I watched in disbelief when only two councilors voted against the RMB project;
Neighbors of an apartment housing development planned in south Sioux Falls are challenging the city council’s decision to allow for more apartment units at 85th Street and Western Avenue.
Original plans were for a village-style development with retail shops on the main level and housing on the upper two levels. Owners RMB Associates instead want to build three-story apartments with a total 182 living units instead of 40 or 50.
The council approved the change with a 5-2 vote Nov. 5. Neighbors who say a large apartment complex does not fit the area are asking for another vote, having filed a challenge petition Friday, Nov. 29.
The city GIS department will verify the number of landowners within 250 feet of the property. Signatures from at least 40 percent are needed to prompt a second vote. In that vote, at least six of the eight councilors would need to agree to change the plans for the development.
As I talked about in the past, the council’s decision was not motivated by property rights, if it would have been, the neighbors would have won this decision, hands down. The land was already zoned properly for commercial use, which the neighbors approved of, but when the landowner realized they made a bad investment decision, they wanted to change the use of their land to all apartments.
Agree or disagree with me on that is really not the issue here. The issue is simple, the neighbors agreed to a particular retail setup of the area, they were on board, they were there first. The council had a simple decision to make, denial of the amendment. Denial would not put RMB out of business. They would simply have two options, develop it the way it was zoned originally or sell the property. But they made it sound like you are in dire straits, hardly the case, FREE enterprise only prospers when their is competition and government, especially local government, stays out of your business.
There is too many private developers looking to get bailed out from the city. So I ask the question, who does the city council represent? The private citizen? Commercial developers? or both? It is obvious in this case, the citizen’s concerns outweigh the developers, but once again, if falls on the deaf ears of the council.
IN OTHER city development news, I noticed that former city planner, Erica Beck, who worked on the Sanford Sports Complex TIF, is now working for Lloyd (Item #16). Interesting, but not surprising.
I agree with you in this case, but in general, the concept of “I was here first, so I have the final say in what happens here” (a.k.a. NIMBYism) is anathema to natural neighborhood growth and development.
Only in America do we plan our neighborhoods in their final states – no organic growth, and no chance of intensification once the development is complete.
They have already been through this, and agreed to the retail center that was going to be built there. They are getting screwed because the developer made a bad decision. That is NOT how the free market works. It is not the job of the city council or even the neighbors to protect developers from making bad business decisions. If that were the case, my guess is that council would have 10 hour meetings overturning all the bad decisions private business makes in this town. They already waste a lot of time and treasure on bailing out private non-profits.
The city has become private enterprise as principal for hotels at the airport & EC. They’ll set rates & others could go out of business. They stand to profit, take hotel taxes, & pay no property tax. It’s win, win, & more win. There’s something wrong with other hotels & restaurants in the area if they don’t organize and initiate a federal antitrust class action lawsuit.
How bout a political cartoon with a Monopoly board? Use mayor & councilor heads on pieces. Make boardwalk & park place EC & Airport with hotels on them. Draw cards called TIF’s.
“It is not the job of the city council or even the neighbors to protect developers from making bad business decisions.”
Conversely, I could argue that your approach would often condemn growing communities to a choice between either no development or a sub-optimal use in the event that surrounding development and growth patterns change, simply because that’s what someone put on the map once upon a time.
The reality is that all development is dynamic, and communities need to be able to make the changes that are necessary to ensure that land use decisions are optimal for now – not for three years ago, or ten years ago, or thirty years ago.
And while I respect to an extent your desire to defer to the neighbors in all these decisions, I would also submit that you seem to reflexively assume that any decision that benefits a developer is a bad decision, even if that decision would also benefit the community at large. Assuming compatible use (and this is most certainly a compatible use in this case, in fact planners would consider it a MORE compatible use than what was originally proposed), and given the established need for additional rental units given the extremely low vacancy rates in SF, it would seem that a clear argument could be made that this change is of greater benefit to the *community* even if some people in the *neighborhood* might not like it.
And I’m saying this as one of the biggest lovers of mixed-use development on our planet. I think mixed-use development is key to rebuilding the sense of neighborhood in sprawl-heavy places like SF.
Believe me, I 100% appreciate your skepticism about the cozy relationship that major developers in town seem to have with our mayor. But that doesn’t mean that every decision that benefits a developer is the wrong decision for the community.
HG, you are right, but this ‘amendment’ stinks.
I agree strongly with hornguy. One downside of our current ‘public input’ technique is that we give extreme preference to current residents, with little thought given to future residents. What rights should the potential apartment-dwellers in this neighborhood have, and how should their interests be represented in the planning process?
That is an interesting question. Do ‘renters’ who don’t own the property they may ‘potentially’ rent have property rights? They certainly have a right to fair housing and equal treatment, free from discrimination. But if they don’t own the property, how do they have property rights? Hmmm.
In the article the developer states that a similar project at 57th and Cliff did not gain the steam they wanted.
Well for starters, they built a typical apartment building, leased out half of the building for their own office, and the retail front is far away from any major street, it’s in front of a parking lot nearly a block and a half away from 57th and two from Cliff.
Maybe the developer needs to get out of Sioux Falls more and see truly what a successful, mixed-use development is before giving up and building more brown or gray apartment buildings in ridiculous locations.
In Erica Beck’s former life as a SF city planner, she was the lead on the majority of the TIFs (listed on siouxfalls.org Community Development/Economic Development/Economic Development Programs/TIF) going all the way back to 2005 up until the time she left city government.
Also, homeowners certainly have a greater stake in their immediate neighborhoods than renters who can easily pack up and move as soon as their leases are up!
Amen, CCFlyer. I would also ask whether present zoning mechanisms (sans Shape Places) are well-conceived for the type of mixed-use zoning that it sounds like you and I would generally prefer. Sprawl was de rigeur in zoning codes across America for far too long.
So there are two variables here. The first obviously being the developer. The second being the types of developments that are encouraged/discouraged, directly or indirectly, by local land use policies.
Because you’re absolutely right. Those attempts that have been made, like the one you mentioned, as well as those near 57th and I-229 and then 57th and Solberg, have been poorly conceived. And certainly, as you noted, the big setbacks don’t help. But unless you’re going to hand a developer 40 acres a successful mixed-use approach has to be a community commitment that extends beyond just those residential properties and includes plans for an appropriate mix of businesses and how to make those neighborhoods pedestrian-friendly. None of those developments has around it what it needs to truly function optimally.
A great example of a mixed-use development in a quasi-suburban setting is Zona Rosa, on the far north side of Kansas City. If this community would have been more forward thinking, something like that would have been perfect for the SW corner of 57th and Louise. What’d we do there instead? Glorified strip malls with segregated multi-family residential on adjacent lots. Fail. But if a developer had stepped forward with a true multi-use plan for that area once upon a time, would the community have embraced it? This community is on the trailing edge of just about everything, after all.
If the city is really interested in a genuine mixed-use development, they have two prime opportunities in the East Bank RR area and the Stockyards area. Just plat them out with the regular street grid (16 blocks to a mile), and sell off the lots piecemeal. This is how the most successful neighborhoods of SF originally developed, but I’m afraid that the City and developers have too much to gain from another mega-scale development for this to ever happen.
P.S. Here’s my idea for an East Bank redevelopment.
Tom, it is about making a lot of money, fast. Like I said above, RMB could make their investment work for what it was zoned for currently, they just would have to work a little harder at it, and would take more time.
I had a chuckle about the Townhouses, Signature Homes is proposing to build DT. While I think it is great idea/concept (that corner certainly needed to be bulldozed a long time ago.) I question why the place would need security gates. Why would I want to drop $300K on a Townhouse in a neighborhood that is unsafe? I a mean, that is basically what Signature Homes is saying by putting in security gates. Are they afraid someone from Sunshine or the Top Hat might stumble into their pristine courtyard? If you want to develop DT and LIVE DT, I suggest you get used to the Urban feel of DT. And security gates to protect a ‘courtyard’ seem to be stretching it a bit.