The rezoning proposal for Billion Auto at 41st and Duluth is now online. Â Here is my analysis.
As I suspected would be required, the proposal is to rezone the block (excluding the dental office which Billion does not own) to C-4 commercial. Â This is the most intense commercial use (regional commercial). Â It needs to be repeated that the proposal is to rezone to C-4 commercial, the most intense commercial use there is, which will be across the street (literally) to single family residential uses. Â It also should be noted across the street is about 54 feet, a non-standard local right of way. Â We’re not even talking about across a collector (80 feet) or an arterial (100 feet). Â
Per the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance, it does not mean you CANNOT do it, although you could. Â What it does mean though is that the buffering will have to be extensive and the most extreme to mitigate the incompatibility. Â The staff report indicates a compatibilty rating of 2 between this C-4 and the single family to the east and north. Â Based on what is really there (single family) it should be a 1 (the least compatible) but it is scored a 2 because the zoning districts next to each other determine the compatibility rating, and these homes have the bad luck of being zoned RD-1 (twin home) district. Â Remember the Twin Eagle Estates neighborhood at 85th and Audie? Â Anyway, based on what is really there, it really is a 1 for compatibility, but based on the compatibility chart, it is scored a 2. Â But we should look at what is really there, which makes it a 1. Â They then print the description of a compatibility of 2, instead of 1. Â That is correct based on what the chart says, but its too bad we don’t score it based on what is really there. Â A score of 1, which this really is, gets you this guidance from Shape Sioux Falls:
“High Incompatibility: The new zoning district is incompatible with adjacent land uses. Any development proposal requires a Planned Unit Development and extensive documentation to prove that external effects are fully mitigated. In general, proposed districts with this level of conflict should not be permitted. Examples include heavy industrial uses proposed on sites adjacent to low- or medium-density residential uses.”
Interesting to note that if it was scored a 1, the comprehensive plan says this generally should not be permitted. Â
There are 420 new parking spaces indicated for parking and display of cars for sale. Â Parking this large requires a C-4 designation, so C-4 is the appropriate proposal in that regard.
As I had stated a few weeks ago, a level D buffer yard is required on the north and west side of the development, the biggest buffer yard, because there is C-4 proposed to be next to single family. Â The Level D Buffer Yard is 45 feet of green space, landscaping, and berming/fencing. Â However, the buffer yard can be reduced by 50% if there is a right of way (ROW) between the incompatible uses (which is true here). Â So they could technically do a 22.5 foot buffer yard on the west and north side. Â They are proposing a 25 foot buffer yard with a 4 foot berm adjacent to the parking lot and a retaining wall to support it. Â I had indicated previously I did not think this buffer yard cut in half was enough. Â Staff indicates that they believe the default buffer yard is not sufficient as well:
“Although, the submitted landscape plan appears to meet the buffer yard requirements, with the Compatibility Chart as a guide staff feels a project of this magnitude within an established residential neighborhood warrants significant buffer yard, screening and landscaping plans. Therefore, staff feels an alternative site plan should be approved by the Planning Commission. This should allow more time for staff and the applicants to come up with a landscape and buffer yard plan that will address the neighborhood concerns.”
Staff makes the following recommendation:
“Because the subject application is consistent with the Shape Sioux Falls Comprehensive plan and potential incompatibilities can be minimized with the required buffer yard, staff recommends approval of this rezoning, with the following conditions;
1. An alternative site plan including detailed buffer yard plans, be approved by the Planning Commission;
2. The proposed 113 employee parking spaces (61 within the new parking lot and 52 behind the existing Billion Auto-Kia building) will be permanently marked and reserved for Billion employees only.”
My thoughts and concerns regarding the recommendation from staff:
1. Â I would add a third condition, that no structures be allowed on the newly rezoned portion. Â There is absolutely nothing stopping Billion from adding structures at any time in the future once it is rezoned. Â They could be quite large as well with C-4 zoning, as long as they could meet the parking and other standards.
2. Â Hopefully the required parking for employees is enough. Â This will only work though to the extent that the applicant actually enforces this and makes their employees use them, and/or the city enforces this condition. Â I’m not fully convinced about this.
3. Â The city indicates that they recommend approval based on requiring an alternative site plan. Â Shape Places allows a rezone with conditions – 160.650(e), and one of those (2) is conditioning an alternative site plan to mitigate incompatibility and transition to other zoning districts. Â They also indicate it would give staff more time to work on this. Â To explain this, mechanically there would be a rezone, which must be approved by the city council, which would have this stipulation (requires an alternative site plan). Â Next, the applicant, before they could proceed, would have to bring an alternative site plan to the Planning Commisison for approval, which would depict and outline an alternative buffer yard proposal, for example bigger berms, more green space, different fencing, whatever. Â The problem I forsee with this is that an alternative site plan goes to the Planning Commission who has final authority. Â It does not go to city council, nor is there an appeal to city council available like there is with a conditional use permit (an appeal procedure) or a rezone. Â Therefore, once the council approves the rezone with the stipulation that an alternative site plan has to be approved, they lose control of the details, because it won’t come back to them. Â They then have to trust that the Planning Commission and staff will bring something forward and approve something that they are satisfied with. Â They have no power once they rezone.
Personally, I wouldn’t have vacated Duluth. Â But we’re here now. Â If we go forward with this, I believe the buffering has to be extensive. Â Either it has to be an extremely large buffer yard, or, perhaps a portion to the west could be rezoned to something else to transition between Billion and the single family. Â I guess if I was going to approve it, I would require a 45 foot buffer yard, with a 6 foot berm, and extensive landscaping at a minimum. Â I think the major issue that the council will have to deal with is losing control of the details if they rezone it. Â I think they need to figure out how to stipulate what they desire in the rezone. Â Perhaps they will need to stipulate certain minimum requirements for the alternative site plan in the buffer yard in the rezone, for example “rezone to C-4 with the condition that the alternative site plan incorporate a buffer yard of 45 feet and a 6 foot berm” (as an example).
The council needs to ensure that if they approve the rezone, that they stipulate the conditions necessary before they lose control of the process. Â I believe that point is at the rezone itself. Â By agreeing to vacate Duluth Ave, they have a responsibility to the homeowners and neighbors. Â It is up to them to protect them and to ensure that sufficient conditions are in place to mitigate such an extreme incompatibility. Â Once they rezone, I believe they lose control.
Another option, which may be best, would be to defer final action until they can be shown an alternative site plan, which they could condition the rezone on the Planning Commission adopting that specific alternative site plan that they see (and get a chance to even modify) before it goes to the Planning Commission.
UPDATE: The neighborhood next door is zoned RD-1 (Twin home) even though they are single family, since they are zoned RD-1 they get scored as if they were twin homes on the compatibility matrix. Â That means they score a 2 which is medium incompatibility. Â A 1, if they were scored as what they really are, single famly homes, is high and the description says that in general this high of incompatibility should be denied.
They have the bad luck of having been zoned twin home district. Â If they were zoned RS or RT-1 (residential traditional single family) they would have a 1 score and have more protections per the comprehensive plan.
This proposal probably should not happen at all, and if it is going to the mitigation needs to be extreme.
A few additional comments:
1. It is possible by the time the rezone gets to the council on October 6 staff and the applicant will have an alternative site plan ready. In that case the council could approve with the condition that the exact plan they were shown is approved by the planning commision. If it is not ready they need to defer until it is ready.
2. That whole neighborhood of single family was zoned rd1 twin homes even though they are single family. Were they asked before shape places was approved. I am sure the answer is no.
3. Had they been zoned single family, either RS or more likely RT-1 they would be in a stronger position.
4. My gut says this should not be done. We are dropping the most intense commercial 54 feet from single family homes. I am not sure any amount of buffer can mitigate that, particularly when we have now pushed the traffic onto their street.
I think the vacation was a mistake respectfully. I am not sure how this ends well. The buffering would have to be dramatic. Someone who knows Shape Places well and is no bomb thrower told me they think Shape.Places is excellent for new developments but it does not do enough to protect older neighborhoods and the unique character of existing areas. I think that person may be spot on.
I am familiar with the neighborhood. How in the world did it get classified for twin homes in the first place, since there are none there. And Shape Places was supposed to go with current use. Is the city once again ignoring its own rules by allowing or even considering this plan?
I’m surprised Billion continues with this. Sioux Falls is becoming a metropolis. For car lots, what works elsewhere is relocating outside the political environment to fresh land near an Interstate Highway exit. Ask new business coming into the area. They’re looking at suburb cities because there’s to many rules and to many pockets to pad in the core city. Once they trap you, it’s ongoing expenditure and harrassment. Sioux Falls is flood prone, polluted, crack whores and crime. Find where you’ll sell cars to the middle class. Not where the business is drug mule junkers and maybe one limo a month to a city politician/director.
There’s a reason city employees live, shop, and thrive out of town.
Teatime, in fact except for commercial along 41st St, it is zoned solid RD-1 Twin Home on Duluth, Summit, Prairie, Walts running north all the way to 33rd St.
There is a significant amount of RD-1 running up to 18th St, but it becomes more mixed.
There are some homes that may have been converted to duplexes or some sort of multi-family use that would call for a zoning of RD-1 or something similar.
But there are a lot of single family homes here I’m sure.
I think it comes down to the fact that no one was asked what their use was nor was consulted when the zoning designations were set.
If there is a buck to be made, MMM will be right in there rooting it out. We have a group at city hall being fed by the developers to rip the core out of this city and make it a crap hole. Wait til McKennan park is sold off for another indoor thingamajig that will cost $150 million. The new big house kinda looks nice, but they sure have caused blight to be put on the rest of them. That was the intent of Shape Places, create havoc to get urban renewal, and stupid regional business circles on a map. To those who voted for it, hope you get a walmart next door to you someday. MMM already told us he is investing in apartment complexes with RBM so it goes that the east side planning with the placement of Fairway and MMMs big ugly apartment complexes would be shoved right thru without any issues.
41st and Minnesota has to be one of the busiest intersections in the entire City. That is a neighborhood in transition.
Comment #6 might come true. There’s been lots of home speculation at McKenna Park. Perhaps the park will be the next indoor something. The city approved a gun range pawn shop at the Arena. They’re in the hotels and water park business. How about a bingo hall or brothel.
Yeah, a brothel. That’s real Shape and Place indoor pleasure.
I did hear some at the office talking about the struggle with the approval of the big house in McKennan. Seems it went high up in city hall ranks for the approval and permit to have been issued. I hope Cooper Schmitt and mmm knock the bs off for once and tell the truth. I could see more big shacks going up as it appears to be easy to knock down unless you are deffenbaugh. Not sure who he irritated.
Titleist,
You do have a point to an extent. The neighborhood is in transition. But it is still a neighborhood.
I think what we have to decide as a city is if existing neighborhoods will be given protection, or, if we’re going to simply say if you live in the radius of certain intersections you have a big target (or, a green or red dot to be more accurate) on your house. If that’s what we’re going to do, we need to identify clearly to citizens which intersections are going to be treated with green or red dots, and let people know your house is targeted to be ‘transitioned’. I find myself torn because in newer areas where you have better access points, for example look at the stretch of 12th from Kiwanis to Louise, the traffic flows far better. Newer engineering standards makes the flow way better and traffic safer, which is good for all of us and we definitely have to deal with the fact that the city is getting bigger and traffic will get worse if we do nothing. The flip side is we have existing residential neighborhoods. So there is a tension. What do we do to balance those? Right now I don’t think we are doing a heck of a lot to balance it at all. The comprehensive plan laid out certain red and green dots, in the growth area of the city. It didn’t put red or green dots in the more interior parts, but now staff is saying that ‘if this was in a newer area we would give it a green dot’. That may (is) true, but it’s not. If we’re going to make all of our land use decisions based on the dot all existing intersections would have, we need to tell people. For example, if you are in this ‘circle of influence’ your city is going to support rezoning properties commercial all around you and you can expect heavy commercial coming. Then people can make an eyes wide open decision. Each neighborhood has a unique character as well. We have to decide if we want to protect that or if we’re OK bulldozing any of them in the way of progress. It’s probably no coincidence that those affected by this are in many cases on the lower income scale, not of the means financially or connected to fight any of this, so their really stuck. They can go plead with the council, but it just falls on deaf ears quite often.
Dots. Those da_ dots. They are really something! Shape Places is the biggest boondoggle Sioux Falls has EVER experienced.
To teatime’s question in #2, what matters is the type of construction that was permissible in that area, not what landowners actually chose to construct. If people built single-family homes in an area that permits twin homes, that’s fine. But they aren’t magically afforded more protection for doing so. While I respect Greg’s analysis, that’s where it’s a bit misguided. It assumes that the city didn’t ask about how the properties were being used. That’s not even a relevant consideration. The original zoning classification is all that’s relevant.
And as it goes, if one looks at a map pre and post-Shape Places, the zoning that’s on those homes now is no more or less restrictive than the zoning that was on them previously. It was always zoned for a higher density than single family and it still is. Everything residential between 39th and 41st in that corridor parallel to 41st is zoned denser than RS, as it should be. RS and C-anything aren’t compatible uses in all but the rarest of occasions. But there’s already commercial zoning directly adjacent to residential classifications all over town, so none of those residential areas can be RS. It would be completely illogical to create new system of zoning that has hundreds of use conflicts already baked in.
I’m not saying I think the proposed use is a good one or a bad one. If I was looking to expand a car lot I’d do it down on 85th or off of 11 on the east side. But people can’t put single-family homes in an area that was historically zoned for higher density, homes that are within a stone’s throw of a major commercial corridor, and then be surprised when growth occurs.
To respond while it is true it was zoned RD twin home in 1983 and thus it has the ‘same’ zoning as before, the issue is the city’s explanation of how they zoned properties with shape places continues to evolve and change. They recently said it was based on the use actually there. But here it was kept Rd even though they are single family. The point is the players who knew the most, the owners and neighbors were not asked or properly noticed, and the more you study the map, look at uses and compare 1983 to shape places you see it is not consistent and all over the place.