YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
Is the city of Springfield in danger of becoming a void in the center of development in outlying areas?
After a Springfield City Council vote rejected a controversial high-profile rezoning measure Oct. 21, Councilmember Abe McGull offered up the metaphor of a doughnut, with the city as the hole in the middle of a growing region.
“If we drive off development – if we drive off the people who have big dreams – they’ll build somewhere else,” he said.
McGull was on the losing side of a 4-4 vote that rejected a zoning shift to general retail from single-family residential at the corner of Sunshine Street and National Avenue, where developer BK&M LLC had purchased a set of residential lots in hopes the city would come through with permission for a business venture in the form of a rezoning to general retail from single-family residential. Some University Heights neighborhood residents objected to the change.
The tie vote was a loss for the developer, as a supermajority of six affirmative votes was required for passage. It was also a sign to some officials that the city’s zoning processes are flawed, though others don’t see it that way.
Councilmember Brandon Jenson said during the meeting that creativity must be brought to the table.
“The process itself and the codes that we have in place don’t allow for this kind of creative problem-solving that our comprehensive plan really demands that we be utilizing,” Jenson said.
Likewise, Councilmember Craig Hosmer is on record as saying in numerous meetings and interviews that the city unfairly prioritizes the voices of developers over those of neighbors – also a flaw in the process, according to Hosmer.
In an interview, Councilmember Derek Lee – an engineer who does projects throughout the region – said he has heard the criticisms that the zoning system is broken.
“A number of council members criticized the system; they said, ‘Oh, the system must be broken in Springfield,’” Lee said. “I don’t think that the numbers show that at all. That’s inaccurate.”
Lee asked city staff for a tally of the number of cases proposed versus those that are voted down, and it revealed a vast majority of proposals are ultimately approved. This shows that Springfield is not broken, he said.
“Over 95% of what we do is getting approved by council, and city staff gets it right,” he said. “Not only do I think it’s not broke; I think that the city of Springfield is the model for the surrounding area.”
He said Springfield staff mail out notices to neighborhoods for public meetings and invite comments from them, and the conditional overlay district mechanism provides even more opportunities for specific input into rezoning requests.
“Our surrounding communities don’t do that,” he said. “I think that we do a better job of incorporating neighbor opinions – and I actually do this in other communities.”
Lee said that leadership requires solutions.
“To me, leadership is if you see a problem then you offer a better solution – you don’t just criticize the one that you have,” he said.
In an interview, Jenson said change is inevitable in the city’s neighborhoods, but that is not a cause for fear, but rather an opportunity for improvement.
At the council meeting, Jenson expressed the hope that all parties in the University Heights issue could work together to find a positive path forward.
Transitional zones
Dan Scott, an architect and developer who is a member of the Planning & Zoning Commission, said he believes city mechanisms work well, even in challenging cases.
The biggest challenge Scott sees is the city’s need to integrate neighborhoods in keeping with the focus of the city’s comprehensive plan, Forward SGF, and its ongoing revisions to the zoning code.
One characteristic of Forward SGF is that it foregrounds a consideration of multiuse land zoning, or place types, over conventional zoning that separates land use by type, and in doing so, it focuses on transitional zones where differing land uses abut.
“The whole intent of walkability, sense of place, that sort of thing, is an overriding priority, rather than keeping everyone in their individual silos of zoning,” Scott said.
Springfield has great neighborhoods, Scott said.
“On the fringes or at appropriate intersections of medium to higher traffic streets, we put commercial or mixed use,” he said.
But a challenge the city faces, he said, is that people are averse to change.
“The difficult transition is for people to try to adapt to the reality – I’ll call it a reality – that an integrated neighborhood is a highly desirable place to be,” he said. “We spend all this time, in Planning & Zoning and on council – hearing all of the negative of what could possibly go wrong instead of focusing, I believe, where we should be, which is on the positive.”
Scott offered Rountree as an example of a neighborhood where things are going right.
“When the new building for Tie & Timber came through Planning & Zoning, we reviewed it and approved it, and the neighborhood was behind it because this is a great asset to it,” he said. “This is really more of a reality than it may appear to be throughout the city.”
Scott said BK&M was an example of a move toward this type of integration, with the developer reducing the height of its proposed development and limiting uses deemed undesirable by the neighborhood.
Lee expressed the concern that the city may be hard for developers to work with.
“A developer needs to know what to expect,” he said. “The reality of what I’m seeing is you really can’t develop unless you literally do a text amendment to change requirements.”
Lee gave the examples of Tie & Timber’s appearance before council for approval of a variance in elevation for its new building, or for developers of a proposed Loose Goose coffee shop, bar and pickleball business on Grant Avenue Parkway to petition council for permission to build a taller building than allowed by code.
“It’s becoming where if you want to develop in those areas, you basically have to write your own zoning code a majority of the time,” he said.
But Lee noted that on the night council rejected the BK&M development, there were roughly 10 other rezoning requests in first or second reading that council flew through without much comment.
A problem, he said, is that planned developments need to be redone every time a developer wants to build, and they never know exactly how it will go.
“I think we’re putting a headwind to make it harder to develop,” he said.
Lee added, “I struggle when I see empty lots for 20 years or vacant buildings with plywood over the windows. I have a hard time seeing that’s better than whatever new thing that goes in.”
For Jenson, civility is a key problem that emerged during the University Heights rezoning case.
“Both sides have people that have made really harmful statements, both to themselves and to this process, and I want to be clear that our city should not have any space for those types of activities,” he said during the meeting. “That’s not how we should be working with developers; that is not how we should be working with neighborhoods.”
Jenson put some of the onus on the city to train neighborhoods on the types of feedback they should provide – including valid reasons for rejecting rezoning – and then offer a system for them to provide it.
He added, “Hopefully, everybody has learned through this process what good development and good development processes look like.”
Dame Chiropractic LLC emerged as the new name of Harshman Chiropractic Clinic LLC with the purchase of the business; Leo Kim added a second venture, Keikeu LLC, to 14 Mill Market; and Mercy Springfield Communities opened its second primary care clinic in Ozark.
