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 fa?ade 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...
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