CC Minutes - 07/28/03 Mtg - Laserfiche WebLink

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Councilor Taylor said that she had been concerned with the size of the district, but that Councilor Bettman's motion had addressed this for her. She commented that making the district too large could cause much development to happen on the periphery of the downtown area, when development needed to occur in the center of the downtown area. Responding to Councilor Kelly's comments, Councilor Bettman asserted that the amendment did no harm. She said that, though the example she cited was somewhat unlikely, the amendment would not greatly impact the boundary of the vertical housing zone and would protect residential housing from being taken out of the downtown housing inventory. Councilor Kelly disagreed, stating that the harm that could come from the amendment lay in the possible preclusion of a desirable project with one story of commercial development and three or four stories of residential above it. He said that he would not support this ordinance if it would allow the potential conversion of a purely residential structure to a purely commercial one. Councilor Meisner noted that there was only R-3 and R-4 properties within the boundary. He offered his support for the amendment if its applicability could be only limited to R-2, R-3, and R- 4 properties, with the exception of the special use district. Councilor Nathanson opposed the amendment. She commented that there were some structures that would benefit from replacement as they were dilapidated. She felt that the amendment could limit the kind of development in the downtown area that the City wanted to promote. Councilor Meisner submitted a friendly amendment to limit the applicability of the exclusion in Councilor Bettman's amendment to properties zoned R-3, and R-4, with the exception of the special uses district. Councilor Bettman and Councilor Taylor accepted the friendly amendment. City Attorney Glenn Klein advised Councilor Bettman to amend page 2 of the resolution, after the description, where it said, "particularly depicted on the map attached as Exhibit A hereto" so that inserted after the comma was the statement "except for lands zoned R-3 and R-4." Councilor Bettman accepted the language change as advised by Mr. Klein. In response to a question from Mayor Torrey, Mr. Weinman stated that the amendment would shrink the boundary, taking out a small area in the vicinity of Patterson Street and 1 lth Avenue. Councilor Bettman reiterated that the intent was not to increase commercial uses in the downtown area and that this would be a more surgical way of pursuing this intent. Roll call vote; the motion to amend was a 4:4 tie; councilors Meisner, Kelly, Bettman and Taylor voting in favor; councilors Poling, Nathanson, Pap~, and Solomon voting in opposition. Mayor Torrey voted against the motion to amend, and it failed on a final vote of 5:4. MINUTES--Eugene City Council July 28, 2003 Page 14 Regular Meeting