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HomeMy WebLinkAbout08-06-18 Public Comment - D. Littlepage - NCOD ReviewFrom:Dean Littlepage To:reilly@bendonadams.com; Agenda; Phillipe Gonzalez; sara@bendonadams.com Subject:Bozeman NCOD review comment Date:Tuesday, August 07, 2018 1:11:01 PM Attachments:DL Bzn NCOD Review Comment 8-8-18.docx Hello -- here are my comments on the current review of Bozeman's NCOD, attached as a Word document. Pasting into the message ruins the formatting, so I've had to rely on the attachment. Thanks, Dean Littlepage 618 W. Curtiss St. Bozeman, MT 59715 dljm@bresnan.net (406) 522-3871 August 7, 2018 To: BendonAdams, Bozeman City Commission, and Bozeman HPO From: Dean Littlepage, 618 W. Curtiss St., Bozeman; resident of Cooper Park district Subject: NCOD Review Greetings; these are my comments on the current NCOD review. Summary: The NCOD has worked well as intended and is incorporating infill in an essentially compatible manner through construction of ADUs and some elements of “missing middle housing.” The district not only should not be altered, but its character, design elements, and lot size should be a model for development elsewhere in Bozeman and more broadly in Gallatin County. If smart growth is the objective, there is no better model. In addition, the NCOD neighborhoods contribute greatly to Bozeman’s identity and quality of life and are one of, if not the most valuable of our community assets. Infill model: ADUs and missing middle housing (see, for example, the 2.5 story triplex that replaced a small single-story, single family home at 209 S. 9th) are the elements that should constitute the infill approach for NCOD/core neighborhoods. The large blockhouse apartment/condo buildings are incompatible (size/scale, design, traffic and parking impacts) with our older neighborhoods. In addition, Bozeman citizens and City employees have put an incredible amount of time and effort into creating and maintaining the urban forest that is so important to microclimate, neighborhood desirability, and property values in the NCOD and elsewhere. Infill development should reflect the value of that hard-won urban forest. We’ve already seen removal of some large trees for development that has been approved to date, e.g., on the SoBo (Pizza Hut) property. Impact on sprawl: The large blockhouse apartment/condo development of downtown areas that is occurring, and which the City and its chosen consultants appear to favor for the rest of the core neighborhoods, is unrelated to the sprawl that is occurring outside the core and outside the city, and in some cases is working at cross purposes with the stated desire to increase effective density in the core. First, the two housing markets are very different. Most of the developments in the county are suburban neighborhoods; the new housing downtown consists of “stack and pack” apartments and condos. There will probably be some buyers who will pick a new home in a crowded complex downtown instead of the larger home on a suburban lot they were planning to buy, but that choice can’t remotely be assumed to be the rule – they’re different types of housing, in general different markets altogether. Second, nothing we do in the town core has any effect on sprawl in the valley at least as long as the County refuses to manage the growth occurring outside Bozeman. Third, if the goal is to protect open space, farmland, and habitat outside the city, the only sure way to accomplish the goal is to acquire transfers of development rights. The recently passed open space tax increment is only a partial fix; the funds are limited and not exclusively for TDRs/conservation easements. If the City is serious about this goal, it should require developers to contribute toward it. Currently, a TDR/easement program commensurate with the scale of sprawl and the damage to core neighborhoods the City’s apparent agenda would effect is not even within striking distance. Fourth, it appears that many of the existing downtown-area developments are being used primarily as part-time dwellings. For example, although it’s been on a regular bicycle route of mine for several years, I have only very rarely seen any signs of life in the Village Downtown development, which occupies a large area of valuable property downtown, much of which sits virtually unused for weeks and months at a time – not the most efficient use of valuable real estate for a city concerned about perceived inadequate density in the core. In a similar vein, and accurate as far as I can tell, the new giant blockhouse-style developments are being rightly panned as “high- rise, high-priced ghost towns.” Last, the blockhouse developers advertise outside Bozeman. This kind of development isn’t just growth management; at the very least, in part, it promotes growth that would not occur without it. Existing values of NCOD neighborhoods: I write here from the perspective of a Cooper Park area resident, but I think these thoughts reflect neighborhood concerns throughout the NCOD. My neighborhood is a human- scale, biking/pedestrian, low vehicle traffic, sociable, leafy, beautiful, neighborly place to live, where residents walk their dogs, push small kids in strollers, visit with each other outside their homes as they walk the neighborhood or work in their yards, and walk and bicycle to do most of their everyday tasks in town. The large blockhouses developers favor and the City supports would clearly have negative impacts on the livable, walking/biking character of NCOD neighborhoods, primarily through increased traffic and parking hassles, the latter given the City’s penchant for ignoring the need for adequate provision of parking by developers. The City’s and developers’ assertions that their favored style of infill will contribute to walking/biking neighborhoods are very odd given the reality that those developments will actually diminish that character in the targeted neighborhoods. Residents value the character of these neighborhoods IMMENSELY. These “amenities” are not something to be taken lightly, and are certainly not to be squandered on ill-conceived, super-density campaigns that would sacrifice these values for a very questionable assertion of benefit outside the town core. The NCOD is not broken. The district doesn’t need fixing. The infill development that has been occurring within the parameters of the pre-2015 block character guidelines is increasing density reasonably, and is appropriate to the neighborhoods’ character and values. We don’t have to sacrifice these neighborhoods; they are healthy and should be a model, not a target for development excess. Need for better development review processes: From my experience of the past 2-3 years, I strongly favor a thorough review and amendment to aspects of the City’s development review process. Some of the specific practices inhibit residents’ participation in decisions that affect them, and others tend to limit a thorough review of all the consequences of development. I would point out the following as requiring consideration and amendment; these concerns are central to balancing the City’s desires for superdensity in the NCOD and residents’ desires to protect the very much loved character of their neighborhoods. * Project notification practices should be commensurate with a project’s potential impact. Wider notification and clearer, more appropriate time frames for response should be the rule for projects that affect areas broader than the approximately one-block notification radius practiced now. Prior to the last commission election, then- candidate Terry Cunningham expressed online agreement that those requirements should be considered for modification. * Notices should clearly and accurately communicate what precisely is being proposed. In my neighborhood, we recently saw a rezoning notice in which those conditions were emphatically not met, written completely in city planning and legal jargon, with no attempt to clearly communicate the intent and effect of the proposed action. * Impact analysis needs to be comprehensive. In this neighborhood, one shortcoming that’s come to light is the limited analysis of vehicle traffic impact, focusing only on collectors, arterials, and major intersections, with no consideration of impacts within the neighborhood. Other brief points: * Carving up the NCOD and the historic districts would lead to more boundary/transition zones, creating more sources of potential conflict between the City and developers on one side, and residents on the other. One district with one set of reasonable guidelines is much simpler for the City to administer and much simpler for residents to understand, negotiate, and live with. * The 1987 NCOD survey of historic properties is too dated to serve as rationale for City action to modify the district. Windshield surveys by non-professionals are not a substitute for the real thing. * The City’s infill campaign appears to be driven too much by developer and Main Street business preference, putting aside broader community concerns and residents’ desires in the process. To sum up: The NCOD is one of the highest density residential neighborhood clusters in the city, it is adding to that density in a reasonable way, and in my opinion as a resident of one of those neighborhoods, it is very much worth caring about and protecting. The language authorizing the NCOD referred to a primary goal of protecting “the fabric and character” of the neighborhoods involved. Most existing residents would enthusiastically agree with that goal; these neighborhoods’ fabric and character very much deserve to be valued and protected. Thank you for your consideration of my comments.