HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-06-26 Public Comment - M. Campanelli - Attn City Commission_ UDC Building Height Waffling under Poor Legislative ProcessesFrom:Mark Campanelli
To:Bozeman Public Comment
Subject:[EXTERNAL]Attn City Commission: UDC Building Height Waffling under Poor Legislative Processes
Date:Tuesday, January 6, 2026 11:30:29 AM
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Dear Commission,
Welcome to 2026!
I want to bring your attention to a planned development in B-3 in my neighborhood, Block B
(https://bozemanrealestate.group/blog/block-b-downtown) on Babcock near Wallace. Thisproject involves "the loss of existing affordable housing with the 20 apartments that will be
demolished", and the plan apparently used cash/land-in-lieu of affordable housing to add twostories of height to the building. Setting aside the City's clear incentive, via "in-lieu"
agreements, to move naturally occurring affordable housing out of my neighborhood, bychanging the height limit in B-3 to 90 ft, you (except Sweeney and Madgic) have now enabled
this developer to resubmit/amend the application and provide NO affordable housing offsets inexchange for additional height. Even if they tack on two more stories (to four total) and keep
the affordable piece, this becomes a building whose mass and scale is detrimental to myneighborhood's sense of place, not to mention the question if we can actually support such
density and height as more and more properties turn over under the new height rules. I can'thelp but ask how many affordable housing opportunities are likely being thrown away here
after so much city pontification vs. neighbor conflict over the affordable housing ordinance(AHO). Did you even try to consider and put a value on that?
Your policies seem insistent upon fomenting a two-tiered class system in Bozeman: The very
wealthy who see no problem paying top-tier property/resort taxes on their high-rise crash padsin downtown Bozeman, and the service class who gets to cater to them while subsiding in
some sort of tax-negative, never-to-be-owned LIHTC project on the edge of town (or, morelikely, in Midtown). I appreciate the greater economic forces at play here, but the very least
the City could do is NOT exacerbate this phenomenon. However, I'm beginning to understandwhich side the bread is buttered on.
Furthermore, the argument that "taller buildings were the plan all along" rings really hollow.
First, the AHO wasn't even a thing during the public engagement for the 2019 May -Downtown Bozeman Improvement Plan. Indeed, when was the last time the City even
consulted, let alone tried to follow, the Midtown Urban Renewal Action Plan(https://www.midtownbozeman.org//uploads/Documents/Action-Plan-V10.pdf,), which isn't
even mentioned publicly at the City's plans pageat https://www.bozeman.net/departments/community-development/planning/community-
plans-documents-reports?
Please do the prudent thing: Put a stay on the height change. Have an open and transparentpublic discussion where neighbors sit at the same table as developers and hash it out in the
open. At the very least, this may stave off the City getting into legal hot water by apparentlyhaving not followed proper governance processes around the very late height-change
amendment.
Mark CampanelliBogert Park Neighbor