CC Minutes - 11/16/05 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Mr. Hledik said it would be helpful to the Planning Commission if the City Council would provide examples to illustrate how an opportunity siting idea would apply to a parcel, to enable the commission to better grasp how limiting or flexible the council wanted the commission to be in further developing this strategy. Mr. Kelly apologized to the Planning Commission for the short duration of the day’s work session. He said the commission’s idea on master planning was exciting and had much potential, citing the rail yards as an example. He agreed with previously expressed concerns regarding available resources for duplication of the Chambers Reconsidered process on a citywide basis. He said the Chambers Reconsidered project got ahead of opportunity siting and population allocation discussions and he urged the Planning Commission to get ahead of future things to enable the council to say that it had the big picture. Mr. Kelly said the opportunity planned unit development (PUD) sounded intriguing, and liked the idea that it was a prototype for an alternative path. He asked the Planning Commission to look at it broadly, so that it was an alternative that need not be burdened by Chapter 9 standards for all development. Mr. Kelly expressed nervousness over statements like streamlining the PUD process, adding that he wanted to see focus on the issue. He said it was important to talk about neighborhood involvement rather than neighbor association involvement. Ms. Bettman concurred that streamlining also made her nervous, especially since opportunity siting was predicated on involving the neighborhood and empowering the neighborhood associations through the process of developing density goals. She said the City may need to do a demonstration project. Ms. Taylor asked for more of an explanation of what the Planning Commission meant by streamlining. Ms. Colbath explained that it was not the commission’s intent to streamline past the public involvement component, but noted that time was money. The public involvement was included in the general standards to which PUDs would need to adhere. She said public involvement would come at the front end of projects, as criteria were created for the desired outcome. Mr. Belcher agreed with Ms. Colbath, noting it was important to balance development needs to streamline the process with community needs to ensure that proposed projects were good ones. He suggested that code language could include a requirement that developers needed to meet with impacted neighborhood groups at the time of application. Mr. Lawless said the current process was an eight-step process, and suggested that triaging the process by eliminating unnecessary steps prior to the application process would be beneficial. Ms. Taylor said there may also be lists of activities that developers would know were inappropriate. She was concerned about allocating a certain amount of density to each neighborhood, noting that some neighborhoods were more suited to density levels. She stated the south hills were not suited to the same density requirements as flat areas. Mr. Kelly said the density or population allocation was very important to him. He said one size did not fit all, and the appropriate density in the south hills area because of topography and natural resources would differ from the West University neighborhood. Nevertheless, there was a good way through opportunity siting to arrive at ways to add density, albeit not as much density, to south hills neighborhoods and there was a way to add density to the West University neighborhood. It was a matter of doing specific, and therefore, costly study to develop appropriate allocations. Mr. Kelly concurred with Mr. Pape, that it was important MINUTES—Eugene City Council November 16, 2005 Page 11 Work Session