What Will Happen South of Memorial Hill?

Moratorium Begins with C-4 Hanging in the Air

by Robin M Johnson

Two new development applications were filed for the same property south of Memorial Hill being considered for the proposed C-4 Zone. Michael Henke, city planner, told the city council at a work meeting held last Wednesday, June 14 at 5:00 pm about the applications. The documents were given an official city stamp on July 13. If the proposed developments meet the current C-2 zoning they have a vested right to begin moving through the city legislative process. Should these applications pass the C-4 zone will be a non issue.

Discussion on the C-4 code text amendment and the C-4 rezone went ahead as planned for about 45 minutes. Karl Dodge, council member, was not present due to a conflict of interest, and Lisa Christen, council member, participated in the meeting over cell phone.

Henke said more letters and emails regarding the C-4 zone arrived to the city offices. All were forwarded to council members by Brad Wilson, city recorder. Henke said the big message he took out of all public comment received is that many residents want to keep the field as open space rather than having the field developed under C-2 or C-4 zoning. However the property's current C-2 zoning allows for Mixed Use commercial and residential so leaving the field open is not very likely.

On the council's regular meeting agenda held following the C-4 work meeting the city council enacted a six month moratorium. Originally the moratorium was proposed for residential only zones. Citizens asked for the Mixed Use zoning, including both commercial and residential, also be included in the moratorium. 

Henke said, "The planning commission proposed a moratorium that would not include the commercial zone, but staff is saying that we should include large scale Mixed Use as part of the moratorium. We have received applications that beat the moratorium deadline (June 15) for development in the C-2 and R-1-11 zones."

He said the proposals include about 19 of the 20 acres being considered for the C-4 zone. About three quarters of the proposal are for a large scale Mixed Use, commercial and residential, development. The other one quarter of the proposal is residential only. Henke had not had time to read or study the proposals.

Colleen Bonner, mayor, opened discussion of the proposed C-4 zone. Items of interest examined from the code by the council include density, allowed uses, height, open space, required amenities to earn points for more residential units within the development, and parking.

Property south of Memorial Hill and north of Main Street.
Photo taken from the lower road on Memorial Hill in October 2016

Bonner said, “I think one of the big things is density so we probably ought to tackle density before we even move on. Do we think 30 units per acre is too many?”

Henke said the way the current city code is written with the required parking, setbacks, and density, only about 14 units can fit on one acre in the current C-2 zone with a height limit of 35 feet or two stories.

Density at 30 units per acre was determined by the council members to be too high. Ken Van Wagoner, council member, suggested, “At least 12 to 15, it’s realistic. Why do we put something in that’s not realistic?”

Henke said, “With the C-2 zone your density is based per acre. The C-4 zone the way code is written is based off of the master plan. So you could actually have an acre with more units because there is the ability to move those units within the master plan; you would receive an overall number of units ”for the whole development that could be moved around. The number could be dropped down from 30 units per acre to 20 units per acre or even less.”

After further discussion the council concluded 20 units per acre would be a better fit in the C-4 zone. In addition to the fact that a given acre could have more than 20 units by moving some units off of another acre, the number of units on a given acre could also increase by adding density from open space outside the C-4 zone. Therefore some acres would have less than 20 units while others may have much more than twenty units. 

Uses for the C-4 started with the list from C-2, each use was looked at to determine how well it would fit in a pedestrian friendly development. Henke said the planning commission removed uses from the C-2 list that were better accessed by car and/or that took up too much space, such as new and used car sales.

Uses in the proposed C-4 zone lend themselves to a walkable area, such as restaurants, boutiques and art or crafts galleries. Mixed Use is conditional so the city would have the ability to put conditions on the developer, restaurants or cafes are permitted and if the application meets city code it can develop. The council agreed the proposed uses were a good fit for the C-4 zone and offered a couple of 

suggestions for pedestrian friendly uses.

Height allowance is tiered in the proposed C-4 ranging from 35 feet on the perimeter and 55 feet in the center. Henke said the idea of the tiered system was to have the feel of an actual European type plaza … “when you look at the different areas in France, or in northern Europe with plazas, usually they’ve got about four stories around them. So the idea is to try to mirror that image yet try to mitigate the height so as you look at that from outside of the zone.”

The council decided 55 feet was way too high. They first discussed dropping the height to 45, then moved to allowing even less. Bonner said, “We all agree that 55 is too high, 45 is pushing it, so somewhere between 45 and 35. Is what I’m kind of hearing?” The council agreed not to make a firm decision although they leaned toward 35 feet. They agreed to think about what would be best and discuss it later.

Henke asked if they would want to drop the number of stories as well, to allow for pitched rather than a flat roof. The council agreed a pitched roof is better than a flat roof for two reasons. One was to avoid using the flat roof of a parking terrace as an extra parking level. The other was a pitched roof would give more of a European feel to the area.

The current proposal does not limit building size. However Henke told the council a pitched roof would limit how wide the buildings can be in order to fit the pitched roof within the height limit. 

Open space for a one acre plaza is the only required open space on the proposed twenty acres. Open space is one of the amenities a developer can use to earn points for more residential units. Much of that trading would be for open space offsite in other parts of town. Bonner said, “I would think we would want to encourage some onsite open space. More than just the plaza … I don’t know how we make that work so that it still had that walkable, but it still had that open feeling. I don’t know how you get the best of both worlds.”

Parking was addressed next. Wes Johnson, city engineer, said, “One of the things that I think has a big impact on this is the required parking. We have one vehicle per unit.”

Van Wagoner said, “The state average is 2.3 (parking spaces per unit) and I mean, how many of us here only have one vehicle? Let’s be realistic, most of us are even over two. I think the parking definitely would have to be addressed because I don’t want ... cars being parked out on the street in front of neighbors houses … if they are going to have it, they need to have the parking on site.”

The council agreed one per unit is not enough, but it is a struggle to find a good balance between not enough parking and too much.  

At this point in the discussion Corbin Gordon, city attorney, offered an observation, "You’ve currently got two people that have come in and applied under the C-2 zone. And they are going to be choosing  between the C-2 and the C-4, but they’re already vested under C-2. The C-4 zone was designed, I think,, to motivate people, and right now you are basically saying your density is 20 which is the same as C-2, your height is 35, which is the same as C-2, and by the way, you’ve got to put in amenities and open space if you come in under C-4, then there’s your parking. No one’s going to chose that. So the discussion, it seems to me, is a waste of time.”

The council then considered focusing on removing unwanted uses in the C-2 zone from the code and leaving the incentive based amenities idea and the proposed C-4 zone behind. The idea was discussed but the council decided to wait and see what happens with the two new C-2 development proposals. Motions were made to table both the text code amendment and the rezone. Bonner encouraged council members to think about all the issues discussed for a future work meeting.