Planning Commission Work Session   7/28/2026

So yeah, got the work session tonight on a couple of items on the zoning code.

I don't know if we have any public listening, but we will not be taking public comment tonight.

You can always email us.

Sure.

So, Mission, this is a follow-up.

This is your working on the 2026 development code cleanup.

You had a work session back in June, and then there was a subcommittee meeting on July 9th.

We talked about active depth, setbacks, and Bill 2.

In your one-page memo, there's kind of synopsis from that meeting, but we had two commissioners at that meeting that can expand upon that conversation.

And so tonight, this work session is focused on those three areas, but as a larger group, staff has put together kind of three areas you might want to look at when you're looking at these three.

These came out of that subcommittee meeting in this kind of terminology and wording.

And Chair, with that, I'll kind of turn it over to you.

If you want to get a recap from that subcommittee meeting, I think the memo captures it pretty well.

I think, Mr.

Chair, I think you guys would be having a great time.

I was going to say, I thought the memo was pretty good.

It was pretty good.

But that's because you were there.

I mean, so we've got, well, all right, let me think fast on this one.

So we're trying to limit our discussion tonight just to these three topics, the active depth setbacks in Bill 2.

And that's kind of what came out of our work session that we're trying to get back into.

Larger items that are going to require more thought and more staff time.

So the goal is to kind of find some things that we can actually get done this year.

Active depth, I think we talked about this as a group before, where currently the active depth standards on primary streets extend from ground floor all the way up to the top of the building.

For some of our districts, it's really deep.

It's 30 feet.

and it prohibits hallways, bathrooms, closets, any of that stuff.

So also parking.

So I guess one of the bigger questions for active depth would be if we want to change it, you know, what are our thoughts on parking on the front facade of a building on the upper levels?

What was I actually looking for?

Because I read that and I didn't see where you guys left the discussion with any recommendations for us.

We left with questions because we didn't want to...

I've got recommendations.

And you guys studied it more than we have and you're probably better suited to make recommendations than I am, so I'd love to hear the recommendations from the subcommittee.

And Ross, if you want to weigh in at any point, if I'm misspeaking.

You're doing good so far.

Active depth, my recommendations would be

We exclude anything that's within a residential unit.

So if you have an apartment unit on the second floor or above or whatever, or actually that would be a question, first floor as well.

Any bathrooms, closets, whatever that are in an apartment, you don't care.

It's within a residential unit.

I think that would go a long way to fixing some of these things.

I think we need to look at the depth that's required because we've got 30 feet is

It doesn't make sense.

An office, for example, the Apex building is, I think it's NX, so it requires a 30-foot active depth on the front facade.

They've got offices that ring the outside of the building, and then there's a corridor, so the building would not comply.

The offices are probably 8 to 10 feet deep.

I will say that there are sort of two big discussions we had at subcommittee on active depth is one, what do we want to include or prohibit explicitly in the definition of active depth?

And two, how deep it is?

And I guess the third is how high do we want active depth to go?

Because on the side streets, it's either just the first floor, I think just the first floor.

And then like you said, on the primary street, it could be the entire top of the building.

And it was like, going back to what are we trying to encourage or prohibit through these active depth rules?

And it's really those three pieces of what makes up active depth.

We want to potentially adjust to get the end result that we're attempting to achieve.

Like I said we didn't really come up with recommendations at the subcommittee meeting it was more of a discussion about what are the things that could be adjusted which I just laid out and if staff had any concern or about trying to keep it narrowed down to more of these dimensional changes or numerical changes

Is it your objective to answer those questions today?

I think it would be really good to have some idea of what we want.

Yes, so then on the build to and setbacks, there's this tension between what is out there today and what the code is trying to do.

And in many areas of the city, the parcels that may want to be developed in the future, it's pretty hard to do based on the build to and setback requirements.

So what it really turned into was

A conversation about do we want to adjust what a parcel with a non-conforming structure today is allowed to do.

Because like, if you have a parcel that's technically too wide for maximum building width, but also meeting the build-to-width, the code is trying to get you to subdivide that parcel.

But if you have a home already on it that's sort of in the middle of parcel,

split the house in two to be able to achieve that goal but if somebody's living in that home are we wanting to prevent them from building additions or allow them to do additional units in their yard and if we do do we want to force them to put it at the sidewalk or can they put it behind their house those are the sort of discussions we were having and the subcommittee it really just became a discussion about for

Greenfield parcels that don't have anything on it, the intent and what the code is doing today, we believe is working or will work when those things come up.

One of the options I saw in the packet that I really liked is giving sort of an alternate condition for existing buildings.

So you just go, oh, I have an existing building.

I will go to this section and then go from there.

That's very clear to me.

So we do have, currently in the code, nonconforming structures have a section.

And you are allowed to add on to the nonconforming structure.

To the side, I think you can go, I think it's 20%.

You can do a 10% addition to the front, or you can add on to the back as much as you want.

For me, the concern is if you don't want to add on, but you want to put a separate building with another primary building, not an accessory structure, but a primary building, which could be a single apartment unit.

If you want to put that in the backyard, you can't.

You have to put it in the front yard up at the street.

Yeah, my recommendation is to tweak the non-conforming structure section to also allow additions, new primary buildings behind an existing building.

That's part of our discussion.

I don't think we need to adjust and get rid of Bill 2 and set back at the moment.

It helps me to think concretely about particular buildings that we might think are good or not good.

We mentioned the Apex building earlier.

I don't know it was there before.

It doesn't matter, but imagine that.

Okay, so Greenfield, sort of.

There wasn't a structure there, right?

Do we think the Apex office building today is bad?

If we're talking about adjustments for not performing structures, that wouldn't have let that building through because there wasn't a structure there in the first place.

So if we think that building is good or not offensive, we would want to have rules that would allow it to be built in the future.

So it would seem to me as that just more allowances for

So with the Apex building, its issue, if it had to follow our current code, would be the active depth, not the ability or setback.

But that's still in scope for tonight, right?

Yeah.

Yes, I think I listed some of the reasons that active depth is, to me, seems problematic, and some of it is the depth.

And I think a big question for us is, on primary streets, should active depth be just the ground floor, or should it be the whole facade, as is currently written in our code?

One of the things that would happen if we did not do the full

One of the arguments against that was eyes on the street.

I think there's a preference for having residential units or some use on the second floors or above so that when the retail on the first floor is closed, you got people looking down the street.

But then we have

buildings that, you know, there was the attempt at putting a taller building where the Violet Crown currently is, and that was not going to work unless they were allowed to have parking up above on the exterior walls of the building.

So kind of a big question for us is what are our thoughts on, yeah, first floor all the way up, yeah first floor or the entire facade, you know.

And middle, it could be the first two floors.

It doesn't have to be the first floor, the totality.

Do we think city space should not exist in its current form?

I mean, sure, but should it not?

I don't know.

I would think about it from the other street.

Market street is just concrete panels all the way up.

So you would have a ground story on each street and so that's where the you

How it worked from a theory standpoint is you were modular, so you get the same height, but it needs to be stepped down.

How that works internally probably would not work.

Does active depth, does it only apply to one facade?

Every story that's within the build to.

So if you were to step back at some level, you can do whatever you want.

On the secondary streets, it would be just the first level.

And I guess, I think you can have two primary streets.

I mean, I'll just, I guess I'll use this chance to chime in and say, I generally support not requiring active depth for the entire height of a building.

I get a little squeamish around first and second floor, because I'm sure the result will be parking garage on the second floor over the street.

And on the one hand, maybe you would walk right by it and not even notice it.

On the other hand, it's like, well, it would be better to have

People living there, whatever office is there, but then on the other hand, it's like, you know, there's gonna be parking and it's like, it's a trade-off, right?

It's like, I don't think we can make the zoning code like force what we think is the perfectly designed building without any of those externalities of cars parked right above you.

If we were to adjust the actual depth

to make it not as deep, so narrower.

That would also give developers more flexibility.

So let's say that we kept active depth for upper floors, but we made it like 20 feet or something.

I don't know what the right dimension is.

And then

Yes and no.

I mean, yes, it would allow that, but I think you've also just architecturally and structurally and such complications are concerned.

It does become a little more, you want to,

Yeah, I think it just becomes more complicated.

So obviously they do that with big apartment buildings when there's enough depth for a full apartment and a hallway and whatever.

And I don't know if, you know, the depth of an office plus a hallway, is that worthwhile?

One of the things with construction is it's nice to have the

But obviously they're not doing that with the standard on West Main.

So what you said could work.

So that's like, I like Josh's thing of having a building in mind that we can apply this to.

And so I could imagine that if we allowed this, like the new

The new building that's being proposed on Main Street, you know, it has structured parking obviously in the proposal, but none of it is actually exposed to Main Street, right?

So in theory, if we were to make this change and say only apply active depth to the first floor, they could come back and I'm not saying they would in this case, but like a similar kind of building would have parking kind of hanging over Main Street.

That's an example.

Now that benefited from the AR review.

Our zoning code does require garages have to have a

That'd be screened, which is why the ERB thing you guys got was a little weird because that was from a previous zoning code that didn't have the requirement.

But it doesn't say, the screening has to have a certain porosity or a certain amount of opacity, I guess.

But it doesn't say what it has to look like.

I will interject and just say when you're thinking about if you wanted to alter numbers and you're not sure what the numbers would be, there's already a path in the code to do that.

In the active depth.

I guess I'll just, my last thing on this for now is I think I'm generally in favor of limiting active depth to one floor, the first floor, and then also I think allowing residential uses and commercial to, including hallways, to occupy the active depth area.

So I don't know if it makes more sense to like state what we exclude, what is not allowed,

I definitely wouldn't want parking in that active depth area.

I think setting what we want to exclude makes sense.

Until someone invents a new thing that we don't want in the active depth.

Sorry, I'm going to stop.

I agree that this needs to be changed.

If we want to look at changing the dimension, I think that, I mean, Matt, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that would be okay to kind of say, like, yes, we want to change the dimension, but we haven't quite figured out what that is yet.

Is that fair?

No, I mean, I think that's fair.

You know, we are moving, like, it'd be interesting to see where

like you that number would come down in trying to put together like the one pager for the justification for the analysis going from 30 feet to 15 feet okay why like what's I have a suggestion to that just quickly kind of cursory search to see some of our neighbors it appears Richmond may have 15 feet on the primary and nine feet on the secondary for active depth and so part of what I was wondering is

I think so.

Just to be clear, though, we do have zones where it is 15 and nine.

The example up on screen right now is the downtown where you see on the side street, it is only the two stories.

The primary is the full facade.

Is it two stories inside or one?

It looks like it's one.

I think it should just be one.

Yeah, one story.

Yeah, again, I agree with others.

I don't know what we get from having the entire facade.

That just feels draconian and it's a burden.

Again, I can't think of a project that worked out for the entire primary facade head now.

It's fully accurate.

And the 30 might make sense on the ground floor.

I don't know exactly how deep, I don't know how deep our restaurants are on the downtown mall.

I kind of, I should just go inside one of the ruler and, or my laser thing and tell them what I'm doing.

Well, I will say the last, in the 2025 cycle, we did loosen up the

That act of death was pretty strict and would have prevented things like CDS and some of these retail things in the old definition.

I struggle with the second floor.

I'm trying to reconcile what we're doing here as being a minimum.

versus having something other than parking garage or other inactive use on the second floor and trying to create a public environment that sort of at least visually extends into the buildings or the private property and vice versa.

So for me, it's like, I know, Danny, you said one floor.

I'd be curious to hear from people what they think about the second floor.

Given the proportion that you can build, I mean,

If it was a two-story building, that would seem, you know, but if people are going up, I mean, most cities, they just have the larger ground floor.

But I feel like bigger cities, the section of the street, if it's a wider street, you want to be up higher with your ground level to kind of create that space in the street.

So I think we're hearing two people for at least two stories on the primary facade.

Okay, so it seems like we're leaning towards two stories.

What are the thoughts on just exempting anything that's within a residential unit?

So what that could mean is that we could have apartments where people put the bathroom and they still have their transparency requirements.

There still be windows, but it could be bathrooms and I don't know, someone have a window in their closet or something.

I think the example that James was trying to avoid and

Only, I don't think this applies in the R districts, but I think it would apply if someone built a townhouse or something in like the RX districts maybe, would be houses where they do put all the bathrooms and everything end up facing the street so that you get like the better windows face a backyard.

And he was thinking that would void the eyes on the street thing.

So that's the drawback.

To me, I feel like there's, we would just solve a whole lot of issues by just allowing

I don't think we do.

We don't care.

The other thing is that single family, even though that's not a definition, but one unit is exempted from active death anyways, is my understanding, right?

That was a discussion we were having on the subcommittee.

So like if somebody builds one unit on a lot,

I think it's where you get, like, if someone's doing multiple units on a smaller lot, where I think it would get a little, I think it'd get awkward no matter what, trying to dictate what goes into a residential unit, get that percentage and all that just right.

It seems funny, and I'm not sure we'd ever get a number that works out

And yeah, it just feels funny to me.

So there's some newish housing in Belmont.

I'll get it wrong just where it is, but I was canvassing there years ago, and it's townhouses-ish.

And what you see walking down them is garages.

Would that kind of building be exempt?

Because they're single family residences, but I don't know if they're considered.

I haven't looked into what they are, especially when we're looking at them from the street.

And then I didn't like them.

But then I don't know that we have a public interest in saying you can't build lovely buildings.

I think we're actually, the code has written it, we don't mind if you park it in front, but we don't want to see the, we'll see the car, but not the garage.

You can turn the garage, you know, and that's fine, but then there is that

We've worked with applicants on that, trying to address that when you're turning the building, so you're still having your entry feature.

You're not seeing the garage because you're pulling in like this, but then not using those first nine feet of your garage for parking, you're using it for something.

The pool table is there.

Is there a way to do a percentage of

The primary facade active or like 80% of the two stories?

I think it's 20% is the number that you're allowed.

Yeah, there it is.

And we can also just say everything is fine within a residential unit except for parking.

We could exclude that if we wanted to.

Or I think currently it seems that

designed and used as a residential unit for it to be exempted?

Or could you have like a random pantry that's not in the closet that somebody claims is a pantry that could be in a residential unit?

No, I think it has to be within, like you can just, it's a, the residential unit is once exempt.

By fact, it's being a residential unit.

Yeah.

Exempts it.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

Another thing that was brought up at subcommittee is you have, I think there's an example in town, but I don't remember what it is.

Yeah.

Yes.

I'm in favor of exempting anything in a residential unit.

I think as long as we're clear that parking is not allowed in the active depth zone, then I'd be okay.

Because we also have transparency requirements.

Are there any objections to that line of thought?

OK, so what I've got so far is on primary facade, we'd like to limit active depth to the first and second floor.

And then we're also looking at limits.

Active death does not apply to anything that's within a residential unit.

And we are still forbidding parking from active depth.

So, let's see if that actually achieves what we want to achieve.

Do we still need to look at how deep active depth is?

So, for example, if we're keeping the second floor as well, if it's 30 feet, is that, if it's apartments, we're fine.

Doesn't matter.

The current zones that it's really going to matter are the 30-foot requirements in the node and the downtown zones.

Once you get into the CX and RX, you get down to 15 feet, and then the residential zone is only nine feet.

I think there's a noticeable benefit going from 15 to 30.

Like I think there's probably some downtown businesses that are less than 30.

I think of like the ones that are the code building, the pharmacy and the witch lab, those are not 30 feet deep yet they're still active.

Great additions to the pedestrian community.

So I think the concern that drove this was

Logistry parking garage that some of those units don't, they're not really used.

It's not great retail space.

It's hard to fill.

Um, but yeah, I don't, again, I'm kind of with you.

Like, is that, do we care a whole lot?

Um, do we assume that the developer is going to, because they have to provide space, they're going to make sure that space is usable or do we think that they're just going to lie in a building with a new space?

Just let it be.

I feel like the mixed use components are a critical aspect.

We want an active ground floor.

It's less about qualifying what makes activity.

Did you guys talk about exempting

If we could find a way to say that, if we say everything that's within an office use or a commercial use as an example, but then do we end up,

The way I read it is actually pretty broad.

I'll read it out to you while they're pulling it up, but it's just any occupiable space designed and intended for human activities, such as living, working, commerce, sleeping, eating, or cooking, as determined by the administrator.

And then it calls out some things that are not active space, such as restrooms, toilet rooms, closets, halls, storage, or utility spaces.

So we're already doing it.

If we could

It's the circulation space that I'd like to remove from what's not allowed.

So hallways, stairs, I think we need to, I'd like to allow those within active depth.

Yeah.

Okay.

Why do I feel like I saw staircases somewhere in there?

But I guess not.

Yeah, just striking halls.

I mean, halls are really as active as everywhere else is.

I think Matt brought up in subcommittee, the thing just run into is, I don't know if you guys see like,

Storage buildings like public storage below the hall on the outside.

But that's the counterpoint where we restrict storage units to like specific areas.

But that's just an example of where someone could put a hall up against the very front of the building.

Oh, don't worry.

So do we need to define hall?

Well, it does make me wonder, like, where a lobby would fall in with all that.

I was just going to ask the inverse.

It's elsewhere where it mentions that perking cannot be an active space.

Yeah, it's its own section.

Did we finish this?

I think we finished part one.

Possibly.

Are we all?

We need to summarize.

We're going to, on the primary facade, active depth will only go up to the second floor.

We are going to exempt anything that's contained within a residential unit.

We're going to remove hall from the definition of

So the halls are allowed within an active space.

So in downtown, you can't have restrooms, toilet rooms, closets, storage or utility spaces in similar areas within 30 feet of the street.

With the primary facade.

With this fairly narrow definition of not active space, I don't mean to reopen the can of worms here, but what is that actually doing to the psych floor?

Preventing parking, right?

What's preventing parking is also meaning that unless it's an apartment unit, if you have an office, it's going to be in the DX zone, the very deep office.

Gotcha, understood.

It could be an apartment building, it could be like a shared amenity or something.

But then again, the apartment, they're all excluded anyway, so you can have this.

It makes me a lot happier than what we've just done.

But that's me.

Mm-hmm.

I think I agree the 30th a lot.

But like you're saying, if there's the backup of the percentage where you can finagle things around.

But it all depends on the lot.

For a big building, 30 feet isn't much.

Or a big, like a restaurant.

I'm just sitting here looking at the map and stuff.

Can I sell you on 25?

Again, I'm just wondering if there's any alignments that are beneficial from our peer form-based zoning towns in the Commonwealth.

I just wonder if there's

That could be the only thing I would think of instead of trying to believe something that's yet another new number.

Yeah, if we I didn't do any research on that, but if we want to I mean, the only thought that I might have is structurally you got about 18 to 20 feet for a parking space depth.

So if somebody was to build a garage behind useful space,

I like 25 just because it gets a little bit more wiggle room.

That's my only concern with that.

I just feel I know too little about that to make it feel not arbitrary.

Trying to look at what Europe does and they don't mess with this active depth.

They just do mixed use sort of guidelines on the lower floors.

I would say from staff's perspective, just with the amount of amendments that are on this, working on, this seems like a good immediate step.

It would be a lot of digging and researching

If we were starting over from scratch and doing this, I probably would have steered more in a percentage based on depth of your plot.

Well, I mean, we can also consider this an improvement.

And if we want to adjust the depths at a later point, do that as well.

Or if, in the meantime, if anybody manages to figure out what other people are doing when that seems to be working.

Correct.

I mean not till December, but I'm hoping to have to get into falls closer than you think.

And getting us in a position like we were last year having these one pictures.

Are you clear on the direction the other direction that we've provided for this one?

Yes, but if you want to give it one more time.

The active depth only applies to the first two floors on the crime record side.

Anything contained within a residential unit would be excluded.

And the only thing I would say is what staff will probably want to look at is

That residential, just to make sure it's capturing unit, not your residential building, your mixed-use building with the residents in it.

Well, I think it's just, it's making sure the wording is talking, just it's excluding the residential unit, not the building.

Correct.

So if you, yeah, if you do a row of residential units, great.

But if you did on that second story, you did three residential units, but then the rest was something else.

Just a cleaner way forward for small sites.

That ultimate form is such a...

It's in there.

The parking is not contained within a residential unit itself, so that would still be, I think,

Yes.

So if someone has a water heater closet in their unit, that's part of the unit that's exempt.

Okay.

This is where we, yeah, we have to kind of think there and not, and not to try to throw a wrench, but if there is a hole, someone's going to find it and park their Bugatti in their living room.

We'll have to figure that out when they're saying, this is not a parking garage.

This is mine.

As long as they're sitting in it,

I mean architects, that's what we do.

That's our job.

It's interesting the depths you do see.

Arlington looks like it's 15 to 20 just on the ground floor.

Buffalo is 30.

Like, I mean, there's not a whole bunch of form-based precedents across the country.

The thought that keeps coming to your mind is about public restrooms since this 30 feet applies to downtown area.

Understand that that's

Public restrooms are like a public need but maybe aren't active space even though they're kind of active.

This would be a new development that would have public restrooms as a facade element.

Or thinking about adding public restrooms to the downtown mall as it sits today.

You're thinking of those bathrooms.

Yeah, I'm thinking about the transit center.

If that was privately owned, could you, not that I'm saying that private

Developers and entities are really going to want private restrooms, but it is a discussion that I hear being had about restrooms on the downtown mall.

I hate this excuse, but I think this is where we get the special exemption process.

So yeah, if we don't want to leave that to a special exemption process, then we should discuss it further.

Is it currently special exemptionable?

Yes.

So there is a path to get there.

Yes.

Does that still have to conform to the active depth if it's just an adaptive reuse of something?

There's something in there about if it's a building that's under BAR review, you don't have to change the existing building to make it compliant.

I was just thinking this building, you know, the city owns it.

There's these facades down here that used to have restaurants that are now offices.

If those became public restrooms, would this be under a different set of criteria than the brand new active depth?

Alright, so just my thought on this was

and how you add on to properties that have non-conforming structures.

If we want to expand that discussion further, we certainly can.

But that seemed like the simplest thing to do.

And so I did a quick look of where we've got places where there might be issues.

And I think within the R zones, if you keep the existing structure, the existing house,

You don't have to comply with setback requirements.

The problems are we've got a lot of existing buildings, existing houses that are outside of the R zones.

So the RX zones don't have that ability.

Similar with CX and the DX and all that.

So some of the areas that we have conflicts, we've got High Street north downtown at CX3.

So those are some pretty old houses.

They are under the BAR review.

And I think it'll only be a couple of lots where it might apply where someone could add a primary use as a separate building in the backyard.

But it is one location.

JPA and Fontaine is mostly CX5 and the zoning extends far into the residential neighborhoods on the other side.

There's also RX zoning that extends further out.

So the whole JPA Fontaine area, we currently are prohibiting people from putting separate apartment or separate dwelling units in their backyards.

They'd have to actually add onto the back of the houses.

Venable is almost all of Venable is RX-5, Preston Place is RX-3, Wortland is RX-5.

So these are streets and places where if someone wanted to build a separate primary use, they would have to build it within the build through the setback area.

And it's, you know, we currently allow you to add on to buildings.

Where the complication comes in is if you have an old building and you want to add on to it and you want to have a separate unit, you end up with firewalls and at some point you end up with sprinklers, which may kill some projects.

So it might be easier to actually put a 10-foot separation between them and just build in the backyard.

So that was my argument for changing this section to, well, these are my proposals.

I like to modify

The 533C2B, which I think is about side additions and allow side additions of any size.

And then also revise it so that primary new buildings, you can add whatever you want as a secondary, as a new primary building behind an existing building.

One thing I'm wondering is if you're doing a side addition, is there a tipping point where, say you have a, say you have a building that's got front yard parking, existing building front yard parking, when you're starting to add on to it, is there a tipping point where they have to remove that parking?

Is that something we need to consider?

You know, maybe it's currently you're about a 20% side yard addition.

If you go over that 20%, they have to then make the rest of their site comply.

Just a thought.

I'm throwing out a bunch of random stuff.

Let's also talk about the intent of what Dakota is trying to achieve today.

My understanding is you're trying to bring things to the street.

If in these illustrations that white building is your primary home, you want to try to provide somebody a home on your property.

You want to, right now you're forced to put it sort of in front of your front door.

So that's got pros and cons to it.

I would think was probably limit the number of units that get put in front of people's front doors.

I've just heard, I mean, this is just kind of informal chatter, but at least a couple different people talking about how, I think probably in the Fontaine neighborhood,

wanting to build but not wanting to add on to their house wanting to build in the back and then just saying putting their hands up and being like well we'll just wait and see if they change that or because they wouldn't they didn't want to build in their front in front of their house so that did seem odd that if if someone wasn't wanting to to you know

add on to make their existing house the build to width or whatever it was that it's asking.

It seemed reasonable to move it to the back.

I mean, they seem like good projects, putting a couple of units in the backyard, especially in an area around students.

So anyway, that's just anecdotes.

I've heard a couple of those frustrations from people.

Sure.

Part of it is also like you're mentioning side additions.

I think in the subcommittee, we were talking about not allowing additions on the front.

That's true.

I mean, it's a good point.

Patrick, scroll down just a little.

It's not very much.

No, it's not.

What does that get you, the bay window?

It's even smaller than what I was going to say.

10 by 10 stoop or something.

And if it's about like eyes on the street, like you build a 10 by 10 stoop, like nobody's going to be hanging out with eyes on the street.

Yeah, I mean, I generally think that allowing incremental change in growth is like a very good kind of change in growth.

And so I would be in favor of just allowing more incremental stuff to happen.

So like, if you're keeping the structure, then

I'm okay saying you don't have to bring it up all the way to where it should be, close to the street.

If you're tearing it down and redeveloping, like yes, we want you to build it like this.

And also like in other meetings and other discussions it's like the shape of our parcels and like depth of our parcels creates so much difficulties in itself so should we be restricting

I'm curious about the first, second, third.

I mean, does it matter what order they come in?

It does currently.

I know, but I'm just saying this group just for conversation, I mean, is the idea.

Well, it's so I don't, it's less about how many buildings it's just saying that you have to fill the build tube with first, and then you can start putting something else in the back.

So it's not necessarily what could be the first and second building could just be the first building.

Well, I'm hearing his question.

The graphic is saying the two in the front happened first and then the third one happened last.

I agree with you, but I think what it's trying to do is force you to fill the bill to you first, because you don't know if that third building is going to happen.

So these are existing neighborhoods where historically setbacks were kind of what was argued for to make things more garden-like.

And to think of this going incrementally in the neighborhood where like houses in front of houses in the neighborhood where houses are all set back, like that condition would be awkward.

Whereas having higher density respecting, like I feel like there's sort of a local context where

Maybe it's an easier way to approach higher density is not suddenly building right on the sidewalk in these established neighborhoods and letting things kind of infill where you have with further back.

And that may be a way to get more housing options for people before you suddenly start saying, hey, this setback, neighborhood building in the 60s, we actually really want it to be brownstones.

And so I feel like it just feels like one of those ones that's sort of pushing

Are we okay with the idea that we can have a new addition or a new separate primary building behind the original one?

Is there any objection to that?

So that would be changing, yeah, new primary buildings and interior lot would be changing this one.

Just get rid of it.

I think we just lose that.

I don't know what to do with the corner lot.

I think we leave it as it is, but that's another thought.

I think that's the next page.

Yeah, it's rolled down.

They are.

Well, in each neighborhood, like you were saying,

There's a little corner one happening right next to the trailblazer right now.

Now I know that one.

Yeah.

I will say, not trying to split the baby, because staff does have a little bit of a heartburn, just because this code is built around this bringing things up industry.

It's a very big policy part of this code.

And not trying to split the baby, but I don't know about thinking about it more and collaborating with staff.

One, just site constraints force you to?

I think they would.

I think if you wanted to really maximize the site, you'd turn down the existing building and yeah, maximize the site.

The thing that's getting me is just the fact that you can put an unlimited rear addition on a building, but if you turn into two buildings you can't.

From the street you might not even be able to tell with one building or two.

But I think we still, so it sounds like with the corner lots you still have to bring up the street and if you tear down the existing building, which I think that is one thing, we need to make sure that our definition of the existing building still works for this.

The concern is they would someone try and say, well, I'm keeping a small portion of the existing building and yeah, then tear down or I don't know what they would do.

But I guess kind of following the same track that I guess Planning Commission has been following, would there be any difference if I had a

2,000 square foot building.

Yeah, I guess not.

I like this one for the corners just because it just says like, hey, if you want to go to the front, this is it.

You want to go to the side.

It doesn't say like you got to do this step in order to unlock this step or do this.

Like it just sort of gives guidelines on

That diagram's not great because it has the building at the back corner.

Both of them are at the back corner.

What's the rule for

Actually, I'll look up additions on a corner lot.

The next page, that's what I was going to go to.

What's the general footprint?

700 square feet, like 20% of that is less than 200 square feet.

I just think it could, but I really struggle with

I understand the ideal.

I understand what we're trying to do.

I understand why it's there.

But we live in a city that started to develop in the 1700s.

And we also, you know,

Some parts of our code incentivize keeping existing buildings, right?

So like, we think that there's a public, our code says that there's a public benefit to keeping existing buildings.

But then with this part of the code, we're saying, no, we want you to really change the built character of your lot to match this kind of like pedestrian centric design.

So there is a little bit of tension there, I think.

I mean, I, and I generally just like, if you're gonna keep your building,

Why not let people do what they want with it?

And on that front, and right now the residential, your setback can be, or existing setback.

So like in today's world, even if you did tear it down, you could still build a new building at the same setback that was basically there previously.

So in a world where we're going sort of down Danny's path, if you are tearing down and building something completely new, do you want to force them?

So just to be clear, though, that's that's just the R zones.

Yeah.

Once you get to RX, there's no more or existing.

So and the R zones are already exempt from this because if you keep the primary building, you're allowed to do almost whatever you want.

So it's more like it's the RX, the CX's and all that, the Fontaine and Venable.

We've still got a lot of

what look like single family homes that someone might want to put in addition or a unit in the backyard.

It's complicated because there already are a lot of exceptions, but it's the parts of the city where the exceptions are not helping us.

I mean, I think, are we essentially talking about taking what we've done in the R zones and applying it to the other zones as well?

So basically if you keep the existing structure and that's defined by the bonus that's defined, then you,

Um, don't have to comply to build to with, even if you're building an addition or an additional building on your lot.

I don't know.

I'm sorry.

The other way would be to modify these nonconforming sections.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know which one would be better.

Staff struggles with this too, because this is such an integral part of COVID that

Why would you say RX and CX if you maintain the building you need the preservation bonus?

And all of the benefits you get with the preservation bonus you get in those zones, which presumably they will use, right?

Are there any of the non-conforming portion that we would want to keep?

I mean, if everybody doesn't like the, you can only add 10% to the front of the building,

If we all don't like that, that's one chunk of it.

There's the side additions that I think 20% to the side.

Yeah, it's confusing that you're right.

You hit it very right from the get-go.

It's like, you can't, like, you want to build an entire separate house in the front yard, but you can't push your pieces.

It's like, you can build a whole separate house next to your house, but you can only do 20%.

Yeah, I think about, like, multi-generational living, which is having sort of a resurgence again in the country, or at least in the Commonwealth.

We've got some small buildings around here.

But if you're adding in the preservation bonus, there's no longer a nonconforming, so they can go above the 20% or 10% because of the conform.

It's only for the nonconforming, which I'm having a hard time figuring out if there's anything, if that happens, that would be nonconforming for

So these standards that are required, does that make sense for any building?

Because this may not just be housing, someone could use this to keep

Well, that's what I'm wondering if there's some sort of

You've expanded a certain amount, then you have to make the site comply.

You mean if you're choosing on where... Like if you add...

Allowing X number of primary before you have to, because if you allow additional two units or two primary, you know, additional primary use or two additional primary uses.

It's complicated.

Yeah.

They would not be allowed to expand an existing parking lot, correct?

In any case?

But they couldn't add parking spaces?

Probably couldn't expand it because the parking, the yard, that's the other thing that takes away so that your yard is from the property line to the facade of your building.

So if you have a building set 60 feet back, that's your front yard.

Now let's say you put a building

And otherwise, they would be, they couldn't make it any worse.

Correct.

Well, if we catch it.

Any less conforming, I guess.

Yeah.

So I guess our options are to pick away at the not conforming or to see if there's a way to write this section into the rest of the city.

And you have other things controlling maximum building footprint, maximum lot covers.

I didn't.

My recollection is that we control how much impermeable space is on a parcel.

And parking counts against that.

A lot of coverage.

Yes.

I'd have to look into it, I can't think on the slide.

Do parking lots count as lot coverage?

That's what I'm sure of.

I don't know that they do.

I think they do.

Two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two,

This is proving another one of my points.

Yeah, so that would exclude surface parking.

It's just like this right here.

It's not live.

And that's why it's not live.

Teaching from a stormwater perspective, when you describe it, that's how I think of it.

For sure.

It doesn't care.

Sorry guys.

It's just for building percentage, covered by building and then building footprint.

Where we're kind of at is this is such a big part of the code is trying to bring things up to the street and I am a little I would be very concerned is taking a whole section by allowing it we'd always be taking a whole section out of the code and that worries me a little

I mean, it's a gray area.

We have some things we've talked about are very clear

Clarifications, Modifications, there are some gray areas where maybe not a policy shift.

People don't stick around.

You know, a bunch of the code.

It fits in with the ideals of preservation.

It fits in with the ideals of more indwelling units for people to live in.

The only thing it's not really doing is pulling people in buildings up to the street.

Just practically, are there lots where somebody that are in the relevant zones with existing structure, where somebody wants to build three new primary buildings behind that existing structure?

I think in Fontaine, in that area, and JPA, there would be some lots that someone could try to do that.

I think Wortland is another example.

There's no space behind for three or more structures.

I just, I can't be offended by, nothing gets worse from the perspective of the street, right?

You've got a structure and somebody builds new buildings that you can't see.

I just can't see any public harm to it.

Do you have a sense that trying to force people to bring something straight is working?

Is that an effective strategy?

Honestly, I think it's still too early.

I think there's still elements in this code that are still percolating through.

We've had, you know, it's kind of that conversation.

We don't know it's not been submitted.

We've had conversations where people weren't going to be the examples of people talking about wanting to do something, but then never showing up to submit.

And I don't know if it's because of this one conformity.

We feel we've corrected a lot last year.

We're seeing some movement on that where, you know, some of the,

People were having to get special exceptions because they had an existing structure and they wanted to build something behind.

They had to go through the special exception to be considered conforming in the art districts.

And I feel we solved that and that's moving forward.

But if they had a partner back there, it wouldn't have been allowed.

So yeah, it just seems funny to me that we

My simple recommendation is to allow new primary buildings on an interior lot behind an existing nonconforming one.

And then to also allow side additions of any size.

Yeah, we can definitely go into that.

How do we really feel about that?

Well, that means respecting other rules that we already have, right?

It means... Yeah, that's what it means.

There's still a maximum building width that's allowed.

Right now it's capped at 20% of your current building footprint.

Now, but that only, the one thing that, this is where these rules really start to tie together.

That's only for the certain area from your lot line.

And some of the, if you're home, you know, if the structure's further back than that, they can go wider.

Just because it's speaking to the, it's speaking to,

Your facade.

And then it's defining facade as a period between the street front and a camera.

50 feet or 75 feet back.

But I think with entry features,

For non-conforming structures or the whole structure, the existing structure is already too far back, your section for additions on the interior lot just says side additions, having a floor area less than 20% of the existing building footprint are allowed.

Yeah, I was just getting to the fact that some of these where you have,

The facade of the building is really far back.

Correct.

Because it's so far away.

It doesn't fall.

Is that a problem?

That's a good question for all of us.

I just didn't, I didn't have any boundaries.

That you're going in, Carl, by basically saying, OK, we're not just saying you keep the building, do anything you want.

We're saying go to the back.

Great.

Go to the side.

Great.

But once you start going to the front, no, you have to bring that up to the street.

So like that, I think has, I think that keeps us closer to what the code is trying to do maybe than what I was advocating for before by saying like, do whatever you want if you're going to keep the building.

But Danny, was that only about additions or is that about- No, anything.

You're finally behind her side.

Yeah, behind her side, but like if you want to, although, I mean, I, and then I don't, you know, you brought up front additions, which I'm okay with.

Yeah, so let me summarize.

If you're doing something that attached to a current structure, you could go and do the addition anywhere on the structure.

If you're doing a separate structure that's behind the front wall,

You can do wherever, but if any part of that building is in front of the front wall, it's got to be to the building.

Yes.

Yeah.

I think that's what Carl was saying, or maybe similar to what Carl was saying.

It's similar.

So we keep the intent of the code

If there are to be new buildings in a front yard, but not that you have to build, that you must build in the front yard.

Yeah, exactly.

At least this sets up if people do choose to start adopting these front yard build outs in a specific neighborhood that has certain lots that

You can see over the course of 10, 20 years that there's a new, you know, consistency to it.

I guess again, we also, I think this is another thing that's probably allowed to be adjusted by special exception, but just, I didn't want to prevent anybody from

I really didn't want to prevent the single-family homeowner from putting a separate dwelling in their backyard, which I think is what we're doing.

But if we can make it easier otherwise, I'm definitely for that.

All right, so I heard new primary structure is okay if it's behind the front of an existing building.

So it could be off to the side, but it can't be forward of the building if it's off to the side or anywhere behind that front facade line.

Is that what we're all hearing?

We're at new structure, detached structure.

So, additions.

I mean, cause it's getting again to the, it's moving the building closer to the- It's an addition, it's not a separate structure.

Okay, so I'm hearing okay for additions anywhere, you can put an addition anywhere basically is what you're calling here.

subject to the other restrictions.

And are we concerned about the fact that these additions may not have to follow transparency requirements?

It's 50 feet back.

So I mean, it's a pretty big system.

So it's considered

The Kochis are really wonky.

You have to follow it.

It talks about street-facing facades.

And then it talks about a street-facing facade is only between the building line and 50 feet back.

And there's some 50%, but it, yes.

Keeping it more generally relative.

Just think about a street.

Facades are the area between a lot line and 50 feet back.

Wow, I missed that part.

Okay.

All right.

So I've heard new primary structures.

Okay.

If behind the front side of the existing building, so it could be off to the side or working back and I'm hearing additions of any sort are okay.

Yes.

I get some clarification on this addition.

When you talk about additions or funds, like front or side addition, regardless, not that percentage.

If you have a zero-foot

Are you saying though you were doing a front addition?

No, I mean they could.

I guess what we're saying is they wouldn't.

I was just thinking, say you have four parcels, three of the four parcels opt to build separate primary structures up to the build two, they do it to the zero setback.

Well, you could, currently as the code is written, you can expand to the front, but you have to expand all the way up to the built-in zone.

So if your house is 50 feet, you have a huge addition.

And I think what I'm hearing is we're saying you could put a 20-foot addition in the front of your house.

I'll admit I'm actually a little more hesitant about the addition of the front.

I don't know why, but that's kind of because it feels like you're at that point you're neither here any sort of just dork thing we're trying to use as an argument for this goes out the window because we're encapsulating the existing structure at that point.

What is it about the historicness?

So you're thinking like in Portland, someone could peel off a beautiful porch, stick a bunch of additional units that are not separate primary structures and just wrap that thing with like bare minimum fenestration.

Is it about the

character feeling historic or about the preservation of the original building?

I'm trying to figure out it just bothers me.

I think I wonder, Carl, what I'm sensing here is so like, if you build on the back, you build on the side, your front is totally undisturbed.

The development potential of that land exists.

If you build 50%

of your front yard into a house, you've eliminated 50% development potential.

So it's less likely that anyone will ever put a house in the front.

And so it's also less likely that at any point in the future, anyone will build up to the build-to-do zone.

Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Right.

I mean, would you just keep it as it's written that if you do an addition and you have to go to the bill too?

For the front.

For the front.

That's something, just keep that for the front.

That's my intuition on this.

So just give some flexibility around the sides and the back.

And also, I guess just for the ability to not police this, but to enforce it.

Once you encapsulate a building, we don't know what's going on in the middle there.

So I guess if you start doing unlimited editions on the front of a building, it's not, like the existing portion doesn't, you may as well just say that they tore it down.

And if they were to tear it down, they're going to make them build to the front, to the build two zone anyways.

That makes sense.

But what are you preventing?

I guess what I'm trying to prevent is,

It just is trying to maintain some portion of this code that still encourages you to go to the street.

And if we're basing this off of nonconformities and keeping an existing structure, once you start, once you've totally wrapped the structure, you haven't kept it.

I mean, once it's inside the building, we don't know what's going on in there.

I mean, the developer could tear it down and whatever.

So you don't think 100% of the front facade should be encapsulated?

I think if you start doing that, you do need to actually come to the street.

If this is just me, and again, if you guys want to push hard and say, additions anywhere,

I'm not going to stop anyone.

I think the issue is if we want to bring it to the street, that we keep it.

It's in the code.

If they want to come to the fore and bring it to the street, do that.

If you want to go 50% of the distance with a really crappy facade, I think there's a concern, unintended consequence,

You can still build a new structure at the build-to-line with a copy facade.

You could.

Nothing we're talking about would prevent you from building something gross.

It's the concern that it'll be halfway there.

It'll be bad in both categories.

It's not going to be the street wall, and it's not going to be of a character.

And so I think what we're trying to say is, if you go to the street wall, that's fine.

It does seem like there's more controversy about the front and maybe less value to be gotten out of it.

I'm happy to not talk about it and focus on the back and the side, but the front doesn't bother me.

It just seems like there's less value in talking about it.

It's only a small number of sites that really have this issue.

I mean, if it's small enough, and I don't know if people are coming to staff or PC or council complaining about the problem of front additions in these zones, if they are, we should talk about it, but if it's a small number of sites and no one's complaining, it sounds like a good thing to talk about in future cycles.

I mean, Ross, I agree with you.

I just don't know.

So are we tabling that part, or are you?

OK.

So Matt, I think where we've landed is additions.

Sorry, I keep saying additions.

New primary structures can be built behind the front facade line of an existing building.

So I think that also would end up affecting corner lots.

So that would allow you to build kind of to the side of a structure on the corner lot, secondary.

Well, I think there's the changes from there.

In fact, conditions of any size already exists.

We might just, as staff is looking at this, might have to re-examine some of the wording, because I don't know if facade would be the best word to use here, but we can look at that.

Did we finish this?

I mean,

I think so.

Yeah, I guess I mean, I think that what you described also kind of gave some guiding principles.

In respects, when you mentioned that about the kind of spirit of the code,

Well, people will let us know if it doesn't.

I mean, not to be flippant, but if there is a one-pager and there's a lot of speakers at the public hearing, it can be bold to say, oh, we realize this needs more dedicated public engagement.

We don't have capacity to recommend it.

Like the First Amendment, this is generally loosening.

It's allowing for more development opportunity than being more restricted.

Do we know what's on our agenda for next month?

There is a comp plan.

Amendment from our long-range planner for the utilities, add that to the comp plan.

There might be a special exception for not providing a new

There'll be a future, I've got to look and see to set up the future subcommittee meeting.

On Monday last week, Council got an update on the mobility plan.

I emailed you about it.

It's riveting, worth your time.

I strongly suggest that we should have a work session on the mobility plan.

It was deferred because of reasons, but we were meant to have one, right?

Yeah, we should have one.

But before we miss it, to your point, Ross, about Everwood Commercial, it's in the comp plan that we should discuss it.

When should we discuss it?

Would you like us to discuss it at a future line of commission meeting?

Yeah.

Any method?

I mean, I will defer to the director of NDS at our long range planning team.

If there's more overarching, there are several long range planning

It's the turnover and staffing going on.

Stuck with me and current planning for now.