Item 8: Ordinance Establishing Chambers Special Area Zone

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Survey. The two April meetings were held to present the draft standards and guidelines and the conclusions of the traffic study to area residents. · Neighborhood Design Preferences Survey The survey is a unique public participation tool. The survey allows a given audience to provide preference feedback (likes and dislikes) on visual images that illustrate a set of physical characteristics. The images can be standardized for multiple presentations or customized to focus on a unique set of conditions. Surveys can be done citywide, as was done in the 1994 TransPlan process, or for a smaller area like a neighborhood, as was done for the Chambers project. The Chambers Reconsidered Neighborhood Design Preferences Survey was crafted to identify local preferences related to commercial and residential infill and redevelopment in the Chambers area. The survey design responded to a criticism ofthe traditional visual preference survey that, in the traditional survey, the viewer of an image does not necessarily know what, specifically, is being evaluated. The Chambers survey was modified to ask respondents to judge the image in the context of a stated topic. All images in the slide show were identified as having a theme or topic ("mass and scale", "parking", etc.) that provided a clue about what information we were seeking. The survey was given to the group on October 19; the results were presented on November 16. The results presentation was formatted to identify tentative "conclusions" reached by the consultants, while allowing the group to comment on those conclusions. Sometimes the group added new information; sometimes they corrected the consultant's or staff s impressions about what was meant or what was said. The November meeting was intended to provide an additional interaction between participants, consultants and staff that would result in a refined, mutual understanding of the project's objectives. Information derived from the survey was fed directly into the development of draft codes (standards) and guidelines. · Focus Group On Friday March .18, 2005, the consultant team and City staff conducted an all-day workshop in which the draft standards and guidelines were introduced and discussed. Half of the day was committed to work on residential standards; half was committed to conmlercial standards. While there was an attempt to include testing of the draft standards as part of each half-day meeting, that part of the program was less successful than anticipated due to the complexity of the task and the amount of discussion between participants that was necessary to proceed with testing. The discussions between participants, consultants and staff however, were very productive and enabled the consultants and staff to move forward with drafting the standards and guidelines. Several months before the workshop, City staff created an event application form to insure that a fun range of neighborhood interests were represented in the process. That form was distrihutedat the November neighborhood meeting, was posted on the City's Mixed Use Development websiteand was available at the Permit Infomlation Center. The form asked applicants to disclose which interest groups they represented and why they would like to serve 011 the group. The application process was left open between November 16, 2004 and January 28,2005. Exhibit A-I 0