Board of Zoning Adjustment - public_hearing

Oh, my love Bye. Bye. We'll be right back.

Well, thank you all for coming here tonight. I apologize for a little bit of delay. I was running from across town with my kiddo from speech therapy, and we were getting the last stuff set up with CTV here for the meeting. But welcome out to the west side here tonight. Today is exciting day number three of the public comment period that runs through October 24th for the second phase of our zoning initiative. As I said the other day, I think this is an initiative that is a clear collaboration between both council and administration. And one of the things that I remember very fondly from the first phase from 2024 was this intensive public comment period that we established for 60 days, which was the longest public comment period we've had at Columbus City Council for any piece of legislation. This is the first of a number of different hearings that we'll be having across the city. Excited to be here on the west side with my colleague, Councilmember Day-Ochauer, who I'm proud to report I believe had a perfect attendance award for the first round of zoning here a couple years ago, and certainly appreciate her being here tonight. Also want to thank our host, the Galloway Ridge Intermediate School and their staff for hosting us here today. Also want to thank the zoning team led by our project manager, Louis Taba, and certainly our chief zoning official from Building Zoning Services, Shannon Pine, who you'll be hearing from here in a little bit. Also want to thank our council staff, the folks in the back, and our CTV staff that really do a great job of making sure that these hearings are accessible to folks both here in person but also online and then safe for folks to be able to review later on if they so choose. The purpose of tonight's hearing is really to hear an overview of what's been proposed by the mayor's administration and to hear public feedback related to that proposal. As I mentioned, CTV's here to livestream this event and then also it'll be available later on on our YouTube channel for folks to access as well. If you heard about the zoning initiative that we first started two years ago, this was about making sure that we actually modernized our zoning code for the first time in over 70 years. Our land use map and rules went back to the 1950s. It certainly was a code that was defined by red tape and red lines, and we sought to change that. And we know that after two years of the change of that code, that changes to our land use can have significant impact on what is happening in Columbus. This summer we started to see positive data from that first round of changes, where we saw as housing permits slowed across the country, we actually saw a housing construction increase here in Columbus. You may ask, why is that important? Well, as Columbus continues to grow, If we don't build more housing, then housing is going to get expensive for everyone. Whether or not you're looking to rent an apartment, whether or not you're looking to buy a condo or a single family house, the only way for us to help to stabilize and lower housing costs is to build more housing. And very excited to report that this past June, we actually saw the median rent for housing in Columbus actually go down. This is the first time. There's not a lot of things right now that are costing less money. And certainly seeing that kind of change for folks, something that everyone needs to keep a roof over your head, very exciting to see that data start to actually bear fruit here with those land use changes that we made nearly two years ago. That first phase, though, only touched about 13,000 parcels in the city, roughly about 4%. That was our main corridors across Columbus, really areas that we sought to make sure that we were encouraging more dense development. And this next phase is going to be different. The second phase is going to focus on significantly more of the city. over 70,000 parcels, which will represent about 43% of Columbus. And we're trying to take the lessons that we learned from that first phase and certainly implement them here for the second. And this second phase is going to be different. This is not a one size fits all approach. We created six new zoning districts in the first phase. There will be nine additional zoning districts that are created in this second phase. You'll hear more about those here tonight. But this is about trying to match these zoning districts on our maps to make sure that while we are certainly trying to change and modernize how we do development, how things are built in Columbus, that those things are certainly reflective of both the neighborhoods today, but also how we want to see those neighborhoods develop into the future. You know, whether it's a nonprofit in Columbus trying to build more affordable housing, whether or not it's the construction of single-family housing, whether or not it's folks that are trying to open a business within a community, we know that our current zoning code creates a significant amount of red tape in order for that to happen. And we have a number of different area commissioners here tonight, and I know we've got a couple assigned up to speak. They are literally the first line as our city code puts in their responsibility to review any zoning or any variance recommendation that comes to Columbus City Council. And if you come to Columbus City Council at 630 on a Monday night, most nights, not every time, you will see what projects that have unanimous support from folks all across their community needing literally to come before council to get an approval in order to move forward whether or not it's a basic business or housing development. That is because this code is so outdated and needs modernization. And that does not mean that we are going to cut folks out of a process or anything along those lines. What I'm truly asking folks is that the time and energy that folks spend on those current rezoning and variance applications that we put into this, that we make sure that as we create a more comprehensive framework for how we want zoning to look like into the future that we do that work now that rather than again focus on individual proposals that we actually focus on neighborhoods entire areas of the city to make sure that we have clear standards that allow us to have high quality design standards on the front end again to eliminate that exhausting project by project negotiation that exists that really bogs down i think lots of time and effort from everyone and again those area commissions those civic associations will still be part of that process and what we really want to move towards is a system in which if there is a rezoning request if there is a variance request that deviates from a plan that deviates from the zoning code that you're deviating from a plan that folks spent time on now that we really took the time to lean in together to think about what is the current status of a neighborhood and the side of town and think about what that looks like in the next 10, 20, 30 years. So we're making thoughtful decisions today to help provide guardrails around what the development looks like in the future that are more reflective of now, rather than thinking about what those land use requirements would have dated back to the 1950s or 1960s or 1970s. Because I can tell you, it'd be very easy for me to tell you that nothing's going to change, but I'd be lying to you. The city's growing, it's gonna change. And the only question is how are we going to grow? What guardrails are we gonna put around that growth? How are we gonna grow together? And one of the things I was very proud about in that first phase was that during that 60-day public comment period, we had over 1,900 different individual comments or requests that were made by residents through the survey, through gallery nights, through public hearings like this. We literally had planners within our division of planning that looked at every single one of those comments to help make a determination on whether or not we could alter what had been proposed to better accommodate those comments or requests. And we made dozens of changes based upon that. So if you're here tonight, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy lives to lend your time an effort to think about what the future of Columbus looks like, because we're in an Egypt. While this is a proposal, I fully expect it to evolve, and I fully expect what ultimately council votes on will be different at the end of the process than where we're at today. And whether or not that's a change to a zoning district, whether or not the change to a specific parcel and what's being applied to it, Those are the kinds of things that we need the public to be with us. City Council can't do this all on our own. There are nine of us. There are over 900,000 residents across Columbus. You know your neighborhoods better than anybody else. But what I do ask is that folks think about what the future of those neighborhoods are going to look like. Because again, we know that things are going to change. And these land use recommendations and requirements are going to guide what those changes look like. So I appreciate folks thinking about that future with us here tonight. Certainly appreciate my colleague for being here. And again, this is day three of 60. We're going to be doing these a lot across Columbus. And if you do nothing else today, I would highly encourage you to make sure you fill out that online survey that we'll talk about a little bit more tonight to make sure that we capture those comments and make sure that we have an ability to be responsive to how folks are seeking to potentially ask questions and help guide these really big decisions that we have in front of us. Because this is gonna be incredibly important for the future of Columbus. And again, as we talk about, rather than 4% of the city, and we're talking about over 40% of the city, There's going to be a lot of differences here. That's why you're going to hear about different zoning districts as it relates as compared to the first phase. The first phase was about a lot of density on individual corridors. We're going to see a lot of talk here tonight about addressing things like industrial development, retail, and commercial. We shop differently than we did 20 or 30 years ago, right? The idea that you would have retail and commercial developments completely separated from housing may not be the reality of what it is in the future. Because I don't know about you, but we Order a lot more things that get delivered at your house these days Then when many of these legacy retail developments were constructed in 10 or 15 or 20 years ago And that's just one example of what the kind of expected changes that that we'll see down the line so Thank you again for being here and taking the time here tonight. These are big, weighty conversations, and that is why we've made space for over 60 days to be able to have these with the public before we even consider legislation and potential changes to what has been proposed to date. So with that, I do want to pause and see if Council Member DeHakkar would like to add anything before we turn it over to the zoning team.

Thank you. Great to see you all this evening. I'm so glad to see some of my area commissioners here. I am really excited about this particular phase of zone in. The first phase did not impact District 2 because we are not on one of those high density corridors. District 2 is a community that is actually the land use is predominantly commercial, industrial, manufacturing, warehouse, logistics. We are a job center. And so this zoning phase is going to impact the majority of the land in District 2. So excited to hear the feedback from people about those commercial industrial manufacturing corridors that we have that provide an incredible amount of jobs. So thank you all for being here tonight.

Thank you, Council Member. I do also want to let you know that again, we've had a number of folks that signed up to speak this evening. Also, if you have not signed up yet and whether or not you're sitting here right now and saying, hey, I got a question about something that Rob said or Council Member Dachauer said or Lewis or Shannon says, please just grab Kevin McCain in the back. He's got speaker slips, so if you'd like to be able to come to the mic and ask a question, we just ask that you fill those out so that if we need to do some follow-up with you afterwards, that we have all your contact information so we're able to do so. Also, when we have public speakers, we're not going to limit comments, so feel free to take your time, but I will ask that we sort of practice Midwestern politeness with one another, because it is 6.20ish right now, and I want to make sure that folks be able to get home for their dinners and everything, so we want to make sure that we have ample time for folks to ask the question they want to ask. Hopefully we'll be able to give some response and some guidance about that, but we certainly will follow up. But again, if you do want to sign up to speak, Mr. McCain is in the back of the room for you to sign up. So with that, I'd love to turn the mic over to our Zone In team to talk about the second phase of Zone In. Louis?

All right.

Thank you, President Pro Tem. So my name is Louis Taba. I am the zone and project manager. We're here today on the west side. It's great to be back out here. We spent a lot of time out here. We have come out and visited the different area commissions and major civics out in this area. And we're here to talk about zone in phase two economic and housing opportunity. This is an important phase for the city of Columbus. It builds off the momentum we had in phase one. And what we're trying to do is modernize the zoning code to support job growth, to build more housing, and to foster prosperity citywide for all Columbus residents. So the overall zone in project began back in 2021 when we did an assessment of our zoning code. And it came back saying that we had a outdated zoning code that relied too much on site specific negotiations. Each site, each development went through a negotiated process. And what this did is it really hindered development in the city of Columbus, and it caused a system that was inequitable throughout the city. Different area commissions, different major civics had different levels of sophistication in their reviews, and therefore they were getting different products and projects and level of sophistication of their projects approved. With that in mind, the city began the zoning initiative. And in 2024, phase one was adopted. Phase one, as Councilmember Dorrance has indicated, was 6% of the city. It was a big success. We'll talk about it in a minute here, some of the more details of that. And then we began on phase two back in about 2024. We began working, we've spent the last two years speaking to the communities, speaking to residents, getting their feedback, making changes based off their feedback. And we're excited to propose for the community this proposal, which we think takes into account a lot of that feedback. And we're just starting to gather that feedback because we just started our 60 day public comment period about three days ago. So the zoning project goals, these are the overarching goals of the whole project. We want to modernize our zoning code to reflect the community's current and future needs. We want to support growth that prioritizes environmental and economic sustainability. We want to encourage thoughtful investment in neighborhoods that have experienced racial economic segregation. We want to guide the development of main streets, neighborhoods, and activity centers to support community goals. We want to ensure that the Columbus Zoning Code is fair, understandable, and accessible. Those are the overall goals that will guide this whole project. We're in phase two. We estimate there being about three phases in this project. So what is zoning? Zoning is kind of a convoluted term. It can be kind of vague, and some people don't understand what it means, but it affects us every day in our everyday lives. So it's a set of rules that determines what can be built on a piece of land and whether that land can include homes, shops, jobs, parks, or mix of uses. It also determines building heights and sizes, building placements, and how buildings can relate to each other. Everything that you see built in Columbus was built especially things that have been built since the early 1900s. So zoning shapes everyday life. It determines where your coffee shop is. It determines where you work. It determines where your kids go to school. And it affects our everyday lives, even if we don't realize it. So our older code, we're gonna start talking about the different code and codes that we have in the city. Our older code to be clear is called Title 33. That's the zoning code that was pretty much adopted in the 1950s. This zoning code has an outdated zoning rules. It deals with things such as cabarets, basket hampers, manufacturing, basket weaving, things that are all noble professions, but they don't drive the modern economy. When we talk about things such as data centers, distribution centers, it doesn't react very well to those kinds of things. We have very strict property-based uses, which says, in other words, on your property, if it's commercial, there's a very strict set of uses. Residential has a very strict set of uses. And what that does is it doesn't allow for much flexibility. If we have a major corridor in Columbus, say we have Carl Road, we might have just purely commercial on a lot of areas of Carl Road, even though the community would support a mix of uses. The community might support residential on some of these areas. Right now they have to go through a very lengthy variance process or a rezoning process to get these developments approved that in many cases the community and the city support. So it's pretty outdated. We have very few design standards, so the uses are very strict, but the design standards are most non-existent. So that's why we're negotiating every proposal. Every proposal, a developer proposes an idea, they propose development standards, and then we have to react to that, and the community has to react to it. So there's very little expectations of what can be built. We have a variance driven process, which is where someone wants to do a use that's not permitted and they have to go through a lengthy process. They have to get a land use attorney. It can take time. We have site by site negotiations and we have no clear expectations like I indicated. The updated code, and there's a picture of Title 33 code. You can see it's very difficult to read. It's not very user friendly. It reads like a very complex legal document. You get to one section, it says C subsection three on page whatever, and you have to go to that. What we're trying to do is create a zoning code that is understandable to the general public. As you can see from the updated page we have there, we have lots of graphics. We explain to you how the zoning code works. We explain to you what a front yard setback is. We explain to you what a facade zone is. We tell you how to measure the height of your building. So it's much more clear for the everyday resident. It has modern zoning rules. It has flexible property-based uses, so we're allowing more uses on a property. If there's a property on a major corridor and they want to do commercial, they can do commercial. But if they want to do residential, maybe they can do residential. But we do have design standards in place. So if they do do those kinds of developments, they have to look good. They have to have a certain amount of expectation of what can be built and what it should look like. We want to have fewer variances in site by site negotiations. And we want our zoning code to be clear, predictable, and consistent. So here's an example I like to bring up. This is 161. This is one of the first rezonings that we did after phase one. 161 was a 2.1-mile stretch of corridor. I don't know why my phone's doing that. Sorry. So it was a 2.1-mile corridor in the city of Columbus. 2.1 miles. It had on it a total of 20 zoning districts. All of them were site specific negotiations. So you had everything from manufacturing, you had office, you had single family housing, you had light industrial, you had multi-family, a big range of everything. And so when you'd go to the community and you'd say, what can be built on 161? The community would say, I don't know. anything I guess or if you go to a developer you'd say what can you develop on 161 and they would say I don't know we don't know so what they didn't have any expectations or clear guidelines of what could be built so through the zoning process we met with the community we went through a public comment period and we reduced that to three zoning districts RAC CAC and UGN2 RAC, how high can the buildings be in RAC? Seven to ten stories. So there's predictability on how high those can be. What about in the CAC? Five to seven. In the UGN, four stories. How much transparency can be on the first floor of these buildings? 40%, how many windows? Between 60 and 40%. On the upper floors, how many windows? It would have to be 15%. And so what we're trying to get to is a point where the community provides us feedback ahead of time of what they think can be supported in their community. And then we build that into the zoning code so it's not always a site by site negotiation. And the community can have expectations of what gets built, and the developers can have expectations of what can be supported by the community. And that's what zoning's all about. So phase one, equitable access, it was a big success. 140 miles of corridors, 12,000 parcels, six mixed use zoning districts, 8,000 surveys were completed. And like I said, it was 4.6% of the city, we had six mixed use zoning districts. And all this allowed for about 88,000 additional units in the city. And this is where we want to do our most dense development on our corridors. With that phase two, the goals of phase two, as Council Member Dorrance indicated, is there's a lot of the city, if I look at that map, that wasn't included in phase one. So for example, Hilliard-Rome Road is a major corridor here on the west side. It was not part of phase one. Carl Road was not included. Henderson Road was not included. So there's a lot of secondary corridors that we are now looking at as part of phase two. So we want to leverage additional corridors to create more housing and to create more flexibility in the uses along those corridors. We want to grow the local economy and support neighborhood investment. We want to connect housing, jobs, and transportation to make it easier for people to get from where they work to where they live and back, so that there's not as much traffic on some of our corridors. And we want to promote high quality development. We want to make sure that in the code, we have standards that promote high quality development. So we looked at the city. We had about 96% of the city left to go, about 95%. And we decided, OK, we're going to look at everything that is commercial, institutional, and industrial in the city. We looked at all those zoning districts and we began mapping them. Where do we think the community and the city could support these kinds of uses? And we put them in three big buckets, just land use buckets.

One was mixed use, one was industrial and warehouse, and one was business and institutional campuses.

Business and institutional campus is kind of a wonky word. We went back and forth on what to call it. But what essentially it is, is your campuses, your hospitals, your major institutions, your Chase Banks, your Huntington Banks, things like that. Mixed use, we want to look at a lower slung mixed use. Phase one was all about urban core, five to seven stories, seven to ten. But what about more suburban style mixed use? What about mixed use that's three stories in height, or four story heights, or that can support more auto uses? And so we put all those in those buckets, and we did a lot of community engagement after that point. Through July 2025 through January 2026, we had online surveys where we had over 3,200 survey responses. We did four community workshops. where we showed all of our maps. We did a lot of doubt exercises. Several of you were there and we looked at all of those activities and we took that into account. We made changes to the proposal. We did pop up pop up, sorry, pop up events across neighborhoods. We did stakeholder meetings. We did a lot of area commission engagement. We went to over 100 area commission meetings. We had an open house downtown. We had an information station downtown where people could reserve hour-long meetings with us. We had a public comment period, newsletters, et cetera. And all this led to over 19,000 changes to the proposal. So we really do take community input into account. If the community has a strong opinion, we will evaluate that. We'll look at our survey responses. And if warranted, we'll make changes based off that. So we did make over 19,000 changes to our proposal. So this really is a community-led, a community-informed effort. And overall, the public support was between 65 and 75% for the work we were doing. So the way that worked is we went to the community with those three buckets, mixed use, industrial warehouse, and business and institutional campus. And we asked the community two things. Do you support the use at this location? And do you support the intensity? What do you think is the appropriate height at these places? So we got community input. And like I said, we made over 19,000 changes to the proposal. And that led to the Columbus Growth Strategy land use plan that was adopted by council in January of 2026. What this did is it set a policy basis for phase two of zoning. Once council adopted this map, there's five colors on there. There's business and institutional campus, there's industrial and warehouse in purple, business and institutional campuses like that pinkish color. And then there's three mixed use districts, mixed use one, mixed use two, and mixed use three. Mixed use one are buildings up to four stories, mixed use two are buildings up to seven, and mixed use three is eight and above. And so what this did is it set for the first time the city has one recommended land use map. The city has never had this before. So when we're thinking about how do we plan for the city, this is a very effective tool for us moving forward. We can use this map to help guide infrastructure improvements. We can use it to look at where will there be additional industrial in the city? How do we guide public service dollars to some of these corridors? Traffic can help make forecasts based off of this map as well if they have to do infrastructure improvements. And it set the policy basis for phase two. So what we did then is we looked at this map and we essentially said, okay, we have our policy in place. We have mixed use one, mixed use two, business and institutional campus, industrial and warehouse. Now we're going to start putting zoning districts that apply. So we have a menu of zoning districts and we created some new zoning districts. So where there's industrial warehouse, we looked and we thought, should this be heavy industrial, light industrial, or urban industrial? We looked at mixed use one and we said, should this be emerging mixed use? Should this be neighborhood activity center or urban general? We looked at business and institutional campus and we said, should this be campus? Should this be regional office and institutional or community office and institutional? So we had the policy basis, and then we started making the zoning districts to apply. And this is what we brought to you for public feedback during the 60-day public comment period. And Shannon will talk some about the code. We did an internal review process by the city as well. It was reviewed by code enforcement, community development, power, water, water reclamation, fire, traffic, mobility, and parking services. So it was reviewed internally. And then since adoption of the growth strategy, we've been doing community engagement. We have attended over 125 community meetings. We've been out to the west side area commissions multiple times. We've shared our updates with over 1,900 community members. We've done area commission major civic engagement. We've done newsletters, stakeholder meetings, and rise up events. And so that's what we have now is a public review draft. The public review draft during the 60-day public comment period. A couple proposed highlights that we have is it's 70,000 parcels, it's over 40% of the city, and it has a capacity for 119,000 units. And code highlights or we have housing incentives, market driven parking, clear design standards, expanded mixed use opportunities, modern employment districts and improved industrial neighborhood compatibility. And we're going to talk to you a little bit about the code and the details we have in the code and some of these highlights. And so Shannon Pine is going to take it away from.

Hi, everybody.

I'm Shannon Pine.

I'm the chief zoning official, and I'll ask our tech team if they can switch us to the code viewing. Okay, so it won't show up on the large screen. There it is. Okay, thank you. So the layout of the code is continuing with clear text and lots of tables and graphics as Lewis had explained. One good thing about the code itself is it is clickable. So any of these sections that you want to go to on the code, you can just click on it and it will take you there. But while we're on the table of contents, I'm just going to highlight a few things that we have here. It's divided, the code is divided into articles. Article A is our general provisions, and it explains, we're in between two codes right now, so we have Title 33, the existing zoning code, and then Title 34, which we call the 2024 zoning code, because that's the year it was adopted. So for the time being, we are going to be living between two zoning codes, which makes life in zoning a little more fun and challenging. But it does explain what sections of various codes apply in this new code. Article B is our definitions and roles of measurement, going over things like distance separation and how setbacks are measured, how open space is measured. The definitions, one change from the existing Title 34 code to this code is that we combine the definitions into one chapter instead of having general definitions and then land use definitions. This was something that both staff and folks that use the code had asked for. So that is something that is new. And then moving on, Article E, oh, I should say, let me not skip, Article C and Article D were placeholders when the code was adopted back in 2024. they are reserved these are our administrative procedures that exist in title 33 now and our boards and commissions and our variance procedures that exist in title 33 now those standards still apply to all of the districts in title 34 and at a future phase of zone in we hope to move those to title 34. Article E is like the meat and potatoes of the code. This is our district regulations. So we have all of the existing six mixed use districts that were adopted in 2024. We have nine new districts and those will all be overviewed at the next public hearing on September 16th. So I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about new districts tonight. I just am more wanting to cover how the code is laid out and how you navigate through it. So all of the district standards, we do have placeholders in Article E for residential districts and for special districts like planned developments. But each of these districts chapters are divided by the major land use bucket. So we have the mixed use, we have the office and institutional, and then we have The downtown district is currently in title 33 with this effort of phase two zone in since downtown is already a mixed use district. We are moving it. There are very little changes associated with that movement. And then we have overlays. We only have one overlay that we moved at this point because we had properties within the airport noise contour areas. So we wanted to make sure that we brought that over as well in this phase. But it's gonna live in both Title 33 and Title 34 because some districts are still in Title 33 that are affected by this overlay. Article F is our supplemental district standards. We have our massing and articulation. This is mainly in our mixed-use districts to make sure that we are interfacing with the block sizes and making sure we're keeping that pedestrian feel in those areas. We have frontage types. These are, you know, what kind of entrance to my building do I have? Is it a courtyard? Is it a shop front? Is it a porch? So all of these different frontage types play in the mixed use districts. We also have large site standards. These are for districts that are between 2 and 10 acres and it helps break up the size of that property to create a more pedestrian oriented development within the confines of that parcel. to create new blocks, to create building sizes that will work with whatever the zoning district requirements are. A new section is building type standards. We just passed accessory dwelling unit legislation in Title 33. ADUs have always been allowed in our mixed use districts, but we wanted to make sure that some of those designs, those development standards were the same. um and then we have townhouse dwelling standards as well that allow different size parcels because of that type that specific type of building and then we a new in this code is also use specific regulations So for example, car washes and auto-oriented uses were allowed in the CAC and RAC districts, but they're hard to fit in with the existing design standards. So we created some ways where they could meet frontage requirements and setback requirements, and then maybe added some additional development standards for when they're closer to residential areas. And then finally, we have Article G, which is our citywide standards. Those are our lighting, landscaping, screening, vision clearance, graphics. I would like to mention that there are graphic standards in this code specific to these districts, but you do have to reference back to the graphics code in Title 33. That once again is going to be a future update of the code. And then also the affordable height bonus program still is in the code and it applies to the six original mixed use districts that we adopted in 2024. Those districts will be placed in other areas of the city with this phase. um i'm gonna highlight a little bit just wanted to show everyone how the code for the district standards works oh zoom in okay thank you let's see here where's my district that i'm looking for Here we go. Okay, let me zoom in a little bit. So each, when you get to the district itself, each district has an intent that explains like what we're trying to do with this district. What type of development is it? Is it more pedestrian? Is it more intense with higher buildings? Is it more auto-oriented? If there is a sub-district, that will be listed here. Urban Core does have a restricted district that we've placed in certain areas that have some use restrictions and specific setback requirements. and then moving on into the code itself the district standards we have building placement we have a facade zone we have figures that explain what that is we have footprint requirements this district doesn't have any but if it does it'll list it same with open space This district doesn't have an open space requirement, but many of our districts do. Building form is the height, so it tells you how tall it can be. If the height bonus applies, it will tell you, and it will tell you how tall it can be. And then we have the step back, which is the adjacency requirements. So what that means is if one of these districts abuts a residential district with a 35 foot height district, that means that the closer you are to that residential district, as you go taller, you have to step in the height of your building. And that way we're not overshadowing a single unit dwelling with a tall building. And then it also has facade requirements with your transparency or how much window glass you need to have. It explains what encroachments are allowed within the setback areas. And then it tells you how much parking is required. With the market-driven parking approach, there are no minimum parking requirements, but bicycle parking is required. And if you do provide parking, a lot of the parking requirements are still within chapter or still within Title 33. That is another phase that we will have to focus on moving over. And then if there are any additional standards, those will be listed as well. And then finally, what I wanted to show is each set of districts has a use table. Bear with my driving here. that has all of the uses that are allowed and it very clearly reflects what uses are allowed in which district. So A for allowed, NA for not allowed. Some uses require a special permit and it indicates that as well. Okay, so that is the code. I also wanted to cover the zoning map So this is our draft zoning map. As Lewis had said, the Columbus growth strategy has informed with a placement of the zoning districts, the mixed use one, two and three. You can see the different color variations. Let me zoom in a bit here. and when you look at the map the original 2024 zoning districts are layered on this map they are outlined in black but if they're not outlined in black that means that's a new district that's proposed and we placed the um according to the mixed use one two or three that's how we decided which variety of district we looked at what the surrounding development was was it more pedestrian oriented or more auto oriented so in our more pedestrian oriented areas we utilized the EMX, Emerging Mixed Use District, the UGN1 and UGN2, Urban General Districts, and then in areas further more auto-oriented areas, we use the NAC, Neighborhood Activity Center District. Mixed use two was UCT, Urban Center District, a new district, IMX Industrial Mixed Use, and then CAC, Community Activity Center. And I'm actually gonna jump over to the, let's see if I have it opened. when you go visit our website it will show you um let's see just go to the main zone and website uh the survey and the map survey so i'm gonna go to the map survey because that kind of gives us a little bit better um information on the map so let me so if i click over here it'll tell me what district is proposed. So industrial heavy, um, when we placed the industrial districts, we tried to flank it with, um, the heavy industrial is flanked by light industrial or urban industrial, just to protect any, um, nearby residential. But when you're going through the various parts of the city and wanting to maybe provide comments, it'll ask you, do you want to comment on the map or do you want to comment on the code? And you can do this survey multiple times on different parts of the city. You can toggle between the map and the code on the website, so that's very helpful. You don't have to open up a new browser to do that. And the map itself is searchable by parcel number or address. Placing of the zoning districts was really just informed by the growth strategy recommendations, but we did look at onsite, on the ground development as well to inform what district we chose. Some of the mixed use three areas are up in the Polaris area, East End Town Center. Another major corridor where we place mixed use is Stelter Road. We've seen a lot of influx of residential along that corridor. Emerging mixed use, James Road and Whittier Street come to mind. where they're predominantly residential, but perhaps some small commercial like a one chair barbershop or a little coffee shop would be totally appropriate in those areas. So I don't want to cut too much time into our speakers, but we do encourage everybody to take the survey, come visit us at the Zonin Gallery at 141 North Front Street. And I think that's everything that I plan to cover. Thank you very much. Do we need to go back to the PowerPoint?

We just have one slide of the engagement. I can go through it pretty quickly.

If you can go back to the presentation, please.

Well, just to let you know, the 60 day public comment period, this is our first public hearing. We're going to have one more public hearing during the 60 day public comment period. Let me pull it up here. We did send out 205,000 mailers to property owners and those within 125 feet. If you did not get one, please see me and we can discuss that. But 205,000 mailers did go out to property owners and tenants, those that are affected properties and those within 125 feet, asking them to give us a call to discuss the project, to send us an email with any questions, encouraging them to visit the gallery and take the survey. We have a gallery downtown at 141 North Front Street, there's free parking. Please come visit us. We'll guide you through the gallery and talk to you about the code and the different standards We're gonna have a public webinar on October 1st where we encourage everyone to attend And ask us any questions they have and then we'll have one more public hearing We're gonna have scheduled events at the gallery after the end of the public comment period we'll look at all the feedback that we received from the public and and determine any necessary changes. We'll have two more public hearings after the public comment period and then we hope to go to council for a vote of support. That's it.

Thank you, Lewis. Thank you, Shannon. I appreciate it. I also want to recognize my fellow West Side colleague, Councilmember Green, who was able to join us. So thank you for being here. I want to ask a couple of clarifying questions and then I want to pause for my colleagues to ask a few and then we can move on to public comment. So, Lewis, you know, I think you talked about just sort of the concept of zoning itself. Could you talk a little bit about, because I think this is somewhat of a difficult concept from time to time, because zoning right now, as you mentioned, is sort of this project by project, right? Where we're talking about someone has proposed literally something to build, and because the code is so old that the code is not kept up with almost anything modern we build now. So that turns into virtually, if you want to build anything in Columbus, you need a rezoning or a variance to do so. And that's why we have so many things that come before our area commission, the civic associations, and ultimately make their way to council. Again, the attempt here is to change that framework, right? Where we have a zoning code that is more adaptive to what the modern environment is today and what we think about in the future. So can you just talk about the concept of having, you know, a zoning in place that is reflective in this proposal here and then what happens, right? So it doesn't automatically, because something's been proposed to be four to six stories that by virtue of that, that all of a sudden there'll be a building there the next day to four to six stories. So you can talk about the concept of project by project negotiation as compared to sort of the concept of being able to build something by right.

Sure. So it comes down to the fact that, like I said, we have very strict use standards and we have very few development standards. And the code is so old that if any kind of modern construction wants to take place, any kind of mixed use structure, any kind of thing that wants to have reduced parking, it has to go through a council variance process or a rezoning process. And this can take several months. It costs a lot of money to get a land use attorney. And as I said, what we're trying to do is create predictability. And when we update the zoning map, what we're trying to do is over time affect the way that development happens in the city of Columbus by creating predictability. It won't happen immediately, but as projects come in, there will be a clear path, a clear expectation created amongst the community members and amongst the development community, where we've said, OK, give us your feedback now. Area commissions, give us your feedback now. Community residents, community members and residents, give us your feedback now. We'll develop a code that the community supports, that council supports, that the mayor supports. And then developers know this is what they have to do if they don't want to get a variance or a rezoning. so there's a clear path forward i can follow the rules set by the community and by the area commissions and by the city itself and i can build my building and meet those expectations if i want to do something different if i want to deviate from those expectations and from what the zoning code states then i have to get a council variance process and In other words, I'm not trying to do what the community has agreed to. I want to do something else. Then I should go to the community and have to explain why I want to deviate from the zoning code, which is different than it is now where everything goes to the community. So we want to create expectations and make a simplified zoning code that residents and developers and the community understands and facilitates overall just development in the city of Columbus and expectations that the residents have.

I think this is a frustration that I think is shared by council and our area commissions and many community members where again we have, because everything requires that process, there's no guiding, there's no general, hey we just decided the community has an expectation of X. Now, certainly while we have area plans, many of those area plans are particularly out of date as it relates to what we would expect moving forward here. So when we talk about this zoning code itself, the update, how does that relate to current area plans? How does that relate to, I think in the first phase of zoning, we heard a lot about why doesn't the city have a master plan, these kinds of things. I know you touched on sort of the growth strategy, which was the foundation here, this foundation for the house, and then we're talking about building on top of that the actual zoning code itself here. So you talked a little bit about that shift again when we talk about how this, again, guides this process from lacking, I think, a lot of these previous tools.

Yeah. So previously, you know, the city still has its 40 area plans. The problem with the area plan process that we have is it began in 1993 and it takes the planning division about two years to update a neighborhood plan. You do the math. We have 40 area plans. It takes about two years to update your neighborhood plan. We'll get back to you in 20 years with updated land use. And the community expects to have updated plans more often and more frequently than that. And so it also leads to a very inequitable process where some people's plans are very new and some people's plans are very old. And so with one unified plan, the Columbus Growth Strategy, we have a method in place where we can get updated land use plans. We can be responsive to the community's needs, on a more regular basis where we can come in and meet with area commissions and community members and say, how do we need to update our land use plans in a way that reflects what the community's needs are at that moment? And then those plans can help inform the zoning that we have that goes in place as well. So whenever somebody comes in for a variance or rezoning, we still use the community plans that are still existing. And we also have the growth strategy as well. So any variance or rezoning would go up against the Columbus growth strategy, the policy that we have in place, and that would help inform whether or not the city supports the variance or the rezoning. So there will still be variances and rezonings. As much as we'd like there to be very few, people will always have specific reasons that they'll need a variance or rezoning. And when that happens, we will still come to the area commissions for their review and for their vote, whether they support it or not, using their Columbus growth strategy as the guiding plan.

And again, we're talking about that deviation. We're talking about deviating from a code that was just recently created as compared to a code deviating from a code that was created decades and decades and decades before. A couple of questions before I ask my colleagues to sort of weigh in. When we talk about, this came up in the first phase as well, we're talking about proactively rezoning properties. Again, rather than waiting for an application to come through. I think a question that we heard a lot from folks was, well, what if the property currently has something on it that is not allowed?

under the new code what happens then am i going to be expected to tear my building down am i expected to be closed my business am i going to be expected to do a bunch of things because this zoning changes come through that i didn't ask for i will take that question so article e does include provisions for pre-existing uses and pre-existing buildings this is addressed in title 33 as non-conforming non-conformities But pre-existing uses and pre-existing buildings are allowed to remain. They're also allowed to be expanded by 25% without the need for getting a variance in Title 33. Anything that's considered non-conforming, you either have to get a special permit or a council use variance to be able to expand your non-conforming variance. use or building so that is one assurance that we are giving building owners and then also there are some projects that are being considered right now under their existing title 33 districts or they've you know been planned for some time and they're finally ready to submit their applications We are letting all of those folks know that if they would like to continue the review of their plan under the existing Title 33 district, they need to submit their final site compliance plan before the effective period of the new district. So there will be a lot of outreach as we get closer to if this gets adopted, that those folks can get their plans in and still be reviewed and not have to redesign.

Thank you. A couple of just sort of administrative questions as you think about, if we're going from a project by project to a more holistic code, I think if I'm a member of the public, I would say, well, hey, what about stormwater? What about traffic? What about these other things that normally come along with the process that is currently in place? How does this affect that? Does this change folks needing to comply with the stormwater manual? Does this change with folks needing to comply with traffic's recommendations on what folks need to do? So how does that interplay, or what if at all?

take that one so any development in the city of Columbus has to go through a final site compliance approval process it's handled by the Department of Building and Zoning Services engineering section and zoning is one review agency as is the stormwater folks water power recreation and parks traffic So there's an exhaustive review by all of those various agencies, and that development plan does need to meet all of the various city codes. Zoning does have a variance process. I believe stormwater does have a variance process as well, but it's not easy to get stormwater variances. It's very expensive. So there is checks and balances. For example, with parking, no minimums, it's not reasonable to believe that somebody's gonna build a 300-unit apartment building with zero parking spaces because that may shift to on street parking situation that is not supported by our division of mobility and parking services. So there are provisions in other parts of the city code that address the overall development plan to ensure that it is going to be a good fit for whatever neighborhood that that plan's being proposed in.

Thank you. Do you want to see if Council Member Green or De Alcar have any questions for the zoning team before we move to public comment? Council Member Green?

I apologize for my tardiness. I was pulling some double duty tonight. I don't necessarily have any questions. I just really want to thank you guys for being here tonight and thank you for coming out into my neighborhood. My name is Melissa Green. I represent Columbus from District 6, which is right where your feet are planted here on the west side. And, you know, I think that this is a really exciting conversation to have in this location. I know that Well, also, I want to recognize our area commissioners that are here. We have our Chair Rastadter, of course, from the Far West Side Area Commission, Chair Reed from the Southwest Area Commission, our Zoning Chair, Rita Cabral from West Scioto Area Commission, is that Commissioner Larry? I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but I think this is a really exciting time because folks that are on the west side know that there's, you know, Westland, where we are right now, has an area plan that is about as old as I am, just by a couple of years. That's how young I am. No, it's a bad reflection on us. And they've been asking, you know, they've been a great partner throughout, for many, many years, not opposed to development, and I think I hear the same things often from from the Far West Side Area Commission. I think that your zoning chair, one of the smartest, brightest people I've ever met, but thinking about the fact that the Far West Side Area Commission or the West Scioto Area Commission areas, they don't have area plans to help guide that development. Or do you? Oh, okay, okay, yes, the Roberts Area Plan, but it wasn't built around your area commission boundaries, because it didn't exist, and neither for West Dioda. And so, like, thinking about the way that this is going to just really transform how we're able to have tools at our disposal to be able to think, you know, long-term and proactively about the way that we want to see our communities growing. I think another thing too that is really exciting about this, I didn't quite realize I was having a conversation with my state representative, Christine Cockley, who represents Ohio House District six, and she was talking about how during this last capital budget process at the state level, They had a lot of capital requests from outside developers, whether it's residential housing or economic development, that were using the planning that we're doing here in Columbus, both on phase one of Zone In, as well as the Link Us project and Link Us corridors, to sort of plan their investments. in communities around these plans. And so like I think oftentimes when we talk about how this is going to help drive growth, it sounds very intangible and just like something we're blowing, you know, towards you guys as like a feel good thing. But to actually hear it from a state representative that she saw that through that process, she saw the requests coming in and people trying to plan their development around literally the standards that we're building collaboratively today, I think really puts a fine point on the importance of this work and of being able to get feedback from all of you. And then as our communities grow in an intentional way, then that's where we're able to then bring the resources to invest in the rec centers that are needed to support that growth, to invest in the fire stations that are needed to support that growth. because we're doing it strategically, right? We have a plan. We have a long term plan for that growth. And we also then can plan our infrastructure investments around that, too, which I also know is sorely need this area. So thank you all for being here today. Thank you for leaning in. Thank you for coming out to my neighborhood to hold this hearing. And I'm excited to hear all of your thoughts and feedback. And please know, I think you are seeing and hearing that these plans right now a lot of you probably for the first time in the comprehensive package that they're in right now I know we've all been engaging in public feedback over many many months so this is going to be a long-term process of being in community with each other of you guys being able to go back home and sit and look at the maps and really you know zoom in on the streets that are near you and think critically about what you're seeing being proposed and be able to provide that feedback so I Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was the west side. So we are looking forward to hearing your comments tonight as well as ongoing in the future.

So we will move to public comments. So again, if I mispronounce anyone's name, please blame my head and not my heart here. And please correct me when you come to the podium. But our first public speaker is Mr. Tom Titchener. Titchener? Titchener. Mic's up there. Thank you.

Okay, it's on. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. My name is Tom Titchener and I represent the BREAD organization. My topic is growing the tree canopy in Columbus. Bread is a local civic nonprofit with a congregation-based membership. We have about 35 congregations representing about 15,000 people. We are diverse geographically, racially, religiously, and socioeconomically. We identify serious local problems by listening to our congregants. We find proven solutions to those problems, and then we press local officials to implement those solutions. In 2022, based on respiratory and other issues reported by our congregants, we begin campaigning for legal protections for trees in order to grow the tree canopy in Columbus. Trees reduce air pollution, which reduces respiratory diseases such as asthma and COPD. They reduce heat, which prevents heat stress, heat stroke, and even death. Trees reduce flooding, improve mental health, reduce crime, and have other benefits as well. Columbus has a very low tree canopy, 22% compared to 40% for comparable Midwest cities. We were pleased that the city had also recognized the need to grow the tree canopy and had published an urban forestry master plan in 2021, which was approved by city council and the mayor. It sets a goal of drawing, growing the tree canopy to 40% by 2050. And it documented the many benefits of trees. We embraced one of the action steps in the plan, which was to strengthen tree protection policies on private property. And that's because we can't build the canopy to 40% by planting alone. We must also protect existing trees. That action step was supposed to start in 2022. The city did pass an ordinance to protect trees on public property, excuse me, that was implemented in 2024. But 70% of our canopy is on private property. In March of last year, the city published a study by a hired consultant which recommended that the city's next step should be to implement an ordinance to protect trees on private property under development. To be clear, that's private property under development only, so existing residences, businesses, et cetera, would not be impacted. The consultant's report included specific recommendations for the ordinance. And we, Bred, have focused our efforts there. But since then, the city has not moved forward. In the meantime, residents are suffering health and other issues, especially those in chronically disinvested areas, which normally have a low tree canopy. These disinvested areas have higher air pollution levels, higher heat, more crime, et cetera, and so need trees the most. For example, 23% of adults living in poverty in Franklin County have or have had asthma. We are afraid and angry for our residents, especially those in chronically disinvested neighborhoods. We, Bred, see Zone N as a must-take opportunity to implement requirements to protect trees on private property under development. The mechanisms and resources to make changes to the Zone N requirements are in place with the Zone N process. Zone N is streamlining the process for development, so it should be easier for developers to follow requirements to protect existing trees. And very, very importantly, implementing requirements to protect trees on private property under development would be an important step toward achieving one of the most important stated goals of Zone N, which is the goal of equity and inclusion. The targets of this goal of equity and inclusion are the neighborhoods which have historically suffered from racial and economic segregation. And if you overlay a map of tree canopy onto a map of those neighborhoods, there is obviously a strong correlation with low tree canopy. And one of the most significant inequities in these neighborhoods is the gap in health outcomes. Implementing requirements to protect trees on private property will result in better health outcomes. On behalf of Columbus residents, especially those in disinvested areas, we urge you to include requirements to protect trees on private property under development as part of the Zone N initiative. And to be clear, what is really needed is a citywide ordinance to protect trees on private property. The scope should not be limited to the area of Columbus impacted by Phases 1 and 2 of Zone N. Thank you.

Thank you, Tom. I appreciate that. You know, I've had the opportunity to meet with folks from Brett about the private property tree code proposal and certainly something I'm generally supportive of. I don't believe this is something that we have contemplated through the lens of specifically through Zone M, but I do want to pause and allow Louis or Shannon to talk a little bit about how this relates to either the current proposal, either what it's currently through the standard zoning process, and then what, if anything, currently is within this phase two.

I'm familiar with the private tree proposal because I did review it for the City Forester and provided comments. I do want to highlight a couple features of this phase of zone in where trees are required. So we do have unit trees that exist now in Title 33 and in Title 34. So in certain districts, the requirement is one tree per 10 residential units. We have revised that to one tree per five residential units for the first 50 units, and then one tree for 10 thereafter. The districts that require those unit trees are the NAC, RAC, RAC, EMX, the COI, and the ROI districts. So there will be two existing and four new ones that will require these unit trees. Also, in our industrial districts currently in Title 33, there are some requirements for landscaping. However, it doesn't say that they have to be trees. It could be a fence for some of the screening requirements. So in our industrial areas, if you abut a residential district and in some of our mixed use districts, if you abut a residential district, there is a residential buffer requirement. that is a minimum of 20 feet wide. And you have to have eight evergreen trees. I know those aren't canopy trees, but they're trees. Eight evergreen trees per 100 feet of length. Or if you do provide a fence, then you can do six shade trees per that 100 feet. Parking lot trees are also required to help reduce the heat shield within the parking lot. So for every 10 parking spaces, you have to have one parking lot island with a shade tree. Also, existing in the standards of Title 34 for the large site standards, if you are developing new private streets, you do have to provide street trees for those private streets. And then I do know for a fact that any development that comes in for a final site compliance plan, Recreation and Parks Department does require or ask for public street trees as part of the development. So that's some of the efforts with zone in. I know I've had discussions with Rosalie Hendren, the city forester about where does this private tree code, where the requirements should live. I know we had this conversation a lot the last go around with what's a zoning code and what's adjacent to the zoning code. And I think something like a tree ordinance probably should be another city code but that's not for me to decide but it definitely we are discussing it and we're hoping that by the time we get into the residential districts of the zoning code that we will have a good plan moving forward

Thank you. And I know that the comment is around preservation, because again, I think, as you said, Tom, about it's difficult to plant our way out of what we're talking about here. So I'm certainly happy to have additional conversations. I think to Shannon's point, it's for me anyways, really, the zoning code is not the perfect fit for everything. And I know we're So while I'm very supportive of a private tree ordinance and sort of how that would reflect existing development, because again, the question is when folks go to build something on the site, what is the preservation of what is already there? I think that's a fair question to ask. I think that's something that I would be happy to make sure I'm having more conversation with Brett about what, if anything, we can do within a zoning code standpoint. I think it's a little bit cleaner to do it outside the zoning code, but I understand there's been some difficulty in that moving forward at this point. i happen to have additional discussion with folks about what we can do in the zoning code do i think address some of the things i think i've had some substantive discussions with folks from brett before in the past if i can make one point to expand on your point about planting versus preserving trees you cannot get to our goal of 40 by 25 day by planting alone you just can't do it you have to preserve a lot of what's there Certainly understand that. And I think I know we've got some public speakers on similar preservation efforts that are signed up to speak, I think, literally next. I think that's going to be one of the things that whether or not this phase or phase three of zoning, just about when we look at the six zoning districts from the first phase and the nine that are being created here, just be very, very clear. You know, once we move beyond those places, we're going to have to think really, I think, critically around what additional zoning districts and potentially sub districts. And to be very clear, the sub-districts are sort of special rules that you would apply in certain areas, and I think that there are certainly areas of the city where, because of the tree canopy and because of the natural types of developments that exist there, whether or not those are ravines or other kinds of things, that we do need to be real thoughtful around that. Just simply because we've zoned something does not mean it's going to something's going to be built tomorrow, but also at the same time, if we're going to say this code should be a guiding code for the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, we need to be thoughtful about that. And I think that's something that's certainly of mine for me. So I certainly appreciate Brad's advocacy on that. Our next speaker to come to our council is Ms. Cindy Decker.

Thank you for introducing the topic of trees, because that dovetails very nicely into what I'm talking about. I'm here from Walhalla Ravine, and if you're not familiar with it, it is a lovely little gem in Clintonville. If you grew up here, you probably went there and did all sorts of bad things you shouldn't have. Now, today, we're the people who call the police on you. We're here today to ask for, in the scheme of things, a very simple ask in phase two. Currently, there are three properties that are Walhalla Ravine properties that are being considered for emerging use designation under Zone 2. They are Walhalla Ravine properties. They sit at the entrance to the ravine. They should not be considered for the kind of development that would go there. A three-story apartment building with a five-foot buffer to the road seems inappropriate for the entrance to what is a very unique and delicate ecosystem. We already as an ecosystem face a lot of man-made threats. It would be great if we didn't add this. These properties would best be suited for inclusion in phase three when I understand you're going to look at all of the ravine properties. All of the ravine properties houses are currently zoned RRR, which is residential residential Thank you. I got them backwards. Anyway, so means bigger lots. And the history of that was that back in 52 years ago, somebody split a lot, built an extra house. Residents weren't happy about that and formed the Wahala Ravine Association and worked with city council to come up with This triple R designation, which is one house on a very big lot. Can't be divided. And that is what, that is how we have become a defacto park. We are basically a privately owned park and it was so indicative in 2020. We were just awash in people getting out of the house. And city officials who have come down there are always surprised. We have more pedestrians, bicyclists, and just people enjoying the ravine and the quiet and the solitude than we do cars. We are heavily treed. We are under threat from things like oak wilt and erosion. The city has been great in working with us on its concerns. We appreciate that you have already removed three properties, Wahalla properties from zone in phase two, but we ask that you also remove 485, 486 Wahalla, and 3199 Indianola, putting them in with discussion about the housing use. You'll hear a lot more of us on when we get to zone three on the housing. Thank you.

It's good to see you again, and I know I've been having a lot of conversations with the zoning team about this, and I think, one, I think you all within that area have been already organizing, and I would make sure that folks, again, fill out the public comment and survey. That's the point of the 60 days. I think the, and again, we've had conversations about different things that were happening in the ravine, whether or not it was water and power, you know, projects of that nature. You know, I think there are certainly areas of the city that have these ecological treasures that we need to, I think, think very, very critically about how do we zone those in a way that is, again, being thoughtful about the future while also being very thoughtful about what is there today. And I think that ravine is a perfect example of that. I mean, generally, I am encouraging the folks in the zoning team to think really critically about this, about what, if any, changes, including taking those parcels out, would look like. Because, again, I think we're not quite there, in my opinion, yet about a zoning district that would make sense within the area. Because, again, when we're talking about economic and housing opportunity, that's not exactly, you know, the middle of a ravine. You know, that's not, you know, sort of a one-size-fits-all solution for that kind of place. So I hear you, and I think this is certainly one of the areas that, you know, I'm wanting to challenge our team to make sure that we're being real thoughtful about. Next speaker to come before council is Ms. Lucy Reed. Good to see you again.

Hello. Can we put up, before I start speaking, can we put up the map for the southwest area? So I do have one, before we talk, I do have one general comment overall. I am concerned about that it's indicated that in heavy industrial that data centers are allowed. I think we should consider, because data centers provide more problems than just the footprint, which is primarily what is discussed in that zoning code. I would prefer data centers just be removed altogether and deal with those separately and not be included as an allowable in any heavy industrial area. Okay. Can we focus on southwest area as much as possible? We're getting there. Yeah, scroll down so we can see more of the south. Just a little bit more to 270. Perfect. We're trying to get that whole triangle, what I call it, I don't know, triangle is what I'm calling it, like a piece of pie. So let's go back to where you just were in terms of, Okay, so this is generally the southwest area where we're talking about Harrisburg Pike. That's that black line that's kind of going up diagonal. The red area is, that's kind of where Cooper Stadium is. And then if you go around the, where the river is all the way down to 270, that's essentially the southwest area. I wanted to define that first. I am concerned about particular areas that are, and I, this is all new information, so I don't remember the exact codes, but I'm concerned about the pink area that is close to where McCoy Park is, so we're talking south of Greenlawn. But west of Harmon Avenue, exactly where you had your cursor, note a little bit more. So that area right there, and then there's also a little square across the street on Harmon down south of McCoy Park. It's just a teeny little square. So those areas in there are currently mobile home communities. We're very concerned about those getting changed or designated as something other than residential or whatever they're currently zoned as because this area provides really affordable housing for a lot of individuals and should it get rezoned and with the development that is beginning to happen in that area we are really concerned about people being removed from their homes and then not being able to afford to live anywhere because a lot of these residents they own their trailers and they're only they may be paying less than 500 a month um for housing which is unheard of so uh very concerned about that so um if we want to now just kind of scroll further just a little bit further south to get to see where we can see heart road and um yeah so that kind of purplish area that's light industrial i think is what we're talking about here that is north of frank um little bit no it's a lighter purple go down a little further south that whole area so right there part of that property is going to be hopefully the replacement acres for McCoy Park the part that kind of goes up to Hart Road you see sort of the square at the top there Right there. So going down further south, a lot of that is what we're looking at. Recreation and Parks is working on getting a grant to purchase some of that property as a park preserve. And what we would like to see to the right, I know it's currently light industrial, but what we'd like to see in consideration next door is probably more housing rather than light industrial. So just changing that whole, like. And I know that we haven't when we were looking at this, we weren't changing anything from light industrial to residential, but I think this would be a proper place to think about that. Especially with the hopefully incoming park in that area. Then with these changes as well as. I guess we don't have to see it, but there are other areas. I am concerned about the outreach because I'm not sure that everybody really understands how these changes may impact them specifically where they live. In the southwest area we have a lot of people I would designate as the working poor. They work a lot. They may have two jobs to be able to afford where they live and they don't have time. It's going to probably take me hours upon hours to dig through that and to really provide you all the feedback that I want. But I'm not sure a lot of people have the time to really understand or dig into this. So I am concerned about some of those areas where it does change from a residential. Specifically, there's sort of like the very southwest corner of our area. There's a little around Gantz Road, that Dyer Road area that was kind of like industrial or I don't know exactly what it was. It was something different than residential. Maybe it's zoned that way currently and it just happens that only people, you know, it's only housing there. But I'm concerned that they may not understand the impact in their area. I'm also concerned about the urban, I think it was called an urban something. No, the urban where you allow hotels. Yeah, industrial mixed use. I think you have that in a lot of the areas like the McCoy Park area, the light pink that we were talking about. Yes, I'm concerned about urban centers just in general because urban centers will allow hotels as well, which is a whole different use than if you think about an office environment. And some of the urban centers are areas that we're also, also being recommended in the southwest area especially when we're talking around that mobile home community that we were talking about a little bit ago so I don't think that's a proper place to put hotels And then I think the final thing I wanted to talk about just in general is code enforcement. So code enforcement currently when there is a business that just decides to buy property and use it for that business even though it's not zoned appropriately, which happens unfortunately more often than we think, what happens currently with code enforcement is they allow the owner time to come up with a plan that will make it okay. Rather than considering that a zoning violation, then they're allowed to spend time, months, even years, to come up with some sort of a plan that maybe might be okay. I'm hoping with the new zoning that once this is in place that those kind of leniencies will not be allowed to the extent that they are now and that we put, you know, when people purposely and intentfully violate zoning code that they in fact are charged with those code violations as opposed to just like, we'll work it out, we'll figure out how to rezone this, it's okay. So I'm hoping that something happens there. If it can happen, policy changes with the zoning code, that would be awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Liz. I did want to pause and see if The zoning team had any response. And Liz, again, it sounds like you're going to be making all those comments within the survey, so I certainly want to encourage you and others that have the same concerns or questions to do so. I do think from a philosophical standpoint, I think the last comment you made around sort of the code compliance and zoning violations, Um, I, I would hope that one of the natural, uh, conclusions of having an updated zoning code, having an updated zoning map as it's much clearer what in fact is a violation, even though we're talking about allowing more uses, um, that's actually very specific about what those uses are allowed within those districts themselves. And I, I think to your point about coming up with a plan and because we, you know, have such an outdated code itself, I, you know, whether or not it's intentional or unintentional, think that there's a lot of belief that oh folks need to try to work through the process and try to figure out a way to make this work and that I think is not something we would want if in fact the community spends all this time on the front end to say this is the zoning district and here's all the things you can do in it and if it's not in that you can't do it you can go seek a variance you could go seek a rezoning if you want to and I can just say a chair at the zoning committee I think one of the things that we have difficulty right now is that reasonable minds can disagree about whether or not a use is appropriate or not appropriate, and we don't have anything to really guide those decisions. One of the things in this is that if we all do this all together at one time and say, here are the things that we think are appropriate today, and actually should be appropriate into the future, then there should not be that reasonable minds can disagree. It should be, no, these are the rules of the road. Either they comply or you don't. And I'm hopeful that that actually will give, I think, far more specific guidance to code and in other parts of the bureaucracy to, I think, take a firmer hand with, I think, some of the things that you all have experienced.

Well, and also I think there's,

This is answer. Oh, I think there's a difference, though, too, between, you know, being a blatant violation and then just, you know, dealing with a property that's not in confirmation with the current code. And then then you have Cooper Stadium that lives in the nexus of all of those things in the most egregious and. horrific way and so i think that my my hope is as well that there will be no longer 10-year runways for people like the owners of cooper stadium to be able to remain out of compliance and try to figure out how to fit around peg into a square hole because the entire west side deserves better than that

We do have two more public speakers. Next is Steven Webster. Mr. Webster, welcome to council.

Hello. Hi. I'm not overly prepared because I did not, I'm the owner of one of the properties that Cindy talked about. I just found out about this a couple days ago. I did not receive a postcard. It seems like about 30 days before public comment would be a time to send out those kind of communications to those that are affected by it, but that's clearly there was an error and it sounds like it's been acknowledged that there's a problem there. But I am here representing one of the three properties that is in question. I will contradict Cindy on one thing. My dog owns the ravine. just allows everybody else to live down there. It's a wonderful place. It's a dog park, yes. uh... i do agree with the more streamlined approach the zone and is going through and clear guidelines i have a variance on my property for when i operated a business on a small business uh... so i understand the process to it but it seems like what zone and is doing is very from what i'm listening to today and what i read just briefly in the last day or so very very pro developer and not necessarily pro neighborhood wahala indianola were very unique neighborhood and trying to do a cookie cutter thing which is what it really sounds like you're trying to put square pegs around holes uh... and unique neighborhood like while holland indianola that area it's very unique and trying to sort of say, paint it with a broad brush and say, this is what we're going to do. That's not the way to keep cities. It's not the way to keep neighborhoods unique. And that's not why we moved to Clintonville or to the west side. You know, we want the flavor of the neighborhood We want it to evolve, yes, but we moved there for a reason. And I think trying to do these broad brushes is not necessarily the right way to do it. So I know there's a compromise somewhere between. So thank you for your time.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Our next speaker is Larry Weber.

Thank you for the opportunity. I could go on for days, but I... I want to echo some of these things. I do believe that this is encouraged by developers. And I think in that process, we are losing democracy to some degree. You send out 205,000 notifications, and I don't know if everybody got them. I don't think I did. But there's, what, 30 in here? I don't know. But the kind of input that you are able to get at this point in time, until it affects somebody's livelihood or their lifestyle or the desirability of where they live or work, They do nothing. They're unaware of it. And I'm an area commissioner, and I find it very difficult even to identify and address specific issues at this point. I'll be looking at it with a lot of detail. So that's my general thing. And also, I'm wondering what the dynamic is, which was everything, C2P2. Does that fit into this in any way, shape, or form? I ran a committee. that spent a lot of time becoming an early adopter and, you know, we broke our whole area, the West Sciotic Area Commission, into six different zones and decided what would be acceptable in those zones, what would be encouraged, what would be good. It was very different from one to the other. And, you know, we were awaiting that, you know, the actual review and, you know, the land use audit or whatever it is. And, of course, now that's not happening, but I'm wondering how does C2P2 fit into all of this? So, I'll say it.

Shannon, do you want to talk about how C2P2 fits into what we're talking about here today?

Sure. So C2P2, that was adopted in 2018. It was planning's first attempt to create kind of city-wide design standards, at least at the policy level. The issue with C2P2 is it didn't really include a map component. So you were still relying on your older area plan land use maps, but we were applying design standards. And it wasn't adopted citywide. It was partially adopted in the city. and so what the columbus growth strategy is it was an amendment to c2p2 the name changed so it went from c2p2 to the columbus growth strategy it's what we engage the community on throughout 2025 how to update and amend c2p2 and the main difference between the columbus growth strategy and c2p2 is that the columbus growth strategy the city's first land use plan, which is a citywide land use map. So it's an amendment to C2P2. C2P2 is just the growth strategy now, but it includes a map. And we also added some additional policy language based off of things we've learned in the last, what has it been, like seven years since adoption.

Our last speaker is Jeff Franz. Jeff, good to see you again.

Hey, I've got sort of three questions that are kind of technical questions about some of the details I've been reading about emerging mixed use. Specifically, the setback for side streets is different from the setback from the main street, as I understand. And maybe the answer is this is all handled by traffic and parking, looking at whether or not something is safe or not. But it seems like that you can actually build a building five feet away from the roadway if it's on a side street. But none of the setback requirements that talk about averaging how much other buildings are set back on the block, those don't all factor in. It's only because it's a side street. Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes, you are. It's because they're corner lots and instead of imposing both a front setback and a side yard, a lot of these areas are very small parcels. So we went with like what a side yard requirement would be on the side street.

Okay. So in the case of, if it were a large building that would be obstruct, potentially obstructing views for traffic, that would be... There's still vision clearance requirements built in. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Okay, cool, cool. And then my next questions are related to block and block face. Block, I was confused about because it seemed like, in the case of Walhalla, the entire ravine would be one block. Well, I should say, from example, Longview to High Street would be one block because a block is defined by some sort of natural impediment like a roadway or railway or other kinds of things like that. That seemed kind of, I don't know. First off, am I correct? Would it be the entire length of the ravine from any road to any road would be considered a block? Is that true?

Not necessarily because, um, in the case of a large site, it's based on the frontage that it has on the street. Um, so if there, um, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be the case on wahala because those parcels are smaller. But if you had like a 10 acre parcel on South High Street, for example, and it had between 300 feet and 500 feet of frontage on the street, depending on what zoning district is, you do have to address a block, like do block scale development, as opposed to having a building that spans 400 feet along a 500 foot frontage, if that makes sense.

but but some of these um setback things are their calculations based on the block face and isn't the entire so that's where I go back again isn't the entire block face for would be from for example Longview to High Street is that true um probably but I would have to look and see if there are any intersecting streets along any of that It would require an intersecting street. It wouldn't be just, I don't know, a bridge or a creek or something. And then when you have a polygon that is not a square.

There are, so in Article B, they do talk about how you do measure contextual setbacks and facade zones on irregularly shaped parcels.

But it's still block face, right?

I believe so, yeah, because it's part of the block.

Yeah, so that's where, in the particular parcels that we're talking about on Walhalla, the polygon is, it's kind of like a truncated circle, sort of. And so when I was trying to figure out what would be the block face for doing calculations on setback for ones for property fronted on Walhalla slash Clinton Heights slash Underground Road, it would be the entire polygon, I think, except Indianola? Would that make sense?

That sounds right, but I'd probably have to, like, not ready to do a zoning clearance evaluation right here. Understood, understood.

But I just want to make sure that there wasn't some other provision that I was missing. Yeah. All right. I think those are the big things. Thank you. Thank you.

Good to see you.

um that was our last public speaker here tonight uh so i want to thank folks that are here i know we uh staff let me know that we had a number of folks that were also watching online uh so they want to thank council staff uh zoning team for preparing and certainly our host here at uh galloway ridge um the materials that everything you heard here tonight is all available online uh if you are trying to find something online that you either heard heard here tonight or you're searching for something, feel free to email me. That's sort of the easiest way to get that information. You can email me at radorns at columbus.gov. You could also get on the Zone In website. You can see the different gallery nights. So as Louis mentioned, there's a gallery that's set up downtown with free parking. where there's lots of information about The zone initiative both was been proposed There are certain nights that council members will be there with members our planning division You can also set up as you heard earlier individual appointments So if you want to sit down with a planner from the city and go, you know parcel by parcel in your neighborhood You really want to dig into some of these details. I think that folks had questions here tonight and more than welcome to do so. You can either be there at one of those gallery nights. I think each individual council member will be hosting a night with their area commissions and major civic associations within their districts. Folks are welcome to go to any of those gallery nights. You don't have to wait until the council member from your area is hosting one. And certainly if you have any questions for me or the zoning team, feel free to certainly reach out. That website is columbus.gov slash zoning update. Our next public hearing will dive into more of a deeper review of those new nine zoning districts that have been proposed. That will be the evening of Wednesday, September 16th. We're still working to finalize that location, which we're hoping to do in the next few days, and certainly get that out to folks so that people can attend. As you heard, we're going to have two public hearings during the public comment period. There'll be two public hearings after the public comment period as well. And again, as the chair of the zoning committee, we fully expect to make changes and certainly appreciate both the comments we've heard tonight. But the biggest thing is that if you have a specific comment, you like this, you don't like this, please use that survey. That is the most efficient way for us to make sure we have all the comments in one place so that as we review that both from our planning division and from council, we have the easiest way to be able to identify what, if any, changes that we want to make to the proposal that has come from the administration. Again, the goal is for us to have legislation before council later this year, so hopefully later this fall. But again, we want to make sure we get this right and make sure that if we're talking about over 40% of the city, that we're doing this public comment period to make sure that we're getting all the feedback we can. Because again, we'd rather do this all as a community together. And I think both Council Member Green and Dayakar and I have, we've sat through many a zoning meeting where we thought, wouldn't it be nice if we actually had all of this work done up front together to actually guide these decisions rather than trying to do our best to try and make these decisions as a one-off, as project by project negotiation happens between applicants, members of the public, and council, and all trying to figure out what is a reasonable pathway forward. This is the opportunity for folks, I think, to think about what is that reasonable pathway forward for their neighborhood and certainly for the city. Hope that we're able to achieve that in this phase as we look towards rezoning the entire city to be more reflective of what our Current city is but also more importantly what our future together is going to look like So I just want to pause and see if either one my colleagues have anything like like to close us out with I

I am hosting two zone in galleries, um, for area commissions, civic associations, our friends and neighbors in district two, or any other straggler who wants to come, um, the evening of September 1st, um, from five to seven and for religious institutions, whether that's churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, whatever, we are having a special one on September 10th from five to seven for religious institutions.

Doesn't agree on anything?

Well, I got dates also, but I don't got him right in front of me. So please reach out. It's sometime in the next month or so. I do just want to say, you know, Commissioner Weber, like I hear your concerns and I think, you know, I can assure you that we want to hear your feedback during this process. You know the streets of your neighborhood better than we do. There's been like already I now have a running list of things that we need to be, you know, thinking through and talking about that. I just simply wouldn't know even though I know the west side really well you know by even talking about the things related to making sure to preserve the land for the for the mobile home park and thinking about adding residential next to the beautiful park we're about to big that all makes sense and that stuff that comes from you as someone who knows your community the best um possible um and you know i will say too i feel sometimes this way with like 3-1-1 when we tell people to put something in 3-1-1 i put my stuff in 3-1-1 though because i know it's the most effective way to get a problem solved and the same is true of this survey like all during phase one of every time i hosted the gallery night i was sitting there also furiously putting my own comments in even as someone that ultimately would be voting on it because i know how important that feedback is so it's not just us sending you to a website where this information is going to you know die a slow death in cyberspace out there on its own it really really is an important tool we want to be in relationship with you please reach out to our offices at any point in time if you have thoughts or concerns we could talk in more detail about and share the survey with all of your friends. I know this isn't the most exciting or fun topic to talk about, but it is so important, and it is really, really gonna set the trajectory for the growth and development of our city, and we wanna do that all together with you, so thank you.

Appreciate you both being there. The last thing I'll say is that if you have an idea on a group, how to be out somewhere, if you want the zoning team to come present to folks that you know out in the community that is being impacted, please let us know. We're setting up these very specific events across the city with those gallery nights, these public hearings. But also, if you know of a group that would like to host, whether it's council or the zoning team, to talk about this, please don't hesitate to reach out. We'll do our best to try and accommodate that. easier if we drive folks to an existing event that's already been scheduled, but more is more here. We're talking about sending out thousands and thousands of postcards to folks. We're talking about trying to be everywhere on social media with folks. We know that there is literally no perfect way to reach everyone in the city on a topic like this, but we're going to try our darndest to do it and make sure that we are in a position to meet people where they're at as much as we possibly can to make sure that We answer folks' questions. Whether folks like those answers or don't like those answers, we have the opportunity to talk more in depth about what this means to the future of the city. So with that, this hearing is adjourned. Have a great night, everyone.