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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-07-24 TranscriptionPage 1 Council Present: Council Absent: Staff Present: Others Present: Cole, Teague, Taylor, Thomas, Throgmorton Mims, Salih Fruin, Monroe, Dilkes, Fruehling, Hightshoe, Sitzman, Russett, Hektoen, Heitner Carolyn Dyer, Max Parsons, Mike Hensch, Billie Townsend, Mark Signs (Planning and Zoning Commission); Tony Perez (Opticos Design Inc.) Update on the South District Form Based Code: Throgmorton/ Okay, well we can begin our meeting, uh, our special Council work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July the 24th, 2019. I want to welcome people, especially the Planning and Zoning Commissioners, including Mike Hensch who's our, uh, Chairman of that commission, and Billie and Mark and Max and Carolyn. I understand Phoebe's not going to be able to join us, but if she does she'll be sitting over here. I want to note that Susan Mims and Mazahir Salih will not be able to join us tonight. They are both out of town. It's possible that Susan's watching this meeting on TV. If she is, hello, Susan! I hope you're doing well! And.....Maz will be back in, I don't know, two or three days from her, uh.... sojourn over in Sudan. Both of'em, if they can't watch this meeting live, will be able to watch it streamed. So it's not as if the information will be lost for them. I wanna welcome Opticos staff, as well, led by Tony Perez. It's great to see both of you. Thank you for coming and meeting with our staff earlier today. Uh, it's my understanding we have four topics to discuss this afternoon. I'll briefly mention them and then turn things over to you, Geoff. Fruin/ Sounds good! Throgmorton/ Okay. So the first is .... to receive an update on the South District form based code. The second is to .... uh, see an overview of the review of the Riverfront Crossings form based code that Opticos has just done for us, and to review the Ronald Street 'missing middle' housing concepts as they might apply to one particular site there on Ronald Street. And lastly to di .... to discuss the development review process. It's my understanding from talking with Geoff that that's what we really need to be focusing on today, but you can elaborate, Geoff, so why don't ya go ahead. Fruin/ Yeah, good evening, Commission Members and City Council Members. I'm Geoff Fruin, I'm the City Manager here and I wanna thank you for, uh, adding another meeting to your schedule on a .... in a July summer month here. I know that's not easy, but we really appreciate it. We think we have a, uh, not only an interesting, uh, set of topics tonight, but very important topics. As the Mayor indicated, we really have two different objectives tonight, so I look at this work session as having two distinct parts. Uh, the first is to provide you an update on the three main elements of the scope of work that we have This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 2 with Opticos. Some of you are newer to the Council and the Commission, so this will ... help bring you up to speed on the work that they are doing for us. Um .... uh, and as the Mayor said, the first one will be the South District form based code development. So you'll hear a little bit from Opticos on what is a form based code and where are they at with the development of the South District form based code here in Iowa City. I'll remind you that it is our hope that this code as it's developed will be able to be applied to other parts of the city as well, with ..... with a little bit of, uh, massaging. So as we look to expand our borders to other greenfield sites in the future, we hope that this code is the ....is the play book for .... for how to develop in those areas as well. We also, uh, asked Opticos to review our form based code in the Riverfront Crossings. We're a few years into that. We have, uh, about a dozen new buildings (mumbled) the dozen new buildings that have been built under that form based code. We thought it was important that they take a look at those and offer any feedback. Uh, they're going to give you a very brief overview of that tonight .... of their findings, and certainly more detail will follow at another time on that topic, and then if you're not familiar, the City has a, uh, a parcel on Ronald Street, uh, that we, uh, thought would be good, urn .... uh, as a potential 'missing middle' pilot site. So it's a single-family parcel on a larger lot, and what we've asked Opticos to do is look at different missing middle housing types, uh, concepts and then the next step, uh, will be to .... how to work within our traditional zoning code. So now we're working outside the form based code, but how do we work within our traditional zoning code to promote missing middle housing, uh, in some of our older neighborhoods. So you'll see some of those early concepts. Now all three of those issues could produce lengthy discussions, and our.... our.... it's not really our intention to get into the details of any of those three subjects tonight. Again we just want to raise those issues with you, kind of foreshadow what may be coming in the next few months with, uh.... urn, with more in-depth discussions on each of those. So I urge ya to resist the urge to get into the details on those three subjects. What would be appropriate, if you need clarification on what Opticos is doing for us, I think that would be great. If you see any major red flags or have any big questions that could alter, uh, the course of the direction that we as staff and .... and Opticos is heading, that would be appropriate too. But again on all three of those items, you'll be seein' a lot more detail of that in the future. Our primary purpose tonight is .... is part two of that work session, which is review of the development review process and, um, what I'm hopin' is we can take about a 10,000 -foot view on our development review process and this is something that the Council has asked me to initiate, uh, this discussion, and um, there ... they asked that because I started to express some concerns to them about what I have seen are some increasingly misaligned expectations that take place throughout our development process, from all the parties involved, and um, you know, I hear that from the development community about them not bein' so sure about what would be acceptable to the City, the Planning Commission and the Council. Um, I think we see that materialize at the City Council and the Planning and Zoning Commission level, um, as we .... uh, see projects that are, um, deferred or have split votes or have special conditions added to them through the process. Um, that's the .... that's the, um, kind of the area that I want to focus on is what is driving, um, some of those, um, some of those conversations that are taking place, and ..... and how can we all, uh, bring our expectations in line, uh, so that, um, we can create a process that is predictable, that .... that produces predictable outcomes for .... for everybody involved. So This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 3 that staff knows exactly what to require of developers and developers know what they need to submit at a .... for various types of projects, and so you as Commission Members and Council Members feel that you have the adequate information that you need to .... to make decisions, and that's where I'm hopin' to get tonight, uh, hopin' to start that conversation tonight. We're certainly not going to, uh, finish that conversation tonight. Um, we will follow up this meeting, uh, on August 6th with the City Council with the work session. So, uh, Tony Perez from Opticos is gonna facilitate that development review, uh, discussion tonight. Now Tony is .... is not from the Iowa City area. Does not really have in-depth knowledge about our development review process, and.... and.... and that's intentional because I thought, uh, it would be good, uh, for .... for someone without that inside knowledge to come and just at a very high level describe how development review processes should work, urn .... uh, if ...if things are, if things are properly aligned, uh, from start to finish. Um, so Tony will help really facilitate what I hope is more of a discussion, uh, between the Commission and the Council, and then again on August 6th we're gonna follow up with the City Council with a more detailed conversation about our particular process, and then hopefully over the course of several months, we can, uh, develop a list of action steps that we need to make sure that we're all operating with the same expectations on our development review process. Does that sound okay? All right, so with that I'm gonna start. We're gonna go back to part one and start with the update on the South District form based code, and I'm gonna turn it over to Tony Perez with Opticos. Perez/ Thank you, Geoff. Um, good.....good evening, good afternoon, uh, different time zone for us. Um, Mr. Mayor, Council Members, Commission Members, uh, it's great to be here with you and talk about these things, give you this update. Uh, can you hear me okay or do I need to go down (mumbled) Okay! All right, thanks! Um, the, urn .... the first part of this is just an update on where we are with the South District code. That's our primary, uh, primary charge here. Uh, let's see here.....do I just go ahead and just hit this one (mumbled) I canjust do this! (laughs) Okay! Uh.... so as you know our main objective in ... in being hired to do this is to prepare zoning standards for the South District. That's.... that's our main charge here, and there are a couple of other tasks sprinkled in there — the Ronald Street and the .... and the, uh, and the Riverfront Crossings task. So let's talk about this one first, uh, we got this thing here (mumbled) That's in the way. Um .... okay. And, uh, for those new to the process, we're talking about the South District here, um, off of Sycamore and down off of, uh, basically the southern edge of the entire city, the 1,700 acres covered in the South District plan. You have a comprehensive plan that already addresses this, and that's what you see on the left-hand side of the screen. That's the .... that's the 10,000 -foot level land use policy direction for this area of the city. So it's our job to take that and implement it in, through zoning standards. Um, the .... the comprehensive plan, um, gives certain direction. We, and we took that direction two years ago to the community, uh, through some workshops in 2017, and came out with these bullets. I won't go through all of them, but they're.... they're important things that the community came up with and said, hey, in addition to what the South District plan already says, uh, the comprehensive plan, these are things that, uh, we find important, uh, to give as inputs as you make this code. And you can see, um, that posters from one of the workshops. Those dots are, um, strength, the weaknesses, or an This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 4 opportunity. So this is the community's, uh, work, and then, um, earlier this year we came as .... as phase two of this project, we ca .... that was phase one. Phase two of this project we came and met with stakeholders over a couple days, and we .... we met with 'em in different meetings and had these points come out, and I'll go over these briefly. They talked about the development process being lengthy and uncertain, and again by repeating this, we're not ..... we're not adding to that. We're simply restating what we heard from stakeholders. Uh, this is input. Um, and then we also heard that if the new process was more predictable, that they would consider, um, additional regulations as not a burden. They would trade more clarity and additional regulations in exchange for a .... a clearer and quicker process. Um, and we also heard the development community was very unsure about this missing middle housing, um, approach that we're taking here and that we're recommending. Um, it's.....and I have a .... an update on that right after this. They talked about needing more affordable housing choices in town, and they, uh, the neighborhood, um, across the road from, uh, Alexander Elementary specifically said that they wanted better adjacencies between new development and even that existing school. Uh, we heard quite a lot about that. Throgmorton/ Tony, if I could just get one clarification. By stakeholders you mean property owners, developers.... Perez/ Realtors, bankers (both talking) yeah, people involved with the process and .... and, yeah, and neighbors. Yeah. Throgmorton/ So one might imagine there's a much broader set of stakeholders in general, but these are the ones you're talking (both talking) Perez/ Yes! Yeah, that's right. Throgmorton/ Okay, thank you. Perez/ Um, so today we had a .... a summary presentation by Zimmerman Volk Associates. Um, they're specialists in residential market analyses for the last 25, 30 years, specifically on new urbanist traditional neighborhood kind of development that we're looking at here, and they, uh, answered the basic question — is there a market for this missing middle housing, that the development community in April said there was not, and they said overwhelmingly yes. So they broke that down and the draft study has been submitted to the Ci...the City staff and they have that and we'll work through the final changes to that, and then submit the final, um, in the coming months, but you can see the summary here. Um, they broke it down and basically said half of the market for this type of housing comes from within Iowa City, and the other half is a combination of different places around here. Um, you can see the .... the, um, number of units. Basically they're saying over a five-year period they see anywhere from 700 to almost a 1,000 of these types of units being absorbed by the market here. Uh, and quickly what is missing middle, it's house -scale buildings with multiple units inside them that are in a walkable context. Walkable context meaning something worth walking to nearby, within a three to five- minute walk. Uh, today the .... the.....the, uh, market analyst said that, um, premiums This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 5 for .... for multiple .... or these kinds of units occur. To ... for the developer, premiums are realized when there's something worth walking to that's within three minutes. So buyers have told them over and over, and .... and demonstrated through their activity, that if it's... something worth walking to, say a shop, service, many like ... nature that you have out there, um, walking or biking trails, something like that within three minutes, it's gonna get a premium, uh, and these .... and.....and so that's also to say for anybody who's watching, um, or anybody in the audience that when we're talking about these missing middle housing, uh, units, we are not talking about finding a new way to park a bunch of multi -family out in the comfields away from everything. We're talking about quite the opposite. We're saying that when you do this, it's assumed that you're building a neighborhood that has walkable amenities within it, and .... and that'll change. Some'll have, I mean they'll vary. Some'll have a little more and some'll have less of those amenities, but it's not just ploppin' houses out in the fields. We .... we need to make that very, very clear. We're not advocating that. So what are we doing now? Uh, we've been working on setting up the new form based code with your staff. Uh, where it's going to... to literally be located in your whole zoning code structure. Uh, we've worked on, with them on the actual structure of that, the numbering and .... and all that. So this, uh, lays that out, uh, section by section within Article 14, uh, how the new code will be structured and what .... what content (mumbled) will have. Urn .... we've talked with your staff about template options, what kind of pages do you want? Do you want them landscaped? Do you want'em vertical? Do you want them with this kind of emphasis on content? Do you want them a little thinner on content? And so this is the format that's been selected, and you can see it's very graphic, a lot of tables, um, as opposed to the code that you have now, which is few tables and lots of text. And we found that that's just, you know, if you wanna read text, that's.... that's great, but if you wanna find information quickly and consistently, this format is a lot easier to read. These are sample pages also for building type standards. You can see, um, intent on the left, standards on the right, diagrams and tables, and then street standards. Street standards are very, very important in part of a code like this because... form based code started out by sa... by saying, hey, the public realm between let's say that's one side of the street here. That's facade, this is a street, and that's the other side of the street. That space in between those two facades, whether it's close like in downtown Iowa City, or if it's farther back like say in a neighborhood, like in .... in Northside here, you perceive that space, and .... and how those buildings are shaping it. Well the streets have a lot to do with that, and .... and so current practice, not just in Iowa City, but conventional practice says, oh the streets are the realm of the engineers, and the lots and the buildings are the realms of the planners and the architects, and that's why a lot of places don't feel that good because they're totally separated in their design. So in a code like this, we work with engineers to come up with standards that work for vehicular traffic and cyclists and pedestrians, but also shape that street in a way that makes that real estate on both sides of it worth something more. Um, and then lastly just quick code guides. Um, these are part of the .... the code that you'll receive. They break down typical scenarios, like a new building, we're makin' a new block, or let's say the buildings already exist, how do you add to it? How do you put up a new sign? Simple things like that. We break 'em down into little flow charts like this so that you can point somebody to that and say, hey, this is how you do that, and it gives you all the steps of. ... of the standards that you need. Uh, the other thing we're doing is a code framework. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 6 We just talked about that today with the staff, and what we mean by framework is the .... the suite or palate of zoning districts that we recommend to implement the South District comprehensive plan here. So there's..... there's a vision at a 10,000 -foot level and then there's all this information we've received in between, and we are recommending five zoning districts. One, um, let's see if I can make this work. Anyway (laughs) the one on the left, your far left, it has the green there, that's the natural zone. There's nature, and you have a lot of it already, and maybe you carve out some more as the greenway's through there. That becomes part of the area you don't develop. It just stays preserved as nature, which is different than parks. Okay? Parks you occupy and use. Nature, you might go in it, but you don't occupy it. Okay? Then the four zones to the right are four flavors of neighborhood zones, with mostly a single-family neighborhood on the left with some missing middle, to a more missing middle neighborhood, and then all the way up to, on the right hand side, a Main Street zone. So let's say on Dubuque Street, one to three-story buildings. That's the scale, uh, maybe even one block long of a .... of Main Street zone that we see occurring somewhere out there. Uh, maybe it's two blocks long but it's small. It's very focused. So that's the zoning district on the right. And we .... we're recommending right now that that palate of zoning districts is, um, is what you need to implement the kind of vision that .... that we've heard, uh, wanted out there. Now can you add a zoning district to this? Yeah, and maybe through the process we add one more before we finish this code, but right now we think those .... those five zoning districts will do the job. Um, and then we've been doing a form based code training for the staff. We .... the .... the ones in gray are what we've done, and the ones in darker gray are, uh, what we're about to do. We have one coming up tomorrow, uh (laughs) if you wanna come (mumbled) you're welcome. We actually sit down at tables and start using another code that's very much .... it uses the same components as you'll have, different content than yours, but it teaches the staff how to go through the steps, so that when an applicant comes forward and starts asking questions, they've gone through it and can understand the questions they probably are asking much better. Um, so that's tomorrow, and then these other ones we do just by webinar. We just get on the phone and send a .pdf and talk to each other. Um, we've found that before we did this kind of training, giving somebody an (mumbled) code and then trying to train them how to use it was not the best way. We learned the hard way over many years. We found that breaking it down, as your .... didn't even have the code yet, and we've already done four of these. It .... it prepares the staff to actually be ready to really get into that and review it with a lot more background. Um, so .... the approach to the South District code here, um, there are basically three types of development when you .... when you boil 'em all down. There's in -fill, which you have in downtown Iowa City. That's basically an existing grid of streets and blocks, and you're in -filling or you're changing something completely, but it's in -fill. The pattern's set, and it's.... it's either becoming more intense than it was or maybe staying the same, but it's new investment. The one in the middle is redevelopment, where let's say there are, um, there's a big vacant area, but there are some existing streets and there may be a factory or some other thing that isn't being used any more and you're going to redo it. Um, so there's a combination of that vacant land and vacant buildings. That's called redevelopment. Um, and that one, um, could apply to some areas, but it doesn't apply to South District. The South District is really what we call greenfield. Uh, it's basically undeveloped, except for the neighborhood down to the south, um, south end This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 7 of the site. So I wanna just...orient you to the types of. ... of maps you're gonna see in this code. Um.....so the regulating plan, as you know the Riverfront Crossings code, that's the zoning map. That's a fancy, that's a form -based way of saying a zoning map. Um, we use it to (mumbled) plan because these .... these plans do more than .....than zone building height and use, which is what usually they .... they deal with. These .... uh, regulate where roads are to occur or civic spaces are to occur, where neighborhoods are to be built, where .... where they're not to be built. There's a lot going on there. So that's why they're called regulating plans, but you can call them zoning maps if you want, if that makes it clearer. So this zoning map deals with where the neighborhoods are to occur. You see the boundaries there? Um, and where the trunk system of the thoroughfares is to occur. So you already have two streets out there, right? Sycamore, MCCol... McCollister, and then you're going to add new streets. Well, that diagram would show the extensions, and then as it gets into the neighborhoods, we just show, hey, you just need.....I wish I could point with this, but um, I haven't figured out how to do that. Anyway, you .... you just show the extensions into those neighborhoods, and you let the developers design their network within there, and you .... and then they have standards in the code that would direct them — how big the blocks can be, how often do you have to have an intersection, but we're not gonna tell'em that the blocks need to face this way. They can face'em this way and as long as they meet the standards, and so it's up to them, and the network can respond to their particular design. It just has to inter -connect. So all those standards are in there and this guides those decisions. Um, and then you have a similar map for open space. So where do the .... where the greenways occur. Where .... where are civic spaces, like greens and plazas? Where do they .... where are they expected to occur? Now .... these maps show that, and the standards provide for adjustments. Hey, this developer has a really good idea. This civic space should move 300 feet to the left. Okay, great. There are standards to guide that. It's not the civic space doesn't occur; it's let's move it to the left or to the right or north, south, you know, it's that kind of adjustment. Thomas/ Tony, just a quick question. So .... so with the open space, is that .... uh, the.... thinking behind that would be promoting those walkable distances, I would .... I'm thinking. Perez/ Yeah, I can't operate it, uh, yeah, like these guys right here. Yeah, exactly. So what you don't see here, in this particular one is you ever .... have you heard the term pedestrian shed? Okay, it's basically the radius, it's a circle. Like it would ... it would be right here, and what that circle is doing is it's saying, hey, every time you draw one of those circles, that's an approximate five to seven -minute walking radius from the center. Let's say it's one of those guys, and every time you do one of those circles, it's .... it's what is called about.... approximation of a neighborhood in terms of development. It's about 200 acres. So these civic spaces are .... they're distributed in that way. So one of the first things you'll see done on this is we'll put these circles down and they're not hard boundaries. They're just trying to locate where the centers of those neighborhoods might be, or maybe the center's between two neighborhoods and they share it. It's not in the center of individual neighborhoods. So, uh, you use those to approximate where those civic spaces should occur and the standards allow for the flexibility of that space being maybe turned on its side, increased, shaped differently, and then the streets come around it and .... and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 8 respond to that design. So this, you can see the little .... little extensions coming off there. It's saying, hey, the streets in white are what we really are serious about the alignment of that. So McCollister would show up like that. And then .... these other things are where we're saying, hey, between here and there, we need four connections, and you can design them differently than we've shown. You just need to meet the standards. We know we need four connections based on the distance between here and there. (both talking) Teague/ ...circles again. Perez/ What's that? Teague/ What are the circles called? Perez/ Uh, pedestrian sheds, walking sheds. Yeah. It's .... it's trying to use the, when the ... when the people that invented that term, um, they invented it trying to use like the nomenclature of a water shed, you know, that kind of thing. So it's a .... it's an area of influence by a pedestrian. What you can reach. Um, same thing with thoroughfares. So we talked about how important the streets are to regulate, uh, to get it all workin' right. And you can see the main .... the main trunk line, main trunk network of ...of that thoroughfare system is identified, and it's not just arterial and collector and local. There's usually five or six varieties of streets in these types of neighborhoods. Because it's a palate of street types that makes these places. It's not the typical approach. Um, okay. Now the other thing to know about the approach here is that, um, the conventional practice is what we call development pause. So somebody would look at these say 80 acres and say well there's a lot of variety there, Tony. Well yeah, but it's of this scale. There's one pod of condos at 250,000 at 14 to the acre. Another pod of $200,000 units at 18 to the acre. Another pod of apartments at 24 to the acre and so on. You can see it. That's not what we're talking about. That is variety technically, but it's variety in this scale. Okay? What we're talking about, well, so I'll get to that in a second. The .... the other big departure, um, from that is this fixation on density. Um, most of. ... of conventional practice uses this as .... as a.....as a regulator and you can see here that it's really not an effective way to think about buildings because these are almost the same in numerical density. This is 30 to the acre and this is 29, and they couldn't be more different. One's 180 units of buildings three stories tall. Look at this. And it's a nice suburban apartment building, right? Well, this one is just one unit to the acre less numerically, and it's 175 units less, and it's a small house -scale building. So this is missing middle and it's 29 to the acre, and this is, you know, typical suburban apartment development at 30. So when you talk numbers per acre with people, they're gonna think this because they .... they haven't been told that that's 29 to the acre. They just see this gettin' built out on the farm fields next to their house and say 'I don't want any more of that.' So when we .... when we talk about this, we usually don't talk about the density, unless we're asked, and if...if you use it, then we call it resultant density. Say, okay, what kind of thing do you want? Well we want this. Okay, well what is the density that results, from making that? It .... it's the result, not the driver. That's another big departure. So this is the pattern, um, that we're talking about, and this happens to be old Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky. Um, I was just there and, uh, for... at (mumbled) and this just This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 9 blew me away. This street right here, we .... we actually spent time in this area, but look at all the inter -connectivity too, and not all the streets go through. This street is just one block long. That one's two blocks long. This is three blocks long. This one is where we spent some time. And right here, I'm gonna show you in the next slide, the variety. So two slides ago I was showing you ... that this is what mo .... what conventional practice thinks of as variety. So I don't have that same slide, but I do have this. I Zillow'd this and look at this......L ....I looked through this entire thing. There are single-family houses and all kinds of missing middle here, ranging from 109,000 to 843,000. All in the same area. And that's the .... that's what we're talking about here is the mix happens per ...on each block. So right here in this beautiful area called St. James Court, look it up. Google Earth it. It's beautiful. You'll see buildings that look like houses, just single- family houses, with six units in 'em. Or eight units or four units. And ... and then you'll see a single-family house, right next to it, and they look the same, and they did this a hundred years ago. So we're not inventing anything new. We're just reallowing what was already a practice in most American cities, uh, before 1950. Throgmorton/ Tony, for what it's worth, I can say as a former Louisvillian who grew up there (both talking) Perez/ Oh wow! Throgmorton/ I lived in that neighborhood (both talking) Perez/ No way! (laughs) Throgmorton/ Just a couple blocks away from Central Park, so it .... it's a great neighborhood, old Louisville in particular definitely is and all the surroundings (both talking) Perez/ Okay so for the record, I did not know that! (laughter) It's .... it's always dangerous to use pictures, cause somebody says, oh, I lived there and it was horrible and all this stuff, but that's awesome! Um .... and then the last version of this is that .... here's an example of it happening now. This is in, uh, Papillione, Nebraska, just outside of, uh, Omaha and, um, founder of our firm, Dan Parolek, um, is working, he's designed this and it's actually under construction. This developer, Jerry Reimer there, he .... he took the full approach. He said I'm gonna do all missing middle, no single-family houses. So this is 540 units of duplexes through courtyard buildings, and you can see that .... I just wanna make it, uh, a clarification. So (mumbled) Louisville, it's a (mumbled) grid and ... and it's interesting but there's no .... there are no curves in it, and I just wanna say its okay to curve the network. It just ... you don't want to curve it where it makes it fast for cars and bad for people, and that's what's happening here. You can see that there are curves in this network, but they work for people and cars, not just for cars, and typically when engineers curve streets, they work for cars primarily and they speed up and they don't create the same place. Um, okay, a couple more slides here. Uh, couple things about the departure from conventional practice, and what we're doing in this approach to the South District. Uh, you see on the left hand side of the screen the buildings tend to be, um, bigger and attached to each other, and on the right hand side in purple, they're smaller and detached from each other, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 10 and that's what we call house -scale buildings on the right, in the purple, cause they're the size of the houses, regardless of their use. They're detached. They're house -scale buildings. And on the left hand side they're block -scale buildings, because they can be as big as a block, or they can be attached together to form what looks like most all of a block. So once .... once you start working with house -scale and block -scale, it's a lot easier to, um, to talk about buildings. Here's.... here's the palate of building types across the United States, and just quickly, it ranges from the smallest house to the biggest tower, and instead of talking (mumbled) ratio and density and all kinds of other things and stories and all that stuff, if you could just say, hey, I'm talking about the duplex, triplex, or I'm talking about the cottage court, or I'm talking about the courtyard. If you can start to give names to them, in that they have actual sizes and things associated with them, it's a much more intelligent conversation than, um, than the way that we have to do it otherwise. It's like, it's just revealing what these things are. We're not inventing anything. This is what it is. Um, and then so here's the whole palate, with how we use it, with the description of each of those types and then I put here just the numbers of units in each of those buildings. So you can see that it's not....it's not necessary... well, it's just very clear. Like every time you do this guy, you can get three to nine buildings. Every time you do that guy you get three to six. It's .... it's clear. Okay. That's the South District update. Very quick update on the River ...uh, front Crossings code. Um, we reviewed it extensively, and uh, worked with your staff to go back and forth on analysis of that, and we submitted a very detailed analysis, and these are the take-aways. Um, certain standards are not effective or necessary, and here they are. Um, these .... these five standards we don't ... in our professional recommendation are not necessary to achieve what you wanna achieve in Riverfront Crossings, and just bear .... uh, put a .... they're... they're either unclear or unnecessary, and just provide, uh.... uh, don't provide enough benefit to really be a standard. Um, and you can .... you can find out more about that, uh, with the final report. Um, overall the code is not user-friendly. Um, we're code experts and it took us quite a while to really page through that thing and go back and forth. There's a lot of good content in there, there really is, but to use it, um, you have to be pretty intuitive as a .... as a development expert or a code expert to do that, and I found myself going, wow, I know about codes and I know to ask this question, but it doesn't tell me to go here and ask that question. So that's really, those are gaps in .... in using it. Um, and then we also found that the seven sub -districts were .... were three too many. We think it could be four, um, you could even make a case for making three, but we think four is probably a.....a conservative way to go, and just three too many zoning districts, again, just more information and .... and additional regulations that aren't needed. Um, and then this .... this last one, um, because .... in our .... in our practice, um, usually when a code gets adopted for an area, the new zoning gets mapped on it the night that the ... the code is adopted. It's just one action, and what happens is then every project comes through and it has to go through a process, but it doesn't have to change the zone to get approval, and we notice that here you have to do that, and so we found that, uh.... uh, in our experience not necessary. There might be reasons you're doing it here, but um, we didn't .... we didn't find it necessary and ... based on our experience. And then lastly the Ronald Street, uh, yeah, Ronald Street study. Um, we're looking at this, um, this lot at 724 Ronald. It's, uh, 80 X 150 and we looked at several, um, in phase one in 2017 we looked at some studies for that, about six different studies I think, just very preliminary, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 11 and then ... and this project we looked at them in detail, and we came up with four alternatives and we discussed those with staff, and we have landed, um, the direction has been we landed on two options to study further, and we're going to give you, uh, very detailed information about each of them, tables that show all the statistics, and then what zoning standards need to change to make this happen. Uh, so what you're looking at here is a triplex, so three units in a house -scale building, with a carriage house unit above the garage. Or a cottage court of four units here, individual units, and then two carriage houses above that, um, garage in the back, for a total of six units there and four here, and again, these are all house -scale buildings and we try to observe the setback of this building and this building, uh, and .... and just trying to really make this fit into the neighborhood. And that's.... that's the beauty of missing middle. It's meant to do that. You don't have to force missing middle to fit neighborhoods. That's.... that's what it does. So .... um, I know it's a lot of information but try to get through this fast to get to the next topic. Uh, so that's.... that's it on those updates, and then now, um .... uh, we've been asked to facilitate this discussion about your development, um, review process. Um, to kick it off, I .... I'll just give you, uh, a summary of like the ideal situation, uh, and every place has its issues, every place has its needs, every place, you know, is different. So we acknowledge that. I'm not here to tell you you should have this ideal situation and you're weird because you don't. Um, that .... you know, I .... we understand that. Um....so ideally, your comprehensive plan, um (mumbled, speaking away from mic) and give you a break from hearing me talk. (laughs) Tbrogmorton/ Sure! Perez/ The, um, ideally the comprehensive plan gives enough direction to your zoning to do its job, and your zoning can.... implement that comprehensive plan. Um, and .... we do a lot of diagnoses for counties and cities, looking at, um, hey, does it do that? Like right now we're doing one in Greenville, South Carolina. And what we found is there's a disconnect between what the comp plan says and what the zoning is doing, and it's not intentional. There's no malice there. It's just over the years that becomes fuzzy. People forget. Or people don't think it's important. The biggest thing missing in ... in comp plan communication to zoning standards is clarity. It's usually too vague. The comp plan's so vague it just says all kinds of pie in the sky things that .... that you can't, like you can be in compliance with or you cannot be in compliance with. Depending on who's reading it. And so what you want in .... in your comprehensive plan is physical characteristics that start to give cues to the zoning, and .... and ideally they would be things like this that, hey, are duplexes envisioned in this land use category? Are, um, courtyard buildings envisioned in this category? Are .... are the buildings primarily detached in this category? I mean you can read comp plan after comp plan and it doesn't tell you that. It tells you buildings up to 30 to the acre, to provide housing choices, or maybe not even that. That are in harmony with adjacent development. That's.... that's not a lot of information. So... and all the background about who you are and all that stuff, that's interesting, but when you get right down to it, what does that land use designation say? What is the direction that it's giving, and most typically, um, it's lacking physical information, that the zoning needs to take cues from to develop standards. You know, and so what you end up doing is having to ... interpolate that, or maybe you do a master plan or some other vision plan This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 12 that actually articulates that and then now you can put that information in your standards, but absent that, um, you know, communities are without direction. Uh, so they .... their zoning standards are without direction. So ideally, the comprehensive plan has that kind of physical information built into it, and again, you don't have to go at length to it, to do it, but if you know that a certain area or certain land use designation is intended to be... like the first thing you should know is whether you're intending to make what we call walkable environments or auto -oriented environments, and I'm not here to .... to tell you you shouldn't do auto -oriented environments or that you should do walkable environments. I'm .... I'm saying that those are two different worlds, and they need two different types of standards. So conventional zoning standards work really well for the auto -oriented development, cause it's focused on use. Because conventional zoning is oriented on use and secondly on form, and .... and that's why there are all those questions, but.... that.... that tends to work for it. The walkable environments can't work well with conventional code, because it doesn't have all the answers the walkable environment is gonna need. That's why form based codes work really well in walkable environments. So, if you could do .... if the, ideally the comp plan, one of the first things we tell people is the first thing you should do is decide, or .... or understand where those, uh, environments occur and where you want them to occur. So the South District, it's ... the language in there is saying, essentially, we want walkable neighborhoods. So that map of Iowa City would map that area as a walkable neighborhoods area, and that would tell you at the comp plan level, oh, when you make standards here, we're looking at it differently. We're looking at it to make these kinds of environments. These other areas, like some of your shopping centers, they're gonna continue to be auto -oriented. It's not that you're expecting less. You're just not asking the same questions that you would be in a ... in a form based area, a walkable area. So that's the key thing at the comp plan level. Then at the zoning level, you wanna make that distinction again. Is the zoning district that we're working with today, for auto -oriented environment or for walkable environment? And, cause they both have different information in them. They don't have the same information, okay? Um, then the next thing is that the staff and everybody else needs to know (laughs) that that's what you're trying to do, uh, you need to communicate that. Um, you know, hey! We .... we've made these distinctions and this is why, and that way when you review a project, and you're reviewing something in an auto -oriented environment, there's a different expectation. You know, people are drivin' at 40 -miles -an - hour past it and the architecture's okay at a certain level because you're driving fast. But the walkable environment, it's different. You're walking closer to it. You might not be as interested in the roof. You're interested in the ground floor. There's different priories that ... that happen in the walkable that ... .that aren't as important in the .... in the auto - oriented. I'm generalizing, you know. Um .... so .... so number one the comp plan, number two the zoning, number three the staff and the development community, and the community, need to understand that that's what you're doing, and then next in line is, uh, and this is ... this is where we found in, uh, in doing codes all over the country, early 20....20 years ago, um, we'd do these things and we'd walk away and we'd hear people had problems because of process, and we'd say well that's.... that's a good code. What's the problem? Well, A, the staff was never trained in ... in this, how to use it and how to answer questions. Uh, that was one problem, but the bigger problem was that the application submittal requirements that .... that the staff hands out, like you need to turn This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 13 these plans, these plans, and this is what they need to have. They were never synced up with the new content that was in the new code. So the .... the new code is basically asking a lot of new questions that the application submittal requirements never .... never knew, and again, there was no malice there. Nobody had bad intentions of doing anything there. It was just like they didn't know they needed to do that. So you wanna make sure that your application submittal requirements are in line with what your code is asking. Uh, sort of reverse it — what questions are .... are, is the code asking that we need to alert the applicant to to provide a drawing for that or a diagram. That ... that's a really, um, important factor that we learned the hard way. Um, that leads into the next part, what do you require when? How much do you require when? And what we found with conventional codes, again, making the distinction between auto -oriented environments work well with conventional codes and walkable environments need form based codes. Uh, with conventional codes, what you require when is .... is higher and more complex, because conventional code doesn't answer all the questions that you have, because it's so general. It doesn't know, again, the conventional code, the zoning districts are .... are general because.... it doesn't have enough information there to say here's what we expect on any given day because a lot of kind of things can happen in each of those zoning districts, and so it's seen as limiting to ... to go in further and tighten that down. So what happens is you say, well it's not tightened down enough in the zoning district, so we need to ask for plans and drawings, and then people get frustrated because you asked for all these plans and drawings and .... and it's a circle. In a form based code, it's the opposite. Because there are more clear regulations and usually more regulations, but that's not to be confused with more regulation. There's a difference between the number of regulations, yes, it's more, but it doesn't mean you're regulating more, and being more onerous. It means you're being clear. You're saying, hey, when we say ...we want a stoop frontage type, here .... here's what a stoop is made of, here are minimum standards, and if you follow these minimum standards, then you're approved, subject to review for compliance, right? So form based code lays it out clearly .... and a good form based code still provides ability for creativity and flexibility. It doesn't ratchet you in to one final solution. Um, that's.... that's a misconception, because the early form based codes were .... were developed for places with just massive historic character, so they were regulating rafter tails and all kinds of stuff. Well that ... that's not typical (laughs) That's totally atypical. So, on the conventional side you have less information in the standards, which requires more information in the drawings and application re ... uh, submittal package. Because of that, I'm not telling you to go and beef up your conventional zoning code. I'm just saying that's.... that's why there's a big disconnect, and also there's the human factor. Well, you know, what do you guys do? Um, I'm on the board and I'm concerned about X, Y, and H and B. Those are my things that I'm really interested in and I wanna watch for those, and so you watch for those and you might require information for those. Um, there's a balance, you know, and I think that that's what this process is trying to tease out is, or get out. I shouldn't say the word tease, but tryin' to get out like what do we really need to know, and I just want .... to really make a clear foundation that the form based code, um, prac.... practice proves, or experience proves out that for more (mumbled) clarity and more, um, more regulations on the pages shown very clearly, what you actually have to require in application packages goes down. And, because if somebody says .... like if.... if, let me just illustrate it this way. In a form based code you're doin' a stoop frontage This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 14 type or a porch frontage type. I don't have to ask you a bunch of questions. You just have to look at the standards and put that on your drawing and if I check for compliance and know that it's .... it's meeting the standards, I don't need to do any more. In the conventional side, it doesn't even know what a porch is. It doesn't even include standards for that. So if you, if they say we're submitting a porch, you have to look at it from scratch and say well what makes a good porch? Um, how deep should it be? You're at... you're at the basics. On the form based code side, that stuff is figured out. The basic repeating information is figured out, and you design it, and then you design it with its own architecture and all that, and then it's reviewed for compliance. So because this one has more clarity, you can .... you don't have to have the same number of drawings and the same level of detail .... of drawings that you do for the conventional. Now I'm also not here to say you should change your whole city to form based code. Because like I said, there are places for form based code and there are places not, and what our experience tells us is that you don't want a form based code where it's gonna be auto -oriented suburban development. You'll just frustrate everybody. Okay? It's more.... it's.... it's more appropriate to have the form based code for the walkable neighborhoods, and then go into your convention zoning code and .... and make that more clear and .... and supplement it with information that it's missing. But those are two worlds of development and you .... you just can't regulate them the same way. So that's... that's a.... a long, um, introduction, but I .... I just wanted to give that and .... and, you know, I'll stop talking. Throgmorton/ Great! Thanks, Tony. It's, uh, tremendously informative. So I think what we need to do is give our Council Members and Commissioners an opportunity, just ask questions that they have. I don't know what those questions might be, uh, we'll find out, but we .... we just, kind of treat us as one group for this process. So you got a question, feel free to ask! Perez/ Or ask each other, you know, and I can chime in. Yep! Throgmorton/ I'll get something going, just ... just to kind of lubricate the process. We, uh, Planning and Zoning Commission, followed by us the Council, uh, several months ago considered a proposed rezoning for the intersection of McCollister and South Gilbert Street. So it's in the area that, uh.... uh, in the South District area. And .... uh, I think that proved to be pretty frustrating for the developer for sure, and we ended up ... mmm, not approving, uh, the rezoning. I can't remember what the vote was. Maybe it's a tie vote or something. I don't remember. Uh, and that had to do with ..... I think the developer's puzzlement over what we wanted, and .... we tried to say as, at least some Council Members, I don't know about the Commission, wanted ... tried to say, well we want a more walkable neighborhood (laughs) and the developer kind of adjusted, but it didn't look or feel right. So .... that sounds like a pretty good example of where we collectively needed to be more clear beforehand about what our expectations were for that area. Perez/ Right. Yeah, and .... and when you say it didn't feel like it, why didn't it feel like that? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 15 Throgmorton/ Uh, well others can speak. I know one thing that came up is that, uh... um, residents in the existing single-family neighborhood immediately to the east of the development were upset because what they saw going in was a whole series of apartment buildings. And .... and they wanted something that was more compatible with their existing neighborhood. Is that fair, I mean that's what I remember. Dyer/ Another aspect was they were just massive.... blocks. There was no, um .... aesthetic integrity (laughs) to ... to them at all. Um, there was almost no public space. They... as I recall, I may be wrong about this, the idea was for them to be sort of, um, mid-level in affordability. Um, there was no place outdoors for people to do anything. Um, and it was not near anything, except for the park across the street. Perez/ So ... so this is a basic question, urn .... was the project in compliance with your standards? Throgmorton/ Well I don't (both talking) Perez/ Just a simple yes or no (both talking) not like (mumbled, speaking away from mic) Throgmorton/ We're seeing some (both talking) My recollection is that it was in compliance with the zoning code, but (both talking) Perez/ ...absent the, you know, asterisk and all that stuff, I understand. So that ... so that's an issue, and again, there's no blame. This is common. If. ... if the system does .... if the code doesn't require all those things that are screaming out to you and the community as important, well ... it's a system problem. It's not a developer -applicant problem. You know, I mean people are gonna comply with the standards and whatever the standards can make them do, that's what they're gonna do! Uh, so .... I ...... just a quick five -second thing on that. When I was a public sector planner in a city, I realized.... developers are, um, I used to think, man, why don't they get this? Why don't they do that? They're manufacturers. Like someone manufactures something else, they manufacture buildings, and when I realized that I realized, wow! You know, I'm looking at them in the wrong way. I need to .... to look at them as they are looking at the rules to manufacture their products, we need to be upset with our rules and .... or ourselves, not with them. You know, so anyway... Cole/ How do we keep that political check in mind? I mean I am a big supporter of form based codes because of its predictability, because of its, you know, based in some of the historical traditions in terms of building types, but to sort of go to the other part of it, I mean ultimately we had some political pushback. I mean ultimately land use is a political act and it's messy some times. You have these sort of discordant voices. So my concern as we look at Riverfront Crossings if we take, if we say we're just gonna rezone the whole thing, and we're just gonna go total form based code and essentially become an administrative, bureaucratic function rather than a democratic function in terms of the political oversight. If you could just maybe comment a little bit on that. How do we not get so technical that we take the political decision makers out of it? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 16 Perez/ Right. Well there's always the complex project, there's always the project of...uh.... you know, significance .... of a use of significance, all those things that, like just to be clear — let's say there's a particular use, fill in the blank, whatever that is for you, that if it's over a certain size, hey, you want to see it. You guys are .... are in charge and you don't want it to be built without you. That's.... that's one way to do it. A project of a certain size. Um, you know, projects bigger than X and taller than Y, yeah they're allowed, but you can't go through the regular process. You've gotta come to us. Now that isn't come to us because we wanna hammer you and get a bigger park. It's come to us because that's of community concern and we can't put everything that we're thinking about into the standards. That's why. Um, what cities often do is say, like in the early days, I was saying this earlier today. We would write these codes and people, the planners and the... and the council members would say, oh wow! We'll take'em through the regular process we used to take them through. Now we just have more rules, and we said, whoa, whoa, we're not helping make a system more, uh, more difficult on people. So ... the way to keep, um, council members and commissioners involved in a system that delegates review authority down is to identify those projects and uses and situations of significance that just can't be spelled out enough in the standards, that that makes sense to bring to you. Thomas/ Jim, I think, uh, maybe....our fellow Commissioners could also weigh in on this. I think that project you were describing down at McCollister and Gilbert, was that not a planned development overlay? Does anyone recall? I don't remember. Dyer/ I think it was (several talking) Thomas/ Yeah, I was going to say, uh, one of the areas that I see things .... um, developments potentially floundering is when we have the planned development overlay situation, where there is in a sense a suspension of, um, you know, what (laughs) what are we, how are we to judge this project, and so, you know, we have on the one hand our zoning codes for, you know, the whole range of say single-family, and it's pretty clear what ... what's gonna come out of that. Uh, but if you have a planned development overlay, and it's in the vicinity of a single-family neighborhood like this one was, and you're seeing, um, what seemed to me to be a .... a better version of our more conventional pod development as you were describing it. I mean there was I think an attempt to try to do a better mix, but the overall feeling was that this was multi -family. Uh, it seems to me our planned development overlay is a particular type of development, which, urn .... needs to have better.... clarity, as you were saying, in terms of what .... you know, what the framework is. Perez/ Well ... so do you know why the planned development overlay, it occurs everywhere across the country. Do you know why it was invented? Why do you use it? What ... why do you use it here? Thomas/ Well in this case it was a .... a.....a larger, well one of the triggers is .... is often you have natural areas which may limit the development potential of a given site, doesn't lend itself This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 17 to our conventional zoning, so you .... you go to a planned development overlay because you can.....theoretically use more creativity, uh, in the process. Perez/ Yeah, but it was .... it was invented because the zoning districts.... or it is, it occurs in cities because the zoning districts that they have don't respond to the needs of the area they're working in. It's not just you again. It's all over the country, um, in our .... in our industry we, um, just jokingly refer to you know the Monopoly game, the'get out of jail free' card? That's how we ... that's what we call planned development. Get out of jail free, cause you go around the standards. The standards aren't working, so you have to get around your own system to go to something that works. Um .... in other cases, planned development is used by boards like you, that say, eh, we don't like what you're doing. We're going to pull that up to us, we're going to make you apply for a planned development and, you know, go through this process. So there's... there's, it's.... it's signs that the system, there's something wrong with the system, typically. Hensch/ To follow up on John ... what John said about needing enough information to make a decision, it really gets to the heart of your whole clarity point. Um, a really common issue that we talk about all the time in the Commission is we're pretty variable, we're not very consistent about the information that we want from developers when they're coming in here. Perez/ Why's that? Hensch/ Well because of, um, it's usually on the issues of, there's two big ones always, it's like good neighbor meetings. The Commis.... they're optional. Commission feels very strongly that we're all neighbors and we need to communicate with our neighbors and that doesn't mean we need to have their consent, but we just need to talk, and the other thing is the whole issue of project elevation. Since there's multiple land uses with each zoning type, we wanna have some type of what they're actually planning on doing, and so we want that information to be able to make an informed decision, but we don't.... equitably apply that and so that's the whole thing about I'm sure developers come in and they're just like it was good last time and this time it was not good, and I .... I recognize that, but it gets to the heart of the matter of clarity and having enough decision to make... enough information to make a decision. Perez/ So that's an interesting point you make, because with .... with a form based code, and you can do it with conventional too. You just have to adjust your processes, but with a form based code, um, because you have the clarity in there, you can actually do like a two-step process that says, okay, um, you're not gonna build the buildings today and you're not gonna subdivide the property today. We're talking about South District, but, um, we know enough that your .... your project meets all the zoning standards and ... and the building types that apply to it. We know what those look like. We know what those feel like. The architecture is down the line. So we're not gonna ask you to do the architectural elevations right now. You're just gonna get the approval for your blocks and your streets, and which building types you're gonna use, and then your civic spaces, and when you come back to plat that, then we'll look for the rest and then you .... so you do a This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 18 two-step process, instead of requiring everything — where's your trash enclosure go and all that stuff— up front, when you're talkin' about subdividing the land. Hensch/ And... and that actually gets to my next point, of...partially of it, of about what decisions need to be made at different types and ... at different times. Is there real clarity to everybody on the Council, on the Commission, about what's the decision we're making tonight versus what we can make later, and so we don't spend a lot of time talking about things that don't need to be discussed. Perez/ Exactly! Yeah, and also what happens is ... is you, you know, the developer and everybody involved sees the clock ticking and says, well, whatever it takes to get out of here tonight I'll do it, and it isn't always the best decision either, you know, on either side. So you wanna .... you wanna identify the things you really need to know up front and the things that really can wait till later. That .... that's a big like .... box to check. Hensch/ Well ... but we all want the reassurance that we will in fact talk about it later (both talking) Perez/ Well yeah (both talking) Hensch/ ...now the chance of having input is gone. Perez/ But see (both talking) that's, if you don't have a code like this, with .... with all the .... like this code is gonna lay out all the components you can use. So it's just a matter of what combination of those components are mixed in, but you know what they are, and if the applicant gets approval for, um, two new blocks and this .... this, these are the two zones or one zone that they're gonna use and they say we're gonna apply these three streets of the seven streets you have in the code. Great! Here they are, they're mapped, and then we're gonna come back later, but using these three ... two zones you can look at that zoning district and say, oh! That zoning district allows these four building types and I'm gonna look at the pages. Hey, by saying you're committing to that zoning district, these four building types are what you can choose from. You can't change that. So you already have clarity about what they're gonna come back with. They need a .... they need to change the code to get around it. So that's why you don't need that information way up front, cause they're.... they're already committed to that by zoning, and .... and conventional code doesn't have that information. So that's why you're asking. You're saying, hey, I wanna know what you're really gonna do. Well, that's a great question, but with a code like this, or if you went in and retrofitted your conventional code to add information. I'm not saying it only applies to form based code. I'm saying that you can add information to your conventional code, then you could make it such that you wouldn't have to be asking for all that up front. Because you know what the components are gonna be. If you didn't know what the components are gonna be, yeah, you have all those questions. Throgmorton/ Geoff (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 19 Frain/ I think you're hittin' an important point there. Um, and at the end of this process that's kinda what my hope is is that we can identify areas in our traditional code that need to be reexamined. Uh, so for instance a few things that I commonly see as we go through this process is when we're lookin' at multi -family structures in particular, the open space standards. And what that open space, how large it needs to be, uh, what it needs to contain in terms of amenities, uh, that is something that I would hope through discussions like this, we can really zero in on .... and then amend our code so that you have some assurance down the road that when you are approving a plan, when it gets down to the design review stage at the staff level, that you have confidence in that code to produce the type of outcome that you want. Same thing with your multi -family, or .... or any design standards that we have, um, if. ... if you're wanting to see the renderings for multi -family buildings, it's probably because there's been some things built in the community that you're not very happy with, or that didn't turn out the way that you wanted 'em to. Well that speaks to some faults in our design review standards, and I'd rather have that discussion in .... in forums like this and see if we can all agree on ways to .... to tweak our design review standards so that they can be properly executed at that design review stage and not necessarily in all cases, um, require renderings up front. As Tony mentioned, there's gonna be some threshold projects that .... that you have, some major projects. The renderings are gonna... renderings are gonna be absolutely appropriate, you know, you go to a process like 12 E. Court. That... that's coming, uh, your way and in that case the Planning and Zoning Commission said, hey, we want to see that come back. Absolutely understand that! That's a significant project that ya.... that ya need, but your routine eight-plex or 12-plex or 16-plex, in my opinion those should be addressed through the code and I think that's where we have some challenges. So those are just two examples, open space standards and .... and design standards. Throgmorton/ And we'll revisit both of those on the 6th when we have out next work session, right? Hench/ And that's the whole clarity thing, to follow up on what Geoff said, for ...so that the .... the P&Z just really has like a list so we actually know what design review, just basically the stuff they're gonna look at, so we just know it's going to be dealt with, and so it just.... instead of just hanging out there wondering. Dyer/ One of the problems that I .... have seen and what we do is when we don't see any renderings, at any stage for the Planning and Zoning Commission, there is no opportunity for the public to weigh in on a design. Our design review is all staff. So some place along the line, when you're building a huge development as we're doing up along I-80, somebody's gotta see what's gonna go in there because it's gonna change the city. Um.... and.....perhaps there's .... put some citizens on the design review commission? Maybe? (mumbled) committee, um, or .... um, as you suggested, if a project is this size, it has to come in with renderings, at a time when people can weigh in on them, um .... as opposed to after it's too late to make any (both talking) Perez/ Just a couple of observations of design review. Um, so let me give you a couple perspectives. So some of these, the urbanist projects across the country, the standards are This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 20 actually fewer. Uh, we were doing research earlier .... uh, late last year and I got to interview some talented architects and said, man, the standards are .... are, they're not as much as I thought they'd be. And the guys said, yeah, because I review everything, and I design everything. So this one project, New Town St. Charles, this one architect, Tim Busse, he reviews everything and tells the city it's in compliance with our standards. I reviewed it and then I designed it and turned it in. You know, that's rare that you can have somebody that capable and that talented to review everything. So by extension, if. ... if he's super -capable and can do it all himself, now take a board that isn't necessarily trained and has a lot of lay people on it that may not know about design, but they have, now have a vote. As an applicant, you're gonna do whatever it takes to get through there, but at the same time, you don't wanna compromise your project, you know, unnecessarily. So it .... it's, uh, there's another example. There's a .... a board, uh, near (laughs) where I live that will go unnamed that has a bunch of arch.... nothing but architects on it, and that's equally a problem. You know, so having the one person who's super -capable is rare and puts a lot of power in one person's hands and it has its ups and downs. Putting power in the hands of people that are interested but don't necessarily understand fully or aren't trained is also a problem, and then this issue of, um, putting a bunch of architects in charge. That sounds great, but you can really ... it just, it's loaded with all kinds.... fraught with all kinds of problems. So I'm just saying that bringing people on, the general public to review architecture is .... is really tricky. (both talking) Dyer/ We have a community of highly artistic and talented people. You could find one or two to put on. Perez/ Right! All I'm saying is that it's tricky and it's not that you shouldn't do it, but it's super - tricky to .... to pull off, and.....it doesn't, uh, you still need to deal with the system. What is the system allowing to come forward that you need to beat on, or shape further? Like you wanna.... you warm put as much of your .... your thinking into the standards so that when it gets to you, it....it requires less shaping or no further shaping. That's really where you wanna be, because just to get .... even if you had the best people on the board, but you don't fix the system, it's just over and over and over and over, you know, you really want to put that thinking down into the standards and the process. Hensch/ But the ... the point you said about, you said the word training and that's a .... a big concern I have too is .... we get, we all need to start on the Commission and the Council with just this minimum training or common understanding what our roles are or what everybody's doing (mumbled) very complex stuff, and .... unless you're going to study this at the University, I mean most of us just don't have the background. I would really love to see some basic training to start (mumbled) We do have some, but .... so everybody has the same curriculum, something, so we're all starting the same place for what our decisions that we're making, what .... what is the basic code, how's this actually operate, uh, cause I ... we're starting our fifth year (mumbled) and so you know I just feel like now I'm starting to actually get the hang of it, after five years (laughter) and .... and so you know cause we're part-timers, and so I just think that's a fundamental thing that needs to be addressed too, just making sure we all will be starting in the same place. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 21 Perez/ What, and I think .... yeah, that... that's a great thing to do is to provide yourself with same basis of how you look at things. Um, I think it's also important to, um, understand the priorities in buildings. You know, as the building gets taller, do you really need to be fussing around with a .... how the cornice looks at the top of the building? Is it, you know, like a deal breaker? Is .... is the top of the roof a deal breaker? The ground floor is the most important part, and often that's the part that doesn't get the most attention. Um, so just understanding that is a priority, uh, is .... is more important than really what materials you put on it, because that can change, but once you make that ground floor, you're not gonna (both talking) Throgmorton/ So, Tony, I'd like to pick up on what, um, Mike was just saying (clears throat) Excuse me! Uh, I agree with Mike that a certain degree of preliminary training or whatever needs to be provided, especially to the Commissioners, because they have a... their focus is very much on land use, very, you know, targeted purview, if you will. Ours is much broader, it seems to me. So ... we .... can't be trained in everything when we get on a city council cause we're constantly encountering new stuff, and having to figure out how to vote on something we've never encountered (laughs) before, and ... and it's lucky that we have good staff to advise us, but still we're the ones that end up making decisions. So ... I wanna agree with ya and not quite agree with ya. I don't think council members should be expected to be trained or receive training in zoning, as such. This discussion is very helpful though. I wanna follow up on something else that Carolyn said, as well, havin' to do with Forest View. I ... I don't know what you know about Forest View, but it's straight north at the intersection of North Dubuque Street and Interstate 80. So arguably it's an auto -oriented area, but there's other stuff around it that's not quite so aur .... aur... auto -oriented, like the Peninsula development that you know about. So anyhow we had a tremendously complicated proposal for rezoning, which our staff worked on with the developer for quite a long time, and we eventually approved it, but one thing that was missing, and this is what Carolyn was drawing our attention to, was .... there's no information whatsoever in the form of renderings about the buildings that will go in this rezoned area, none! We have footprints that are really approximate I think, but nothing in the way of renderings, and yet the buildings are gonna be substantial and some of 'em will be fronting on Interstate 80. So....I.....I'm not condemning that, I'm just wondering what your advice is with regard to any development of that type. Is there some adjustment we could make, based on your experience? Perez/ Well (mumbled) first of all are the buildings that you're used to seeing, that when they're built you'll say, oh yeah, they're more of those? Dyer/ We don't know! Throgmorton/ Well we don't know really. Perez/ Well what kind of project is it? Just generally. Thomas/ I would say it's sort of a mixed-use commercial development, with ... but the res ... with residential, but the residential is also large floor plate building types. When I look at the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 22 site plan it's hard to distinguish what's planned for commercial and what's planned for residential. So Hacienda Business Park, you know, I'm from the Bay area, originally, uh, comes to mind as a .... what, on a smaller scale, but the type of thing. Perez/ Okay. Well I ask that because if it's a building that you're ... or scale and type of building, like a shopping center. You'd say, oh, we've seen those. What flavor are you gonna put on the outside? Um, you could anticipate it, but it doesn't sound like you could anticipate this. I mean there .... there are things you can do. You can, again, the threshold, like Geoff was saying, and say projects over X size require this additional information. Uh, projects in, within X feet of this corridor require additional information. Things like that, and especially if it's an image issue that you're thinking about for your community and you say, hey, that I-80 corridor says a lot about Iowa City. Then that's a...that's a policy level, I mean it's a community -wide level issue that you warm bring up and say, hey, along this corridor the stakes are a little higher. You need to identify what that means also. Teague/ One of the things that I question is like a cookie -cutter type of mentality for staff, commissioners, and even city councilors, um, because when we're talkin' about like the palate of five type buildings, um, you gave that porch example, um, when I hear that type terminology I just wonder .... um, where the form based code is supposed to have less standards and more creativity, um, and renderings or whatever, you know, submitted by the developer or the owner, but as I'm hearin' a lot of conversation around it, um, and even the example of, you know, one person in a .... in a city reviewin' all of the plans. That .... that seems to me to be more .... urn, may ...maybe not open-minded to, uh, everyone's, uh, independent style, and so can you speak a little bit to that, and maybe the cookie -cutter type mentality that might, um, form or .... anything like that? Perez/ Yeah, so ... so that's a typical response we get, uh, and people saying what do you mean you only have these 10 building types. You can (mumbled) across the United States and you're gonna find that palate of building types that I had on the screen. Some are called different things in different parts of the country, and some are variations of that, but you're gonna find all those, and .... and that's just, that's the reality. They're physical objects that you can find and they're called different things and they're different sizes and everything, but they're basically the same thing. So when somebody says, oh you're gonna limit me, my .... they're usually architects. You're gonna limit my creativity by only these 16 building types, and only these eight frontage types. Um, then we ask 'em, okay, show us the one that you think we're leaving out. What would you do that you think we're leaving out, and they can never show it, because these types repeat, across the country, and they just change shape and size and architecture. That's what's different. So to say that it's cookie -cutter is like to go into one of your cool neighborhoods here and say, wow, if you looked at that on a map, and just took away everything, and identified what they were, and say detached house, detached house, detached house, duplex, duplex, four-plex, four-plex ... it would have the names and you would start to realize, wow! That thing I really liked that's cool out there has more, um, repeating elements than I thought. And so it's.... it's not cookie -cutter. It's actually taking... it's... it's taking the physical environment and reducing it to the components that make it, and then it's a menu and you This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 23 just choose. So it's actually more liberating than conventional zoning says, hey you gotta limit it here, you gotta limit it there, and we don't know what you're making, but we gotta limit it. This is saying, you got a menu of all these choices, and .... and here's how you can put them together. Teague/ So you're saying that, um, one extra option, it would only be whatever that menu is and bringin' us something different it would not be.... Perez/ You can always add to it, yes you can always add. Teague/ So when I think about, um, affordable housing, and, um....L....I'm assumin' that you know the form based code would consider affordable housin' as well as age -in-place options, uh, livin' options for individuals. Um, but if someone, if a developer said, you know, you have these 16, you know, options or whatever, but this right here really does create another element that, you know, five years when you created this there's a new trend, there's a new whatever goin' on. Perez/ Right. Teague/ This is ... so how do people, um .... be able to make adjustments with, you know, when is somethin' that would be to the benefit of afford.... affordability or ADA, you know, agin' in place options. Perez/ Right. Teague/ Um, how .... can you speak to that please? Perez/ Yeah, so the .... the two issues are affordability and aging -in-place. Aging -in-place, that ....that's what we're talking about. We're saying that the current model makes you move from one thing, one place to another to be able to age somewhere else, right? You don't want the big house anymore. You wanna downsize. You don't always have the option to go around the block. Building like this gives you those options because those different building types are closer to each other and .... and you get .... you get more choices within the neighborhood you live in or maybe just one neighborhood away, instead of moving to another town or completely across town. Uh, so that's aging -in-place. Affordability, um, the code doesn't regulate affordability. That's... that's a market issue and .... and a city issue, uh, of whether the city helps in subsidizing or...or incentivizing. So the code doesn't provide regulations to say, hey, you have to keep the price here. That .... that's a whole other, uh, issue. Teague/ But affordability is that a part of the, you know, the middle, um.... Perez/ Well we think the missing middle provides affordability because it has smaller unit sizes and it...it provides people ownership options that currently only exist in big buildings or in ... in single-family detached houses. Yeah. (several talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 24 Throgmorton/ ...often used as affordable by design. Perez/ Yeah. Throgmorton/ So that's what I think is certainly, uh, possible and likely if we pursue this course of action, but in the end still if you got units for sale, then the market is gonna affect the price, right? Yeah, likewise with regard to rents. Teague/ I have one last question for ya, and this is in regards to like the, how the buildin' is.... what it's build with. So when you're talkie about a lot of side-by-side, you know, uh, duplexes or whatever the case may be, typically is wood that it's made with, and so is there a, um .... is there increase, um, trouble within these neighborhoods, when you're talkie about tryin' to bring that missing middle in there, where there's noise complaints between neighbors and stuff like that. Um, I'm from, you know, um, Chicago and there's a lot of thee three-plexes and six-plexes and the wood floors, of course, those buildin' s are old. You can hear, you know, kids runnin'. So .... have you .... have you heard of like, um, issues with that type of neighbor -to -neighbor type of.... Perez/ Right. Yeah, the .... the uniform building code deals with sound transmission and attenuation, all those .... yeah, we don't get into that with the zoning standards. This is still ... what we're doing is zoning. Teague/ Sure. Perez/ Yeah, it's just very, very informed zoning. So those kinds of issues are dealt with, sound attenuation standards in your .... in your uniform building code. Uh, and .... and I think, um, or sound transmission, but I .... I think in the past 10 years, you know, the .... the codes and the builders have done a really good job of keeping that, because it's to their advantage to not have those problems within the buildings, but .... but that isn't a zoning standard, per se. Cole/ Well and as I understand it, one of the genesis of the missing middle was is that in spite of the cookie -cutter critique, is that what we saw after World War II was essentially two types, which would be single-family housing and multi -family housing. Perez/ Exactly! Cole/ And nothing in between. Perez/ Yeah! Cole/ Um, so I think for community members that are out there watching, we just need to go to our Northside as almost a perfect example. We had all these historic houses. We had rooming houses, we had quad-plex garden apartments.... Perez/ Right. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 25 Cole/ ...so it would seem to add to the variety, and if you go to places that do use the conventional zoning, it seems like you see the cookie -cutter. You have single-family and multi -family and nothing in between. Perez/ Yeah, exactly. Yeah. To your point, here's a single-family house and then here are the apartments, and this is what we're talking about, all these guys. And ... and the, yeah, I totally, that's a great point, um, that the cookie -cutter is actually now (laughs) It's single family houses and apartment buildings, garden apartments. Yeah. Yep! Throgmorton/ So, Tony, I'd like to ask you about the Riverfront Crossings District form based code and your preliminary review of that code. You have one slide that offers several obser.... observations about that. Yeah, so....I.....I seek your advice about a particular part. You know that our form based code for the Riverfront Crossings District provides height bonuses .... of various heights. Anyway, I don't know, two stories height bonus maximum or up to seven stories maximum height bonus. So, uh, my own personal sense is that our height bonuses are either excessive, too liberal if you will, or .... well I'll say excessive, or else the standards by which height bonuses would be provided are too liberal. There's too many opportunities, too many ways to get a height bonus. And ... but that's only my personal assessment. I'm curious about your sense of our form based code with regard to height bonuses, and whether you have any observations about that. Perez/ Well I think that the .... the menu that that code provides for ways to achieve additional stories is ... is .... is one of the more robust menus that we've seen, that's for sure. But I don't know that that necessarily is a problem, um .... I mean it can .... I see how it can be. The bigger....the bigger issue that we found with height bonuses is that if you're reading the zoning districts, it says one height, and you don't realize how big the buildings in that zoning district can be until you go to the back of the code and add the height bonuses, and so for the average person, especially a community member, that's .... that could be problematic, cause you say, oh, six -story buildings here, okay. Then you go back there and it says you can add additional four or five or whatever the case is. That's.... that's a big difference, so we made the point in our analysis, the difference between a four-story and a six -story building is .... is not as big as the difference between a seven -story building and a 15 -story. So it's not that .... it's not the addition itself. It's the amount of addition that can be added, when it's almost 100% of the base, you know, that really should be disclosed up front and said, hey, you know what? It's .... it's likely you're gonna get 12 to 15 -story buildings in this zoning district, not seven. That was what .... what caught our attention. Thomas/ Another issue that I ... I see on the subject of Riverfront, although it's not limited to Liver, uh, Riverfront is the we're seeing, uh, very large projects, you know, there's a kind of a land assembly factor going into this, and I think the plan, and I think, you know, your concept of missing middle, uh, is, the emphasis is more on trying to achieve a higher level of, you know, what might be referred to granularity, a little finer grain to the development scale, and uh... it may be related to this issue of the development potential that we have there, when you add in the, um, the bonus heights, but you know, in order to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 26 really maximize the development potential, you have to, for those higher densities, you know, especially with our parking requirements, you need to have a fairly large piece of land to do it. Um, but I'm concerned about that, cause it seems like we're .... we're seeing, uh, I .... I don't know what exact percentage, but it's, there's a .... seems to be a tendency for projects to be very, very large scale, uh, and ... and so that .... that has a .... a quality that, in my mind, in terms of walkability, you know, if that's sort of one of our, you know, underlying frameworks — walkability versus auto -oriented — the .... the grain of the street is a very important aspect of that. Perez/ Well so let me ask you about that. You're talking about large projects affecting, it sounds like you're saying they're affecting your perception of the ... of this, how the street feels. Thomas/ Yeah. Perez/ So, um .... a challenge on that, to think about it, how .... what, urn .... I don't know that it's the footprint of the building that's making you feel that as much as the ground floor, not having a certain scale and rhythm of openings, because how many .... think about the rimes, I mean challenge in terms of homework when you go out and about, uh, next time you go to another community, walk past the buildings and then go on Google Earth and see how big they are, and sometimes you walk past buildings that are huge, but the ground floor.... usually old buildings are great example of this, the ground floor has been done in a way where it wasn't monotonous. It was interesting. They kept you, there were storefronts and ... and all that kind of thing, but then you realize, whoa! That building was 300 -feet long! And so ... it, building footprint, uh, shouldn't be making you feel like the streetscape isn't good. That's a frontage ground floor problem. Yeah, cause, you know, you could have a bad 20 -foot wide building (laughs) uh, that .... that ruins the street. You don't need a big one to do that. But I ... I'm not .... I'm not saying what you're perceiving isn't there. I'm .... I'm just asking you to consider another aspect of it. Yeah. I mean do you .... do you all, as far as these, you know, these two bodies are concerned, when you review buildings, do you, um .... do you take size into consideration? Besides height. Like what you just did now about footprint. Do you consider that? How do you think about it? Like what .... what's the fust thing that comes to your mind when you think about building size? Hench/ Just the size of the footprint, relative to the lot and relative to adjacent buildings. As soon as I look at a plan that's what I'm looking at. Perez/ And what guides your thinking? Hensch/Um, I'm from a small town. So I've always that thing of...too close, too crowded, so I... that's just an instinctual thing that comes to me. Perez/ Okay so that's why I asked you, because it's a great point to, um, to remember as a commission member or a person reviewing projects. Your personal history and your personal, like I grew up in a town of 1,200 people, with a miniature Main Street, but I can appreciate a big downtown and a small downtown, but I have to remember which one I'm This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 27 in and .... and which one I'm operating on, and so that's what really ask you all to consider is we all have our history and our preferences and our, well I really like it when buildings do X, and you have to really maintain that balance and say I, you know, when is it appropriate to bring that in, and is it appropriate to bring it in to this context. You know, cause you say you like, you grew up in a small town. You have that kind of reaction to buildings. If you're .... if you're working in the context of downtown Iowa City, that's big building context, at least that's the pattern right now, especially with Riverfront Crossings. So, um ... you have to put on the big building hat and ... and glasses (laughs) you know and look at it that way, and if you're workin' on Dubuque, the little Main Street area, historic Main Street, it's a different perspective, right? So I ... just asking you, well let me ask you. Do you consider the context that you're working in to that level when you're making decisions? Teague/ I mean for me I try to think about Iowa City as it is now, but even what does Iowa City look like 40 years from now, cause I think sometimes we get caught up in, you know, the now and then. If your needs change in 40 years, you know, then we're .... we're kinda stuck with, you know, rebuilding and, um, really costing, you know, just kinda respendin' when you can do somethin' in the beginning, so I ... I mean my mindset, I mean, of course, you know, I like to get in tune with my past, just to make sure that I'm aware of my biases, um, or you know, personally and then I can try to, and I've been in Iowa City for a while, so I do know the feel of Iowa City, what it was 26 years ago when I came, what it was 10 years ago, and what it is now is very, very different, and so .... but I .... I think that, you know, even lookin' forward in the future is a challenge to do, but that's something' that I always, you know, try to remember as well, if, you know, 20 years, 40 years from now, you know, would this be a good decision for the city, or are they gonna tear it down and all that revenue just be .... spent all over again. Perez/Yeah. Go ahead. Signs/ It kinda goes along with one of the questions I had is .... is how do you take, how does time play into this? Um, I know specifically on, you know, on the Commission there's been times when we've made decisions, by golly that is what the plan said, that is what the comprehensive plan said. Well the comprehensive plan was written about 10 years go now. Um .... things change, um, the community changes, the neighborhoods change, development changes. And so how do you know when it goes to our .... our Forest View is one of the concerns was is it's going to be probably at least a decade before... that to be developed out, you know, and what the expectations are or the community standards are today, may be significantly different in 10 years, and how .... how does all this play or account for that? Perez/ Again, it depends where you are in town. You know, and whether that area that you're in town is .... changing and....and, or is it stable, and what you're doing is slotting something in that's really, uh, a very sensitive in -fill situation. So that's another map at the comp plan level that's really helpful. What areas are stable and what areas are acknowledged as really change areas, that you're say, hey, this.... everybody, you know, we're workin' on this area to change it to be X, whatever that is, and then what areas you just .... you're just This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 28 keeping things intact because it's already a great pattern. So it depends on that. Um, I think, uh, well experience shows that plans and codes every 10 to 15 years could .... could stand a review. Doesn't mean the content is .... is necessarily wrong or .... or inappropriate. It just means that's about a good threshold to go back and say, hey, this, you know, 10 years, 15 years have passed and this content, well let's look at it and .... and just ask some questions. You know? So, there are two aspects to that, I think. Cole/ I'm curious about the .... oh, I'm sorry (both talking) Townsend/ This again is why I think the good neighbor meetings are so important, is to find out how the people that have been there are gonna react to what's coming in and let them know what's coming in, because if you put the big buildings, like Forest View, these people have been there for years, in a nice and peaceful quiet neighborhood, even though they did, do have the, urn ... uh, trailer courts that are there, which is gonna be a plus for them, but they're also .... it's also a community that's been there forever and unless we know the problems and concerns that they have, we can't make the right decisions. Perez/ Right. I think, uh, yeah, that's.... that's right on, and .... and one thing we found that really helps with that is to involve the neighborhood, you know, each of the different areas in... when you revisit things, when you say, hey, we're gonna dust this off and take a look at the content and just ask some questions. Involve them in it. Because it's easier for them to look at all the content once and understand that direction and the content and maybe the revisions you make. It's easier for them to grasp that once than to have to chase down every project that occurs over the next 10 years and come to public hearings. Who has the time for that? I mean that's what I do for a living, and I don't even have time to go to my own city council with follow up projects, so when I see somethW in town I go, oh man! You know, I only have myself to blame, cause I didn't go. But I'm just saying, I'm in this and I don't even make the time to go. So what we found is it's super -helpful to involve those neighbors, you know, a couple times over .... over a five, 10 -year period and say, hey, we want your input on this information that's gonna guide decision making in your neighborhood, instead of hey, come to the meeting. Well there's another meeting in another month from now, oh, in three months there's this other thing. People'll get worn out with that. Townsend/ But if they know it affects their area, and you don't give them the opportunity. Perez/ Yeah. Townsend/ Then it's on them, not on us. Perez/ That's true. Townsend/ So I guess that's what I'm saying, if you open .... if you expand the area for the good neighbor meetings, then everybody can hear what's going on. You can make a better decision, based on the information you ... you get that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 29 Teague/ I'm enjoyin' this dialogue. This is probably not totally on topic, but maybe it is (laughter) So when .... when we hear people sayin' that's an eyesore (laughter) you know, um (laughs) and of course I think sometimes we have that reaction to some projects, like that's an eyesore, it doesn't fit in the neighborhood, um, you're.... you're..... you're challengin' our thinkin' a little bit here. Um, what would you say to somethin' that, um, I .... I really do think that it speaks a lot to the uniqueness of either the owner, um, you know, if they want somethin' that is not totally matchin' or sometimes we get into color schemes and try to, you know, say it shouldn't be pink or purple. That's what the owner likes, it means somethin' to them, and then we .... we get into all of this, uh, dialogue. Perez/ Well I mean if we could define what eyesore really means then, you know, we could probably solve a lot of other (laughs) problems. Uh, the .... the problem is it's in the eye of the beholder and here's.... here's where the hardest parts about that, is that you can take somebody that's super -trained in architecture, um, and what they say feels good and sounds good, you say yeah, and what they design you say, man, that feels great. You can take an equally trained person in architecture and they design something else — you go that's an eyesore. So it's very, very difficult to define that, uh, and I guess I'm saying to you as .... as.....as decision makers, um, when you get those complaints, you have to take them with a grain of salt, because you have to dig deeper. Well why is it an eyesore, and if they can't get past, well I just don't like it, that's not enough information (both talking) Teague/ And .... and as they're (mumbled) you know, um .... (mumbled) eyesore is now bein' like, oh, in the future not even an issue because I think oftentimes right now, you know, everything is a big issue and then 10 years from now nobody remembers it (laughter) Perez/ Yeah, well again, that's why you want to prioritize the ground floor of buildings and how they relate to the neighbor build.... neighboring buildings, whether they're right butting up against them or they have side yards or front yards. That's super -critical! And the backyard, of course, if there is one. That's way more critical than the materials along the side and ... and how the upper floors feel, cause that's .... the eye doesn't go there. I'm not sayin' it's not important. It's just wayless important than the ground floor. Throgmorton/ Tony, I'd like to follow up on a question that you asked us .... about five rounds before (laughter) Yeah, uh, it had to do .... I don't remember the exact language but it basically was.... question to us .... do you all think about more than just the footprint of a building when you're considering how to respond to it. So that question immediately made me think of two very controv.... two projects that have been very controversial in Iowa City, and .... one of'em is almost finished construction and the other is in the Riverfront Crossings District and ... uh, might get a very large height bonus. So .... I would Iike.....1 don't know exactly how to ask you a question, but I can tell you that I personally thought about it, both of those projects, in terms of a lot more than just the footprints of the buildings. Uh, there's height, there's mass, scale relative to context of surrounding buildings, uh, what's going on in the proposed building. Does it fit ... that area? Is it something we need? Uh... how much does it cost? What .... what kind of financial support's bein' requested, if any? Uh, things like that. Uh, so .... and .... and those are the two projects I'm thinking of are of a scale that's much larger than .... one of'em's much This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 30 larger than any other development we've seen in Iowa City. The other is, uh, as large. It's the largest building we've seen in Iowa City so far. So, hmm, do you have any thoughts about (laughs) havin' to do with .... how we should be thinking about proposed developments that are really a .... very large scale relative to Iowa City at the moment. Perez/ Well yeah, I mean, again, I go back to the ground floor, you know, first thing is what.... what space are those buildings shaping? Um, are they making space, you know, off the sidewalk in a .... in a courtyard? Is that courtyard public? Or is it like The Rise building, where it's.... it's there but you can't really see it from the sidewalk? That's another form of a .... a beautiful space, but it's not contributing to the sidewalk public realm. So that's one thing. The .... the other thing is, again, how is that ground floor configured so that it's interesting, it makes more of great Iowa City downtown streetscape. That's... that's really where it's at, at the ground floor streetscape. I can't say that enough. Not .... not just the sidewalk portion, but that wall of the building. Um, that's where.... that's where it's at. And then the next thing is, you know, the skyline of the city, or is there something you're trying to do with 15 -story buildings or are you not necessarily interested, I mean there's no right answer to that. It's just a consideration, and then with big buildings like that, the next thing is .... what are they doing along the sidewalk, um, to .... to make a pattern, or do we ... do we care? Like is, if you're.....you can, it's okay to have them be eight stories tall and .... and.....and just be monolithic along the side, but it requires really good design. So there's a lot of examples of very simple buildings that don't go in and out and do all this stuff that are beautiful. And so that's.... that's, it's a lot of restraint when you're reviewing these projects, I think, is .... is one of the lessons. Um, and .... I'll never forget a planner was telling me, he was describing to me the .... this one building wasn't doing what it should do and .... and after about an hour of questioning him and asking what do you mean. He was talking about the depth of the window returns. He kept telling me the building doesn't pop in and out, and I finally realized what he's talkin' about is the depth of the window return wasn't significant enough for him to feel good about how that building looked, and I was like, wow! It sounded like you were asking for the building to jog in and out, and so restraint on .... on.....on building gymnastics is .... is something to really take to heart, and if you're .... when you, the buildings are bigger, the moves are bigger. So you're shaping the volumes in simpler ways, and all this .... all this gyration with big buildings, it....it goes unnoticed and it's just expensive. So .... so that's one thing to take away is the bigger the building gets, the simpler the massing... you should be looking at the massing for simpler moves and .... and like you make a great ground floor, maybe the eight stories are monolithic, beautifully designed, and then the top might be a slender tower that the seven stories about the eight is not the same size as the bottom. It's not about facade setbacks. It's about expressing a tower out of those eight stories. It's another way to look at it. Or you could just do 15 -story build .... in building. Signs/ Who ... who makes that decision? Um, at what point .... you know, a monolithic base going up to a .... to a tower. Is that a code thing? (both talking) Perez/ Yeah (both talking) Signs/ Is that a developer thing? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 31 Perez/ Well it's .... ifs a combination. If you set .... you can say it's .... it's not a categorical everything has to be this way. It .... it's .... it's triggered by size. If you say you're building a 15 -story building, okay? Well we don't want a monolithic 15 -story building, but we're not gonna....make you do gymnastics on the rest of the building and do all this other stuff. You can build a monolithic base up to X height, and then the rest of it has to be either a pair of towers or one tower, not exceeding a certain dimension. I mean that's.... that's, developers know about those kind of...they use those tricks themselves. Um, and so you put that right in the standards. It's pretty simple to do. Yeah, and see that, once you express that, again, where are you in town? When you're talking about big buildings, you have to look at things a little simpler and focus on that ground floor and focus on the simple organization of those buildings, and not treat it like you treat a five -story building that you might be doing all this stuff to. Uh, it just depends on where you are in town and what... what's goin' on. So I don't know if that gets to your question the way you wanted, but ... urn.... Thomas/ To ... Tony, one of the things which you haven't mentioned, um, although it's in your presentation, you know, the South District. You have the neighborhoods and they're TI through 4, and the T, I don't know if everyone on the Commission and staff knows what the reference is with the T, but it's referring to the transect, correct? Perez/ Yes. Thomas/ Which ... which I think is a very useful concept for understanding .... how the image and shape of a city, or a town, is derived, and .... and you applied it to the South District, as if it were a small town. So you (both talking) Perez/ Yeah. Thomas/ ...Tl through T4. We've never really done that in Iowa City. We don't have a kind of full transect in which to understand, you know, from .... from the edge in, what is the image of this place as one coherent place (both talking) Perez/ Right! Thomas// ...where you do have districts within it that express different qualifies, but there is a coherency (both talking) Perez/ Yeah. Thomas/ ...to the whole, and .... and for me that is .... that's how I've tried to understand Iowa City, or any place that I've lived in terms of how .... how do these pieces all relate to one another and have obligation to one another. I think some of the ... the issues of disruption are when you feel that .... that sense of coherency has been disrupted, and .... and that.... that image is shattered, so to speak because of violations to the transect, if you wanna call it that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 32 Perez/ Yeah, just for the benefit of the rest of the .... of the group here that might not know about the transect, I'll try to give a very short description, uh, without any slides (laughs) It's a six, it's six categories. Number one is nature; number two, T2, is the country, and that's not low density subdivisions, you know, out in the country. It's the country, farms and agriculture, and then you start making towns and cities from T3 to T6. So T3 is mostly single-family neighborhoods, and .... with a few non -single-family building types in there. Maybe duplexes, maybe a .... a four-plex, and maybe there might be a non-residential use here and there. It's never just one thing. T4 is flipped. It's mostly missing middle types of buildings, with some single-family. You .... you have both of those here, and you have Tl and you have T2. T5 is the kinds of buildings you're seeing in downtown, um, Iowa City, the big footprint, five, seven -story buildings. Uh, usually that .... that means these big footprint buildings that have big floor plates, but they're not towers. Um, so T5 ends at about 10 stories, and T6 is like across the street, that 15 -story building. That's T6, big footprint buildings, regional significance type of buildings. So you have all of them here. You're starting to get .... and The Rise. I think The Rise is another T6 category building. So you start thinking of it that way and you say well what's across from our T6 buildings? And .... begs the question what should go there, and ... and you have to think it again, the context you're making, cause the context that exists is .... is very different now. So it's the context you're making, and so ... let me ask you that .... as you make decisions, how is the context you're making affecting your decisions? Are you trying to keep it the context it was, or are you consci ... conscious of the context you're making? Signs/ Personally I think that's a lot of the challenge that we have. I think there's, um.....I think that's the, at least ... I can speak on the Commission for sure. I think that sometimes that's our struggle is are we .... are we trying to conform or are we looking forward? Perez/ Changing, yeah. Signs/ Yeah, and I .... and I'm not sure we've come up with a good answer. Hensch/ I think Mark's absolutely right. I think most the neighbors wanna keep it as it is, and we may have a vision different than that and the developers may have a different vision. So I think that is one of the issues. Good point. (several talking) Parsons/ It seems like it just happens on a case-by-case basis. You know, there's one situation where we wanna conform, but there's a different situation where we're tryin' to look forward to the future. So it's (several talking) Yeah. Perez/ Is your comp plan giving you enough information to help answer that? Parsons/ Sometimes not. (several talking) Cole/ I don't think it does, and I think you talked about this disconnect problem. I think it's a huge problem for our community, because that is sort of the narrative thing that the community reads. So we get people coming up there, reading the narrative, and then This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 33 the .... the code says something, it's really not in compliance, or they're not able to understand it, and so they'll say, hey, you talk about compatibility of the existing spaces, family -friendly neighborhoods, and then you have this. There's a problem, and I think you're absolutely right, that what is the purpose of the comp plan if what's built is .... is surprising, based upon a plan reading of the statute, or of the, um,of the plan. So... Perez/ Well you could see in that .... in that ..... I don't wanna use the word, in those situations, a map that generally describes areas of change and areas of stability would be very helpful. Is the community.. presumably would have input on that, and so if you go to them with a project that's gonna change the game in their neighborhood, they would be at least aware of it. There's some policy direction to make those decisions. So it sounds like, well how do you do it and how do you make those decisions right now? Signs/ You know a lot of it is .... goes back to the political, um, you know, and .... and my impression overall, you know, when people ... when the people, the citizens who were involved in the planning process, um, are usually a fairly small subset of the citizenry at large, but it's the citizenry at large that typically comes before us when they have a problem with something that's going in next to them. And ... I don't know how you, I don't know how you balance that. Uh, you know, so they're, the vision .... the vision may say we, this is what we want going that way or going forward, but then something specific comes along that affects that neighborhood, or that block, or that whatever, and then you have a very vocal constituency that comes and says, absolut... this is terrible, you know, and then we have to react to that. Uh.... Throgmorton/ Tony, one of the things we've been talking about quite a bit over the last several weeks has to do with strengthen.... strengthening our climate action and adaptation plan. So I wanna pitch a question to you pertaining to that. Uh.... I would argue that we cannot continue developing the land of ...of Iowa City and around Iowa City, the same way we've been developing it over the past 30 or 40 or whatever years. We cannot continue to do that .... given the kind of climate change we're looking at, and given the contributions that we and .... billions of other people around the world are contributing to it. So, uh, it seems to me that we have to make a shift. So with regard to land development practices. So identifying locations in our city that are designed from the get -go to be walkable in the way that you have just described, wh... what's in the works for the South District is precisely what we need. For lots of reasons, but one of the reasons is climate change and doing what we can to reduce our carbon emissions and adapt well to the changes, uh, in the climate we will be experiencing in this city. I don't know if you have thoughts about that. I mean those are my views, but .... you may or may not have thoughts about (both talking) Perez/ No, I ... I don't have any thoughts about it. I'm not an expert (laughs) in that area by .... by the way, so, um, but yeah, we hear that all the time. Yep. Throgmorton/ Do we have any other questions for Tony? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 34 Parsons/ Well I was gonna ask, um, sorry, if you had an opinion on something that requires maintenance, like in our code it requires maintenance after the fact, such as like storm water basins. Um, cause we've had a couple meetings where even if a storm water retention plan met the code, uh, people still don't trust it, cause they can all point to examples where a homeowner association failed to maintain it and it got clogged and it flooded the area, or someone had a great landscaping plan, but everything died cause they didn't water it. And so I'm kinda curious on what, if you have a take on just stuff that requires maybe enforcement or maintenance after the fact? Perez/ Yeah, I mean that's.... that's what it is. Um ... you know .... the other, yeah, so there's, there's, you have to take care of what you put in. Um, and .... and there are a bunch of ways to do that, I mean, some.... some communities go out and monitor that, you know, every couple of years they'll do a review of the permit. So you spend all this time developing this project and these conditions of approval and then most cities don't even check them, because they don't have the time to go look at them. Um, but some cities do. Some cities say, hey, it's worth to our .... our investment, all this .... all this stuff that's happening around the community, it's worth it to us that people take it seriously, uh, so we're going to send somebody out, you know, once every few years to make sure that all that stuffs still there. Uh, so some communities do that, but most often communities can't afford to have staff doing that. They're just pretty overstretched. So.... Parsons/ It's just my main concern cause I think if they see that, then the public starts loosin' trust in our zoning process. Perez/ Yeah. Parsons/ So (both talking) Perez/ ...but that's... that's not a zoning problem. That's a maintenance problem, and (both talking) Hensch/ There's certainly a public trust problem because that's where .... Jim was talking about climate change. We're getting more and more precipitation, which means there's more and more storm water issues in Iowa City, which is making the .... the systems (mumbled) not having trust when the developer says, oh, well the homeowners association'll take care of that. Perez/ Yeah. Hensch/ And they don't believe that. Parsons/ Have to do a lot of reassurances in that area. Perez/ By the way as far as storm water, um, management goes, especially with the South District. You have such an opportunity to create a network of big, um, greenways that can actually serve as that storm water management system, without burdening individual This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 35 properties with doing it on site, because that's what we usually find. Like in .... in in -fill situations like downtown, a lot of cities can't .... they don't make a distinction between a lot in downtown and a lot out in the .... the South District, so the lot in downtown has .... it's treated like it's some big greenfield site. So you really wanna watch that you make those distinctions in your standards and your processes, cause the .... the person with the lot in downtown is pretty constrained (laughs) you know, or in a neighborhood, but out there where you can build in greenways, it's wide open, so yeah. Yeah, uh, I .... I just wanna ask you one .... one other question. What .... what do you see as the biggest thing that, what do you see as the biggest, I guess for the Commission, what .... what do you all see as your biggest thing that you should be workin' on, to improve yourself as a board? Maybe there's nothin' but (several talking) something! (several talking) Hensch/ ...predictability, that we're doing everything the same way, we're approaching it the same, develop it .... developers and staff can expect a predictable response, but of course that's predicated upon we're getting the information we need to make this decision in a format that we're able to consume in those limited periods of time. So .... information, trust... format, you know, predic... predictability. I .... I, we struggle with it, meeting after meeting. (mumbled) Parsons/ Yeah, there's a lot of working pieces, and so trying to get it all as one working machine, for that predictability is .... it gets difficult at times. Signs/ Well and I think in all fairness, um, there's been a significant turnover in staff, um, there's been a fairly significant turnover in the Commission, especially leadership. Um, and you know, arguably you could say there was a .... a significant shift in Council in recent years. And so, urn .... I think some of it's just we have to get used to each other a little bit. I think there's still some of that going on. Perez/ Do you ever see, um .... do you ever see a scenario in the future where you would delegate some of your review authority to staff, because of the clarity of a code like this? Or do you, or do you see ... well I can see how that would work, but I really wanna see everything still. Hench/ It's probably up to the individual person. I personally am a big supporter of staff. That's just my orientation. So I have that .... lot of trust level. But other people don't have the same background and familiarity and may say, ehhh, I'm not sure I wanna go there. So I .... I think it's gonna be mixed depending on who you ask, but one point I wanna make is I think we've always, since I've been on here, had really good chemistry of the people, and so that has never been an issue where people just can't get along. Perez/ Yeah. Hensch/ I mean we have good diversity. We have good, uh, good input, so I just wanna really say that posi... very positive (both talking) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019. Page 36 Perez/ ...didn't get along that's worse. Before the rest of you answer just let me give this other piece. So I worked in a planning department a long time ago, alongside a planner who, um, the plans would come in, the project application, and he just loved it. He'd say, oh man, my red pen, and pull it out. He didn't even know what they'd done and he was already ready to mark it up. Not for compliance with the standards. For his personal opinions on what that development should be. So it ... I'm not criticizing you, I'm just saying it's an easy thing to fall into to say, oohh, whenever you meet, Wednesday night and you get to go and mark up the elevations and .... you know .... how, as tempting as that is and as interesting as it is, it's not always the best thing to do, and again, I think one of the biggest things I've learned — restraint and .... and working together as a group. So just .... before the rest of you answer I just (both talking) Throgmorton/ Well you know (mumbled) our ambition, our intention was to end this session by 7:00 (both talking) Perez/ Okay! Throgmorton/ ...be fair to you and staff and our Commissioners (laughs) and Councilors, we probably should, uh, put an end to it now, but .... are we agreed about that? Okay, good deal. Great job! Thanks so much! I really appreciate you giving this opportunity to engage in dialogue with you. Perez/ Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you about this. This is a personal thing, I mean a lot of commissions and councils are, you know, this is us, don't talk to us about our thing. So thanks for the opportunity. (several talking) Throgmorton/ All right, so, um, we're done, right? Okay! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council joint work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for July 24, 2019.