Incentive zoning: Right solution, wrong problem?
The City Council appears to be moving deliberately and methodically toward approving an incentive zoning proposal. The morning after the public hearing I wrote about earlier, the Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee held a three-hour meeting including a another discussion of incentive zoning. Conventional wisdom holds that the Council will pass something.
Councilmember Tim Burgess asked a key question of the incentive zoning discussion: what is our goal? Is it affordable units? How many and where?
Council staff didn’t really have a clear answer.
Incentive zoning is a good concept. A Public Health study from a few years ago showed that developers like the idea, provided that there was a real incentive involved. More density might work but an incentive also might be reduced parking requirements or, as Denny Onslow suggested, an easing of local regulations that could make 85 foot development produce housing as affordable as 65 foot development.
But incentive zoning all by itself won’t get us closer to the larger goals of affordability, sustainability and livability.
Height is a problem. Large chunks of our city are zoned for 40 feet. That height doesn’t work for projects like Jim Mueller’s at 23rd and Union.
The city needs more projects like Mueller’s. It activates a property that was blighted, turning it into a community asset.
Incentive zoning is based on the theory that morepublic benefit will be created when there is less regulation. The current proposals don’t address the problem of intersections like 23rd and Union. The Council really needs to ask itself, as Councilmember Burgess did, what are we trying to accomplish?
Incentive zoning could be part of the solution.
Finding the problem is something the City hasn’t done yet.
Increasing floor area in exchange for affordable units is only a piece of the puzzle.
Addressing height and other issues that drive cost are also critically important if the concept of incentive zoning is to succeed.
Tags: 23rd and Union, height, incentive zoning
