Review of the Draft La Plaza Vieja Neighborhood Specific Plan

Since July 2014, City staff and La Plaza Vieja Neighborhood Association (LPVNA) have been collaborating to update the draft Specific Plan for La Plaza Vieja Neighborhood, originally prepared in 2012. This renewed effort included forming a new project team, regular meetings with the neighborhood association and public meetings to look at new information, issues, and potential directions for the Plan. The team, which includes two members of LPVNA, has updated the Plan to align with the new Regional Plan, incorporate up-to-date public involvement, and better incorporate the partnership between the City and the neighborhood. Staff initiated a 60-day public review of the draft Plan on May 26, 2015 and plans to hold Planning and Zoning Commission public hearings by September, followed by the City Council hearing.

COUNCIL GOALS:
7) Address key issues and processes related to the implementation of the Regional Plan

REGIONAL PLAN:
Goal CC.2: Preserve, restore, and rehabilitate heritage resources to better appreciate our culture.
Goal CC.4. Design and develop all projects to be contextually sensitive, to enhance a positive image and identity for the region.
Goal LU.1. Invest in existing neighborhoods and activity centers for the purpose of developing complete, and connected places.
Goal LU.10. Increase the proportion of urban neighborhoods to achieve walkable, compact growth.
Goal LU.18. Develop well designed activity centers and corridors with a variety of employment, business, shopping, civic engagement, cultural opportunities, and residential choices.
Goal NH.1. Foster and maintain healthy and diverse urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods in the Flagstaff region.
Goal NH.6. Neighborhood conservation efforts of revitalization, redevelopment, and infill are compatible with and enhance our overall community character.
Goal REC.1: Maintain and grow the region’s healthy system of convenient and accessible parks, recreation facilities, and trails.
Goal T.2. Improve transportation safety and efficiency for all modes.
Goal T.3. Provide transportation infrastructure that is conducive to conservation, preservation, and development goals to avoid, minimize, or mitigate impacts on the natural and built environment.
Goal T.4. Promote transportation infrastructure and services that enhance the quality of life of the communities within the region.
Goal T.5: Increase the availability and use of pedestrian infrastructure, including FUTS, as a critical element of a safe and livable community.

WHAT IS A SPECIFIC PLAN?

A neighborhood plan is a specific plan, which expands upon the strategic goals and policies in Flagstaff Regional Plan 2030 (FRP30) for a particular neighborhood. Its role in the development review process is similar to the Regional Plan. The Specific Plan will only apply in discretionary decisions and does not impact existing entitlements. However, the Plan is also a vision for compatible reinvestment, and therefore will be available as a tool for all developments within the plan boundaries to preserve and enhance the neighborhood character.

The City Code Title 11-10.30 (Specific Plans) states, “The purpose of a Specific Plan is to provide a greater level of detail for a specific geographic area or element of the General Plan, and to provide standards for the systematic implementation of the General Plan.” This Title lays out the requirements for the content of a Specific Plan and the procedures to be followed in its adoption. The working draft presented today is undergoing legal review to determine that it meets all of these requirements.

WHAT IS IN THE DRAFT PLAN?

The Draft Plan is divided into four chapters:
1. Site and Area Analysis – describes the social, economic, physical and environmental context of the planning effort.
2. Concept Plan – provides a visual illustration of the desired outcome of the goals and policies. These illustrations do not encumber private property or limit private property rights in any way.
3. Recommended Goals and Policies – provides area-specific ways of moving forward the goals and policies of the Flagstaff Regional Plan 2030. They are connected to policies in the Regional Plan and trade-offs of community values and resources. They are written broadly, and are intended to be viable for a 10 to 20 year planning horizon.
4. Implementation Strategies - provide a complete and essential picture of how the City and La Plaza Vieja Neighborhood Association (LPVNA) can achieve the goals and policies of the Plan. Having strategies as part of the Plan allows both organizations to build partnerships, apply for grant funding, and take advantage of opportunities that arise in the future in a well-coordinated manner. Some of these strategies may not be immediately implementable but may be possible within the 10-20 year planning horizon.

HOW DOES IT SUPPORT THE REGIONAL PLAN?

The Specific Plan for the La Plaza Vieja Neighborhood supports the Regional Plan by prioritizing policies for a complex area of the city. Every goal in the Specific Plan is designed to make progress toward implementation of one or several Regional Plan goals and policies.

Not all of the desired goals, policies and implementation strategies perfectly align with Regional Plan goals and policies. For instance, adding additional design review requirements helps meet Neighborhood Preservation and Land Use goals but might limit flexibility for developers because of additional requirements (Policy LU.1.6.) In another example, the desire to limit the maximum parcel size so that whole blocks within the Neighborhood Core are not assembled works against Policy LU.1.8, which encourages voluntary land assemblage.

This is the essential role of the Specific Plan in relation to the Regional Plan, to help prioritize the goals and policies that are most applicable to this unique situation and to address the trade-offs of the broader Regional Plan goals in this local context.

PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT SUMMARY

City staff held neighborhood meetings in November and January with the required posted sign and mailed notifications. Over the course of these 4 public meetings, approximately 90 participants provided comments and had an opportunity to ask questions. 

In November 2014, City staff held a public kick-off meeting for the project. The objectives of this meeting were to inform the public about the process and solicit feedback on the goals, policies and concept plan from the June 2012 draft. The public expressed support for many of the policies in the plan, such as a work program, gateway signage and landscaping, community gardens, the FUTS trail, the need for pedestrian crossings, park improvements, improved property maintenance and neighborhood association programs. Concerns were expressed about the identification of commercial corridors on the neighborhood interior, the mass and scale of mixed use development, the implication of existing zoning entitlements, and providing infill incentives.

In January 2015, staff held two topic-driven public meetings about land use and transportation issues, and an open house. At the land use and transportation meetings, staff shared posters of current conditions and potential improvements and solicited feedback about how these represented their values and desired outcomes. The transportation meeting also included preliminary findings from the Milton Corridor microsimulation model about how traffic on Milton and Route 66 could influence cut-through traffic in the neighborhood in the future and the potential impacts of a Clay Ave. Extension. The discussion around these materials helped inform development of goals and policies that focused on architectural guidelines, historic preservation, pedestrian improvements, streetscapes, traffic calming, transit, and the Clay Ave. extension.

In early March, the staff shared an early draft of the Plan that had taken into account public feedback with the LPVNA board. The board members discussed refining issues associated with property maintenance, illegal camping near the neighborhood, improvements at parks, potential policy language related to the Clay Ave Extension, traffic calming and signing near mini-rounds, the desire to see specifics in the land use policies, and general strategies for continuing to revise the document. In May, the LPVNA board helped to prioritize the Implementations Strategies, which provided the basis for Appendix 1.

CHALLENGING ISSUES IN THE PLAN
There are dozens of issues that were raised by the public and staff throughout the public outreach and team meetings. Finding a solution to them that could be implemented through a specific plan was challenging in some cases.

One of the most challenging issues raised was how to address the existing entitlements in commercial zones that far exceed the desired build-out of the neighborhood. First, a specific plan of an existing area does not have the ability to reduce entitlements directly. Second, Proposition 207, which requires local governments to compensate a private property owner if the value of a person's property is reduced by the enactment of a land use law, makes reducing entitlements difficult and costly. The strategy in this Plan is to treat the goals and policies and the concept plan as an opportunity to clarify what "compatibility" with the Specific Plan means for this area. Eventually, the City may choose to pursue the overlay district mentioned in Implementation Strategy 6N.1 and 6N.3, which would further implement the goals intended to preserve neighborhood character.

The Clay Avenue extension is another challenging issue addressed in the Plan. It is included in the Regional Plan as a “Future Access “corridor. Some see this route as an opportunity to improve the road system’s connectivity; however, the impact it will have to congestion at Route 66 and Milton are inconclusive at this time. Residents are concerned that there will be more cut-through traffic traveling at higher speeds coming through the extension. The Plan addresses this issue by providing a concept of taking the extension to the south of Clay Avenue, following Chateau Lane and McCracken Street (Implementation Strategy 13.2). It also includes language to be considered in any future planning of the Clay Avenue meant to protect the neighborhood character, provide traffic calming and pedestrian improvements (Policies 13.1 and 13.3, Implementation Strategy 13.1).

The Arrowhead Village Mobile Home Park has been in the public eye for the past year because of the first development proposal for The Standard. The property represents a number of challenging social and land use issues. It is in the floodway and floodplain of the Clay Avenue Wash, it does not conform to current zoning standards for mobile home parks, some units are substandard and it provides housing for low income residents. How to represent this property in the Concept Plan was difficult to resolve over concerns that it could be misinterpreted as encouraging redevelopment of the property over social concerns for its residents. Ultimately, the property is shown in the Concept Plan as a multifamily apartment that has the same number of units as the existing park and could be developed as affordable housing (Illustration #2). Policy 7.5 also calls out the desire to see affordable housing preserved and expanded in the neighborhood. The Plan does not include implementation strategies or any specific mention of the property as the previous draft did.

The previous draft of the Plan (2012) included a policy to increase owner occupied housing in the neighborhood. While this goal would clearly have benefits, it was difficult to determine a realistic path using the City’s authority to achieve it. While the City can certainly regulate the form of development and can manage life and safety issues associated with unoccupied or substandard housing. Deciding “Who” can live on a property is difficult to regulate or incentivize. This draft therefore focuses more on the public realm of the building, historic preservation and affordability as means of encouraging owner-occupancy.

Another issue is apartment buildings in the R1N Zone that are nonconforming because only single family residences and duplexes are currently allowed. When a building is a nonconforming use, the provisions of the Zoning Code (10.20-60) apply. In general, non-conforming uses may not be expanded and rules for the loss of non-conforming status are identified in the Zoning Code. Treating nonconforming uses differently in different parts of the City is not a strategy that the planning staff supports and so it was not included in the Plan. However, in the Concept Plan, all nonconforming structures are shown with footprints that would be allowed under R1N zoning.

NEXT STEPS
The next steps in the City’s process for review and adoption of the specific plan will be:
• A 60 day public review of the Specific Plan (May-July) • A citizen review meeting with the Planning and Zoning Commission (August)
• 2 public hearings of the Planning and Zoning Commission (September)
• City Council hearing and resolution adoption (October)