Despite concerns board sends PUD revision to City Council

The Whitefish Planning Board is handing an update of the city’s planned unit development zoning code over to City Council even though concerns remain over different pieces of the revision.

The board voted 4-1 to recommend the proposed code amendments as written during its July 20 meeting. Board member Judy Hessellund voted in opposition.

Board Chair John Ellis thanked the committee that has been revising the code for its work saying it’s more important for the board to hand the document to the City Council rather than getting too picky about the details.

“I don’t really see any impetus to go through this and change words here and change words there, and take out phrases and paragraphs,” he said. “I think that ultimately this is going to be a matter for the City Council.”

A PUD overlay allows a developer of a property to apply to alter certain standards, such as lot size or building height, in exchange for providing community benefits such as affordable housing, shared trails or greater environmental protections.

The proposed revisions increases the number of PUD types from two to four, which include residential, commercial, industrial and mixed-use. Previously only residential and non-residential PUDs existed. The committee is recommending to set the high density residential and commercial dwelling unit bonus to a standard 25 percent bonus, while leaving the lower residential zone bonus as is.

During the meeting last month, the main points of concern coming from the board, the re-write committee and the public included the possibility for high density projects, the code’s impact on the city’s affordable housing crisis and whether the new revision was too prescriptive for developers.

Board members Rebecca Norton and Allison Linville both struggled with passing on the revisions before finally voting in favor of recommendation to City Council.

“There are many things about it that I do like – I really like the way you’ve done the affordable housing section,” Norton said. “I’ve just read through it and sat through maybe three or four of these revisions and I’m still confused about what we need to keep and what we don’t need to keep. I feel like it means a lot to the development community for us to get this right.”

Linville said she was concerned with how prescriptive the code could seem to developers, and she also shared the worry that the new PUD regulations wouldn’t have as big an effect on affordable housing as originally hoped.

“On paper it sounded good and like it might work, but in reality it’s maybe not as effective as we think it might be,” she said of the code’s impact on housing. “It just seems to me that there’s a lot more that needs to be discussed. Almost as though we’re jumping ahead in the process or we’re maybe not doing this as thoroughly as we could.”

During the planning board meeting, a few members of the re-write committee appointed by City Council to revise the code spoke out against what they see as an overly prescriptive draft for developers.

Bob Horne, who serves on the committee, said more specific rules in the new PUD code may keep innovation out of Whitefish in the future.

“Zoning prevents the worst from happening, but it doesn’t allow the best to happen. It doesn’t allow the most innovative, it doesn’t allow the latest market and design trends,” Horne said. “I’ve heard the saying, all of my professional career, that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. As hard as this group has worked, and as much time as we put into it, I’m afraid that we’ve given you this evening in this draft is a big old, funny-looking camel and I cannot in good conscience recommend that we past this draft onto the City Council for further consideration.”

During public comment, Casey Malmquist, president of Malmquist Construction, called the revised PUD code a “solution in search of a problem.”

“The current PUD [code] is a very creative and flexible tool, ultimately intended to benefit the community. I think it’s done that very well in the 23 years I’ve been here,” he said. “Bottom line, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and there are a lot of really good things about that PUD.”

City Councilor and planning board member Richard Hildner noted that depending on what side is reading the code, someone won’t be happy.

“The prescriptiveness is in the eye of the beholder. It’s too prescriptive if you’re a developer, and it may be just about right or not prescriptive enough if you’re a landowner who may be affected by the PUD,” he said.

The revisions also look to codify the method used by planning staff to average density by acreage, requiring that PUD overlays that include more than one underlying zoning district can not exceed the maximum average density.

Planning Director Dave Taylor noted concerns about blending high density into lower-density zoning areas, but said whether the city is going to continue to grow within its boundaries or push those boundaries is a decision Whitefish needs to make.

“The city limits are only so big, we’re going to grow as a city. We either get denser or we grow out and get bigger, we basically have two options,” he said. “People scream and cry about density but most cities favor infill over sprawl. As affordable housing needs grow, as the need to provide more units grow, we need to look at how do we manage density and allow it in a way that don’t impact the people who have invested in the community.”

“It’s always going to be a struggle, no one likes having higher density next door to them and no one likes more traffic,” he added.

Concerns also arose over how much of an impact the rewritten code would have on helping the city with its need to develop affordable housing.

For example, developments would be allowed a density bonus when a minimum of 10 percent of the total number of units are set aside permanently for affordable housing.

Don Spivey, chair of the rewrite committee, argued that given the number of PUDs applied for in the last 10 years, the effect on affordable housing would be minimal.

“Since 2007, the average number of PUDs that have come before the city of Whitefish are 2.4 per year. And that’s against the current regulations. When you think about affordable housing solutions, even though it’s an optional requirement in the PUD world, we are not likely to significantly impact the needs statement that the study has come up with. The PUD process itself is not going to solve an affordable housing process on a grand scale, only a very, very minimal scale.”

Under the proposed revisions, residential PUDs would be regulated to overlay only residential zoning districts, and they could not be blended with commercial zones to increase their allowed density unless it qualifies as a mixed-use PUD. Commercial uses, which previously were allowed for up to 10 percent in residential PUDs are now limited to PUDs of five acres or more.

The commercial PUD is for commercial retail or office type uses in commercial zones, but can also included residential two family and multi-family units.

Revisions to the code started last year after neighbors of a proposed PUD raised concerns about the impact of blending higher commercial density across lower density portions of the project. City Council placed a moratorium on PUD overlays that include blending density zoning created the ad hoc committee to rewrite the code.

City Council will hold a public hearing on the revised code during its Aug. 21 meeting at City Hall. The final draft ordinance can be found at the city Planning Office website at http://www.cityofwhitefish.org/planning-and-building/planning-and-zoning.php.