Title
Discuss Possible Amendments to the City's Architectural and Site Standards
Summary
MEETING DATE: January 26, 2015
DEPARTMENT: Planning
CONTACT: Michael Quint, Director of Planning
RECOMMENDED CITY COUNCIL AND PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION ACTION:
· Discuss possible amendments to the City's architectural and site standards.
ITEM SUMMARY:
· Staff is requesting feedback from the Commission and Council as to the basic framework of the architectural standards and feedback on a preliminary set of draft regulations.
· At the July 28, 2014 work session, the City Council directed Staff to re-evaluate and draft amendments to the architectural and site standards section of the Zoning Ordinance. These amendments were to focus on the following stated topics:
o The standards should mandate quality but should be flexible enough to remain competitive with sister cities;
o The standards should allow more material types; and
o The standards should focus more on architectural design including, but not limited to façade offsets.
· Additional focus points that have been provided by the development community and the Planning and Zoning Commission include:
o The existing standards are too restrictive;
o The current point system is too confusing; and
o The current architectural and site design standards create delays in the overall development timeline.
· Prior to drafting any ordinance amendments, Staff first set out to thoroughly evaluate the City of McKinney's existing architectural standards, the stated issues with these standards, and possible ordinance frameworks. The result of this evaluation was a document titled "Architectural and Site Design Standards: Analysis and Recommendations." This document, which was written by Staff, includes a preliminary set of draft regulations (due to the significant number of changes, a "tracked changes" version could not be produced) and the original analysis from 1999. It also identified a number of issues with the existing regulations and recommended a significant overhaul (save and except changes to recently adopted amendments pertaining to multi-family residential uses) to the existing ordinance which was intended to introduce more flexibility. It's Staff's opinion that the objectivity of the existing ordinance adds to its confusing nature, restrictiveness, and inability to address a wide variety of architectural design without needing approval of a meritorious exception application. This overly objective approach to architectural design standards may put the City of McKinney at a disadvantage when comparing our regulations to those of our sister cities; Plano, Frisco and Allen. These municipalities rely on flexible and more subjective regulations to govern architectural design.
· STEPS ALREADY TAKEN AND NEXT STEPS:
o Staff met with the City Council to discuss the City's architectural standards on December 15, 2014.
o On December 16, 2014, Staff posted the draft regulations on the City's website to solicit any feedback from the public and or development community at large.
o On December 18, 2014, Staff emailed a copy of the draft regulations to recurring McKinney developers for comments.
o Staff met with McKinney Economic Development Corporation's Development Advocacy Group to solicit feedback on January 7, 2015.
o Assuming the City Council is comfortable moving forward with the proposed draft regulations, adoption proceedings could commence at the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on February 24, 2015 and conclude at the City Council meeting on March 17, 2015.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
· The Architectural and Site Standards section of the Zoning Ordinance, Section 146-139 of the Code of Ordinances, was originally adopted in May of 2000 and has not been significantly updated since that time, with the exception of design requirements for multi-family residential uses which were updated in 2013.
· In August of 2009, Council Member Day expressed concerns about the existing Architectural and Site Standards and requested amendments. Staff worked with the Development Community, City Council, Planning and Zoning Commission and McKinney Economic Development Corporation's Development Advocacy Group between 2010 and 2012 to draft significant amendments to this section but the City Council ultimately decided to abandon these efforts due to a lack of consensus.
BOARD OR COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION:
· At the January 7, 2015 meeting, MEDC's Development Advocacy Group (DAG) was very supportive of the direction in which the draft regulations moved the City, but raised the following questions, which warrant City Council's direction:
o Should building expansions for buildings constructed prior to the effective date of the architectural standards ordinance be required to meet minimum architectural standards? The current standards mandate conformance with existing regulations for building expansions that are 50% or more of the building's original floor area (cumulative or single expansion).
§ The DAG felt as though there should be minimum standards for expansions to building constructed before the adoption of the City's architectural standards.
§ The DAG also felt that the 50% floor area threshold was too low.
o Should façade replacements for buildings constructed prior to the adoption of the architectural standards be required to meet some minimum standard? The current standards do not specify any minimum standards.
§ The DAG felt as though some minimum standard should be required.
o Should the architectural standards for multi-family residential buildings be modified? The existing standards were adopted by the Council in 2012.
§ The DAG felt that some of the multi-family standards were difficult to satisfy.
o Should tripartite design be mandated?
§ The DAG felt as though the requirement for tripartite design might date the buildings constructed and might stifle creative designs.
o Should parking garages be required to match the materials used on the primary building?
§ There was some fear from the DAG that doing so would add cost to the garage's construction.
§ The City of Plano and Frisco have regulations similar to what's being proposed by Staff.
· At the January 13, 2015 meeting, the Planning and Zoning Commission's feedback was broadly supportive of the proposed regulations. There was broad discussion regarding, but not limited to acceptable finishing materials, equipment screening, covered entries but no specific changes to the draft regulations were recommended.