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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1998-05-08 TranscriptionMay 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 1 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session 7:10 PM Council: Lehman, Champion, Kubby, Norton, O'Donnell, Thornberry. Absent: Vanderhoef. Staff: Atkins, Karr, Franklin, Miklo, Yapp, Kugler, Davidson, Rockwell, Osborne. Tapes: 98-65, all; 98-66, Side 1. Peninsula 98-65 S1 Lehman/Some with a gray Dodge with the lights on in the parking lot... Victor Dover and his staff has been working in the Civic Center .... Commend you and your staff... been great great people to work with... Staff... is enthused about this... We look forward in seeing what is being proposed in this area... unique opportunity .... It is important that we make this work. Victor Dover/Let's bring down the lights, and look at pictures. Picture this, roads on your term. Roads that make things better rather than worse. Imagine, not a new subdivision in Iowa City, but a new neighborhood. That's what we've been working on this week. We've started this last week with your help. So those of you who weren't here for the previous meetings, let me just make sure you know where the project is. Here's a map of Iowa City, the location we're studying together, is right here. The upland part of the peninsula that is owned by the city, that includes the flood plain below, the parkland on the peninsula, the area next to the bridge and so on. What if that was a new neighborhood for Iowa City? We believe this really is a one time opportunity. There is as far as we can tell, no other site like this one. Picture having the feeling of living in a place apart because of its stand alone, self-contained geography, and yet living in the heart of the city. Is there another place where that can happen? Picture this, living in a place that's well served by municipal services, has the feeling of community life, the strong bond that you feel in your older neighborhood, and yet has spectacular, long views against open space, across open space, that will remain open in perpetuity. There is no other sight like this. That's why growing just the right kind of neighborhood is very important on this sight. Now, designing in public is the way we have been going about this and you are going to see tonight work in progress because the next step in this public process is to show you how we took your instructions during the last week and molded that into a concept plan, it's not finished, but it's there for adjustment and improvement. The first and most exciting part of this process took place in this room. We took the sixty or seventy people who came out last Saturday, gave up their weekend day to work on planning for the neighborhood and we broke them into table groups, about ten or so per table, spread around this room. And each group worked for several hours answering questions like, where's the center of the neighborhood? Where are the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 2 edges? What do you want to see there? What kinds of homes and other things occur there? What are the streets like? We asked you these questions, and the groups got rather intense, we admonished everyone, argue if you must, but argue with your pencil. And they did it. You are a very polite town, and even the growth and the new development is sometimes a very emotional charged issue, folks really acted pro-actively to propose what they do want on the mats, instead of just complaining about what they don't want. Then, each of the six groups pinned up their work for the others to review, and we reconvened theater style, and went one by on through presentations of each of the six teams. Spokes persons for those teams presented five minutes or so of the big ideas that came up at their table. And then after that the other members of their team occasionally corrected them and said wait, you forgot one of the big ideas. It was really kind of neat. And then as a group we critiqued the results. And the audience offered the bigger gathering a series of watch words and things to be sure to remember as fundamentals. We took notes on all that and then went to work. Now the next step of the process was to get a better look around. You told us a lot, we had seen a lot on our trips to Iowa City, and on our initial tours we went back out on the streets. We were studying neighborhoods we had less familiarity with, like Manville Heights, because you said that was important. We also went to look at other precedents, we studied Mount Vernon, and West Branch for example to learn about other forms of settlement in the smaller town scale that have been occurring in this area. And it was a great thing to do, because we were finding over and over as we walked with cameras and notepads and measuring taps that the dimensions matter a lot. That the feel, for example of a street that is 32 or 33 feet wide curb to curb is incredibly different from the feel of a street where the dimensions are 25 feet, like they are in the Longfellow neighborhood. We also saw lots of evidence of success in these great old neighborhoods. Look at the natural fit between neighborhoods that are filled with front porches and kids for example, that you see there is evidence with all those bicycles. And then we started taking those six plans and trying to hammer them and mash them and synthesize them to a single plan. We jokingly called it the Frankenstein plan. And there were a bunch of them, very different, here's one that got a little harder geometry, here's one that didn't know about geometry. Here's one that starts to apply different geometries and different sectors of the property. We were studying the design ideas three dimensionally as well as two dimensionally, so we were thinking about the long views in relationship to the park, and these kinds of things. Now during that part of the process, we also interviewed a lot of people. We had a parade, for those of you who came in and out of the city council chambers during the past week, you saw this in action. Dozens and dozens of Iowa City folk came through to see the work, look over our shoulders, offer suggestions, everywhere we can, those suggestions are incorporated in the plan. We interviewed builders, developers, realtors, council members, technicians from staff, transit people. We interviewed the engineers, the public works folks, all getting that what's the win-win solution for This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 3 each person's technical specialty. And then we stayed up all night. Here's Nancy Purrington helping stay up late coloring marshes. Nancy, are you in here? There you are. You deserve a lot of credit for the graphics in the lobby out there. We appreciate your help. And lots of other folk helped too, as we put the plan together. It was a tremendous team effort. I get the luxury of standing up here as spokesperson tonight, but it really was a hands on effort by tons and tons of people. And of course our whole team. Now tonight what we want to do is hold up the work and ask you what you think. We need to here from you about what you don't like. We need to know what you're concerns are, and what might need to be fixed as we march toward the second draft. We also need to here from you what you do like. Because if you don't bring it up, and no one else does, we may not realize that's an idea that's important to you. So we need your information about what you want and what you don't. Plans are visual things, but they do boil down into a few policy concepts that seem to be coming up over and over as most important. First of all, you told us that you didn't want just one kind of thing, that you wanted a mix of housing types, a range of sizes and types of dwellings to own and or rent, no all one thing. You also told us you wanted it mixed through the neighborhood. You didn't want a row house enclave, all the row houses together in one part, and an apartment enclave or complex somewhere else, but rather you wanted to create as economically and socially diverse a fabric as possible over the whole property. Second, you told us that the natural features are incredibly important and you wisely, as good real estate consultants reminded us also that those things were for the enjoyment of all of the neighbors, and would add value to all the neighbors homes. Literally adding value to the adjacent neighborhood and adding value for the greater citizens of Iowa City. You told us that the views were important, and you didn't want to see things impede those views unless-you wanted to improve those, and you talked a lot with us about the forested ravines. Now, most of that upland property you understand does not have trees on it now. It was crop land, it's cleared, and most of the property that we're discussing for the actual footprint of the settlement on the top of that hill is already cleared. But the ridges, or the slops rather around and the forested ravines are heavily treed, and you told us that to stay the heck out of those everywhere we could. And you'll see that in the plans. You talked to us about streets. You put a high priority on being pedestrian and bicycle friendly. There was discussion about traffic calming, about the way buildings sit down on their sites, so as to really shape the public space instead of just sitting there randomly. You told us that you didn't want a gated community but rather the kind of interconnected neighborhood you find in older parts of Iowa City you also told us that not just any buildings would do. That the place to look for building types that respond to the climate, which look right in this light, and feel right in your neighborhood are the historic models of your older parts of town. And that raises some questions, with it and some challenges and we'll explain those to you later, but this is definitely one of the directions. You told us that you didn't want to see the garage scape. When we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 4 showed comparative pictures and asked folks what they thought, thumbs up on front porches facing streets, thumbs down on double wide garage doors facing forward was the response we got over and over and over. So buildings and lots will have fronts and backs. There's more to being interconnected than just streets. The streets are part of the pedestrian network and the bicycle network, and the motoring network but that system also includes the allies, pedestrian paths, and trails, and, here's and important one, ways to get across the river. The dam of course you may all know is about to be improved with a pedestrian and cycling bridge. But that goes to Coralville, and it doesn't make for a, at least in the short term, a very convenient connection to say the University or the Medical Center or downtown. So the plan includes a way to get that kind of connection. And then last, recognizing that this new neighborhood was sitting at the end of road, and there weren't a lot of other ways in and out besides using Foster Roads, we've worked hard in the big ideas to do all the things we can to reduce the travel along your streets. One of the things we can do is mix the uses, provide things inside the neighborhood that you need so you don't have to leave, encourage folks to both live and work in the neighborhood, and of course that list of ways to reduce traffic would also include on the horizon at some point, a transit connection. Now the land itself tells us a lot. These green areas on this upland slope are the forested areas. Here are the slopes that surround the new part of the Elks golf course, here are the slopes that transitions from the neighborhood to the parkland below, here are forested ravines... and so on. And you can kind of tell when you look at the picture that way, that these forested areas you told us to treat very gently carve the area of the neighborhood into very distinct parts. Well, that could be very good for identity in the neighborhood. For example, the neighborhood will really cleave naturally into a pair of urban quarters, or carties as the French call them that have their own identity. Kind of a lower part of the neighborhood, an upper part of the neighborhood, and the neighborhood center where the two come together. Now put that into scale for you, this circle represents from center to edge a five minute walk, a quarter mile, from here to there. So the neighborhood clearly falls within an easily walkable distance, if we provide pedestrian friendly streets and paths, if we make it possible for people to walk then perhaps they can. So with that as the basic framework, lets take it to the neighborhood. I'm going to show you pictures, illustrations, they're purely hypothetical, and I'm going to show you sight plans that go with the pictures. As we do that, I want you to understand that the master plan you see here is, at this point, truly a concept. Yes, we've drawn streets, and we drew street trees on them so you could visualize how the plan might be lived out. But implementation wise, what's going to happen, is that the city, who owns this parcel, is going to advertise for buyers, of the land to be settled. And they will include in that request for proposal, a booklet that has all these pictures and all these big ideas and challenges the developers or builders who'd like to bid on the property to propose their design solutions incorporating these ideas everywhere they can and improving upon them everywhere they can, seeking the maximum This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 5 creativity from those builders and the developer. Design is one way that we would look for their creativity, we would also look for their creativity in financing, phasing, staging in other words what part is done first and second, how they can best achieve the goals of minimizing the environmental damage, how they achieve the goals of maximizing that mix of housing types, and price. The price should not be the only concern or the foremost concern of the council when they select the final buyer. All of those factors ought to come into play, and you might as council even choose to sell the property to a proposer who offers a little less. Yes they did the other things you're asking for in the best way. So that's the attitude. Price is going to be very important the city has made it very clear for example they fully expect to recover the 1.3 million dollars that has been spent here on land. We don't think there is going to be any difficulty doing that. But there are all these other factors too that should be weighed in, now let's walk around the neighborhood. Here's the Iowa fiver as it runs an ox bow around and then forms the peninsula. This is Foster Road, as it's being improved, and along side the Elk's golf course as it enters the property. Down below here's the dam and Coralville to the west. In these maps, north is up so you can remain oriented. Now this area inside the trees is that cleared upland area. And part of it has been leased to the Elk's for a modification of their golf course. There is a fairway here and here. And that gives us basically this area to work with. Down below is a big city park, with well fields and the new wells that have been installed, that park will be improved with some paths, with a service lane that they can use to get trucks to the well heads for maintenance, but it will be essentially preserved as a natural area. There is a park master plan forth coming, it is not part of what we're doing here, but look forward to seeing the details of the park master plan, which might include restoration of some natural areas and so on. Now, I think it is probably better to zoom in here a little bit, and look just at the part on the upland. The neighborhood center, Foster Road, the southern ward, and the northern ward. Foster Road is a piece of the city's city-wide trail network. It will actually include a design that is friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists who are working their way back down to that bridge, and that's great. It'll come through the heart of the neighborhood, reach the neighborhood center, we treat as a trail head, with some things that will be very attractive to the trail users, and then on through and out to the path. The neighborhood is made up of a series of fairly normal, although cranked and twisted, and adjusted where necessary, fairly normal city blocks. Blocks, streets that are faced on both sides by the fronts of buildings, the buildings are served on their backsides in most cases, where everywhere possible, by any ally or narrow service lane. That means the garage doors, garbage pick-up, some utilities, can be in the ally. Allies might well be private, but subject to agreement, development agreement or speed restriction which maintains the private responsibility for maintenance, like snow removal, and cutting the grass and so on. The streets in this scenario could easily be public streets. In a few locations in the neighborhood, there are special sights for specific buildings or This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 6 gatherings, like this central square, or this little park which is compared size wise and character to Black Spring Circle, if you know that area. You can see a series of those things. The design of the neighborhood calls for streets to be faced on both sides by fronts, right? Well that also means that at the edge where there are critical views, into forested ravine there, or into the golf course there, the road only has buildings on one side. That means if you are standing on the golf course and looking back, you will be able to see the fronts of houses instead of the barbecue grills. You will be looking at the front porches, and we think that's a very valuable marketing tool as well, because that means that from across the river or from out on the open space, there will be post card views of the village on the hilltop. Much better than looking at the backsides of buildings. Now lets enter the neighborhood on Foster Road, 28 feet from curb to curb, with a wide planting strip, a wide sidewalk, or multi-use path on at least one side for the pedestrians and cyclists, faced on both sides by fronts of houses. That might look like this. Here's the Elk's golf course, the first of the tree lines and ravines, and then Foster Road as envisioned in that cross section, and this really should be, instead of thinking of Foster Road as it enters the neighborhood, as a problem to be retreated from because of the traffic, and so on, the best way to handle this street is to make it the signature address of this neighborhood. As in the older neighborhoods, really showplace homes might well be located there. You're looking at an image that depicts what it might be like to arrive along that curved section at the comer of Foster Road. Now into the heart of the neighborhood. A typical street. If you look at the dimensions, you know that these streets are really not mysterious, their based very much on traditional Iowa City streets, the wide planting strips that the trees can grow large, and there's not interference with utilities, we learned that from places like Brown Street. The sidewalks on both sides, we learned that from places like Summit Street. The shallow setbacks really, never less than say 15 feet, more ordinarily 20-25 feet, and sometimes where the slope is intense, or a front yard is called for spacially, even a little bigger. The 25 feet curb to curb we learned from the Longfellow neighborhood. And in this shot, you actually see down a street, and there's for example the golf course long view in the distance. The streets are arranged the way they are so that the homes are not only on the edge of the view. But the homes a block or a block and a half inside will share a feeling of ownership and beauty with that view. I also noticed this street is not made of all one kind of thing. So let's just exam how it is different. For example, a street like that that is across the slope might have a fairly small difference between the level of the sidewalk and the finished floor on one side and a sloped front yard and a higher or larger difference between the sidewalk and the finished floor on the other side. And we see that all over the older parts of Iowa City. You will notice that that street is intercepted by an alley at just the right place and there is a little out building for the garage of the house that faces the golf course. And naturally, a site like that might attract a rather up-market home buyer. That could be a fairly expensive home with a majestic view across the course, across the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 7 trees, across the river and so on. And then intemally a house that doesn't have that same view but has a great street as its amenity, full size, market rate, a four-square house, for example, like that one. The same street, however, can have a small and modest bungalow. Or a house like this one on D Street which is really a marvelous example of historic preservation in action. What else? A marvelous example of affordable housing through smart design. This house, which is really quite charming, is a rectangle. It has a simple foundation. This house is narrow. It is not as wide as the big houses that are sharing the neighborhood/This house is not a full two stories, maybe 1 V2 if they are very creative. That is a way to blend affordable units with the more expensive units. It is to allow the smaller ones and smaller lots to be interspersed in the same neighborhood with the larger ones. Here is that idea on another street. Full size, a single-family detached house with that wonderful urban relationship to the street. Then immediately adjacent, ckeek by jowl, attached housing, inherently more affordable to construct and sell. Smaller per unit land costs, less frontage to finish to a presentation face level and so the sketch shows you the idea of how row houses and duplexes can be incorporated into the same neighborhood with detached houses. As we find our way through the neighborhood we eventually arrive at the neighborhood center. The village square on the hill top. This is a simple greens pace. It is the precious center where the land-there is no other land like it on the site. Very special and designed for community gathering. Very very straight forward and no elaborate equipment. What is really going on here though is the homes and other buildings are brought close to the square to frame it and it is given shade and enough regularity in design to be used for a wide variety of community events. When there is not an event going on, it is just a nice beautiful green space where you might sit to eat your lunch or meet a neighbor. Now in that picture we are seeing a number of different things. For example, live-work combination units could be built like row houses but they might contain upstairs a residence and downstairs a business for that resident. You could be an attorney with an attorney's office down below or an artist with an art studio down below. You see here a site for a daycare facility. Childcare deliberately constructed in a way that is domesticated. A civic building in the way it fronts the green and behind it is the tot lot play area. We happen to have a site right there that is large enough to do that. You can see here how the ravine begins to slope off. So actually the square forms a green connection between those two forested ravines. Then you are seeing this thing. More about that in a moment. In plan, the place you just saw was a drawing James Dougherty did that illustrates what is would be like to stand right here and look back at this comer of the square. You saw the live-work units, the comer store, the childcare center. You didn't see the other side where its play area is located. And what you also saw was a trail head because somewhere on the site you know we need to find a few, not many, parking spaces for people to come and enjoy the trails. Nothing where they could park a boat or a trailer or anything like that. Just a few and those are concentrated at the center. And then folks that have stopped This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 8 here can walk on down or take their bikes down. It is envisioned that the other end of the square could be anchored by another civic building. Now why Emma Harvat Square? Well, this is just an idea. Okay, city council, you get to name streets and squares. We are just playing the game here for this week. But it was fascinating to learn about the history of Iowa City and we were intrigued to find out about Emma, the first woman mayor on this continent of a town larger than 10,000 people. Elected just a year or two after women gained the right to vote. I understand she was not someone you would want to cross. Tough mayor. So Emma's Place anchors the Emma Harvat Square. Well, that is an idea. And for shorthand, just to give us a way to talk about all of these different streets and squares, we have given them all names and all of the names may not pan out. We might find out that some of them are horse thieves or wife beater or Indian murderers. If you find that out, we don't have to name streets after them. But for shorthand purposes, the maps have those names on them. All of them are mayors who served in your city prior to W.W.II which is approximately the time where on this continent we lost our minds with regard to how to do design and development of new neighborhoods. Now what is this thing? A site reserved for a comer store or small commercial enterprise. Will that work? We don't know. It might have to be a Coke machine. Okay. Or it might start as a Coke machine or a wagon and find a niche and grow to the point where it could occupy something like this. But the idea is that you could incorporate in the neighborhood a very very small enterprise which provided somethings people need in the neighborhood and avoid the necessity for them to get in their car, strap themselves to another 6,000 pounds of steel and amble down Foster Road and Dubuque Street adding to the regional traffic, the area wide traffic. And you can capture a lot of trips. A very small fraction of the trips generated by the typical single family detached house are trips associated with work travel. The majority of the trips generated by a house are for so called discretionary trips and they are things like going to get a newspaper...quart of milk .... to pick up a popsicle or an ice cream cone. Now, picture this, maybe, just maybe. If it is a labor of love for someone who lives above or a retiree or someone whose break even line is not at the level expected by some national chain. Maybe you could sustain a commercial enterprise here despite the fact that we have a relatively small number ofrooftops surrounding it and supporting it on foot, on bike, and with short cars trips. But if we add a couple thousand people a day on a trail going by on their in-line skates and on their bikes and on foot, we can support it a little better and Foster Road is the trail and your trail today, incomplete as it is, is generating 1638 trips on Wednesdays in that part of City Park that is next to Hancher Auditorium, even though it doesn't yet connect and run along the river's edge as it will when it is implemented out on the Peninsula. So there is a possibility that you can make it a little more affordable if you provide something in there that folks need when they are using the trail. Water, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 9 for example. Remember that ice cream cone? Trail users like that. Now suppose we also put right here in front of it because we need convenient parking associated with that comer store even for our own neighbors in the neighborhood who are stopping by for something on their way home or on their way to work. Suppose we designate those parking spaces the trail head and now we make this a great place to start a bike trip or a skating trip on the trail network and we add customers that way without adding anybody who wasn't already going to use the trail. Maybe it is a little more practical then. Now what if transit, in some form, may a little jitney or maybe a bus, were to find its way eventually in the heart of this neighborhood. Obviously it would come and stop at the center where the most people can walk to the transit stop and that would be a great place to stop and wait for the bus if you could buy a cup of coffee and stay warm and dry inside and read that newspaper while you wait for the bus. You see how these things come together in a neighborhood center and makes it more viable. Well, all you have to do in your request for proposal is insist that a site be set aside to make this possible and encourage it. All you have to do is make sure there is not some zoning law that is going to make that impossible and all you have to do is demand the design that will make it a good neighbor. Three easy things. Now it gets even better. Traditional towns just did this very well. Here is the banking house of Wright and Fuller and here is the residence of Mr. Wright, the banker. It was normal in Iowa forever to put residences and the business of residents on a small scale together. And that is what the live-work units are all about. And if you do it right here and this is my home or my home is around the block. This is my law office where I am on a phone or tapping on a computer and I want a cup of coffee. See how it works. That is synergy. It works even better if I have dropped my child at childcare at the very place where a few steps away I am going to wait for the bus. That is what you just saw. Childcare, comer store, and live-work unit. Now civic buildings are really important too but there is a great deal of variety within the houses themselves. We envision streets like the ones you saw before. It is also a possibility that you could encourage the kind of street rarely seen in mature cities and that is the kind of very intimate village kind of street scene here. I call that the quirky intimate cross section. It is deliberate not a consumer of so much land and it is a different kind of walk. Imagine if you are walking and you walk down Moses Bloom Lane and you see a street where the trees lean in from a garden. Okay. That is the kind of thing that can be accomplished if we think outside the box. Imagine a street where the row houses have bay windows as they always did in the Midwest and you can see up and down the street. And here is the kind of cross-section, astonishingly small cross section which can generate a place that looks like that. Enclosure is not a bad thing. Human beings crave it and in this neighborhood, you are going to have the ability to create those kind of cozy contained enclosure spaces and the broad long open views across the golf course and across the trees and so on. We were just here at Emma Harvat Square. There is the comer store, here is that lane you just saw in the perspective. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 10 Civic buildings. One of the basic principles of neighborhood design. Special sites are reserved for civic buildings. That encompasses a very large amount of things. It might be a little branch library. It might be a music school. It might be a place of worship. It might be a community hall or some combination. It could be a post office or these kinds of things. Well, look at what that does to the identify of the neighborhood. It becomes a landmark, a symbol of permanence in the neighborhood. This is from an old Iowa map, as you might have guessed. And we think there are possibilities for your civic building and special locations to do precisely the same thing in this neighborhood. So here you see, for example, a civic building drawn generically. That includes a little bell tower or a clock tower if you happen to have a clock laying around that you need to find some good place to put. Audience/(Can't hear). Dover/I was waiting for one of them to get it. But anyway. The cartoon illustrates it as if it is a scaled down cousin of your old city hall tragically lost because some consultants from out of town thought it would be a good idea for you to get with the times. The Pruecil School was another example of a great Iowa City civic building which could be that kind of symbol of permanence. Also it adds visual variety and variety of life to the things that go on in the neighborhood. Wouldn't that be a great place for a music school. A music school will need performance spaces but you also could use a performance space, a room this size for example, for a community gathering or a retreat or a conference or a lot of other things. So just like the live-work units, it requires you to think outside the box of conventional zoning. The civic buildings are going to make you have to think about combinations of civic uses that make it viable to build them. Here is this lower part of the neighborhood and the road that leaves from the Emma Harvard Square around this way. Here you basically see the newest part of the Elks Golf Course. It is under construction now if you go out there and take a look. Here is the road that is designed so the fronts of houses look across the golf course instead of the backs ..... That road becomes an important edge road and we get into conditions like this one where we would like to bring the street close to the forrested edge so that the lots can be reasonably sized. You can get good size blocks to fit within our constrained land. But also because we think that is a scenic special thing. Imagine, just take a stroll around the neighborhood and walk about the scenic edge. Even if you live in the middle, you feel you own a piece of all of it. Okay. But the slopes are pretty dramatic when you get close to the edge like that. These are forrested because they weren't good for planting crops because they are too steep. And so here is how that is resolved. Here is one of those forrested slopes. A little overlook for the passers-by. To grade and build in This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 11 such a place, you can leave the trees alone and that is what is proposed in this plan. You grade at one level for the street and at a second level for the sidewalk and at a third level, third terraced level for the house. This is very much like that cross-section I showed you from downtown before, except here with a little retaining wall. We couldn't resist drawing seasons. I have to tell you we are from Miami, we had to draw seasons. We enjoyed that. The perspective you just saw might be along this area. Now there is an opportunity at the close of that street when it is joined with Foster Road to create a little park. We were really taken with Black Springs Circle. Do you all like that example? Up in Manville Heights... It is a really beautiful place, high standard. Of course this street still connects as they go through. So the fronts of houses here. We look upon the park and the forrested slopes would remain for the public enjoyment of all. There are a couple of other spots where you can do that, too. Where the block really requires us to be creative about how we fit lots in. You still have the opportunity to create a little public space that belongs to everyone and is off the traffic but is not a cul- de-sac. See. This is a much better place to have a potluck dinner than the bowl at the end of the conventional cul-de-sac out in the sprawl. And here is a spot where the slope drops off dramatically and we saw an opportunity to create one of those overlook streets, right where the flat part of the land ends and the slope begins. Here you see an overlook that is designed to give you access. In the winter time toward one of those views, folks told us last week were the most special. This is a cross section through one of those edge streets. There is an Elk .... Golfing at the edge. It is a tree lined street and the fronts of houses or apartments facing it .... Here is that street overlooking the golf course, faced not only by houses but in a couple of strategic spots probably an apartment building or a couple of row houses. We think that there are great opportunities to get housing variety by incorporating some multi-family buildings of just the right kind. We also think those buildings which have a little more mass can be part of changing the sky-line so it doesn't look like house land but it has that diversity and landmark status. Here... looking up from the park you would be able to see, because of the natural clearing that already exists, you would be able to see an apartment building there. Here, because of the long views down to the river and back toward Manville Heights, a natural location for a couple of apartment buildings that are essentially 50 steps from Emma Harvat Square. There is a place here for between two of the forrested ravines where a conventional block of the kind you saw doesn't fit. So we recommended you could creatively use a spot like that by having a couple of apartment buildings, one that faces the T over here and one that faces the street over there .... In old Iowa City there are beautiful examples of a medium size apartment buildings .... Something that will fit nicely with the scale of houses and the trees. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 12 Now, for landmarks, you can't do better than this. How long have you been looking for a place to find a home for the chimney swift tower. Well, here is just an idea. What if you took this very special thing from 1915 and found a home for it in a part of the community? Do you know what this is? This is the only structure of its kind in existence. A chimney swift tower where the chimney swifts are encouraged to come in a build nests and then there is a spiral stair in which you can go up and study the nesting habits of the chimney swit~s. It is a song bird tower. This could really be great. It is about 30 feet tall. So it will be, if situated on the proper base along one of those overlooks, it could be a great symbol of the neighborhood. Imagine standing in the park, looking back up to the forrested slope and peaking through the trees is the chimney swift tower. That is the postcard view of the neighborhood. Just an idea. Now you have got to be able to get around in a place like this. I talked earlier about the trail that Foster Road becomes. It leads to the trail head which is that center. But it is part- CHANGE TAPE TO REEL 98-65 SIDE 2 Dover/ The streets... plus Foster Road from relatively small blocks that can be easily walked around. You have many paths to get from one place to another. It also means that if you are entering or leaving the neighborhood, you have many ways to get from one origin to another destination. And so interconnecting is very important. But those aren't all of the pedestrian connections. For example, the paths or trails .... Add additional ways of penetrating and circulating through the neighborhood, looking at its special views and the alleys themselves are also part of a pedestrian network. So when you put it all together, this is a highly permeable neighborhood for the movement of folks on skates, on foot, and on bicycles. Audience/(Can't hear). Dover/ This is not something you can move a car down or anything like that. There is a service lane... blocked... ballards .... To manage the well field. The trail would be coming here across the steep slope... stairs or ramps and not something for the movement of cars. This is the southem tip of that map .... Connection across the dam to Coralville if you are walking or biking. We recommend the addition of a second pedestrian and cyclist bridge. Here it is shown crossing the river and connecting to Crandic Park which is one very good way to hook up with the city's trail network and make your way to the campus, medical center or downtown. The map also shows .... Second location as an alternate .... Connect you more in the direction of This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 13 Manville Heights towards Park Road .... Now it is a matter of engineering, environmental concerns and the overall trail picture to determine which of those it should be. The green stuff is also network... tie together two existing forrested areas. No home is very far at all from some kind of special public space .... One longest block. There would be no dwelling farther away from a public space of that kind than one block .... Enjoy the benefits of open space. Every map that you have seen so far doesn't have lot lines. There is a reason for that. A basic framework of infrastructure can be laid out without needing to know exactly how the segments of the blocks are going to be subdivided. Okay .... But we did want to have an idea what this infrastructure framework might support and how you might diversify the layout of blocks and lots. And so this map is an overlay showing lot lines on top of the block segments .... You might reserve a larger parcel for an apartment building... in that same block .... larger houses... You might start to see smaller lots.. or even locations for the row houses or attached houses .... We did find examples... Think of a Midwestern row house .... See how the block could work here with a mixture of medium size detached house lots, smallest row houses and big lots... all in the same block. Now building a new neighborhood doesn't mean neglecting the neighborhood that you have got. I am very encouraged by this map... the city thinks of itself as a city of neighborhoods .... How you treat planning in this town is very encouraging. You are a city of neighborhoods .... Continuing to nurture and improve your existing neighborhoods is also a priority of any good plan. You have historic districts .... Our advice to you is while you work hard as a community on getting just the right neighborhood on the upland area, you should continue to invest and work hard for the success of existing neighborhoods. We are concerned about the fact that because there is not another motor bridge across the river .... in this new neighborhood and other developments which take place along Foster Road... are going to be down at the end of a road and they are going to contribute their traffic onto that road... and brings them out here to Dubuque Street .... Traffic will enter the area-wide network. It seems reasonable to do everything you can to intercept folks who are doing routine car trips before they go out into the area wide road network .... To some of the locals... issue of rising concern. That means thinking of a larger area. We recommend you continue to think of the study area as a whole... about what you can do to intercept car trips .... To give a hard earnest look to the area... natural neighborhood center... might want to include a wider variety of non-residential uses .... We would never recommend anything of a scale that is big enough to be any kind of competitive threat to downtown .... Need to look at that .... Capture car trips with retail and other things .... I showed you a bunch of pictures... Will this work? What if you could move into a new neighborhood and have all of the benefits of an old neighborhood?... character of the historic architecture... and still have full size closets and modem This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 14 appliances .... Modem family and household types... Sounds like the best of both worlds. This week, we asked Architect Suzanne Martinson .... To interview builders and developers, Realtom... tour home sites .... recent development... compare what she found there to the older neighborhoods and the things that carry out the urban design objectives you saw in the pictures. The question .... Can we have those kinds of exteriors and those kinds of relationships to the public realm we saw in those old pictures and still have interiors and floor plan types and cost of construction that meet contemporary needs? Suzanne Martinson/The answer .... Yes. After meeting with builders and developers... We took the opportunity to concentrate on designing different housing types that might fit into your new neighborhood and one of the first types of houses I explored was a four-square .... Most often... qualities... open kitchen .... Family room... possibility of open dining room... ability of the garage to be attached to the house .... Sites... have an alley access .... Different opportunities... placement of the detached garage .... Can move closer and closer to the house .... Typical front porch... developed an entry... stairs... living room... kitchen... office... small library... Doveff We are not recommending that the city should go out and design all of the houses for a builder. What we have been creating here are exhibits that demonstrate that both objectives are doable. These are samples... not rules. John Shaw/ .... I have been in older homes... taken down to the studs... re-done inside... found them very unsettling. What risk do we run simply putting up a stage set? Dover/Design matters .... But also create the right kind of relationships among neighbors and householders ....Architecture is important. Here is a finding. We learned that architects, for example, are not usually required, unless your building a large number of units or a very expensive piece of construction. You need find-and that's probably a mistake. We would encourage you to involve architects on all the projects. And so if you are sub-normal designers you'll get the stage set effect that your worded about. You go ahead and remember that design matters and invest in it up front. As builders and developers you'll reap the rewards and greater value. Martinson/I'm going to test this, Mike. Can you hear it? Dover/All right, your on. Martinson / The next study were smaller units where we studied-These are smaller width units and this is a typical vernacular cottage style with again, it's very important that you've raised porch for privacy element, also placing the house on the site. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 15 And again the development on the public's space of the house, which is the living room towards the street in relationship to the porch, and in close proximity to the sidewalk, and dining room and much larger kitchen and viewing the back yard. And again, viewing the development of the detached garage. Dover/(Overhead slide projections). Martinson/Here we are taking the garage and attaching it to the house. This can be equally achieved... direct access into the house. Majority of green space ends up behind the garage .... It is possible and very workable off of an alley situation. Here is two different width units... side by street on the street... Victorian detailing... This is a bungalow style house .... Different... gable faces the side, asymmetrical porch .... Second level in the house .... Here is one that is situated in Iowa City... one story example... Dover/...examples of how you can elegantly attach ramps .... Accessibility ....Liked about the raised floor level.. additional level of privacy .... Martinson/The bungalow in this particular example .... 1200 square foot house .... Attached row house... some of the ideas that Victor was citing... 16 & 24 foot wide lot here .... These units have alley access with a garage .... This is the open green space... garden space... These units.. developed with living room space.. towards the front... combined living space, great room and kitchen .... These are two story units ....Stretched out to add another floor ....Bay window ...open golf course view .... Dover/Lower price units and undoubtedly an expensive house... on the same block and equally dignified .... No penalty either way. Martinson/This is the second level floor plan of the units... The apartment unit .... This is what it might look like from the alley view .... Two story scaled .... Dover/Accessory dwellings, naturally occurring forms of affordable housing. Martinson/This is a sketch of a multi-family unit .... Use this as a model .... Accommodated off the main square, constructed out of brick .... Woodsy type of accessory detailing on this... Dover/Multi-family housing may not be mean spirited housing .... Where does all of this go?... Without a vision the people parish .... But what we ask you to visualize if a neighborhood on the hilltop... surrounded by permanent open space. Part of the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 16 city... river... natural scene. That is what the images suggest ....Karin Franklin will help bring us into the next part of this. What you just saw was work in progress .... This is a very risky thing I am about to do... From the delegates to this important assembly who are here, I am going to ask you to raise your hands for one of the following three categories: I love it, I like it but it needs some work or I hate it. How many hate it? How many love it and how many like it but think it needs some work. Okay, I think we are on the right track .... Franklin/What we need now is some input from you...comments, questions, anything you would like to say about what you have seen tonight .... I like that first response of you love it. Audience/...the thing think I really like about this is that perimeter road ....Best ingredient in this whole thing. Dover/We had some of that .... Plan has some more because of that input. Thank you. Audience/ Dover/At last count there was something like 400 .... Projects of various scales... that embody this idea of traditional neighborhood design or the new urbanism .... There are Midwestern examples .... Madison... We are finding this impulse to build neighborhood now to get back community is going on all over the place .... A lot of others... early stage of construction .... Early returns have suggested to the Realtors .... That traditional neighborhoods absorb... sell much faster... Jim Thorgmorton/I would like to praise the city council... staff... you for having produced a very interesting design for a part of the city that is quite special... I really like each of the key components... Draw attention.. risk that we and the city will be swayed by the imagery and believe that something like what you have seen here is really going to happen... It may not really happen... likely to... I want to encourage the council and staff to hang with this direction .... It is a good design ....There are lots of key elements here that are really good as design principles ....What could not happen here but should happen in other parts of the city is a really coherent mix use core that people can really walk to... fully accessible by public transit ....For other parts there is more that needs to be done .... Doveff I would offer that you have a special opportunity because you own the land .... You hold the cards .... You can hold out for the kind of quality that you want .... Also .... Very important that you are setting a model, aim as high as you can get This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 17 because then you have something transferable .... You are going to be able to encourage builders and developers to try things here they might not try on a corn field. Audience/One of biggest concerns here was how you were going to balance providing good views from the new homes... and protect the valley for natural uses. I think you have gone about it in the right way ....You leave the slopes undisturbed... I commend you .... Dover/There are places in those cross streets that mn from the golf course back towards the deepest forrested ravine .... A lot of economics that have to take place here .... Audience/Do you have an estimate of the total number of dwelling units? Dover/The reason I didn't make it a part of the presentation is because.. that number can be a little higher or a little lower depending on what is going to work out financially. So it is not a magic number. But what you saw illustrated represents somewhere between 250 & 275 to 350. We didn't try to get every unit you could possibly imagine fitting on the land... That little study you saw with the lots lines represent between 250 and 350 units. It represents 300 units and that fits. Audience/With this land being possibly the most precious in Iowa City as we look at the potentials for the layouts, how is the idea of keeping this moderate price range possible? ... small houses become expensive... rent on the apartments becomes so high .... Dover/ There is affordability at the outset that we accomplish by design and there is long term or permanent affordability which is a different problem .... When we use the term we mean owner occupied housing that is affordable to someone earning between 60 and 80% of median income in your area .... Two parts: First the immediate affordability at the outset. By making some things affordable that are smaller, cost less to construct, have a lower per unit land cost, we can get some range of prices from the beginning. For example, an apartment above a shop front on the comer store... likely to remain inherently affordable over a long period of time .... Neighborhood that is desirable .... That will cause appreciation which is normal... proof that you have succeeded. As those appreciate in price, that can be for the people who bought in at the beginning a natural way for household wealth creation .... Now you have a unit that is not as affordable anymore. That has happened... That first event .... Very smart investment .... That is good. But that doesn't deal with permanently affordable inventory that is also important to create. Our recommendation to the city is that they challenge the builders, developers, buyer-applicant who want to buy the property, to present the most compelling scheme for obtaining long term or permanent affordability... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 18 affordable owner occupied homes, not city subsidized .... They can do this in any number of different ways... tax credits .... They can decide the sell some of the units to a not-for-profit housing organization that holds them in a permanent affordable inventory ....A lot of mechanisms... policy things that the developers of the land could do ....Long list of criteria ....Smart way of protecting the environment .... Good price .... If you have the most compelling plan... for incorporating permanently affordable housing, you ought to get points for that in the rankings of various proposals .... Find partnering organizations .... Franklin/Besides the design and policy issues that are just related to the Peninsula, too, one of the things that we can look at as Jim was pointing out was translating this to other parts of the community and when you have these choices as more of the norm rather than the exception, you are going to get some leveling out there as you get more supplies. Audience/My question was about permanent affordability and I think you did a very good job of answering it. I really do like your vision, mixed neighborhoods throughout...economically and socially diverse. Dover/It is not our vision .... Did this in the room with everyone else hands-on. It is the citizen plan at this point. Thank you .... Audience/I live in a 150 year old house on the northside and I am sort of wondering are you going to build with the right kinds of materials... so this is going to last for a long time... Franklin/That would certainly be the intention that they are built to stay there for a very long time .... Quality of the structures that are built there is very important. Audience/ Franklin/ .... list of things that we will want to see... get higher points... quality of construction should certainly be one of those things. Dover/...One of the things that will be in the package handed to the interested buyers of the land will be an officially adopted set of design guidelines .... Sergio Vasquez from our office .... Has been managing this project day to day. He is directing the work in the coming weeks... concept draft and a future presentation, 4 - 6 weeks away .... Early July for a follow-up presentation with improved information. One of the things we will have at that time is the design guidelines... a draft... to council. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 19 John Shaw/You are using the words design guidelines. Sometimes when you get into a neighborhood you hear the term covenant. Can you discuss that? Dover/ Here the design guidelines will be broad. It will be illustrated... diagrams... explain how to actually build the stuff that is shown in those pictures. But it won't be a full blown code .... I think some of what you just saw in those pictures might be illegal under current city standards .... Street standards and setbacks... mix of uses will require some adjustments to the city's rules... So the design guidelines serve an interim purpose. They could easily be adapted .... Made more hard line .... Developer agreements... homeowners association documents .... Part of the zoning system... Guidelines will be broader at this point. Franklin/And we wanted those broader guidelines so that we can translate them into whatever it is that we need for other parts of the community. We may have covenants on this particular piece of property which are unique to this piece .... Dover/This is the starting point of those ....If other members of the consulting team want to chime in here .... Audience/ I think what happened this week is really exciting .... One question... when you show the examples of what the architectural styles looks like, the reference is so strongly historic that I guess my concern would be that ... some of the ideas need to be reinterpreted in a 1990's vision... more modem... I am curious about how that has worked... how guidelines developing that isn't a recreation of a New England village... Dover/ ....I think your point is very good. We would urge great vigilance about a few basic urban design principles: about the placement of buildings, orientation of the fronts and backs, location on the lot for parking and garages .... That kind of stuff we would urge to be very rigid about. When it comes to architecture, the important thing is the quality and the long term life cycle intelligence of the house: response to climate... the way people really live. The regional vernacular architecture is usually a good benchmark for fit with climate because it is time tested .... We hadn't planned to recommend that there be a rigid historical style... old neighborhoods are kind of eclectic ....Eclectic might be the best way to think of it. Robert Gray/A few people have come in and mention other things... passive solar ideas... We can incorporate other things like that .... CHANGE TAPE TO REEL 98-66 SIDE 1 This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 20 Dover/We are actually pointing to the genetic code for how to grow good architecture for the area and we are still on a learning curve as far as that goes ....The mounds of books of examples have been growing also .... Martinson/I would just like to say... make a comment about the translation of architecture in this day and age... beautiful historic home and historic ..... techniques... Not everybody can afford the full brick foundation... But I think this is where you have to be aware... architect... knows how to detail materials properly... starting and stopping of materials becomes so important .... You need architects. Dover/Why it is optional here we cannot figure it out. Martinson/It makes an incredible difference .... A drawing... how to tell somebody in what dimension is also important for something to look real .... Dover/We saw a lot of two dimensionalized four-square knock offs .... Those kinds of things have to be re-learned here to build better neighborhoods... Advance .... Urban design.. architectural design should both be floated upward .... Gray/We had some local architects who came in and worked with us: Jim Barret, Sue Licht and others... John Shaw. They also showed us some of the work they had done in town... Unless you are doing a certain number of units as a builder, you don't have to hire an architect... we think your local architects could be used .... Continue to contribute their ideas and thoughts .... Dover/ 400 projects... have all dealt with the same problems... there are starting to immerge lots of ready to use or adapt plans... of houses that work for modem expectations .... Adapt if for Iowa City... Franklin/I think since it is getting to be almost 9:00. What I would like to suggest at this point is that if you have got comments that you would like to make to the consultants that are here or city staff.... Please, we would love to hear your comments .... Anything about this project... They will be coming back sometime in the beginning of July. We will be having another public presentation of this project with refinements... Dover/And better base information .... That needs to get updated... Franklin/The next step after that will be adoption in some manner.. resolution by the city council of this as a design concept .... Adoption of the design guidelines... send out a RFP to developers and that is a process that is probably going to take us This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898 May 8, 1998 Council Work Session page 21 another six to nine months .... Have someone that we are ready to work with to build this project. So stay tuned. John Shaw/(Can't hear). Franklin/We need to hear from the local market, can one person do this all or are we going to look at a number of different people? Okay. Shaw/(Can't hear). Franklin/It could be one developer and many builders .... We will have to still scope that out .... This is not all fine tuned at this point in time .... Thank you all very very much for coming. Dover/Thank you. Adjourned: 9:00 PM This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City council meeting of May 8, 1998 WS050898