommendation for staff for the general standard.

What about the coverage issue one versus two?

Immediately.

On purpose.

Well, the PHA was the recommendation.

Is that right?

second Lyle House.

Let's make sure.

So I don't think, I mean, not that I'm never going to be able to look forward to this, but I don't think I'd be able to put a

If you guys are curious, the mean building footprint for the greater tinted beige and Rose Hill sensitive RNA areas that we laid out, plus the ones I laid out in my memo, the mean is 1,215 square feet and the median is 1,136.

Michael Koch- Do you want me to get the lot?

All right.

And is that worth the groups that we're seeing?

One is that we seem to have a pretty loud and clear signal that neighborhood preservation, housing preservation without developer invasion is heavily weighted against value.

sell that and have somebody come in and build a large single family residence or they can build a, they can, I guess, conceivably build a duplex.

And a lot of these, and a certain number of these lots, it doesn't matter whether they're RA or not, there's just not much to be done because of the size of the lot anyway.

Who's saying that?

It is cultural participation.

But I mean, is this like the people in the hack, or is it- Yeah, I've heard about it.

Yeah, I mean, this is- Providence is Joy Johnson and Ellen Dreyfus.

No, I mean, the provenance of the title of the group.

Sorry.

I thought maybe that was the name of a group that I wanted to actually name.

So, well, certainly got larger thoughts on the whole concept if you want to go to that discussion.

The mean structure to the mean lot size is about 21.5% coverage, and the median to the median, remembering that those are different, right?

Yeah.

So, honestly, I would say it probably doesn't make a huge difference either way.

between 45 and 55.

Your bigger problem on most of these lots is going to be that the house is kind of square in the middle and you can't just fit another house on the other side of it or behind it.

The second unit by right is, I mean, the design is that you preserve the structure and you put an accessory dwelling on it, which is one thing we want to preserve.

Even if there were no restrictions, you keep the structure because

Unless I wanted to buy a house from an estate, a house that's, say, a C-core condition and do a teardown because it's relatively cheap, small piece of land to build a McMansion on.

I'm selling the house for $1.2 million.

I think when you're talking about adding units in back or around, you're rarely going to be economical to tear down.

James, what do you guys think about the way it comes to it?

Yeah, I don't have any particular questions.

So, I mean, one thing I would, well, so one thing that's different here, right, is that in RA, it's 55 for two units, 60 for more, 60 for three to four units, and then more than four units is 65, right?

Now, in that more than four unit case, we are talking about an affordable six-plex.

So I would have it match the RA requirements for building coverage.

What is it number?

Okay, so these are the promising.

45, 55, 65.

And I mean it.

Well, so I'm saying we should match our A. Oh, it's not the stage, but sorry.

So one unit 45, two units 55, three to four units 60, more than four units 65.

I mean, it's more complicated.

I don't know that it's strictly necessary, but I get the sentiment to reduce my attention.

So we've got...

So staff's heartburn is on not having a standard that's a standard that's a standard that the initial starting place is.

If that were the case... So one thing we could do with footprint is to make it smaller if it's one unit, perhaps.

that would have the same.

So what we, so what the hack was proposing on footprint.

So what you would say is pull the

But, you know, I mean, you want to say one unit's 2,000 and anything over that's 2,500?

Yeah, I mean, if you're talking about mostly 5,000 square foot lots, then you're 2,500 square foot for your 45% building coverage is going to restrict your footprint anyway.

I mean, you know, on the flip side and the less restrictive side for these, say, affordable six flexes, now they're restricted more than they are in RA.

But I don't know.

Affordable.

Wow.

Look, if you get anything where you're getting to a 3,000 square foot footprint on one of these tiny lots, these people are coming out.

Right.

At least one affordable unit.

I mean, if somebody can find a $3,500, they'll come in and argue for an affordable housing.

So setting a flat height of 35 max bonus height for affordability, otherwise you're at one story over existing structure.

It's either one floor or two floors or not.

I guess one.

It's the lesser of one story over 435 feet.

I mean, I think you're under the same problem of defining things relative to existing.

I think it's easier to, I think it's, you can spend a week arguing about whether your house is 800 square feet or 840 square feet, depending on who's measuring it.

Well, I think the argument is less defining what the current is and more that it shouldn't, like, to apply a zoning rule, what's there now is not super relevant if you're trying to apply a universal standard to an area.

I mean, I think if you really wanted to do that, you could just set a two-story height limit.

I mean, I think we should put that back here is what I would say.

If we go to that for anything over two, you can go to 40 feet.

We're going to do, I mean, we're going to do affordable, this is a way of getting an affordable bonus, a height bonus for affordability in this district, and we've sort of run away from that and most others in the R districts.

If it's over 23 and 35, what is 35? 32.

Are you looking at RA or the changes to it?

Right now is it 2, 5, 35, and that is what our current RA says.

One unit, your current recommendation, one unit is two and a half stories of 35 feet.

Yeah, I think that is fine.

Because of the reportability requirement for more than two units, it acts as a bonus for affordability.

More restrictive than two and a half stories seems a little restricted.

The more that it matches RA, the better.

All right, so two plus three and a 40 is what they're suggesting.

So it matches RA, one unit is two and a half, 35.

Carl Schwarz, Lyle Solla-Yates, Michael Koch, Lyle Solla-Yates, Michael Koch, Lyle

It's just 2,500 here.

In most cases, you're not going to be able to subdivide because of the frontage requirements anyway.

So the square footage requirements, everyone's hyper-focusing on that all the time.

But it really don't matter that much because your frontage is what's really limiting.

Well, you need a back alley and two frontages, great, like enough frontage to make that.

That where we got the access is where we got.

That's where we're at on this.

We talked about the no net loss language.

I think you're saying as long as it's physically still in able to be a unit, it's all you've got to be capable space with bedroom that's qualifying things, you know, bathroom, whatever, I don't know.

Like what would trigger this?

You couldn't take out your full bath, I don't know how to do that, and you couldn't like knock down a wall that separates your units, right?

I mean, the worry here is like duplexes or sometimes, you know, I

Well, I mean, the answer... Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I understand the... Maybe I'm not getting your point, James.

I mean, if you want to buy a triplex and it's your house and you only want to occupy one of the units and the other two you're going to, you know, run paintball tournaments and, I mean, I guess it is what it is.

But that's the individual.

Well, yes, but the person who would go in there and buy a triplex, which would have one residential unit in there, would be, you know, recombining.

Sharon, do you want to speak at that point?

That's where we left it.

Do you have any examples of other localities that have done it that I could take a look at?

James may, but I do not.

And they, one did that, one has been planning to do that.

They're following them.

The intention is to expand into the duplex as their family groups.

So, in other words...

It's just an anecdote.

Let's focus on legal methods.

I think they're valid, but there's, I don't know, I see both sides.

Yeah.

No one's really thought it through.

We're not sure what we're going to, it's got potential, but it's not a thing that we're going to, we're going to somehow, you know, bomb it up in the middle of this table.

So then these are some relatively minor things.

If we're done with the text of RNA.

The second page is

That's about the equivalency of units.

And I think it's just useful language in general to have.

All right, so on the resale of affordable units, 80% AMI is the threshold, not 60.

80%?

we're looking at the old and work session agenda. Let's go down and say, alright, maybe I'm going to do that. Did you renumber these? No, there's not going to get inserted, right? Since last week, since last week, we don't get to. Okay, we've been in. Okay. So, alright, let's go to forty-one.

41, Section 2, 80% as opposed to 60 on the, all right.

And then on resale, you just, you want it to always be 80%?

No, I want the resale to get 80.

The resale only says there has to be a rent first refusal.

Never mind.

All right.

Yes.

12 of the packet, 15 of the PDF.

I want to add, I want to cut and paste that.

I want to leave it here and I want to duplicate it because I think it's useful language.

And then some sort of length.

So there's something.

the equivalency of unit requirement is waived.

and the combination of units and what you need in size and in finishing, you may not be able to match that up in a coherent way to the market rate units.

Why doesn't the labor that we just added account for that case or that we want to add?

It's in line with the comp plan, blah, blah, blah.

It's a lot easier to go out for LIHTC funding if we say it's over 20%.

We don't even have to, we don't have any regulatory issue whatsoever.

Okay.

Yeah, but that's the way that I don't like bedroom count stuff is the substantive thing, right?

It says must include the same interior features as other units in the same building.

It's not just interior features, right?

composition of the overall project units in number of bedrooms.

Right.

Extertors per end.

Or a third one.

So as long as those are mixed in, the others may happen to be live tech units.

These standards really ought to only apply to the required affordable bond.

If you just happen to be doing an affordable unit, you should be able to do whatever you want.

your deductive, your more than whatever, raise that issue.

How did we resolve that?

That's a way to do that.

Okay, I mean, that's right, I guess.

If you're doing, if you're at 30%, I mean, a third is a good number.

That means this is an affordable housing project and we're not going to have to wrestle with this at all.

It's not proper procedure to phone a friend, get sunshine on the phone.

The number that he was recommending was 20% or more, and his body feels that 30% is better than 30% is better, and you can argue the city council why we got it wrong.

Darren, would you agree with that?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Are all of those going to be de-restricted for 99 years or are 10% going to be de-restricted for 99 years because it's required by zoning and the others are de-restricted for LIHTC amount of time.

Which is 30 years.

Yeah.

Which, which my, which the my response to be is let's take the win for those and move on.

Sure, but then do they qualify for that 30% if they're not meeting affordable housing units required by this section.

Yeah, which is how we define affordable housing units in this section.

That was, well, what you would require then is that they would have to be able to extend it for 99 years to those units.

I don't see how that's true.

To all 30%.

If it becomes mathematically impossible, we'll do a little bit then.

meeting 422 C1A term affordability for over 30% of units.

They're exempt from equivalency requirements.

For projects meeting the term affordability standards in 4.2.2.C.1.A for over 30% of total units, equivalency standards do not apply.

Does that make sense?

Yes, that makes sense.

I wrote it.

No, no, I'll email it.

Was that language seeking better?

Yeah.

Everyone's okay with that.

Carl, do you have something?

Does the shop front house still apply to R&A?

Well, I think that's fine, but it does raise... I mean, I don't know that there's any uses on the use table that we would want to exclude.

We want to change the VAR membership requirements.

Okay, but we would just want to check the other sections.

Perfect.

So our suggestion is that where we have two historians, we would change it to be one historian and one licensed professional contractor or one historian.

I do.

I'm just trying to tell you, Molly, can I'm chasing down impressive service.

Nice.

It's already surveying the trees.

And 422 whatever cost requirements?

Or some other way to say that they are accordingly.

Okay.

Are you guys done with your... No, we're allowing landscape architects.

So the goal is to allow a contractor just who lives in the city.

So now we're requiring a landscape art effect.

Got it.

Thank you.

I don't want to add requirements that don't need to be there.

I mean, I think it's implied.

Since you're head of the boss, I'm assuming that if it becomes a conflict that'll ask you to probably fill it up, right?

Yes.

When the BAR considers an appeal of the administrator, we've reviewed the applications that the application had come before us since first instance.

I don't know.

Do you know these?

Jeff Andrews.

paper, so I've emailed Jeff to give us something.

There's a couple of notes in there.

It looks like you can lease it and someone under contractual ownership.

application or any sort of thing?

What about on D.C.?

Again, the owner still has to sign off that they're given permission.

Okay, so that is the owner always does have to sign off.

Yeah, I mean, and the applicant has to provide documentation on the owner that they have the authority to move through the process.

I think, so I think what Jeff is saying is our application form needs to be changed.

Then he can change that.

I think you said a limit to this.

I need to meet that minimum requirement.

That was the big thing.

What are we looking at? Two, nine, six, now into this.

I mean, you probably also want to change that section to Norfolk Southern, which is how I would say it out in the street.

Can you tell me what list you're working on?

This is just what we're working with today.

No, no, no.

I mean, you have a list of comments.

So what are we looking at?

Yeah, give us a little bit of a picture.

The standards to get that bonus are very, very clear.

These are not.

Okay.

How many people at this table would want to look at that?

I think the concern driving its overlay is not necessarily coming from this commission, but rather external feedback.

I have one minor little thing, just the art.

But I think that's fine because some of these other things are really hard and like beautiful.

Yeah, but I mean, you can get in a place where somebody just throws some white paint on the wall saying it's a reproduction of a Blanca, leave me alone, it's art.

That's not going to kill me on this, but I would change the art to be go back to the language you had before on the art because I don't think we should require a public art organization or whatever.

I mean, I would argue that this entire thing since long before I was around in 2017 was about making for predictable, non-discretionary processes to have a zoning code that is not based on arbitrary decisions made by council on an ad hoc basis.

I think all that for arbitrary.

I'm sure they were very recent and considered, but they are unpredictable and in that way fundamentally bad.

That said, so that's my first opinion, to be clear.

So I'm pretty comfortable with G as it's written.

I think we're on a bigger issue of is it do we keep this as a discretionary review or do we do what Lyle wants, which is you do a checklist and you do the high bonus without it coming before us.

So we'll do that doesn't mean isn't the concern that that might actually be so reductionist that it doesn't achieve the goal in the first place that we were planning.

Do we have authority to incentivize affordable commercial space and community gardens?

that this has to be described as some specific authority for incentivizing as opposed to a separate corridor that has attributes that are designed to create and achieve a certain atmosphere or aspect within those corridors and to support uses and adjoining parcels.

like we could make say you have to have two of these and then you get it and that would be fine.

would give you a mixture of various things.

Making this non-discretionary, but you have to do these things.

My concern is what I stated before.

How do I measure it in terms of sufficiency?

I just thought the conversation would be easier if I was told it was illegal.

The other thing I should add to this is by making it a special exception, it does encourage interaction with the landowners around them and adjoining neighborhoods, which may be a good thing.

where I am on this, just to keep the combination going.

But on this, it does offer a seat to by Phil and 10th and Page to advocate for their, you know, what they want in these areas.

Well, in the near term.

In the near term, yeah.

And you're in a way that

Yeah.

And if our direction is to put something in now and then come back to it after, that's what we've been hearing from

others, then that's fine with me.

When we have a smaller plan and we have the new zone that we want to have, we just swap them out.

Though, I mean, I will say some of what I've heard from the council is a long description or review for these bigger areas.

What?

They can't just tell them what we think.

Yeah, I'm generally comfortable with it.

And I think if we're making this commitment, having the supplies to our R&A too, we're making these commitments to small area plans.

If we make the commitment, then we can nuance them, rewrite them.

But right now, we're just trying to, as somebody put it, land the plane.

Yeah, we can get out of here.

Hey.

So that's why I like to get rid of the art installation because I feel like that is that we're just someone's going to offer that.

I think it's okay if they just do an art installation from the other things, right?

I don't know.

I don't know.

If we were requiring one thing and that was like the easy way out and everything else was much harder, that would be a lot more a concern.

All right, it looks like the art is going to remain.

Because the idea of qualified art connoisseurs specifying the law is a bit ridiculous to me.

arcing the item.

And I think if anyone wants to do that, it can be counsel when these special exception requests come along.

Yeah.

All right, we're going to leave it as space on the stupid organizations.

But even if we take out the art installations, still can come up through gold of the comprehensive plan, I'm sure.

No one's going to do it.

Each?

Yeah.

And then they've got, you know, sustainable design or they've got,

Some commercial space built in there.

Where the building goes, I just thought I'm not quite there yet.

I vote to keep art.

I don't know why you all hate art.

Ideally, the community through coming to the city council.

People will be mad at the developer for lying.

We're taking it out.

This is your trivia.

We back in business.

Yeah.

We wanted to make sure that everyone was on the same page, so.

Didn't miss any business.

No.

There isn't actually a map on this one, but if you look at the tactics, maybe,

That was actually something I almost brought up last week and then found myself, excuse me, being concerned about photos disappearing.

So basically your four parcels there, your five-ish parcels are...

On the south side, you have Kenny Lumber slash Random Row.

You have reeds and you have the cleaners.

On the north side, you know, that's just Parrish Street up there, which is kind of all industrial stuff, at least for a ways.

There are big downside I see with that eventually.

or really we just discussed one of the things we wanted to see was like affordable space for grocery stores and stuff and Reeds is kind of an anchor of the neighborhood and I would hate to incentivize it, the family that owns it to like sell it and redevelop without a replacement Reeds and photos also.

What are you posting on this too?

So I would say just remove it from its overlays, putting back to what it was.

One way to maybe spread the circle, if we can think of a good way to justify it, maybe, is to say that the gas station and the random row property go up to something else.

I mean, we're basically talking about the boundary.

Yeah, but you can't do that after you get to see X3.

No, every store.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I regret it today, too.

They're on the west side of the river and spur, but not the north and southern bridge.

Anyway, it was across the street.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right, back to the start then.

Well,

It's much closer to 10th and Page, one might say, than it is to much of Venable.

In terms of the scale of the thousands.

I mean, there's just a big old undergrad area separate from the rest of Venable.

Yeah, I don't know why the neighborhood associations are drawn that way.

So it's west of 11th Street, including Page Street, and there's up to 13th Street.

I think it makes sense.

Don't take it.

So when I asked what the constituency was, I mean, this was my question.

I mean, like I said, I don't think R&A is an unequivably good idea.

But that said, I mean, does your perception of the people on your block think that in a way that's different from the area that we've assigned it?

The people I've talked to are mostly just scared of, not scared,

It's new and different and scary. You hear the idea of someone could put multiple units in their backyard. It's scary, but that's the same fear that the whole town's got. Yeah, so.

And if we decide, I think perhaps even we could recommend not to do it if we thought that was appropriate, but still could offer a fully baked version of it to council if they want to run with it anyway.

Does that make sense?

I am viewing RNA as a, I don't want to say stopgap, but a

zoning district that is designed to give us breathing space to do the small area plants and to provide that protection.

But I just cannot see not providing something to do with the anti-displacement, even if it's not as highly geared as we would like.

And frankly, I think we should have spent more time on this earlier, but we didn't.

The only thing it's doing is saying that if you're going to do that, you can also... But you're missing.

It's what's going to happen everywhere in the relative behavior.

post, right, that this goes to your same issue of, well, the best way to do this is to upload everyone else around it.

Now, I mean, personally, I mean, I'd like to have a much heavier touch, but we don't have the time to do it.

If City Council wants to revisit the issue and juice up parts of it and tune down other parts of it, then we can watch that happen or argue it.

I think the problem is you can call it an anti-displacement area all you want, but does it reduce displacement?

The question is, would it have the effect of reducing displacement relative to the change that is happening elsewhere, not to what is happening now?

I think that that is misplaced.

So we can't have it both ways.

And what we're saying here is eliminate the one possibility and force it into the flipped house possibility.

Your argument is going to continue to happen.

Yeah.

And then there are many non-zoning tools that you can use to address that.

because that's the whole point, right, the up zone that you provide the ability to build more units elsewhere.

No.

I haven't at all, all I know is people have lost their audience.

We didn't talk about anything.

So we're making sure that we're including our virtual audience.

I appreciate it.

So let me...

and making a recommendation based on what we've got here.

Everybody's throwing it.

The neighborhoods are Rose Hill, Penfield Page, Byteville, and potentially Rick Reed.

If you're able to do this defense page, give this an order.

All right, Mr. Cohen.

A couple changes in Byteville.

size for our large lot R1 zone, though it is zoned R1S. Generally speaking, the houses here are valued higher than most of the rest of the neighborhood areas we're talking about, though there are some duplexes that are relatively affordable if you divide the assessments by two. I would suggest moving this pocket. And if you look at the zoomed out map.

Just the hashed area here, if you have the... Is this map that is on the share screen?

Yeah, that's my map.

Yeah, sorry.

It's this pocket here.

Okay.

Got it.

Next up,

If you look at the Byteville historic survey, that one really only extends up to that kind of, you know, upper portion of Byteville, this is like Western Byteville along Grove.

So, three options.

One adds 26 parcels to RNA, one removes 12 parcels from RNA, and one removes 44.

In your reasoning again,

And then if you look at the other way to look at it, which is like the historic core of the neighborhood of this core neighborhood, as we're calling it, these areas were developed separately and later.

So you're suggesting the North Baker Street.

It's not clear to everybody what is hatched in the map on the far right is to be removed.

all going to RA, regular RA.

and there has been some movement from tenant-occupied to owner-occupied, although I haven't done one in a few years.

I see my maps.

Honestly, I can't remember which side of this street, but which ones I did were on.

The Congress are on the west side.

Yeah, is there a call here? I can pull that up for you. Oh yeah, well I have a nice little map of uses here. Um, so this.

I mean, the condos are actually somewhat more expensive sort of per unit than a lot of the duplexes there.

There.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, the line could be appropriated for subsidized affordable housing.

So these, it was the growth

I guess that was after we adopted future land, which is probably why it's general residential and now RA.

But I'll think there's, in terms of geographic goals of buying lines, whatever that word, edge conditions, there's a ridge here, and then there is a

The rock roof project.

I...

Of the three, I think Baker Street makes the most sense for geographical reasons and for reasons of just modest and similarity.

Yeah, the one on the right that removes the most.

So essentially we're making Bally Road, the divided line in that case.

No, we're making the unnamed Creek tributary that runs behind the lots on Patent, the dividing line, and that sort of these kind of, it's basically North Baker.

Yeah, I think I'm looking at the middle, Matt.

So I think it's pretty cool.

Yeah, weird.

Doing something nice to hear.

Some of you guys may remember this from a critical slope waiver.

So this is the bottom of X. So if you were to zoom out, this is like,

We kind of like to square this corner of Elliott and Sixth because those are big streets.

And so it got kind of, it's in the same sort of area as like the Dice area.

But it's sort of this little square kind of all on a slow and some.

Yeah, pretty small, pretty modest single family houses.

Cool.

Next up, we have Ridge Street.

This is my kind of stat for a reasonable map of the registry area.

the plural of anecdote, not being anecdotes, not data, but I think I generally agree with you on most of this.

All right, folks.

You've got Brooklyn, one of the brooks down there.

And then you've got just random expense houses right in the middle of modest houses.

This might be something that if we've got this zone we can always apply it later.