Item 3: Ordinance on Downtown Code Amendments

Home Browse Search

findings, given that the DLCD had raised it as an issue. Ms. Laurence replied that it had not been addressed directly; what had been talked about was the impact on commercial and residential lands. She noted that she had not received notice from the City Attorney that this was something that needed to be addressed. She said she would contact legal counsel to be certain. Mr. Hledik asked if anything in the changes would preclude someone from building at a 1.0 FAR or more or building and not providing parking. Ms. Laurence responded that no parking was required within the downtown core area. She did not see anything in the code that would preclude someone from building at a 1.0 FAR. She noted that there was always the provision that allowed an applicant to go through an adjustment review. Mr. Lawless was amenable to the change in language to ‘lot’ as long as it could be used singularly or plural or in conjunction, as in the case in which two lots were separated by the width of a street. He was glad the development site was being modified so it would not have to be attached to adjacent properties. He added that the ‘development site’ component should be removed from other portions of the text for the sake of consistency. Ms. Laurence stated that the change of ‘development site’ to ‘lot’ occurred only in the calculation of FAR only in the /TD standards. She acknowledged that it appeared to be inconsistent because it was only included in that one area. She said the strategy going forward into Phase 2 would be to review the code with a “fine toothed comb” in order to find those sorts of things but at present the effort was to make the smallest change to address one particular issue. In response to a follow-up question from Mr. Lawless, Mr. Nystrom said the term ‘development site’ was still valid for many reasons. He encouraged the commissioners to not take an either/or approach to the language. He did not want to use ‘lot’ throughout the code as there were reasons to keep ‘development site’ as it was in other areas of the code. Mr. Duncan asked, regarding lot definition, if a developer would be able to tell the Planning and Development Department what the lot was comprised of. He noted that many of the lots in the downtown area were established prior to the 1900s and were only minimal widths and many of the tax lots could contain several of these lots. He said if he was developing something he could potentially build a building on a 40-foot section of a 100-foot lot because there was a 40-foot lot MINUTES—Eugene Planning Commission April 28, 2008 Page 4