March 30, 2026 — Meeting Transcript

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Plain Commission ARB for March 30th. If you have any electronic gadgets, please silence them at this time. Ryan?

Steve Lichtenfeld? Here. Helen DiFate?

Steve Lichtenfeld? Here. Ellen DeFate?

Here. Jim

Marsnow? Here. Chris Brennan? Here. Jeff Morrisey? Susan Buse?

Marsnow? Here. Chris Brennan? Here. Jeff Morsey? Susan Buse?

Here. Okay, we have meetings from the previous meeting on March 16th. Are there any changes? Seeing none, do we have a motion?

I move to approve as submitted.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. We'll proceed. Right now, we have an open forum for anyone in the audience that has a comment or a question about anything not on the agenda tonight. If your hand is up, we'll take you. If not, we'll move on. Okay, seeing none, we'll move onto new business. The first item is 6800 Whiteown Boulevard, a conditional use permit. And we'll start with the staff report.

The subject property consists of the former Fontbonne campus at White Island Big Bend, which was purchased by WashU in 2024. The applicant is seeking a conditional use permit to consolidate and replace previously approved CUPs and operate the site in accordance with the existing conditions. The applicant proposes the regulations remain consistent with previous CUPs with two exceptions. In August 2014, CUP grants Fontbonne use of 153 spaces on the Concordia Seminary property. The lease of these spaces has been terminated and the CUP does not need to grant use of these spaces. Washington University would like to retain use of a connector drive in 14 spaces on the Fontbonne property, which were discussed in the CUP as well. And then a July 1998 CUP authorizes construction of 152 parking space lot and includes a condition that the university will agree to limit enrollment to 2200 students at the campus. The applicant letter states that the Fontbonne site is going to be operated in conjunction with the Danforth campus and not as a standalone site with its own enrollment. Therefore, the applicant would like this condition removed. Staff are of the opinion that the proposal meets the requirements contained in the regulations governing conditional uses. Site conditions are not proposed to change and two modifications are proposed from the existing CP regulations. Staff are of the opinions that the requested changes will not impact the site's operation or result in adverse impact. Staff recommend that the Planning Commission recommend approval of the CP with the conditions identified in the staff report.

Okay, thank you. The applicant would like to add anything?

Good evening, Honorable Councilmember Buse and Planning Commissioners. I'm Joanna Schooler, the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Local Government and Community Relations at WashU. As was stated in the staff report, Fontbonne, the former Fontbonne campus, we acquired it in June of 2024 to provide much needed financial support to Fontbonne as they were going through a very sensitive period, a challenging period. closing down operations of the campus. They continued to operate the campus until December, the end of the year, in 2025, which was a little earlier than we had expected. But they continued to operate. And when we acquired the site, the CUPs, that Fon Fon CUPs, transferred to us as is with them operating the site as a tenant. Now that they have vacated the site and have turned it over to us, we understand that we have to now ask for an update of the CUPs and consolidate them into one comprehensive CUP consistent to the conditions that were, that applied in the CUPs, the existing CUPs to Fodbond. In addition, there were several buildings on site where there were no CUPs at all. And so we're trying to consolidate all of that together into one, into a single comprehensive CUP. We continue to assess the conditions on site and Certainly the buildings are in varied conditions, and they're in varied conditions. Some of them are going to need some renovations, some repairs, and there are some buildings that were actually damaged in the tornado as well. So that's a whole process that we're going through in terms of assessing the buildings. We do think there might be some no decisions have been made that may need to be demolished at some point. But that is certainly not something that we've made any final decisions on. In the interim, we anticipate operating the campus on an intermittent basis in places where it makes sense and then also looking to see where there might be uses as needed on the site, but everything to be consistent with what's outlined in the CUPs. And we just appreciate the opportunity to be able to work to consolidate the CUPs. And please know that as we know what we will do with the Fondbond site, we certainly will have community engagement with that so that we can certainly try to move forward with either an overlay or a CUP at the appropriate time, an updated CUP at the time. And just appreciate your time and your consideration. Thank you.

Well, thank you. This seems to be, it looked like a very weighty application at first. But in reality, I think it's cleaning it up so it'll be much more realistically useful for both WashU and for the city. So we thank you for approaching it this way. I do have a few questions. Well, a comment first. The multiple criteria for review all seem to be without any issues in there. So there really isn't anything there. We do have a staff recommendation with 14 points. Is Washington U agreeing to all of those? Yes.

Yes.

Okay. Then specifically on condition eight, which was earth slopes, I couldn't find any earth slopes on the site plans that were given there. So I went over to Washington to the old font bond. I couldn't find really there either.

I'm not aware of any either, but we certainly will comply.

Okay. And then on condition 11, the sound wall, I did find it. It's on the east side along the driveway, but it doesn't show up on the site plan. on the uh the plans that were submitted unless i misread it maybe someone else has seen it so you might want to have that added on

we'll take note of that for sure

and then my third one was on the uh parking driveway if i understand it when i didn't put down You wanted to keep the parking drive, which I believe went to the parking on Concordia.

It leads to the parking on Concordia. The lease there has been terminated. However, that CUP also includes 14 spaces that are on the Fontbonne site. So that CUP includes spaces that are on former Fontbonne site plus that access point as well. And so we'd like to maintain both of those.

So those 14 spaces are not on concordia no okay okay ellen

I think it's a good idea. It makes perfect sense to combine everything instead of dealing with this one, that one, and too many. And I think you did an excellent job of explaining it all to us. I, too, couldn't find the sound wall, but if it's something in the future... you know that's fine i have no questions

thank you

jim i don't have any questions or concerns thanks

thank you

bruce

go bears player

no questions concerns

deaf

okay

I assume this does not affect the number of beds approved for the South 40,

correct? No. The beds that are approved on the site are part of the existing CUP. And so we are simply trying to consolidate all of that into a single CUP. Okay.

So by enacting this CUP, or maybe already, maybe it's already been enacted, we've approved 328 more beds for the university by this acquisition of property?

Well, those beds are currently approved in the CUPs that were existing on the font bond site.

The other quick question I had was about event parking. And I assume, well, I shouldn't assume. What sort of events would those be and what sort of parking is anticipated on the site?

Well, certainly we know commencement is potentially one of those places where parking is at a premium during those types of events, large events like that. I want to make sure.

Would sporting events be part of this?

Well, as I've been here before and talked about, we typically don't have that many people driving to sporting events or WashU sports. And it would not be close to the fields. But that's – I don't – event parking, we're really thinking large event parking.

Okay. Okay. don't think i have anything else thanks thank you yeah

i do a few questions uh the uh and i'll just pick up first on the on the parking because i don't know that this is you know set up with the street crossings and everything else for it to be pretty any intense overflow parking for washoe events so how do you intend to handle that

We certainly would take steps to ensure working with our public safety partners, with our WashU PD, to be able to ensure that we manage traffic flow in the event that we had a need for an overflow parking for a large event like Commencement.

Okay, and that would be something that would happen how often per year would you have a larger event? No, we

have commencement once a year. There may be other commencement. Commencement, there's several different things that happen around commencement, so you may have multiple times. Any thoughts? Really? Okay.

any plans right

yeah and i guess some of the questions i'm going to ask and come from what we went through when you were looking at the prior development where the neighbors are most sensitive to and a lot of that would be um the more traffic uh the ingress and egress and everything else and the hours of of the actual parking um i know that you have a restriction in here i think seven to ten on outdoor activities on this site And so just thinking comprehensively, wanting to make sure that use of the site for even overflow parking isn't something that would disrupt what the neighbors are used to with the font bond usage. And that's my concern there.

And we would certainly look to work closely with the city on that, but we would also take the steps to have our police, WashU PD, to help manage with that.

another question, and maybe the easiest ways to kind of go down the staff recommendations. And one of them, the first, the second one is maintaining the property. I know that you, you designated in your letter that there are several buildings, I think three buildings that you intend to probably bring down the next in the foreseeable future.

There are certainly some that we are looking at that are in poor condition, and some of those sites weren't in use by FontBot, actually.

Right, and if that would happen, I imagine you have to come back here. So any questions on maintaining this green space or what you're going to do during that period? I mean that, that require you to come back to us. Is that your understanding?

My understanding is we would need to come back for, for certainly for a permit for approval to come back to the city for sure.

And something else I struggled with, this all makes sense to me, consolidating and making it easier both for you and for the city to do the work. The documents are talk about how CUPs that the use is not temporary in nature. I, I certainly hope that you are having productive conversations with our school district at this point in time. And I'm wondering how that fits in their usage of the property or anything you're considering with the school district or anything else you're considering with property fits in with what you're proposing here.

Well, certainly in terms of where we want to strive to be a good neighbor and a good community partner with the schools where, uh, we certainly have, uh, had discussions to understand trying to, um, as they assess their needs for this, for the site. But I wouldn't want to get ahead of anything, any of their plans in terms of details.

So again, it would probably require coming back here again for something that's happening.

Absolutely.

On the dormitory beds, I think Jeff brought this up, or somebody brought this up too as well. One of the buildings you intend to tear down is 124 beds. And the staff recommendation is to allow a dormitory capacity of 328 beds. So it sounds like that could be reduced significantly in the staff recommendation by an additional 124 beds, right? Of the building that's the St. Joseph's Hall, I think it is. Okay. I would suggest that we do that.

But certainly we haven't made any decisions, but certainly we would come back to the city if the determination was made that that building would come down for sure. I'm just saying that the decisions certainly this is one that we are looking at but we would absolutely come back to the city

and trying to be respectful of the neighbor concerns we've heard in the past if that's something that you're not planning on using those 124 beds i would make i'd like the recommendation that we reduce that staff that total bed count by the 124 beds of the building that's coming down that's something

certainly if the building comes down then certainly we would we would we would lose those beds

that's my that'd be my recommendation on the approval tonight um then i think seven i'm talking about exterior lighting that the uh the dark skies compliance words aren't used with color and everything else. I'm hoping just given WashU's pretty impressive practices with sustainability and awareness of night sky and everything else, that I would hope that that would be dark sky compliant for number seven recommendation by the city. And perhaps updating some of the lighting that's there. This already says in here, everything shall be shielded and diverted away from adjacent property. et cetera, and the dark sky compliance just goes a little bit further with color coding and things like that, which I think you have done on the main campus. And I'm just hoping that you'll agree to extend the same thing to this property, again, in consideration of the neighbors' expectations of the city.

Well, certainly if we were to make updates. we would comply with the regulations for

sure. That's a recommendation that I would like to see too. We talked about the hardscaping. Yeah, and then 12, there was a, talking about the deed restriction. My understanding that under this, and a couple of these seem to have been pulled from prior CUPs, but my understanding is that this is, you do not intend, this is not authorizing any building at this point in time of new parking lots or anything else. And that this deed restriction probably is already filed along Big Bend, or along, is it Y-Down? Yes. Pulling that in. So there's no new construction being authorized there. any of this yes okay with those recommendations um i think that that looks great thanks thank you

any uh comments from the audience there any hands up anything further you'd like to say

Just thank you for your consideration and for the opportunity to be able to consolidate these in a thoughtful way.

Okay. Before we vote, any further comments?

I think my two recommendations, did I only do two? I could do more than that. Was it dark sky compliance reducing the bed count by 124? To add that in. In the recommendations, right? Yeah.

The only concern I have with that is that we're limiting the number of dormitory beds in that case. Then we are forcing WashU's hand in a way that basically they're saying that they have to take that building down. I don't see a need necessarily for restricting the number of beds if they wanted to rehab that building. I know that most likely that building might be taken down, but unless I'm misunderstanding.

Well, again, when we've been before with WashU, we have to work a lot on trust with the neighborhoods and there is concern with density. If this is a building that is not something where they would house their students and it's something that, and this is acceptable to WashU, it seems to me this would make a cleaner document for us to be presenting with our zoning neighborhoods and at the city council.

And that would be if we took that building down.

Do you intend to rehab the building? Is there any plan?

I'm saying that we are assessing these buildings. We have not made a final decision. We point that out because we just want to be open with the fact that that building is not in the best of conditions. Okay. So we have not made any definitive plans or come to the city to say that we would take them down, but we want to be transparent that these buildings are in very difficult conditions and they weren't in use by Bon Bon previously.

I misunderstood. I thought you pretty much decided not to put students in that building.

Councilmember Buse, if this helps too, the way that we've worded it with breaking it out, if they decided to tear that building, that hall down, they would not be allowed to then just move the 124 beds to a different building. So unlike the overlay district, which we did for South 40, this kind of freezes the regulations and stands still in time. With South 40 with that bed density, they can move beds around or add beds or change it. And here we're trying to restrict it to really how it is right now. So if exactly.

That's my that absolutely. That's my understanding.

Do we have a motion?

I move to recommend approval to the city council with the 14 staff conditions.

Plus dark skies.

Dark sky in number seven.

Okay. And adding dark sky in condition number seven.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you for coming in.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Okay, that is the end of our new business. And we do have a discussion session on a text amendment.

I heard you mention a couple things. I just caught text there at the end. One of the items that we're going to start out with, though, is we're going to talk about some of our comprehensive plan objectives and key results. I want to warn you, there's quite a few slides, but I'm going to try to go through it. This is... reasonably as possible. There's going to be a lot of fun data, so just stop me if you have any questions. First thing we're going to talk about, lot sizes, setbacks, and density. Broadly what we're encompassing there is our lot dimensions. Whenever you open up residential zoning districts, what are the immediate items that you're going to see? So in the comprehensive plan feedback that we got, we got pretty consistent feedback that residents highly valued their neighborhoods. They're definitely open to development, but they want to make sure that development is context sensitive and sort of respects the character of that area. Lot size is one of those elements. Those lot dimensions are elements that come into that. So we'll definitely focus a lot on those. One item I want to bring in and talk about for a second is density because as we get into our specific goals here the key result that we're going to look at is modifying the lot size and setback regulations to better align with historic neighborhood patterns however density was such a common thing that was paired with that in the comprehensive plan i want to talk about that a little bit as well in conjunction oh didn't even pay attention you know we're full screen beautiful yes sorry guys So, before we get into this I kind of want to talk to you guys about how we kind of came up with the data that we're about to show you a lot of it goes into. GIS geographic information systems that's basically a fancy way of saying mapping I like to describe GIS is excel in 3D so a lot of mapping is attaching a spreadsheet of data. to a point or a shape somewhere in geographic space. And we're able to sort of extract a lot of data from that. So just whatever your normal spreadsheet activities are, just another dimension to make it a lot more fun. And so as we get into the specific lot dimensions, there's a specific tool that we use called minimum bounding geometry that's built into the software that we use. I want you to understand that this is pretty solid, but it does have some nuances to it. So whenever you're dealing with weirdly shaped lots that have a lot of extra sides or like perfect parallelograms really throw it off. So for most of our lots are rectangular and that does a great job. But with some of those other ones, we definitely had to double check the data that we had. And that's where we get into just adding basic formulas to double check things as we go along. So let's start out by talking about setbacks. So really most of the setback challenges that we come across have to do with detached structures, specifically detached garages. We've never really run into issues where like a side yard setback or a front yard setback is really presenting issues in development But we get really consistent challenges with garages because you have a lot of old garages that are not meeting the current five foot setback rule. To clarify to that five foot setback, a lot of that has to do with fire regulations, fire spreading between property. However, as time has gone on, that's less of a challenge perhaps than it used to be. so one of the goals in revising this is in potentially revising regulations is is there a regulation that's more appropriate for detached garages so one thing that we're looking at here is reducing that detached garage setback to one foot from a side rear property line where that garage is no taller than one story or 14 feet and we want to be pretty intentional about that height aspect of it because a lot of these garages that fall within the setback that five foot setback that want to get rebuilt they are smaller garages. They're not these taller garages that have really high-pitched roof that might have an accessory dwelling unit above them. Once you start to have that massing of structure taller, it might not be as appropriate. We also don't want to set our setback just at zero. There's always nuances. Every time we get an as-built survey, it's off by the tiniest amount and you don't want to have a weird situation where somebody accidentally crosses the property line or you have roof overhangs and so you want to make sure that that's That's not, you're not creating those conditions.

Ryan, can we ask questions as you go or do you want us to wait? Yeah, go for it. That one foot garage setback, is that to the building face or to the face of the foundation?

You know, I wish I had a great answer for you on that. We're just saying that it's a one-foot setback because whenever we get those as-built surveys back, sometimes they show it to the foundation. Sometimes they'll show it to the brick on top of that foundation that's a little bit over. Any strong opinions on that?

I just wouldn't want to let the foundation slide too far, too close to the edge of the site. Okay. or beyond the site, in the worst case.

So clarify. Part of the structure that is closest to the boundary? Yeah. Okay.

Frank, can I ask a question too, as long as we've stopped? What was that?

So the setback is measured from the property boundary to the portion of the structure that is closest to that property boundary. There are a couple of exceptions, like on a main structure, I think. Like the roof projections and sometimes porches are exempted, but if there's no applicable exemption, it is whatever portion of that structure, whether it be the brick or the foundation, whatever's closer to that property boundary, that's where you measure it from. So it's got to be, yeah, one foot from there.

Yards are usually measured to things above grade,

correct?

I believe, yeah.

only concern i wanted to express is a particular situation i know that this was built a few years ago but um where the house that built the garage was elevated so when it was built it did overshadow the house you know it it did feel taller and i don't know if there's any way to address that photography or not so just raising that one pardon me No, the house itself. The house that built the garage was up higher than the house here is lower. And so when that garage went up, it did have a significant impact. We had some very unhappy neighbors, but it was a five foot.

You're talking about an example in Clavarack park.

I am.

Okay. Well, I think in this case, at least with this, that would, that, that is a two story structure that would go over 14 feet. So that wouldn't be applicable to the setback rules.

Just, I'm just talking in general, because if you have a slope, which we do have in many neighborhoods, it does feel taller than the house in front of it. So, um, Yeah, I don't know if we're talking about the same spot because I didn't know that. I bet we may be. We'll

just wait until we get to the infill discussion later, guys. Okay. We'll be real excited. All right, just

raising that to

consideration. Yeah, because I think the height and infill, you have to – we have to kind of decide where the line wants to fall. So that's where the 14-foot, keeping it very short for this – kind of anything above that would have a bigger setback because when we get into a lot of one-offs where we have slopes and then people have to do additional engineering and grading and analysis for for those garages so it all goes into play in terms of how much costs and upfront work it is. So we have to figure out where that balance. So from our perspective, a 14 foot tall structure, I think could be closer without as much of an impact. But Ryan has more slides that I think will help us facilitate that discussion.

One foot. able to do anything.

I mean, that's definitely a real consideration. And whenever we've had these applications come before us, that's not usually something folks bring up to us. Because I usually let people know, I'm like, hey, if you want to go for this variance to be able to reconstruct a garage, that's great. Definitely be mindful of these things. We've never really gotten feedback in terms of a maintenance concern. Most of the time, too, these setback variances, they're they're pretty evenly split between side and rear property lines, but definitely that one side yard line is really the only spot that you're going to run into that challenge. And we just haven't seen that challenge occur.

I just want to clarify for, would this be, would this be just replacing like an existing, uh, Garage in the rear, or like, let's just say if this was brand new construction would, if long as it was under the 14 foot height, would you be able to build to the one foot setback

or. The proposals for any new garage. Okay. So if somebody wanted to go higher than 14 feet, they would then need to abide by that five foot setback. We're only wanting to call out those shorter garages.

it just feels tight maybe that maybe that's the basis of a lot of our comments i think for a lot of reasons one foot doesn't seem like much and if and do i understand correct but if two lots back up to each other and there's no easement back there maybe there's always an easement if there's no easment those structures could be two feet apart

correct and that condition exists in a lot of places I'd say most commonly, the ones I found were most commonly in and around Hillcrest area, definitely on the east side of town. There's definitely examples more on the west side of town, probably more so in like Davis Place than you would find in a place like Clayton Gardens, just because there's been so much new construction in Clayton Gardens comparatively. Davis Place is a little older. All right, any more questions? All right. We can always come back to these items, guys. But let's jump to talking about lot width. So every zoning district is going to have its outliers in terms of whether a lot meets the minimum lot width. And to clarify, every zoning district does have a minimum lot width. So in R2, it might be something like 60 feet. In R3, it's something like 50 feet. Actually, most of them. R3 and up, I believe, are a minimum width of about 50 feet. And that's one of those ways of controlling the mass and density along a block. But there's always going to be outliers. So we wanted to look at this data and see, hey, is there anywhere where our zoning code is just not meeting what the actual existing conditions are? You can see that R2 and R5 really stand out. Over half of R5 lots are smaller than the minimum lot width. About 30% of those are two lots. So can we... can we look at a different lot width that might be more appropriate? One of the things that you kinda wanna consider is if you're decreasing the lot width, you're creating avenues for subdivision and increased density. to talk about R2 for a second. We initially looked at a different lot width for R2, and this was presented to the city council. And after really spending some time with it, it really didn't appear to be worth it. It was creating too many avenues for subdivision in places that might not be appropriate. In the places where subdivision might be appropriate, it doesn't look like that there's a great mechanism to sort of call that out or create that. So really to leave R2 as it is, despite the fact that there is a big chunk that don't meet minimum width, that's probably appropriate. However, R5 seems to have a much easier approach. So right now that minimum width is 50 feet. What if that was changed to 40 feet? So right now R5 is really all concentrated over in the high point to MUN area. And if that was changed, you'd see 50% of those lots become conforming. 43%, no change. Four could be subdivided. However, that's actually no change from the existing condition. And then 3%, a really small amount would remain non-conforming. And you can kind of see from this map here, a couple of that 3%, which is not many, These down here are townhome units there. So they actually fall into like a 20 foot width, which is going to happen on any property that goes the 20 foot route.

Sorry, when you're saying they're non-conforming and talking about potentially changing those, are these non-conforming currently too big or too small?

Too small. So the lot width requirements are just a minimum right now, 50. So anything you see that's not, let's see, anything that you see that is green on this map is something that is smaller than 50 feet wide. a lot of 45 feet there's a lot of 40 depending on where you are in this neighborhood

so if i understand correctly it's not necessarily that we're now saying to lots that your lot is this that the lot is already like that we're just decreasing it to bring them basically within code to say that like now your lot meets the requirement of 40 feet if it's like 45. there's not actually changes that are being made to lot

sizes. Is that accurate? Correct. An adjustment to the R5 district of 50 feet to 40 feet would not actually change any of the conditions around how you could build on a lot, whether you could subdivide a lot. All it does is bring more of those properties into conformance.

And I think, too, it's interesting because even on some of these where it says could be subdivided, like this large red block on Southwood I previously lived in. And that's three buildings that are just all common ownership. So it's not like it's just there's a grassy field there where, you know, a couple of big buildings could go up. Like even if that was subdivided, it would probably maintain kind of its current form.

With going to the 40-foot width, would that allow multiple properties to be combined for greater density in the

future? Not more so than in the current conditions. R5 lends itself to density fairly well just because it's meant to sort of cover both high point and demand. As you can kind of see, the lots are very, very different shapes. Changing the lot width doesn't really change the likelihood of density to occur. I do see that there is a hand up. Once we get through all of these slides that we can come back and take any audience questions as well. So in that question of density, let's get into sort of the relationship between lot area and density. First, I'd like to say that no changes to lot area are being proposed here. Just as there's a minimum lot width, there is a minimum lot area to every lot for R2. I can't remember if it might be like 6,000 or 7,000 square feet. For a lot of other lots, it tends to get down as low as like 5,000 square feet, but there's also a lot of lot density And I've added... Those started R3 and up. I added R1 and R2 just kind of as a comparison here. But what this chart on the right examines is... Where are their nonconformities? Where you see green, that is a percentage of lots that are nonconforming in terms of the size. That means they're too small. And then density, where is their nonconformity in terms of having too many units on a lot or the ratio of units to lot area is too high? Now, where you see that green and that orange parallel, that nonconformity is largely caused, not in all circumstances, but largely caused by the size of the lot. Especially in like your R1, R2, R3. That just means that you don't have too many units on a property. Your property is just technically too small, so it throws off the ratio. But if you look at something like R5 or R7s off the chart, that means that there's a much higher number of units on that property than would normally be allowed. So is there an appropriate way to adjust density for these different zoning districts? One thing you have to kind of consider, though, is if you start adjusting the density, that can scale very rapidly in terms of the size of a lot. So on this, actually I'll wait a second to get into that. Some of the findings that we had as we looked into density is that R3 actually has a ratio. It's redundant though because you have a minimum lot area of 5,000 square feet and you can have a duplex with a minimum lot area or 2,500 square feet per unit.

Do you have a city map that shows your orange and green as a whole?

terms of density

yeah in term in terms of this conversation like we just saw the demon the r3 area primarily do you have a map that shows all of these as in the city

I don't have a density map. Does

that make sense what I'm saying?

Yeah, I don't have density map in this, but that's because the outcome is we actually found that we really don't want to adjust density even though this chart shows that R5 here might be off the chart in terms of non-conforming density. This chart here, the upper chart on the right here, if we were to adjust density from 1,500 square feet of lot area per dwelling unit to 1,400 square feet of lot are per dwelling unit, only 100 square feet of lot you dramatically change what folks can do with their lot. You have 50 additional lots that could add at least one, 40 additional lots that could at least two units. It really starts to scale and that's where you start to get the incentive of should I tear down this structure to build something new? The feedback in the comprehensive plan was, We want to maintain the existing housing stock. It's historic. It's an asset to the community. And so although there's these big nonconformities in terms of density, we don't want to propose something that is going to incentivize tearing down these existing structures. We did find that R3, the ratio in R3 is largely redundant. We don't really need it. There's only a couple lots that actually don't meet the ratio. I mean, it literally might be like two lots, if I recall, two or three lots, and they might be a few hundred feet smaller. I think what maybe is more appropriate for R3 is rather than having a ratio would be just saying, yes, duplexes are allowed here because ratios are intended to scale normally. which is why if you go to like an R4, R5, R6, it's a ratio of dwelling unit per lot area. Whereas in R3, you're not allowed to scale that. If somebody bought a bunch of R3 lots and consolidate them, they couldn't maintain density by scaling that ratio. They could max out at one or two units. So really removing the ratio is kind of redundant in R3, and we could probably just remove it.

um do you does either the current ordinances or your proposed talk at all about maximum lot size i mean maybe the beam has been project that we looked at a couple weeks ago was an outlier but it worried me in terms of the size of lot it created for one dwelling unit essentially

Yeah, I spent some time digging into that, where that exists throughout the country, and it's very, very rare. There's a couple of examples. There's like one in Seattle, one in Portland. It's definitely something that could be done. There's just not a lot of examples of it, so it's hard to really understand the consequences, but it's definitely something that

wanted to buy two, three, four lots, combine them into a huge lot within a neighborhood that has small houses and build a really big house. We don't have any way of

quote unquote stopping that. You can kind of start to address that with maximum lot size or even getting into somewhat floor area ratio. But the problem is, is that just because a lot is not consolidated doesn't mean somebody's gonna do what you want with it. So for example, for that recent project that we saw, they didn't necessarily need to consolidate those lots. It helps them because they could connect the two structures, but if they weren't connecting the structures, then the primary structure on the Northern lot would have been the garage. All they would have had to do is maybe add a dwelling unit space to it, add a space for a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and it meets all the requirements. And we still lost a duplex out of it. So there's a lot of routes you could go, but at the end of the day, zoning regulations are really designed to mitigate the impacts of density, not necessarily encourage it.

Right. Just adding that quickly because I think that's a shared sentiment that we like the character of our neighborhoods, which includes neighborhoods, not just a big or large dwelling. I know some places require those any building on a lot to have a master bedroom and a bath. It can't just be a garage. and something like that that could control consolidation of lots for one large unit. I would love us to look into, and I think conversations. The other part that came out very clearly in the plan was retain the duplexes, give all those incentives, as you mentioned, to retain duplexes and alternative housing.

That's definitely something we can explore more Another item I just want to talk about for a second is R7, because throughout this whole process, the R7 zoning district kept showing up as having a lot of nonconformities. R7 is not very big. It's four lots. Right there, it's right there on Brentwood Boulevard across from those tennis courts at Shop Park. Three buildings and a parking lot. One of those buildings doesn't meet the use requirements because it's mixed use. You're not technically supposed to have mixed use in R7. Two of the three buildings don't meet the density ratio. They're technically too dense for the site. None meet their canopy coverage. None meet their impervious coverage. R7 in this instance doesn't really seem to do its job. It'd probably be more appropriate if these properties were rezoned to M3. That's what the adjacent properties are. Also, that's the zoning district that would get these folks closest to the existing conditions. If something tragic were to happen to these properties, say there was a natural disaster of some kind and it was to the point where they had to maybe demolish or there's extensive renovation they could run into a lot of challenges right now in terms of trying to maintain repair rebuild those structures as is whereas looking at maybe rezoning these properties is going to help better protect those properties the way that they are

would that be dissolution then of r7 entirely just getting rid of that and saying it'll be m3 those would be rolled into m3

correct okay there's no other r7 properties All right, so to kind of summarize the items that we've talked about here. So in terms of setbacks, the only setback change we're really looking at is that garage aspect of one foot for those shorter garages. Not looking at any changes to lot area. Lot width, revising R5 maybe from 50 feet to 40 feet to bring those properties in conformance. Density, removing the redundant ratio in R3 but not touching anything else. And then maybe considering rezoning the R7 district to M3 and doing away with R7.

I don't understand this process. So now based on this explanation and the summaries, what are the next steps?

The next steps would be to investigate any of those items that you guys had outstanding questions about. And once we felt that maybe any questions were resolved, possibly looking to text amendment.

Thank you.

Well, from the comments, do you have specific items that you will have to revise on this summary?

If there's a lot of interest in talking about lot a lot maximum or something of that in that vein of conversation that's what my big takeaway so far has been that that might be the most appropriate thing to take a look at certainly these items could proceed before something like that was ready but what we want to do here is we want to address that key result from the comprehensive plan of making sure there are a lot sizes setbacks densities all that reflect the existing character of the neighborhoods so if that's something you guys feel needs to be coupled with that then that's something that we'd want to pay attention to

I would agree. I think we're going in the direction of reflecting what's there currently. So I think generally that's the right approach.

And I like the way you've looked at what's there and how to make it conform, but also where do we want to be? Like not changing R2, but 5, 8, The one foot setback with the garages is also something that I kind of struggle with too. Our lots are not that big. I

agree.

Going back to that garage, one foot off, would that differ if, for example, it was a corner lot? So being on the side, you know, up at front, I mean, how does that differ? Is it all the same or do we look at that independently?

So the recommendation is for one foot from a side or rear yard setback. If it was a corner lot where that garage is going to be towards the street, it would have a front yard set back there. So it'd be set back to whatever that building line was at the house. There's no other comments. It may be appropriate to take the audience question. Ian, you had your hand up.

Yeah, can you hear me? I appreciate the opportunity to weigh in. Assuming that you can hear me, Ian Hageman representing Hillcrest. I'm one of the trustees. I just thought the discussion of subdivision and Too big versus too small was very interesting. I wanted to call attention to what happened at 21 Dartford, I think it is, recently. In R2 Hillcrest, the prevailing lot width is 50 foot width. I understand that R2 requires 60. There was a situation where there was ultimately a 60 and a 40, and rather than being allowed to reconsolidate those or subdivide into... we ended up with a single hundred, and the resulting construction is really out of proportion, and our neighbors are extremely upset about that overly large house on a 100-foot wide lot that's really the only one of its scale. So I think that illustrates the importance of getting this right and what happens when there's a localized change in density. So that's my comment.

Yeah, thank you very much. I can provide a little context on that one for you guys. So that was one of the big items that sort of instigated this conversation. That came up a lot in the comprehensive plan. And so, of course, we looked into that and said, where are all these other places where we might have these opportunities where somebody might, in the neighborhood like Hillcrest, where somebody might say, oh, I want to do something larger here. I can't subdivide the property. I think there might, I think I found one example, and that example ended up being a property that was relatively new compared to the neighborhood. the vast, vast majority of subdivisions would likely occur in a place like Clavarack or Tanglewood where you have much wider lots and where subdivision there could really, really change the character of that neighborhood. So that one's a difficult one, but ultimately the challenges prove to be greater than the benefits. Nancy, you had your hand up. Nancy, are you there? That's up, Nancy. If you are talking, we are unable to hear you.

One thing I will mention though on the lot subdivision, and this is something that we did in that conversation with the council, talk a lot about with R2. The only downside to just looking at what other lots right now could potentially replicate Dartford Is if somebody does consolidate, they buy the lot next door and they do consolidate the lots. And then we wanted another 10 years from now or so to subdivide them again. They wouldn't be able to. So that's the only. piece floating out there is that right now in this moment in time, there aren't a ton of lots that would result in the same condition of Dartford. But if the house, you know, something like the house on up the street here that consolidated and is tearing down the duplex, if they decided to resubdivide, would they be allowed to resubdivided or would over time something change? So that is a little bit of something that we still have to put in the back of our minds. At this point, that discussion with the council, it seemed that there was not a lot of interest because of potential subdivisions that would result in removal of existing homes. But it's always hard to know exactly what the future holds.

So you're saying they would not be able to subdivide in the future? Is that correct?

So if you have for a lot of our neighborhoods that do have that 50 foot prevailing lot as of today, if somebody did combine two lots and then we wanted to go back to subdividing it to come back to the context, they wouldn't be able to because they would not be able to meet the lot with. So that's the balance there right now. You might have two lots, but if somebody does consolidate and we don't have a provision to stop them from consolidating, then they would not be to separate again.

thing if one is under the, is non-conforming, is under the 50 because you're

going to... Right. So this comes up in a lot of our other neighborhoods. So in Hillcrest and in Davis Place and in High Point, Wydown Forest, that's where you have a lot of the lots where the existing kind of standard of those neighborhoods is less than 60 foot wide lots.

I think that in the interest of this board, I don't want to speak for everyone, but I feel like we're mostly concerned with something like the Dartford that we don't necessarily want in our tenure on the board to set a precedent where these lots could be combined. I don't think there's much concern about subdivision down the road. It's more that we don't want these mega-lots being built, if I'm understanding correctly from what we're saying. i ryan i think in answer to your question if there's more to to consider i think that is something we wouldn't want to pursue except there's ways to limit that

all right if there's no outstanding outstanding questions we can jump over to infill development All right, let's dive in. A lot of really good data to get into this one. So a lot of the findings are pretty much the same in that this is kind of coming from the same place residents tend to favor maintaining the existing homes. They're open to development but they want it to be context sensitive and really residents gave us the feedback that they are concerned about the increasing size of new homes. And so we wanna make sure that we're establishing appropriate infill development standards for building form and materials We're largely going to focus on form today. Materials will come later down the road. Blocking myself here from seeing. Okay, so I'm going to kind of walk you through the story of infill. Where is infill happening? Where you see the brighter orange color, that's a newer structure. Where you see the darker greener color, that's an older structure. You can see that infill development is kind of scattered around. However, there is definitely concentrations like Clayton Gardens, particularly like the Clayton Gardens addition has a lot of it. You see a lot of it sort of in the old town area, but otherwise largely scattered throughout. And so there's a lot of reasons somebody might choose to demo an existing house. However, one thing kind of important to note in Clayton is that the land value ratios are very interesting. So this map here is showing you basically what proportion of a property is just in the land itself, where you see that brighter orange color, that's the higher ratio. As you get to that higher ratio of land value, that development re-incentive, that development pressure tends to increase. This data is a few years old. I felt that would be more appropriate rather than giving something brand new. I'm not trying to put the data out there for everybody in the world, what the current circumstances, what property you should go for. So this is a few years and doesn't reflect some of like our current coverage and regulation standards, how that might've impacted the land value versus the structure value. But it's somewhat reflective of what we've seen in terms of development trends. There's a lot of space up here and around Clayton Gardens where it's all the values in the land. A little bit in other places. You know, you can see an area like the Morelands, you know, where you have a lot of that nonconforming density, nonconforming, you know, lot areas, that kind of stuff. That's where that tends to stay more in the value of the building. Because once you tear down that building, you can't build that stuff back. And then sort of layering that over with floor area ratio kind of starts to tell the same story but it's just another interesting item to compare. floor area ratio something we've talked about a lot here, but just as a reminder it's a ratio of what is the square footage of a property versus was the square footage of structure. One square foot of lot one square foot of structure floor area ratio of one. So where you see a lot of those higher floor area ratios, yeah, you have it in your multifamily districts or similar high densities like High Point or DeMunn, but you see those big floor area ratios over here and around Clayton Gardens and around Old Town. So how have structures changed over time? This is a really interesting graph to look at because we have in the screen here, this is the quantity, the number of structures built in a given year. And then our line here is our floor area ratio. So we see we've got this big building boom here in the 20s. You can see World War II kind of right here sort of depresses that construction post-war boom and sorts to level out with a little bit of a boost as time goes on. We can see that there's kind of a line that fluctuates, but it's relatively consistent in and around 3 plus or minus. Whereas the new stuff that's coming around, that's 0.6. We're doubling the size of homes in terms of new construction. And there's not a huge quantity of new construction compared to this mass that was built around here. So those properties are definitely likely to stand out. So let's take a look at the size of homes, breaking it down by zoning district. So this is a distribution curve here, your bell curve of what is the floor area shown to given zoning district. Now something kind of to keep in the back of your mind here is that R2, 75% of the land area, 75% of lots in Clayton, whereas everything else is 5% plus or minus. You'll find R2 everywhere, whereas if you look at any of these other zoning districts, aside from maybe R4, that one's scattered around a little bit, but they're all relatively concentrated. Like if you say R5 zoning district to me, I'm going to know that's High Point to mine. If you say R3, I'm going really consistent average here. R2, this orange here, it's bigger on one side than the other, basically here meaning that there's a big chunk of houses over here and there's definitely some houses that get bigger but less so. And then all the other zoning districts, they have these really wide spreads, which I think is quite interesting. And since they're concentrated, what that tells me is if you go to like an R5 or an R6 that has these wide spreads but concentrated in terms of where those lots are, a different size structure next, you know, bigger versus a smaller structure next to each other isn't going to be that weird because there's such a huge spread in a small area versus like an R2 which is everywhere. So what happens if we break that R2 down into the individual neighborhoods? On the right here is a graph sort of breaking down each of those subdivisions. So we can see Clayton Gardens, Clayton Gardens addition where we have a lot of that new construction. Our average is above 0.4, whereas Clayshire and Clayshire Ridge are less than half of that. However, those are actually governed the same. We have the Clayshire Urban Design District, we have the Clayton Gardens Urban Design District. But in the actual zoning code, it's Clayton Gardens slash Clay Shire, despite the fact that they're different. They're governed the same way, but those houses, house sizes look very different. You get somewhere, you know, Tanglewood, that's the bit that's over up against Ladue. Very, very small. That's a third of the size of those Clayton Gardens homes. If we were to translate that mass, how would that actually present on the street? So what happens if we layer this over property sizes? This is a lot here looking at this one. So let me try to explain as best I can. On the left axis here, this is where we have our floor area ratio. And then down here on the bottom is where we have So we can see here that Clayton Gardens is up in this top left corner. That means we have relatively small lots compared to the rest of our R2 zoning, but we have really, really high floor area ratios. Tanglewood that I talked about, those are pretty big compared to Clayton Gardens, but it's got a really, really low floor area ratio. So if maybe if you took the exact square footage of a Clayton Garden sized house, you know, and stuck it on Tanglewood, maybe it wouldn't stand out. I mean, probably might because you're probably talking about one story versus two story, but the actual square footage of the house, maybe not. But if you scaled that floor area ratio, if we took the same proportion of house from Clayton Gardens and put that in Tanglewood, that might stand out quite a bit. So what are some solutions that we can look at in terms of managing infill? As I investigated what other communities do, we actually use quite a few tools already. So for example, we use that mean roof slope height and then we also, we've got a few height mitigation elements that we have in like the Clayton Gardens Urban Design District, but there's definitely a few that we don't use. One that I found was really common is basement exposure limits. This tends to vary from community to community, but basically the point is that if X amount of your basement is showing, that counts as a story. Now, I don't know that we necessarily need a specific basement exposure limit, but I think creating a definition of what a story is is probably going to be really appropriate. And we can bring something like this into it. We can bring elements of half stories and dormers into that as well, because we've seen those examples of when somebody comes in, they want to do an ADU over the garage. It's a half story, but it's a facade of a half story. It's a lot bigger. That adds a lot of massing. So that's one element that we can kind of bring down the massing of houses. Another one is adding an official finished floor height. Again, another item that varies by community. Some have something really specific. Some have kind of an average. Probably an average is more appropriate for a community like Clayton. New exact floor area ratios are really good for like new subdivisions with relatively flat terrain or neighborhoods that have very well documented finished floor heights. But maybe looking at some kind of average or some kind of relationship to adjacent properties is probably an appropriate direction for us to go.

Looking at those two, we've had several residential solutions that the houses were built up higher because of a rear garage and the ramp going down that pushed the whole house up. So it didn't look like the front facade was more than two floors. But in reality, I guess we might be able to consider that in the future. And quite often we try to push that floor down, but you can't do it because of a rear garage on a lower level. So how do those two work together?

I guess it's going to depend on how you define the finished floor height or you define the basement exposure, because most of the regulations I saw were coming from the front facade. A good example would be actually I'll just. Going back to this house that you see here on the right, clearly a lot of that's exposed. But you can see here there's a retaining wall that comes up. We'll say that you rotated this and this is the back of the house. That presents as a three-story house. Most regulations I've seen out there don't actually account for that. Doesn't mean that we can't, but just an item to consider. I did see a couple of examples where the facade had to present as a number of stories only above that portion. So say only the right side of this had the exposed garage, then that might count as two stories. But if the left side wasn't exposed, then you could set it up so it kind of has to step down. I don't know if I explained that properly, but It's going to depend on where you're identifying those basement exposures and where you're identifying that finished floor height.

Yeah, and I think some of it won't necessarily be solved though. So think of like Stratford is a good street where we have rebuilt almost every house on the north side of Stratford. And that lot – the angle drops off significantly. So part of what we have – how we currently measure height is using existing average grade that prevents somebody who has a somewhat relatively flat lot from building the lot up in order to create that basement level garage but when you have streets that have existing grade changes like stratford does it facilitates you having that lower level so that's where a newer using the definition of a story in a way that we don't currently. Right now, our definition of storage just basically talks about measuring from the floor to the ceiling, you know, so it doesn't have any height mitigation. But if you introduce that exposure level, that's how you might be able to reduce the use of those lower-level basements in certain areas.

Will these changes at all affect how we then sell and consider real estate? I mean, when you're buying... you know, your house and you're counting your rooms, isn't that gonna, I mean, that will ultimately affect that final sale or that final listing, right?

Yeah, and this is where when the conversations first started in the conference of play and discussion, something that Ryan has been looking, that's why we're doing a lot of data analysis of where we stand right now because a lot of the value of property in Clayton is reflected by the square footage of your home and what do you sell that for. So if there are elements of us restricting how you build a lot, well, we've reduced our lot coverage, so that restricts you. Are there other ways to allow design of multi-bedrooms with different half stories? So how could we still facilitate a half story but have design elements of that roof or the dormer style or other elements that maybe help mitigate the impacts? Now we're trading footprint of house for height, but how do we not shadow every neighbor with that height?

And if you can flip back to that photo, I think back one slide. Anything we can do to reduce the number of gigantic entry stairs, like, like is shown here. It happens in so many new houses in the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years. And it's, it's, I don't personally, I think it's just sort of an awful way to get a guest into a house and we see it all the time, you know? So there's any, anything we can do code wise to I don't know if I can say not allow those, but not encourage those. That would be great. It's just, I mean, these are, you know, it's silly. I mean, you know, and they're all over the place.

Well, we had one at the previous meeting. Which I didn't like. And the only way they could get a garage on that narrow site was a tuck under. Right. And the whole house looked much higher.

And that house will be, it'll be interesting to see that house built. That house will look large, potentially too

large. I think at least with that, how the stairs were split so you don't get this. And I think it's very interesting along foresight here because you see definitely varying degrees of success and how they've dealt with that. And there's definitely successes and there's definitely failures.

And I guess I'm just, you know, the older I get and the more I think of anybody with any age arriving to that house and coming to a party at that house. I mean, you almost want a landing halfway up to rest. I mean, as silly as that sounds. Yeah.

Coming back around to kind of the items that we've talked about in the recommendations that we're looking at. So I think we should definitely look at a story definition. We should definitely have call-outs for that basement exposure, definitely talk about some half stories. I think that's going to go a really long way to helping this board sort of express the things that you've regularly expressed to folks about the massing of homes. What is a half story? How much of your basement exposed? I think that's really going to go and aid in that discussion. adding a finished floor height relative to adjacent properties. And then we also have a lot of great height mitigation strategies that are in the urban design districts. Finding a way to apply those broadly is probably going to give you guys, it's going to give staff a better mechanism to help an applicant get to a better finish line. Because oftentimes if there's a large structure, We can say, well, in our urban design districts, we have X, Y, and Z that is a good tool. It doesn't necessarily apply in this location. So it's on the applicant side, they can kind of come back and say, well, that doesn't apply to me. And then they have to come before this board and work it out. But definitely applying those across broader residential zoning districts is probably a good direction to go as well.

I have a question with the height mitigation. Is there a way... I don't want to eliminate it because I think there's scenarios, obviously, where it would work. But is there a way to push people away from the five extra feet of height for one foot of side setback? Because I believe that's the height mitigation strategy that, at least in residential areas, we almost always see. And I... I don't think it has near as great of effect as some of the other hype mitigation strategies, but since it's the easiest to do and doesn't necessarily change the new buildings or anything too much, then that's what we see a lot. So I think a lot of the other strategies, which are at least in my opinion better, get shied away from because that's such an easy one to apply.

Yeah, as we move into whatever the next generation is of architectural review guidelines, if there's stuff that's not working, we don't want to carry that over in the same way if it's not being effective.

This direction is terrific. I wish it had already been in place over the last couple years, but better late than never.

Okay. Well, Ryan will come back with more hashed out. There's a lot that goes into it, so we're trying to kind of give you guys some doses to acclimate you to all the fun stuff that Ryan's been working on. So... Now I'm just going to follow up with really brief discussion we shared. We had a discussion about public benefits with the council and then with you all for a new PUD structure. So in your packet is part of the new code language that we're drafting for the text amendment. I just wanted to take a quick moment somewhere to just check in with you guys and how some of the language has been translated from that discussion into the more code language, then ideally we'll get a little bit more feedback. And then we will get going starting next month with the public hearings for the actual text amendment. So you'll get the full code language then next month. But I just pulled out the chunk that goes over the framework. So as we talked about having a tiered system, so it will set up, you will have a PUD that's either a tier one, two or three, depending on what I've called table X here. And then based on your modification qualifier that puts you in a tier, then it tells you what public benefit requirements you would have. Following that up with public benefits, then we have Table Y, which lists out public benefits under Tier 1, 2, and 3, and also identifies some of the priority benefits. So this is where the feedback, if you have any from this, if we missed anything, Please let me know. One of the items to pull your attention to is at the end of table Y under notes. So this is where I tried to tease out a little bit more about what architectural distinction is, along with affordable housing and workforce housing. So for architectural distinction, the council said that it would be helpful for this ARB, went through ARB hats on to provide some guidance for them when it comes to a project for architectural distinction. So I wanted to try and balance, you know, tightening the potential of what architectural distinction is while also maintaining that discretion that the ARB and the council need to have within a PUD. So I envision that following this, as we get into architectural guidelines, we'll have a little bit more of a toolkit, a booklet that you all will adopt similar to the material architectural guidelines for fences, other things that are not codified, but it's just a little bit more an outline of your thought process So here for architectural distinction, we have two different ways that you can reach that. For tier one, you could reach architectural distinction just purely by putting more effort into the design at the first floor or that bottom 40 feet. So that would be more of those detail elements to make something walkable. Then to get to tier two, architectural distinction is where we've required that intention and that detail at the street level as well as at the roofline. So that's when you start to get the full facade treatment with the distinction rather than just at the ground level. If you have any questions or comments about this. Sure.

If you look at B2 in Section 405, that's on page two. I think the high quality materials, that seems to be a judgmental process. As we go further, will it be tightened up any?

The use of high-quality materials? Well, no. So the PUD is, as it says in here, it's all at the discretion of the city council. So I don't know that we would want to go that far and say you have to use brick or you have to use what that is. But it was clear from the council that they didn't want high-quality materials to be a benefit. That needed to be the entry level for a PUD. And so that's why it's included in the general requirements rather than in the public benefit. On

B3A, I don't think I really understood where the ceiling height could be reduced to 12 feet if there were an MEP infrastructure. Would that be an enclosed infrastructure as opposed to leaving everything open?

Either one. So essentially if there... if the ceiling, if they don't have an MEP corridor planned. So if they don't know where it is, then your ceiling height has to be 14, but it can be down to 12 if they've intentionally left that space for, um, for all the MEP to fit above the finished ceiling. Okay.

Yeah. Uh, in table X, it's the PUD two tiers. Um, I understand how the priority benefits work in it. However, tier one has only one priority benefit in it. So that means that is mandatory.

No, it's not mandatory. So for the priority benefits, if it's a tier one project, they could choose that one or they could choose a priority benefit from tier two or tier three. So that's why I felt like it was okay to have the priority benefits. That's kind of its own category. So a project would be required to choose a priority benefit, here are the options that would fit that, and then there's other benefits that they'll need to reach later. So a Tier 1 project could have all of their benefits technically from a Tier 3 category if they wanted to. It's just that some of the Tier 1 benefits that are listed here might be a little bit more feasible for somebody to incorporate into a smaller project, being that a Tier 1 project is requesting less modification or less density or less changes from the requirements. But that doesn't prevent somebody from selecting a benefit from a higher tier than they're labeled.

Okay, so Tier 3, they can pick from Tier 1, 2, or 3. For their priority benefit. And Tier 2, they can pick form 1 or 2. So I don't understand how Tier 1, your priority benefit, they could pick from any of the tiers. way it reads

um okay well then i can work on the language so uh the goal here is so if it's a tier one project they need to have two public benefits with at least one being a priority benefit so they you can choose public benefits from any tier that you want from a tier one for a project that's a tier three they have a total of four public benefits that are required and one of those four has to be a priority so they could choose any priority benefit but then they're out of the four, they have to have at least one benefit of a tier three and at least one of a tier two. So you can always choose any priority benefit or you can choose from your tier higher for a proportion.

I just thought the tier one was not as clear as it could be.

Okay. On that chart, Steve, could I just add one thought? Did... Was there any thought to being more aggressive about, for instance, on Tier 2, three public benefits with two being priority as opposed to just one? And the same way going up to Tier 3, four public benefits but two of them being priority? I kind of, as the project gets bigger, should we ask for more of the priority benefits? I think we should.

Sure. Yeah, that's up to you guys.

I would agree with that. I mean, I love that you're focusing on this because to truly make benefits, benefits, but let's try to get them through.

Yeah. And with that in mind, I'll probably take another look. We might need to We might want to add more. That's the only thing. In the list that we have now, we're trying to narrow it down. So if we become too prescriptive with the priority benefits, then every PUD is going to end up being the same because there's not that many to choose from. That might be something that we don't care if that's the way that it ends up. But we'll just have to look at the ratios with that in mind. But yeah.

Well, also in the future, there's probably going to be less PUDs just because of the process that we've been through. So, you know, it might be able to write, you know, we're not constricting as many projects because there should be less going through the PUD process.

Yep. Good point.

We hope.

So looking at table Y, first priority benefits extraordinary landscaping and green space provisions. And some talk about putting more of that into the code. So, again, it's a baseline versus a conversation. And similar with EV charging. MAPE requires it with every new bill, and we put it as an additional benefit. And especially as there are fewer PUDs, it would be nice to have things that we really care about that we actually put it in as a basis.

Yeah, so with the extraordinary landscape and green space, the only comment is that right now we don't really require, especially in our commercial elements, landscaped areas. So in order to make that as a baseline, then we would need to rework it to make to institute a lot coverage maximums within our commercial districts um for that one to really come into play so that's that's a benefit with ev i mean yes of course if you if it if the council instead wants to make ev requirements for these projects then we wouldn't need to have it as a benefit but that would be a step yeah so that would be you know we have not gone that far to evaluate that at this point but

right um the other one seems anything else when we when you talk about the very last one uh right on tier two the and this is similar to the comment on high quality materials high efficiency mechanical systems have a bait we already have a base i guess that's with the qualifications and so this would be something over and above that i guess it doesn't need any more qualification

Right. So we have with LEED, there are different ways for people to design to LEED. So there is potential for that. This one came up in the city council discussion as being a real goal to reduce that greenhouse gas emissions. So that's why it was included within here because we haven't gone so far as to tell people how to meet the LEED silver achievement. So there could be multiple pathways to do that.

And I also wondered, with both the workforce housing and the affordable housing, what we've seen before is there's small studios. And I don't know, does it work to have a square footage required or a percentage to be dedicated to that type of housing versus a number of units so that you might get some variation in the available spaces?

Yeah, I... Definitely had a similar thought when we were putting this together. So one piece that I'll work with Stephanie here to make sure we have it correct is the goal of having the unit distribution reflect the overall project distribution. So we will get a table from people that will tell us the percentage of studio one, two, three bedroom. And so then their affordable unit should reflect that same percentage across the numbers. So it's not a perfect science. Depending on how the overall project is weighted, you might still not have everything. But that was the attempt there. And I ran a few examples. The percent, 5% and 10% is more than we've been getting. So that's the other one that I know was big in our council discussions. How do we make it a benefit so that we're getting... number of units becomes impactful within a project, but also trying to figure out the number of units that are maybe achievable as right now in our in the context of the market and where it is and trying to get affordable. So that it in the few 100 unit projects that we've been getting this will still only be a handful of units, but it would be more than we have on any of the other projects.

Right. And then the last one again, is how prescriptive we should be inclusion of alternative energy sources Do we have a percentage of impact that we want in there or just something minor or something significant? I don't know if that can be defined more. Great. Thanks.

I have a question about that same table, and it's just one part. I keep getting held up. Under the architectural distinction, I love that that's in there. I'm getting held up on the word unique and only because unique in the sense that it's not seen before or... I'm just concerned that someone... could say, hey, we want to build a large concrete toasted ravioli as the base for the site here. And that's because it's unique. There's certainly nothing else that's been done like that. It is distinctively massive. There's distinctive massing with this one right here. Culturally rooted design within St. Louis, it'd be appropriate to have that. What mechanism do we have to push back and say, you're correct, but that is not what we want to have And I see that it says that it's evaluated by city council. Are there guidelines that say like, this is not, this would not be okay?

I mean, we can write that in if you would like. It's a tough one. The discretion of a PUD lies within the city council and their approval of it, and similar to how you all have discretion with just your normal architectural review on if something fits. So a project still has to be approved by ARB and meet all those same standards. So there are some... you know, gold posts for us. But if there's anything really specific then we can work it into the code.

Yeah, and I don't know if there's anything. I looked up synonyms for unique, and I came up with notable. That might be a good replacement. Notable, but maybe just putting a disclaimer in there that it goes along with the tasteful as determined by city council.

Yeah, and that might be the best way to do it is to add some reference back to those general ARB guidelines as well that we have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

architectural distinction is measured by the firm that's doing the work. You know, Columbus, Indiana. I'm sure a bunch of you have been there. Cummings Engine did it by paying the fees to important architects and they got incredible buildings. They got truly architecturally significant buildings, the GSA Design Excellence Program, it doesn't measure the design. It measures the ability of the design team to start with. Now, I don't know that we as a city can do either of those things, but yeah it's tough to to define yeah and and i circled the heck out of unique also i said i would not i would not use that word period to get that that's a that could it it could be it could be very it could be great design that is ununique that is extremely contextual you know so

i

yeah it's that's a hard one i

mean yeah

Yeah, I think the reason that we originally tried to bring in unique is because I heard a lot of feedback on previous approvals of PUD projects, all receiving points for good architectural significance, I think is maybe what we say in the code right now. And everybody's saying, but they're all just nice buildings. They're not... There's nothing. Yeah, so that's where I added the unique in. I looked through, you know, you referenced design excellence there, Jeff. I looked through a lot of AIA material and award material descriptions and all that to try and figure out a better way to word this. And there was a lot of references to innovative design. So I think we are, the hard part is right now we are trying to write the description of a building that we have not yet seen submitted here in Clayton. So that's where we're reaching for that. So I do think that maybe the unique, I hear you guys are professionals in your field, so maybe we'll replace unique and maybe we'll reference back to just those, some of those general ARB standards that set kind of the floor. But I do, I want to make sure that it's clear here that we're, the expectation is a level above the design that we already have established. seen constructed in the city is kind of where my head was going.

I do like how you included that example, that standard block massing with high quality materials does not rise to that level. I think that's always helpful too. So someone doesn't say, but I'm using this and well, that's still a block, you know? Yes.

this is really going in a more positive workable direction than what we had previously for our pud with the numerical adding up of points so i'm i'm pleased with the direction however i think you should change on board of alderman

yeah Yeah, I quickly pulled this over from my larger text amendment with all the procedures and everything. So this will be also the base for updates to the special development districts. That's under a similar point system right now. So that will also be kind of updated to go in the same direction as the PUDs framework that you see here. But we'll set that up for public hearings for the text amendment starting next month.

Any other comments? We're picking apart details, but I appreciate the effort. Yeah, this is good.

Any comment from the audience? Please come up to the microphone.

Hi. Thank you. My name is Joel Montgomery. And we own some property in Clayton, commercial property. And I'm parachuting in here, so it's hard for me to maybe give you comments that are relevant and germane to the topic of public benefits. But it's, in some cases, especially if you're going to build vertically in Clayton, it's very expensive, partly because of the parking that has to be integrated into the development. And parking is a very Expensive part of the development because you don't really get paid for the parking get paid a little but not enough to compensate really for the true cost and so public benefits could come into play to help maybe offset the the parking garage costs and that kind of thing to get a project to a point where the numbers make sense and discussion of public benefit if I understand correctly the topic today could come into play in a project like i would have in mind for my site to help offset the costs of let's say a garage um to the extent that those public benefits come with requirements that add back costs into the project um it may or may not result in me getting the kind of ultimate net public benefit i need to make sense out of moving forward that and that's my only question or concern and i guess i would hate to see the city box itself into maybe a system that doesn't really get a project off that help doesn't help get a project off the ground on the other hand i understand completely The concerns the city has for making sure structures are attractive and that add amenities and enhancements to a project that would help accomplish other goals like activating streets and whatnot. I understand why there are requirements. And I think all that's good, it's just a bit of a balancing act. Do the requirements offset really the benefit that you need to get a project off the ground? Anyway, I don't know if there's a way to even PUD application to still provide some latitude to work with the developer if you need to tweak an approval so that it could get enough public benefit to satisfy the city, but also enough incentive to satisfy the developer. and maybe not box yourself in too much because you don't know exactly what it's going to take. And rightly, my comments may not even be relevant to the topic. Again, I'm parachuting in here, and I apologize if they're not.

Well, we appreciate your comments. I think there is some relationship to where we're going with the PUD. Will this be, well yes, we're going to have a public hearing, correct? So we could have developers coming and talking at that point also.

Yeah, so this is available on the draft that you all have is also available on the website. One of the things that I've been putting together is a quick little survey that's going to be sent out to property owners, developers, design professionals who have either had a property like yours that has previously had a PUD submitted for it that didn't get developed or somebody who's designed a different PUD project, etc., So hopefully this week I'll be sending that out. Hopefully we'll get some more engagement from the people that may be on the other side of the application just to make sure we're not completely off base with what we're looking at.

And it may be that after I read it and get it digested a little bit that I think, oh, this is great.

I

sure hope so. But just sitting here and listening, the only concern is if you add too much to the cost of getting an incentive, it becomes kind of self-defeating in some ways. But I don't know if that's where you are. I'm not suggesting that. I really need to read it and kind of get more comfortable with what's being required and

Yeah. I mean, I'm glad that you came today because that's a huge kind of, we're on the same page. That's a huge goal of redoing the system, the framework for PUDs right now, because I think our point system gets hard to judge that, to weigh what you're asking for versus what the city is asking for. So yeah, that's absolutely why we want to make sure to engage more people like you, because you're going to know the best of the other side of the market and the actual buildable side of it to give us some feedback from from both cases. Okay,

that's my only...

I was going to say, I think it is worth noting this like something that could be helpful to you, like a tier two benefit says use of a shared parking agreement for access to existing underutilized parking spaces. So something like that would not only would it qualify for tier two, but also could reduce the amount of structured parking that you would need on a specific site. So something like they kind of kills two birds with one stone, you know, you're reducing that cost and picking up a benefit. And so, yes, there could be some more benefits there than they might look right on the surface.

And I look forward to reading it and maybe getting a better handle on it from talking to you all and hopefully have more specific comments when the time comes.

Thank

you,

Joel. We'll see you at the public hearing.

And I just want to say thank you because actually I think that hearing from the other side also is extremely important to what we're doing.

Any further comments? So when will we see the next iteration

Um, potentially the end of April, because we don't have a meeting the beginning of April. So hopefully, like I said, the goal is to make a few little tweaks based on our conversation tonight and then send something out in the next day or two to the development community. And then hopefully get feedback from them in two weeks to kick off the, you know, the staff report and everything that you guys would get. So I Is it April 20th? I'm eyeing April 20th to come back, but we'll know more if not April 20th, the beginning of May.

I will apologize to Joel, but when I saw him come in, I thought he would have a comment. Okay. Yeah. Pushed him into it. Okay. Well, I think we've come to the end. Jeff, any comments? No, thanks very much. Claire?

No, thank you. It was really helpful. I really enjoyed learning about all this stuff.

I think that I love that you nerded out a lot of those charts and stuff. I really do appreciate that. Like the level of detail presentation skills is just awesome. Thank you.

Nothing further for me. Thank you. Ellen.

Nothing to add except well done. Thank you. Susan.

I'll join in that. And I'm also anxious to see what WashU comes back.

Good. Ryan? Nothing else, but thank you for all the kind words. Yeah.

A couple other tax amendments that will be headed your way, outdoor dining regulations, some minor changes to that program. Hobie, that's one of his tasks. So probably maybe April 20th or the beginning of May is when we'll see some draft amendments to outdoor dining regulations. And then our goal is also to go back to the city council with updates for a pilot program for food trucks, mobile food vendors. And that section of the code does not require text amendments. It's not in Chapter 405 or 410. So it doesn't necessarily require your approval, but I wanted to put on your radar we will likely still come to get, since it's so closely connected to our comprehensive plan goals, we'll likely have a presentation to you all with that pilot program framework as well.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Nothing this evening. Thank you.

Okay. Well, we'll see everyone on April 20th. And enjoy the upcoming holidays. And we're adjourned.