Planning Commission

SUMMARY MINUTES Regular Meeting Eugene Planning Commission Sloat Room–The Atrium Building–99 West 10th Avenue September 19, 2005 11:30 a.m. PRESENT: John Lawless, President; Mitzi Colbath, Vice President; Jon Belcher, Randy Hledik, Phillip Hudspeth, Anne Marie Levis, members; Gabriel Flock, Susan Muir, Steve Nystrom, Kurt Yeiter, Allen Lowe, Nan Laurence, Planning and Development Depart- ment staff; Rob Inerfeld, Gary McNeel, Public Works Department staff; Dan Herbert, Zachary Vishanoff, Charles Biggs, Will Shaver, guests. ABSENT: Rick Duncan, member; Mike Sullivan, ex officio member; PUBLIC COMMENT ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS I. PREPARATION FOR JOINT PLANNING COMMISSION AND CITY COUNCIL MEETING: MIXED USE CENTERS Staff: Kurt Yeiter, 682-8379 II. ITEMS FROM COMMISSION AND STAFF A. Other Items from Staff B. Other Items from Commission MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission September 19, 2005 Page 1 Regular Meeting  MINUTES Regular Meeting Eugene Planning Commission Sloat Room–The Atrium Building–99 West 10th Avenue September 19, 2005 11:30 a.m. PRESENT: John Lawless, President; Mitzi Colbath, Vice President; Jon Belcher, Randy Hledik, Phillip Hudspeth, Anne Marie Levis, members; Gabriel Flock, Susan Muir, Steve Nystrom, Kurt Yeiter, Allen Lowe, Nan Laurence, Planning and Development Depart- ment staff; Rob Inerfeld, Gary McNeel, Public Works Department staff; Dan Herbert, Zachary Vishanoff, Charles Biggs, Will Shaver, guests. ABSENT: Rick Duncan, member; Mike Sullivan, ex officio member; Mr. Lawless convened the meeting of the Planning Commission at 11:34 a.m. PUBLIC COMMENT ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS Zachary Vishanoff, Patterson Street, offered suggestions to improve the process for the basketball arena. He stated that there was a lack of information regarding the project. He said the project would be an athletic complex. He wanted separate stakeholder meetings and he wanted to know the names of the committees and who was on the committees. He said Mayor Piercy had committed to an open forum and he suggested a process like the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) used. Ms. Levis asked Mr. Vishanoff to send the internet links to the documents he cited at the September 12, 2005 meeting to her. Dan Herbert, 1913 Potter Street, distributed a handout entitled: AN EMERGING ISSUE: The effect of housing patters on children’s achievement in schools. Mr. Herbert suggested that the Planning Commission add an item to the FY06 Planning Division Work Program, under High Priority Task 5/Emerging Issues: f) Effect of housing patterns on children’s achievement in schools. Mr. Herbert read from the handout and quoted George Russell, Superintendent of the Eugene School District 4-J. Mr. Herbert said if Mr. Russell was right, claiming that our present housing policies do contribute to the problem of educating poor children in our community, the city must reexamine its current housing policies, noting that the problem had not been defined adequately to try to solve it. Mr. Herbert asked the Planning Commission to acknowledge the problem and raise it as an agenda item at the October joint meeting with the City Council. Following that, he suggested working with the school district on a brief follow-up study to define the problem, and to provide the Planning Commission data to evaluate the issue in relation to other planning priorities. MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission September 19, 2005 Page 1 Regular Meeting I. PREPARATION FOR JOINT PLANNING COMMISSION AND CITY COUNCIL MEETING: MIXED USE CENTERS Mr. Yeiter reported that there were two important meetings with the City Council in July, a work session on mixed use centers, and the joint meeting with the Planning Commission. A second joint meeting was scheduled for October 26, 2005. The purpose of today’s meeting was to provide an opportunity to determine what issue(s) should be brought to the joint meeting. Mr. Yeiter reviewed the Agenda Item Summary and attachments, including Minutes Except from the July 20, 2005 City Council meeting, and a series of e-mail messages circulated among City Council members, referenced in the motion from July 20, 2005, regarding expectations of mixed use centers and opportunity siting. Mr. Belcher arrived at 11:45 a.m. Ms. Levis reported that she had talked with her City Council buddy, David Kelly, particularly about opportunity-siting. Mr. Kelly suggested that the Planning Commission make a proposal to the City Council around which the discussion at the joint meeting could be framed. Ms. Muir said 45 minutes had been allocated on the October 26, 2005 City Council agenda for the joint meeting with the Planning Commission. Ms. Levis left at 11:47 a.m. Mr. Yeiter reviewed the Staff Recommendations iterated in the agenda item summary as a method to provide direction to staff regarding issues to be raised with the City Council: • Request clarification about what the City Council expects from “opportunity siting”. Is there a different approach than what is explored during site specific Mixed Use Centers (MUC) plan- ning? • Discuss/explain the new types of MUC (Neighborhood, Commercial, and Employment). What are the differences? How might the strategies for implementation differ? • The council clearly wanted opportunity siting to be the primary strategy in MUC planning, but there are indications that some may expect changes to zoning outside the MUC. Is the council expecting the MUC and vacant parcels to accommodate all new growth? Does the council expect the MUC strategy to result in modifications to R-2, R-3, R-4, and/or commercially zoned areas outside MUCs? • Long term strategies (e.g., additional funding, timing) for implementing the MUC strategy. • How might MUCS be prioritized for study and implementation? Ms. Colbath, who recently attended the Oregon Planning Institute (OPI) conference, said changes to Goal 9 would allow regional growth on a metrowide basis. Economic opportunity analysis in Region 2050 could be done on a metro or local basis. Analysis must be done in a comprehensive way. The city may receive a reprieve from Department of Land Conservation and Development (LCDC) in terms of commercial lands inventory, but there needed to be a way to deal with residential development as the population grew. She expressed concern with the 1.0 FAR and noted the nodal overlay was dysfunc- tional. Transportation needed to be looked at comprehensively. Ms. Muir noted that staff was seeking specific direction and consensus from the commission on how to MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission September 19, 2005 Page 2 Regular Meeting incorporate their ideas for the City Council. Mr. Lawless expressed concerns regarding limitations in MUCs opportunity siting, and hoped to look at them on a city-wide basis. He was discouraged by comments in the City Council minutes that the Planning Commission was not flexible in not providing direction, and that the commission reversed or was opposed to City Council policies. He said it was important for the commission to open horizons to broaden conversations with the council. Mr. Belcher stated he continued to wait for the opportunity to have the larger discussion. He said the opportunity siting motion and accompanying amendment needed to be considered by the commission in future population discussions as addressed in the Growth Management Study (GMS). He asked if the opportunity siting process needed to be incorporated into the Chamber Area Families for Healthy Neighborhoods (CAFHN) process. Mr. Hledik proposed a three step process: • Recap the lessons learned from the history of mixed use development nodal zones. o One size does not fit all. o Inherent conflict between densification and neighborhood character preservation of the Chambers Study. o Future Planning Commissions will have to deal with built-in obsolescence similar to that of refinement plans. o Potential costly and time consuming MUC planning. • Impediments to development. Develop examples of what process a developer would be subject to if a project was ready to go today, based upon the already identified 38 MUCs, including: o Rezoning. o Planned Unit Development (PUD) criteria. o Inherent city impediments. • Alternate paths for PUD process. Should a hybrid PUD apply city wide. Mr. Lawless noted that the comment about “new distinctions” of commercial, employment and residential centers were not new, but simply looked at again from their inception in TransPlan. Conversations about opportunities for differently proportioned balance of mixes of uses were fundamental to a more inclusive discussion about MUCs. Finding various ways to infuse new population into the community would be beneficial, opposed to past strategies that were too rigid. Mr. Hledik attended the Dollars and Sense of Smart Development session at the OPI conference in which the speakers iterated that planning could only drive development so far. There needed to be a market opportunity and a willingness on the part of local governments to work with it. He expressed a desire to pursue the concept of looking at the PUD process to help facilitate private sector involvement. Ms. Colbath suggested asking the City Council how it wanted the Planning Commission to achieve character and balance as identified in the CAFHN proposal. She said the council wanted the alternate path discussion to move forward at a faster pace. She suggested asking the council how it wanted to fit the new population into the parameters of the Growth Management Study. With new parameters from by DLCD, would the council prefer the new population go to another portion of the metropolitan region or prefer to look at UGB expansions from an economic opportunity analysis perspective? Ms. Muir said the City Council had previously provided direction on opportunity siting as up zoning on target parcels, design standards, down zoning in other sensitive areas on a neighborhood basis, increasing MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission September 19, 2005 Page 3 Regular Meeting housing types and opportunities, and an overall increase in density for the city as a whole. Ms. Muir suggested modifying the Staff Recommendation 1. to Providing a framework for opportunity siting based upon the Planning Commission’s discussion. Mr. Lawless said it was crucial to raise the issue of the Region 2050 concept that communities in the area were becoming bedroom communities to Eugene, how would that impact transportation, and was that a viable way to deal with metropolitan population growth. Mr. Yeiter said the DLCD saw Goal 9 as a regional problem solving tool as perceived in Region 2050. He said workshops scheduled in Eugene and Springfield this week to address how far the state rules could be modified for accommodating growth would depend on agreement from all of the parties. The Region 2050 economic analysis was under revision for presentation to the policy board in October. Mr. Yeiter said he had copies of a letter drafted by Mr. Duncan and Mr. Belcher in July available commissioners who wished to have a copy. Mr. Yeiter said the nature of reexamining all opportunities city-wide related to the amount of growth the city would be expected to accommodate outside of Region 2050 was seen by Mr. Kelly as a large work task, the scope of which he expected to see brought back to the council with program and budget implications. It was not one that could easily be added to the current work program. Suggesting the scope of work and budget could be an option the Planning Commission offered to the City Council. Mr. Yeiter noted that 25 percent of the current population increase was going into MUCs, because that was the location of vacant land. Staff was developing a status report regarding the 38 MUCs, regarding locations, remaining opportunities, and other issues, noting that how the city would grow would be addressed when the report was completed. Ms. Levis returned at 12:22 p.m. Mr. Yeiter said the following issues needed to be addressed for the status report: • What would happen in the R-2, R-3, and R-4 zones. • Were the neighborhood organizations involved in the opportunity siting. • Should the targeted population be distributed geographically or would opportunity maps on good infill sites be a reasonable place to start. Mr. Belcher said the commission was faced with the Chambers proposal by accident, noting there were significant implications about how density would be addressed in the future. Several neighborhoods had expressed an interest in a review similar to the CAFHN study. It was important to look at the big picture while implementing as opportunities arose. Mr. Nystrom said it was important to be strategic about short term issues as growth issues continued to be identified and studied. Mr. Lawless said it was important to be more creative and interact with the market demand, noting that some of the early protection clauses of nodal development needed to be reexamined. It was important to identify the order of magnitude of growth, and identify what associated changes in the community were desirable and should be accommodated, and which were not desirable. He said analysis was needed to identify what needed to be done to encourage growth in those desirable locations. MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission September 19, 2005 Page 4 Regular Meeting Ms. Colbath said the economic analysis could examine demographic trends, and asked if the city could tie into the Region 2050 study to get this information on a regional basis for review on the local level. She said the terms, Commercial and Employment MUCs sounded definitive for the site, excluding other uses such as housing, rather than being proportional for the sites. There was a need to talk about a balanced approach to distribution of density, in spite of the fact that it may not always be a favorable discussion. Equitable means of densification was needed when discussing housing patterns and socio economic impacts as brought forward by Mr. Herbert earlier in the meeting. The commission needed feedback from the City Council on the methodology to be used on density issues. Mr. Belcher said it was important to use the information from the Region 2050 process, and expressed concern about expecting the Region 2050 partners to reach agreement on growth, when some communi- ties wanted to grow and others did not. He concurred that it was important to avoid built-in obsolescence, and asked what incentives should be provided to get desirable development. Mr. Yeiter stated that the economic study in the Region 2050 plan was a high level, regional growth forecast that would not work well for distributing MUC growth within the UGB. He added that the Region 2050 study was the first attempt at a regional discussion on growth issues, and the timeline was not clear. The danger in waiting for completion of the Region 2050 study could negatively impact some of the city’s concerns, noting that several of the growth scenarios encouraged Eugene and Springfield to grow more so that rural communities would not have to grow as quickly. Mr. Lawless said it was easy to imagine how nice equitable distribution of population growth in the area, would be but that it could be difficult to achieve, noting that market demands would significantly impact what actually occurred. Mr. Hudspeth favored using economic incentives with developers, particularly related to nodal develop- ment and MUCs, and encouraged the commission to include this as part of the message conveyed to the City Council. Such incentives would make it easier for architects and developers to design and build projects that would be sought by the marketplace. Lack of incentives was a significant obstacle for developers in Eugene. Ms. Muir summarized the proposals for the joint meeting discussion offered by Ms. Bettman and the commissioners: • Offered by Ms. Bettman: o Up zoning on target parcels. o Design standards for down zoning in sensitive areas. o Increasing housing opportunities. o Increase density city-wide based upon estimates of future population. • Offered by Planning Commissioners: o Using PUD as a vehicle o Alternate path. o Transportation issues need to play major roles on a city-wide basis. o Neighborhood enhancements should to be the goal. o How do we implement in terms of timing and at what scale. o Incentives must be part of the package. o Where can we be most effective geographically. o What were the design standards supposed to protect or address. MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission September 19, 2005 Page 5 Regular Meeting  o Lessons learned including the Region 2050 report, timing and how the data was used. o Impediments and issues, including conflicts with the GMS, and refinement plans would need to be examined. o Lack of understanding of development economics in the decisions currently being made. o Social equity regarding densification in some areas of the city. Ms. Muir suggested that the Planning Commission propose parameters on which it wished to reach conceptual agreement with the City Council. Ms. Levis suggested that the commissioners touch base with their council buddies following today’s meeting to ensure that there was a general understanding on terminology, such as opportunity siting. She added that concrete examples should be developed for conversations with councilors. Mr. Yeiter said when staff had an opportunity to do site specific planning, staff believed they were doing opportunity siting within the current parameters, and suggested completed studies could be offered as examples of impacts existing zoning had on other uses to the City Council. He cited Chase Gardens as an example of where a significant amount of analysis had occurred, but development that occurred did not necessarily follow that analysis. Mr. Hledik said it would be helpful to compile themes of underlying lessons learned in prior develop- ments, identifying errors and solutions for future efforts. He concurred with Ms. Levis’ proposal of developing examples, but using generic projects, to identify lessons learned, impediments, and alternative solutions. He was concerned about identifying opportunity areas that would include a lengthy, costly process, to generate a list that would be incomplete and become obsolete, that could serve as a barrier to desirable projects. The PUD process should be evaluated to ensure that it did not present barriers to desirable market driven growth and development. Mr. Lawless suggested quickly developing a screening process, or development triage, that could be used to evaluate proposed development opportunities. Mr. Belcher said the commission should focus on three or four questions on which it needed feedback or approval from the City Council. Ms. Levis stressed the need for a concrete discussion by using examples to elicit concrete responses from the City Council, and to provide a format for making hard choices. Mr. Belcher suggested not using concrete examples, but rather offering options. Mr. Lawless suggested taking a bold leap, and shifting the demand in neighborhoods to more opportunis- tic sites. Ms. Muir suggested that the Planning Commission propose a plan to the City Council to solicit the council’s reaction, rather than posing questions. Mr. Hledik suggested going for a city-wide, alternative path, PUD application process that allowed for a very quick response to wherever the objectives of densification, neighborhood preservation and transit orientation might happen, regardless of how many of the 38 nodes were impacted. Ms. Colbath said the City Council already had motions directing the Planning Commission’s work, MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission September 19, 2005 Page 6 Regular Meeting including Ms. Bettman’s motion to direct the City Manager to incorporate opportunity siting as described in the July 19, 2005, email to the Mayor and City Council as a primary strategy for achieving density targets in MUCs. Furthermore, Mr. Kelly had offered a friendly amendment to request that opportunity siting be combined with city-wide estimates of future population which will be approximately allocated to mixed use districts and other areas in the city. Ms. Colbath noted this would follow Mr. Hledik’s suggestion of determining how to proceed while plans were under revision. Ms. Levis suggested that the Planning Commission add to Ms. Bettman’s motion by aiming higher. Mr. Belcher said there was not a clear explanation on the purpose of the motion, and felt the commission needed to get clarification from the council. He asked if the motion was currently in place, if the single incentive offered by Ms. Bettman was the only incentive the commission was to include in the process, and was the incentive city-wide, site-wide, or both. Ms. Muir said the Planning Commission needed to ask those questions of the council to get clarification. At the conclusion of the discussion, Ms. Levis proposed that the commissioners talk with their council buddies to get ideas on opportunity siting, and then forward those ideas to Mr. Yeiter for summarizing. She further proposed that each commissioner develop a package of proposals for Mr. Yeiter to summarize for the joint meeting. Mr. Nystrom proposed that staff would analyze the discussion from today’s meeting, and the materials from the commissioners to Mr. Yeiter, and bring it back to the commission for further discussion in early October, prior to the joint meeting. II. ITEMS FROM COMMISSION AND STAFF A. Other Items from Staff None. B. Other Items from Commission Mr. Hledik reported that he attend the commissioner training at the OPI conference. Mr. Belcher reported that the commissioners met with Pat Zimmerman following the September 12, 2005 Planning Commission meeting. Ms. Colbath reported that she had also attended the OPI meeting. Mr. Lawless adjourned the Planning Commission meeting at 1:30 p.m. (Recorded by Linda Henry) m:\2005\planning and development department\planning division\planning commission\pc050919.doc MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission September 19, 2005 Page 7 Regular Meeting