Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

doesn't have to stream. We can record it closer to 10.

Okay, we are live chair. Hello and welcome to the March 4th, 2026 meeting of the Asheville Planning and Zoning Commission. I am your chair Jeffrey Barton. And we'll start with a roll call. Chair Barton present. Commissioner Faircloth present. Commissioner B present. And Commissioner Analo present. We have a quorum chair. We also have our ex officio PNC member Councilwoman Maggie Olman present.

Thank you, Mr. Palmquist. Um, we have no items that are on our agenda that will be voted on except for the minutes. Uh, but we do did have an item on the published agenda for a quasi judicial public hearing for a special use permit. Um, that is seeking a continuence to the April 1st meeting. So before we vote to continue that, we will start with our land acknowledgement. As we are gathering today as the planning and zoning commission, the body tasked with reviewing and advising on appropriate land use in the city of Asheville, it is fitting to acknowledge the storied history of this land. We occupy the land of the Cherokee people who have stewarded and been in relationship with these mountains and waterways from time immemorial. This land is occupied through violence, oppression, coercion, broken treaties, and forced relocation. Please join me in expressing respect and gratitude for the present day Eastern Band of Cherokee, the Cherokee Nation, the United Gadua Band of Cherokee, and all of our indigenous neighbors as we as well as the past and present marginalized community members as we seek to join in the healing of the indelible trauma that is embedded in this land. Thank you. So, as I mentioned, we item seven on our agenda is a quasi judicial public hearing that is uh seeking a continuence to the April 1st, 2026 planning and zoning commission meeting. Do I have a motion to continue?

Motion to continue. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? So that item will be continued to April 1st, 2026. Um, next up on the administrative section of our agenda, we have the approval of minutes from February to 4th, 2026. Any comments or corrections on those minutes? Hearing none, I'll take a motion to approve the minutes. Motion to approve the meeting minutes from February 4th, 2026 as they stand.

Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. And next up, we have an update from our committee liaison and workg groupoups. This is going to be a little bit of a non-traditional meeting. We have some presentations later. Um so I don't know are there any liaison updates? We do now have a fully seated liaison to the multimodal transportation committee. Um thank you.

Any any I I don't think MMTC has met but any report back on MMTC? Uh yeah, I met with Jack this week and then who uh the chair and then um I believe May might be whenever the first meeting is happening. Uh but yeah, I'll report back whenever we have an official meeting, let you know how it goes.

Great. Thank you. Any other liaison workg group updates? Later in the staff presentations, we'll be hearing a little bit about the uh ongoing work of anti-displacement. So, um, I know Commissioner Zyvk is not here to speak to any interim work of the anti-displacement work group, but we'll be hearing a little bit later from staff. Hearing no other updates in this section, we'll move on to a staff report on um, recent legislative and administrative actions. Are you taking this, Mr. Palmquist?

Yeah, I'll get us kicked off here. This is kind of a new item that um the commissioners expressed interest in having just kind of reporting back on the happenings at city council for items that you all have reviewed and other um maybe things that are uh going on around the sphere of planning in the city of Asheville. So, um just looking at city council actions. Know this is a lot of text um but essentially city council uh reviewed and approved um some recent resonings and text amendments that the planning and zoning commission had recently reviewed um including two resonings from the January 13th meeting. Um at the January 13 council meeting that was reviewed I think in the December PNZ meeting. uh the property at 13 Baldwin Street from neighborhood business to RS8 and the property at 137 Broad Street that had the conditional zone on it and went back to the base community business one district. Uh they also adopted the amendment to um per the planning zoning commission's recommendation to and instead of modifying the waiting period for subsequent um applications under section 777, you all have recommended just to strike that section entirely for simplicity. And that was what was brought forward and adopted. At the January 27th meeting, city council adopted the resoning for 22 Broad Street from RM8 to Community Business One and also the amendment to the UDO that would um allow non-conforming structures to be converted into accessory dwelling units without seeking a variance from the board of adjustment.

Great. Thank you for that, Mr. Palmquist. Um any questions or comments? I think this is really helpful information to kind of get a report back, especially when some projects that have a life cycle where there's a long period of time between planning and zoning commission and council. Um, would it be possible also to get a report on projects that go through their final TRC because I think that would then close the loop on when something actually might start to be built. Uh there was a really good discussion at the recent peed council committee um around you know tracking conditional zonings that actually get built or have a path for viability and um so I think us tracking when it comes back to final TRC would be helpful.

Yeah. Um so there's two different steps. There's the final TRC when they review their their final development plans maybe but doesn't get approved always because there's a lot of outstanding comments. So, do you want an update then or when the project receives like final zoning approval and has all the Yeah, I was thinking final zoning approval because the other step usually precedes Exactly. coming here. Yeah, we can certainly do that. You might be amazed that how much time there is between when you all review and when it gets the final approval. So, um that'd be cool. We can do that. Great. Any other thoughts? I think this is great. It's it's nice to see that there's actually like fruition to some of the stuff we talk about. So, it's It feels good to see it. Thank you, Will.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a great idea. And yeah, you all don't work in a vacuum, so it's good to close the loop on on some of these things. For sure. Um, our next item, uh, Janice Ashley is going to give a a presentation on the, uh, downzoning prohibition contained within the disaster recovery act. You can, you're welcome to do it from your seat or at the D, whatever. What would you prefer? Because I finally got some slides up. So, but you'd rather stand up there. It might be It might be easier to But can I move the Yep. The arrows will advance the slides. No, you don't.

Good afternoon. I'm Janice Ashley, um, deputy city attorney and your planning and zoning legal liaison. And I'm just going to talk to you about downzoning, which was an amendment to the legislation back in 2024, was adopted in December of 2024. And it was an amendment to 160D 601, which is the section on amending um amending, adopting, and appealing development regulations. Just a quick review in North Carolina all development regulations fall under the chapter 160D. So this is where you would that's why they changed it there. Now what this change was was mainly saying no local government can initiate a downzoning as you'll see here. This is the language from the legislation and it struck out. It used to be that cities were prohibited were were allowed to pass initiate zoning and it didn't matter if it was a down zoning or not. So the big change here was it said not only can um citizens not initiate um amendments and this is a text amendment or map amendment that would lead to a downzoning without all property owners that are affected permission. cities can't do it either. And that's a big change for us because when you do big zonings, um you're impacting possibly whole areas of the city, if not the whole city. So technically, if you did something that created a downzoning, you'd have to have the permission of everybody that owned property in Asheville. And it broadened the definition of what a downzoning was. So typically you would think of downzoning as a decrease in the

development of density. So you pass a a zoning amendment and you're decreasing density. So we think of that in terms usually of number of units. So if you amended your text amendment to go from a multifamily zone to single family, that's downzoning. Um and that's that's basically where that would be impacted. So you think in terms of number of units, but also we often pass things like setbacks, open space requirements, um, and, uh, other other regulations that might limit what you can do on a lot and the developility of the lot that would fall under a downzoning as well. So that's why local government started to think this could really be a big impact on our authority to to zone. It's also a downzoning if you reduce permitted uses of the land. Now there was a question this isn't this is broadly written. So it's like is it just you can't do a permitted use anymore? So you used to be able to have say you had commercial that allowed multif family residential and then you say no we're not going to allow multif family residential in commercial anymore. Yes, that could be or and that that's called um a substantive a substantive um change in use or is it a numeric change in use? So, you used to have this zoning that allowed 10 uses and then you take out two uses. Would that be a downzoning? If you if you add in two new uses and that you've taken away two but add in two, maybe it's not a down zoning. So,

that was very confusing. We weren't sure how that was going to impact things. And then the last one that got added was you cannot create you cannot create any kind of nonconformity in land use by your zoning. Now nonconformities are sort of a term of art in land use law which is it's a use that was allowed at one time but then you change your zoning regulation. Say you change the setback that house that used to be set back only ft in your new zoning says set it back 15 feet. That is now a non-conforming use. It's legally non-conforming. Nothing has to change. Nobody has to to to move their house or do anything. But if that use was somehow uh you know changed, the house was torn down, then that use would no longer be permitted and you could never expand that use. The most local zoning ordinances do have a provision for non-conforming uses and they say that you can keep that use as long as you don't expand it. you can reestablish that use. Say um say the house was torn down, you could usually reestablish it within 12 months. But the reason that this got in here, and this is the whole reason that this bill was passed, is that there was a property owner in Durham who had a non-conforming use and he was not allowed to reestablish it. And the state law never codified what you do with nonconformities. It was always just done at a local level and the homebuilders said that's not fair. As we go around different places or property owners, there's different rules for different

municipalities. So, this added in that basically what what local government already does, which is allow non-conformities. But uh but then we started to worry about what if we make a change in the law and we create a nonconformity then we're not allowed to do that if that makes sense. So then does anybody have any questions about that? Okay, I do. Okay, go ahead. So, for example, if we were on like a uh a core, let's say it's like Broadway or on a kind of a traditional cord uh corridor,

uh and we wanted to change the code so that we were trying to increase the number of traditional style form and we said no more drive-through fast food restaurants uh that or any sort of like structure that has a drive-thru. Uh that would not be permissible permissible under this law. Correct. Right. Your existing said you could have a good setback or things like that somehow prohibits the use of okay

yeah so again broadening the funds decreasing the development density reducing the permitted uses and creating any type of nonconformity all considered talk about dimensional nonformity at all. We touch on that you said the setbacks that's a good example right well it's dimensional could be you would allow a building of a certain size at one time then you change a building we did it now we couldn't the building nothing to it.

So what the law did is dramatically change what local governments had the authority to do because this never applied to local governments before and you can think about why is that so important to local governments. All of our zoning we're trying to create zoning it's often lately upzone but downzing sometimes there's a need in the to down zone things. And so that this has really caused a lot of concern and it is now starting to show the impacts. We we weren't sure where it was going to go. I think for Asheville it hasn't risen to the level of too many issues, but there was an article in the paper. Durham has had a UDO amendment. They've worked on it for two years, a comprehensive plan much like we're getting ready to undertake. And they started to they were going to start imple ing some things from that plan. And in February, they called off that meeting and they said, "We can't do this. You know, there's a lot that we're doing that's upzoning, but there's other things that could be viewed as a downzoning." And then we've already got lawsuits in the pipeline. Uh Southern Pines, Apex, same thing. They all just feel like we don't even want to adopt any new plans. We're not Why should we even do that? Um and the status of where we are now. Um there was an amendment um a proposed amendment to this bill um that was passed unanimously by the Senate in May of 2025 and it would have come brought back the government's authority to down zone and the give and take was and I didn't put this in here but then it added in a whole new section of the code that did codify what you could do with nonconformants and that they would have

a right to stay. They would have a right to be reestablished. And I think it just extended the time to reestablish from tw from 12 months, which typically is what a local government does, to 24 months. And I think the thinking and and this was worked on by the League of Municipalities, by many uh local governments, including our own city attorney Brad Brandham, who drafted, I believe, this latest one. Um, and we thought it was a compromise uh because again the heart of where this started was from somebody in Durham who said my non-conforming use went away but it didn't make it into the the it passed the Senate but the House has refused to hear it. It may come back but the House is still refusing to hear it and the the league doesn't think it's going to go anywhere. So I guess if we were to see what we've done, we have yet we have passed several things in zoning amendments and each one was analyzed to see were we running a foul of this downzoning and we haven't had it yet. But the big area of concern that we think is going to come up for here and many other places is flat flood plane map amendments. We have to amend them. If we don't amend them, we won't be able to get insurance, flood insurance that's required by the federal government. But assuredly, when you pass a new flood map, you're going to probably prohibit uses um permit permitted uh uses or even create nonconformities. And so if this law stands as it is, that's going to be a big obstacle for us. Um

any any other question? So in that case if you were to take you know say an expanding flood zone where additional say this body decided to add additional prohibitions of uses the only way to do that would be to get the consent of all the property owners in that area prior. Is that correct? That's right. Okay. And there's no as far as a consent of property owners, it's not explicitly saying like how it defines impacted. I mean, you were you were almost saying like you can make an argument that that's everyone in well town.

Maps are a little easier, I guess, if you want to. I mean, I don't know how big flood flood plane maps are, but how many properties are typically in a flood plane? all of those properties on a general text amendment. You know, when you say, "Oh, we're just going to allow this in residential zoning and that in commercial zoning, there it's much broader properties." So, that's why I was saying that. And I should note the nonconformity language now only applies to non residential properties. If you create a nonconformity in a nonresidential property that stands sorry say that one more time again. Oh, I can go back to

the nonconformity. Oh, it's only for non-residential. Yeah, it's not residential. On that note, oh, sorry. Did you have something? That's fair to site non-conformities but not the uses, right? Oh, you mean like a nonforming use including a nonforming use the number of permitted uses.

I had two questions. They were kind of about the substantive versus numeric zoning. I think Am I getting that phrasing right? Yes. Okay. Um, yeah, I I'm trying to wrap my brain around the um, so down zoning would occur residentially whenever you decrease the number of housing units. Uh, and I'm a little confused about how that's uh, intersecting with the third point about the permit. Okay.

So, you have I'll send it neighborhood and you're offic You're allowed multif family and you're retail and then you take away retail. Well, now you have but then the confusion was maybe it's about not just substantive but numeric. So you had five uses that were allowed before and you cross out just one of those, but you add in another one, then you say, "Well, there's still five uses allow."

Um, so it could be. I don't I mean, he the article I'll make sure you get it, but he's like, "That could be. I don't know if people are really going to argue about it, but it must be important enough because change it makes clear we can't reduce but a neighbor that you know the neighbor initiated it

okay and then there isn't the law so knew that there is a lot of legal precedent to see how courts are handling this already

I I don't courtesy municipalities and they'll put it in user friendly language where their obstacles are and they They are always make sure. So this is one as How do you think conditional reszonings should be treated with regards to that?

At at first people thought that this would apply to special use permits and conditionings, but we've taken the position at the city that know that's an individual asking permission to do something on their own property. So it's not the forcing somebody that affects everybody. So that makesense. And we haven't been challenged because some of the things you just saw there were they were down, you know, conditional zoning down zonings going from multif family to residential industrial.

Oh, sorry. Industrial, sorry. Industrial to residential. That's a downzoning, but that was a request of the property owner, so that didn't fall under down zoning. So, say a text amendment is passed that effectively upzones all districts and there are certain districts who are exempted from that from overlays. Is that not considered downzoning? Um, do you see where I'm kind of going with that? I see. I know you're I'm just I'm not trying to make a point. I'm just

No, that's why it was done that way. We had existing zoning. We didn't change that zoning. We changed the zoning for other areas. We upzzoned other areas. We froze some areas. We didn't downzone them. Sure. Okay. Yeah. I mean, would I actual map amendment either, but I mean it's just Yeah, I know what you're saying. Yeah. overlay this. Yeah, I'm I'm just saying it. I get that it's different. It But it almost does feel like a a downzoning of that if everything else around it is being changed just

like by omission you're saying in some ways rather than Yeah. But even if you did officially do an overlay that is a protective zone. So you're you're not changing it. You're not reducing uses. You're not You're not making it less developable, you're just keeping it that's the same. So, I think that we could defend and it could go back to the laws that stay in slide. Thank you. Oh, sorry. Could you go back to the slide that has like the text of the log? This is the current.

Yes. Yes. Thank you. And everyone knows so the strike through is what was taken out had been there before. The underline was what is added in new language. And I think to revisit the conditional zoning question that constitutes written consent, right? So that's the is that the theory? Yeah.

Yeah. But like if you had an overlay district that had like historic preservation requirements or something like that, wouldn't that create nonconformities or like if the overlay had requirements in it? Yeah, I

Yeah, I guess I was thinking more as we'll talk about displacement which I think is sort of a neighborhood preservation one. Um, I'm trying to think. I guess you could say it could create nonconformities. Probably won't maybe decrease the density or permitted uses because historic overlays don't, but the design itself might create. Yeah. Well, that's but that residential is not part of that. So, we'd have to look at that a little bit more.

But if there were a historic overlay that encompassed non-residential properties, I I think but maybe the question is like this is about there could not be a new a new one but what's in existence is you know right not subject to right this law.

Yeah. But it's a good point because you're right. A lot of people think an overlay, well, I simplified it by saying you just freeze whatever's there, but most overlays do have additional regulations. They say, you know, sizes of new units that could be built and things like that that might yeah might run a foul of this. So, that's another good area to be concerned about. So, the the baseline comparison is the existing ordinance as of the passage of this bill. it it went retroactively to June of 2024 actually. So people who had passed amendments before that had to go back and see if they violated any. Asheville didn't

didn't have any that had that we saw as violations of this. So when we go to do the the UDO update, we essentially will have to compare to the list of permitted uses and density allotments in June 2024. Yes. Or just provide a blanket like a blanket, you know, no down zoning is permitted, right? Hopefully, the regulation, it takes a year or two to get the plan through. So, I I wouldn't I wouldn't put a pause on going if you're going to go forward with the UDO plan, but certainly the consultants need to keep

this in mind. Hopefully by then we will have been able to get this a change by the time we're ready to implement some things that come out of the plan. And again, a lot of the plan is about upzoning. So maybe if that message gets out to the legislature that a lot of this a lot of things that cities are doing now is trying to increase density and zoning and impact for affordable housing and things like that, which everyone seems to be able to get on board about. Um there's just different methods that to to promote affordable housing, but usually the homebuilders would say we want to build more. So they like that part of it, but maybe the word's just not getting out about how many are doing missing middle and upzoning. Just I I'll reiterate like what what Brad said in an email to us was that Durham was really far down the line in this process getting close to the time of adoption. We are just starting. Um and it's important to note that there have been several counties or counties and municipalities that have introduced successfully bills to be exempted from this provision. Um, so it it does exist that some folks have gotten out of this even if it doesn't change.

Yeah. Local legislation. So So cities can request a local bill. Asheville hasn't always been very successful in getting the things that we want in a local bill. We've had local bills put on us, but Mills River, I think, is the only one so far that got a local bill to exempt them from this downzoning. And I I didn't even know that they were doing a whole bunch of development. values. Oh, that's why. Speak into the mic.

A former city staffer is now a councilman or mayor in Mills River and I ran into him at a land of sky meeting and he was saying it was um around farmland preservation

because they wanted to pass legislation that would make things less. If you get a chance to read municipalities, you start to get understanding behind the intent and they often teach us in their meetings the legislative people there. They say, you know, it starts out as this one little issue that somebody wants to fix and they're like, well, just write this. And then it affects so many other things. It's much broader than than they ever intended it, but that at the same time, it doesn't always get scaled back as quickly as it gets implemented. So, that's good to know.

Well, thank you. Yeah, thank you for the presentation and good discussion. It is something that we'll need to track with the comp plan UDO updates. And I I think one fear I'd have is that our consultant that we start to work with contorts the new ordinance around this and then there's a repeal, you know. So, we're going to have to be strategic, I think, about how how we balance uh against the downzoning ordinance or statute. Any any final thoughts on downzoning before we move move on? Great. Thank you. Um, next up we have a presentation from Dawah Hitch on our anti-displacement and affordable housing. Miss Hitch,

good afternoon commission members. This is uh the first time in a while I've been in front of the commission. So happy to see you all. Appreciate your service. My name is Dawa Hitch and I serve as the communication and public engagement director for the city. This is a very very brief presentation just to give some insight into some work that is doing uh some work that's moving along um with a lot of connective tissue between it. So wanted to share that with you all for your awareness. Um, some of you may be aware uh that the Legacy Neighborhoods Coalition has some requests that they made at a city council meeting. So, in the realm of community engagement, we've certainly continued to um foster a relationship with the coalition as we do with many other coalitions and neighborhood groups across the across the city. And wanted to share with you today just a um brief few bullets on what was incorporated into there into that request. So there were a lot more words that were shared at that council meeting, but here are the concepts that were shared and that was a desire for some type of displacement impact review tool. That was that was an ask that the um coalition made. Uh they they asked or indicated that they would appreciate enhanced development notifications. um would love to see the LNC as a required engagement partner. Um there's an interest in preservation districts and maybe any zoning tools that are associated with that. Uh an interest in community development block block grant. That's the steadystate program, not the DR that that you all may have been hearing a lot about here recently, but community development block grant and uh

capital investment prioritization. Um, and then the last one was public art and history as a capital projects policy around that. So, so the idea is is these are some ideas that are associated with any development that might occur around a legacy neighborhood and and some asks or considerations that the coalition has made. So, I want to be uh just share here publicly that there have been early conversations uh that I've been involved with and some others in leadership in the city around displacement and affordable housing. So really acknowledging that those two things can have some interrelatedness to them. And so some of the groups we've had some early conversations with are of course the Legacy Neighborhoods Coalition, GAP AVL, Asheville for All and Mountain True. So, um I've just got one more slide past that, uh past this slide, but did want to say, you know, if there are other groups that you're aware of that you think would be important voices in this conversation as we develop a project over the next year, happy to take those. Um we just want to be as inclusive as we possibly can be as we as we work through this project. So, here are the next steps. There's a cross-dep departmental team that's convening and responding to the requests made by the coalition. While this is important, this is back to, you know, these things are happening together. Also identifying actions that address Asheville's affordable housing challenges. So, so what it's going to look like in the next 12 months is that there will be coordinated actions taken in both areas. And that's within the next 12 months. and and beyond. So, so while the project I can't stand in front of you today and

say exactly what that project's going to entail. We're in the very early stages of bringing everybody together. Um I can say that there will be something that happens in 12 months in in both of those areas and and we will get to that point through some focused engagement with a diverse group of stakeholders to include developers. So, just wanted to I gave you a list of some of the folks we've talked to already. Then also want to make sure we're getting input from developers in um how we might address some of these concerns and requests that were laid out by the coalition. You'll see some of those are um some of those are pretty they're things from I would say at least my department's perspective that we could do rather quickly. I'll just give this one example because this is a thing I can say for sure and that is uh the coalition as a required engagement partner. We do communication and engagement plans for all of our major projects and and part of that process is identifying who's going to be most impacted, who's going to be adjacent to the project and we intentionally do our best to reach out and engage with with the people that have been identified there. So, you know, work with the coalition of actual neighborhoods sometimes. So this would just be this one's got a place. I can say yes, we can make sure that that is clear in all of our communication and engagement plans that that is the intention. The others um are going to require some collaboration and um you know some may end up nested underneath if for any kind of response or action that we can take. But the the important thing that I want to walk away from here today with an understanding of is is that the affordable housing actions that we can take and then concerns that have been identified by the legacy

neighborhood coalition. We're looking at those two things um together and not in a vacuum. So I think that helps with uh the next presentation that's coming up. Um if you have any thoughts um uh about groups to reach out to, please sh feel free to share and we can add those to the list as the project evolves. What's the Go ahead. What is the best method to share?

Well, you we you could always if you have any thoughts now, you can just share them and then we'll catch them in the minutes and I I'll pull that from there. But if you want to noodle on it a bit, um, you're welcome to you to send that. You can send those directly to me. Um, I can leave one of my cards, but it's D as in dog hitchh.gov.

Thank you. This is really helpful and kind of helps supplement um an earlier presentation at the HCD committee around anti-displacement and the the work that the city's undertaking to address as we kind of look at you know development regulation. Um looking at those two things in tandem. One piece of the HCD conversation that I thought was interesting, it may be more of a question for planning staff is around um legacy neighborhood boundaries. And you know when we're talking about preservation districts, there was a robust conversation on area of influence that may not be the strict boundaries of the neighborhood as defined in neighborhood plans. Has at what point do we see that reaching shared agreement or you know shared tool because it seems like the the delineation of areas for preservation is important that everybody understand where the boundaries are. I'm I'm happy to speak a little bit about this just because the neighborhood services staff is within as a division or in our community engagement division under under our department. And so there's no firm answer right now, but it is definitely something that needs to be explored and something that we run into often. You know, sometimes neighborhoods define their boundaries one way and then if we're talking about a regulatory tool, if we are somewhere down the road, we recognize that there's going to have to be some more clarity around around what what those boundaries are. But but that will be a piece that I I think should include folks that are that are in those areas as well as staff. And again, why this collaborative approach is so important. So, we're not looking at it any of this from just one perspective, whether it be the neighborhood, the staff, developer, other organizations that are doing work um around either affordable housing or anti-displacement.

Yeah, thank you. Um, and I I think it's it was interesting. Um, I think it was the council meeting with the um conversion of non-conforming structures to ADU. There was a point made that appendix 7F is a really inelegant u land use regulation right now and it could actually drive um incentivizing subdivision of parcels because we're using parcel numbers instead of an area boundary. Um, and so it could have a really counterintuitive effect of subdivide a parcel and they're no longer in on the 7F list uh for exclusion. So that's something that I think is a really important that we all grapple with is those unintended consequences of trying to preserve.

Thanks for um your work on this. Um to what degree there's the affordable housing advisory committee, right? So to what degree have you engaged or talked to them?

We we are we I mean we are in the early early early early stages of this. So yes, there have been conversations happening in other in other committees um whether those even be council or other commissions and the effort here is to really bring all of those in a way through this project to bring to bring those conversations together. So that's not to say that they won't continue in the spaces that they're happening, but there'll be more intention behind how we can cross share information between the different topic areas or challenges that we're we're looking at within the context of this project. And I'll add to that. Um, I think several of us on council have all been talking to each other at different times and with staff at different times about our enthusiasm to pick up these anti-displacement strategies as well as pick back up our missing middle ideas and that they need to be done in tandem and in concert and support of each other. Um, but we haven't sat down and had a meeting with all of us on council to really talk about that because that's two sentences in a very complex world. And so my understanding is that the city manager's office is preparing an upcoming work session or perhaps a specific discussion in council's policy, finance, and infrastructure committee, which has all council members, for us to pick this back up so that council can come to what our alignment is and really discuss what this looks like. And then then it would make sense to be like okay and and the affordable housing committee might take this part or council's committee of HCD or planning economic and development will take these. So I think that we need to get into a council alignment place which we just haven't had the space to work through that but my understanding is that's forthcoming pretty quickly

like in the next one to two months. Um then thank you for that. And then my other thought is here, I mean, um, I'm I'm not a realer. I come from the developer world, but like the realer in Lando Sky reals, I mean, they're they're on the front lines as far as knowing what market pressures are out there and what the public is asking, what's being asked for. So, I know we may not all agree upon what the market's demanding versus what we should supply, but I think they're a good person to be in the room just to say, "Hey, here's what's being asked for."

I think they're just the the closest to the front lines of what's actually happening out there. Um, so I think their input's helpful whether it's what we want to hear or not hear. Well, and it's all helpful, right? because because we're all impacted by it and and and that's really I think a core belief of of this project team as it's developing. Um and again there's different projects that are happening but it's really let's talk about how they work with each other. So I don't want to create the expectation that that my department's getting ready to take over all these projects. That is not the case at all. It is just you know how can we sequence how can we take in all of these different perspectives and sequence things in a way where it's complimementaryary instead of um more challenging.

Sure. Thank you. Yeah. You're welcome. All right. I have two questions of clarification. Um and thank you for doing this by the way. Um the first question was about the enhanced development notifications. So, I was kind of curious if you could just expand on what exactly that means. Yeah, we're just not there yet. And and I would hate to say something that isn't something that we can realize. It it is um we're in an exploratory sta stage. If I were to say what was the intention behind the ask,

my understanding of that through some conversations is um we've got we've currently got some tools. Um, are there things that we can do to improve how people connect with the tools we have? Are there any tweaks we can do with the tools that that make it easier for folks to understand when development is happening in and around them? It it's that kind of thing. And and there's lots of different ways that that easier access to that information could be realized. So, so it might not be technology based and it may be working through some of the neighborhood um the established neighborhood communication networks that already exist. So, again, there's more exploring that needs to go there. I want to be real I don't I don't want to overpromise anything. Um okay,

but but I think that's it. Just how can we as a neighborhood know better about when development is happening? That makes sense. Um I think my next question might fall under that same sort of this might be a later uh answer for me but I'm gonna ask anyway is um the in terms of who else is a required engagement partner.

Okay. So so so that's back to the communication and engagement plans that I mentioned earlier. So that's just kind for our projects. It's a it's a service that our department provides. They're done collaboratively with departments. And as we walk through that, we walk through an exercise of who do we anticipate being uh impacted? Who's adjacent to? Who cares a lot about this? I mean, it's a big old list of things we ask because all we really want in the end is to push information out through channels that are most meaningful to people in different who who have different preferences or resources or all of those things. So, there's there's lots of folks depending on what the project is and and it's not like it's a that's static. We're always welcome. We always welcome any input we can get. So, I don't know if that answers your question or not, but there's not a definitive answer to it. I guess project by project.

That's Thank you. Yeah. You're welcome. Okay. Thank you. All right. Appreciate y'all. Thank you.

So, next up we have a discussion of comp plan and development regulations. I'll kick it over to you, Mr. Pongquist.

Yeah. Uh this was um kind of requested as a chance just to kind of recap some of the discussion we had at the retreat the other month um where we asked the commission to kind of brainstorm some uh different ideas regarding um focuses in the comp plan update and UDIO rewrite projects and then have you all kind of vote to give some weight behind the different ideas so we kind of knew where your priorities lay and and potential ideas that we we didn't want to miss. Um so this is just kind of that summary document that was sent around. Um as you can see the main takeaway is that there was a strong emphasis on housing related and supportive policy uh focus on more density affordability and incentivizing sustainable practices and resiliency. Um do also have some of the raw the raw voting there that's in the folder on the website too that's available for anyone to to kind of check out. Um you can see housing supply, flood plan updates, storm water and green infrastructure and then reducing development barriers probably the biggest ones there along with anti-displacement um and subsidized housing. And we had some other other uh items too regarding like implementation steps um regarding like graphics in the UDO more clarity and usability and then regarding the process of the project focus on equity having public buy in and then making sure that the UDO aligned with uh with transit as far as um aligning land use and transportation policy. So I think those are kind of the main takeaways. Um, but this is a chance to provide any clarification or highlight anything. Um, the voting is over, but you can highlight anything that you thought was important to you that that or if you had time to think about it in the meantime, you want to add anything. We're we're all ears. So, um, that's

that's what this item is today.

Thank you for this. And it was it was a really great discussion to at our retreat and work session. that's helpful to kind of distill it and it really um elicited a couple thoughts from me especially on the prioritization. All land use regulation is prioritization of of what we want to see. Um for us on like the voting exercise, there's kind of a few buckets. The what, where, and how. And it seemed like what really got the most traction and attention. we know what our community needs and housing supply, you know, really rose to the top.

Where kind of speaks to like how do we regulate sensitive areas that we don't want to see um completely unregulated development and then when we get into the how, it's sort of like what do we want to see that makes a project better than just code minimum. Um, so it it's it was interesting to see kind of the vote distribution where it's like we all really agree on the what, we kind of agree that there's some where factors and then the how is like how much can we expect of the development community to come to the table for the privilege of building in Asheville. So, um, yeah, really helpful kind of distillation of it and I look forward to keeping this as a throughine when we keep track of the UDO process, but would love to hear other thoughts or impressions.

Um, somewhat related to this and it's kind of like a new thought I had, but um,

the idea of not working in our bubble of Asheville, Bumpingham County. I know as planners y'all often reference other other cities and other codes um and other UDOs's, but I think there's been some good examples in the local region of Durham, Greenville, you know, cities that have had significant updates. And not that we just want to copy and paste them because we are different and have our own issues, but like on some of these things like having a comparison like all right, here's here's the direction we're going here's the direction they went two years ago. Crash and burn, you know, success. I mean, and that's a very general idea, but um you know, I just that's my offthe-wall 2 am thought I had.

Yeah. Yeah, and we've been kind of poking around at some um comparable uh cities and counties that have been through this recently, mostly in North Carolina, but outside the state as well to learn um learn some success and crash stories here and there along the way. Um and we expect that the consultant that we eventually hire will have a really national, if not a worldwide perspective to be able to not to say every idea is directly transferable or even legal in North Carolina, but um they'll have a breath of knowledge. I think that will expand outside of our area for sure. That'll be helpful

because I thought it was during the missing middle housing thing very helpful when that consultant had like hard examples from several other cities like pictures data like okay here's how this went don't do this or like yeah this is working here y'all yall should consider it um I don't have any other comments at this exact moment this won't be the last time that we ask you all to uh give us your brilliant ideas either. I'm sure we'll have a lot more engagement along the along the way with this project. So,

one question I had was whether I mean maybe we're not quite at this point yet, but whether there's like city staff outside of planning that have been appointed to sort of like help in this process. um like economic development or transportation or storm water those folks that y um you know it seems like even just in terms of reviewing the proposals we get back they should be involved at that point.

Yes. Uh so we do have an interdep departmental um RFP response review team slated out. Um so hitting some of those departments you mentioned we have um mainly folks that interact more with the development and comp plan related elements. Um we've consulted them a little bit with like the scope of work creation and we plan to continue to consult with them um at varying levels. We have this whole breakdown in our project management about how we're going to engage. Is it just a consultation? Is it like an involvement steps? We have done that work at the outset to identify which departments and even staff members are going to be involved into what level. So we kind of have that road map already and we'll rely on that as we work through the project to make sure that we're keeping our partners at the appropriate level of engagement and involvement.

Can you name some of the departments like I know what your thoughts on but other department not um every department I think is going to be consulted or informed at some level. I think the major players that we'll work more closely with and be more involved with like the RFP work and review work is going to be transportation, economic development, development services, I think public works. Um, and then I think storm water, right? And not legal, not explicitly, but as like a general uh security needs legal. Yeah. So,

here come the lawsuits. That's right. Yeah, those are kind of the new folks there. Yeah. So, thanks. Yeah,

you know, kind of in a on a similar track but different framework. Um, one thing that I thought of when we were looking through the prioritization and hearing our good presentation around the anti-displacement efforts is um public engagement and communication. And I think, you know, we're a city who loves a good survey, you know, to solicit public engagement, but I think really dialing in the effectiveness on what aspects merit the public engagement. And and to me, you know, this is just my opinion. It's kind of those sensitive wares and those important hows, but let's let data inform the what'ss, you know, and and even to a good extent the where like we need, you know, and here we had pretty good um support for housing supply and expanding by right. So, you know, maybe we can accept those as preconditions without going through exhaustive, tortured public engagement. And so that way when people are people's input is solicited, it's meaningful and impactful and not just to check the box.

It's a great point. Well, thanks for this. Shall we move on to our presentation? So next up on the agenda we have a presentation on recent housing plans and proposed UDO amendments presented by Mr. Palmquist.

Thank you chair. Good afternoon or evening commissioners. I'll officially introduce myself will Palmquist with planning and urban design. I'll be presenting uh this uh kind of recap summary of recent planning and zoning related housing reforms. Um and just a shout out to our colleague Vanilla Safa who put this together for us uh this evening. So uh the goals of tonight u basically bring you all up to date with the previous work that you all have done. Um not they don't remember but maybe you weren't on the commission when this work was happening a couple years ago. So we're trying to kind of level set and uh get folks all on the same page as um as kind of another kind of a restarting point in a way. similar shared understanding around these things. We're also going to ask for some feedback um on the prior work and the potential future work. So maybe keep that in mind through this presentation. We're basically going to be asking if um you know items you review that haven't been approved yet are still, you know, relevant and relatively low barrier is our fancy way of saying low hanging fruit. Um asking what other ideas are out there that you all have for those low barrier amendments for housing related goals. um asking who the stakeholders are that we should engage with and asking what the barriers are. So, we'll have a chance for some some good discussion at the end, but feel free to stop me and ask any any clarification questions along the way as we work through this. So, first we'll go over the missing middle housing study. We'll review the recent um planning zoning reviewed housing amendments. Then we'll have that discussion at the end. So, I'm just going to kind of let all these up. Um general timeline. Um so the uh missing middle housing study was completed at the end of 2023. Uh staff gave a presentation to planning and zoning commission which we followed up with uh some proposed changes to elements to the zoning code such as um

cottage developments, flag lots, accessory dwelling units, and small backyard lot standards. And we'll get into that a little bit more about what that really means. uh January of 22 uh of 2025, planning zoning commission recommended changes to increase the development thresholds, uh remove parking regulations and minimums, and incentivize housing development and commercial corridors. Some of those were adopted in March of 2025 by city council. Uh a few tweaks made along the way, uh the implementation of appendix 7F that we'll talk a little bit about. uh to note that uh backyard lots did not get adopted. So that's kind of hanging out there still. And then um in January of this year, council adopted the change to the uh non-conforming um structures for ADUs that do not require variance any longer.

Sorry, just to summarize that the which you said small backyard lots was not adopted, but the cottage developments flag lots and ADUs were. Is that correct? ADUs ADUs were not either. Correct. So, yeah, there were some proposed changes to accessory dwelling units uh that we'll talk a little more about. Those were not adopted. And then the new small backyard lot standard was not adopted. So, those are things that the planning zoning commission recommended approval of and city council has not has not taken them up for a vote as of yet.

Okay. So um a very o overall uh summary of findings from the missing middle housing study. Um and then there are links to relevant documents um on these presentations that's in the uh meeting folder too if you want to check those out. Um the main takeaway with missing middle housing study is that um you know zoning in Asheville uh encourages single family housing significantly more than missing middle housing does. Um, you know, there are districts in the city like the multifamily districts that allow for some missing middle type products, but kind of due to some of the restrictions on them or the functional limitations of those areas or the or just the code itself, they're very difficult to implement. Um, through a through a more databased approach and analysis, uh, it it found that just simply adding more single family homes will not really address the housing shortage or increase sustainability of housing. So there are four main recommendations made from that study. Uh engaging the community to develop a missing middle housing implementation plan. Allow missing middle housing more broadly focusing on the most appropriate areas for them. Uh considering the concurrent establishment of anti-displacement strategies and aligning other standards and requirements to permit missing middle housing by right. And then just to um summarize um which I should have done at the beginning, you know, missing middle housing really refers to things that are not single family and things that are not 20 unit apartment buildings. So, it's things like duplexes, triplexes, quads, um courtyard developments, um you know, that kind of townhouse style attached um product that we used to see a lot more maybe like in street car era suburbs of the 1920s and became less um yeah, less uh produced

with suburbanization. And we don't see a lot of it today. We we kind of see the single family and we see the large scale multif family. We don't see the missing middle. And then um so this refers I think mainly to some of the strategies for like small backyard lot implementation and it's a kind of an observation that um maybe speaks to the validity validity of that approach in that there are approximately or were two years ago 2400 vacant lots in the city of Asheville um compared to 30,000 um lots that had some kind of building or structure on them. meaning that there's opportunity, most opportunity geographically is going to be on lots that are already already developed.

Question of clarification, when you say I think you just said this, but I just want to make sure the built upon land is not necessarily 100% of these lots are covered. It's just that there is a structure and there's still like a yard. Correct. Yeah. So, they might be ripe for redevelopment. they might be um not not super um utilizing the land, but they have some kind of structure on them. So, these would still be lots that could be subdivided and like another structure could be put upon it.

Yeah, these are I think the point and I think it depends a lot on the geometry of them because there are going to be some requirements. There would be or as proposed requirements about the size of the backyard lot area, etc. But this is really just pointing out that, you know, if we're trying to add more housing incrementally and in a more infill approach within the existing context of neighborhoods, um there's a lot of opportunity with land that already is built upon. So, the backyard lot allows you to put a another residential unit on on land that's already developed. There's a lot more of that than there is vacant land to do any other kind of development on. And if you if you go to that link, there's I think that folder has like a presentation that has a lot more of the data kind of laid out too. Um, so this graphic shows kind of the difference between uh an ADU, the accessory dwelling unit that we currently allow in residential districts associated with a single family house and a backyard lot. So the main takeaway between the difference of the two as you can see is that an ADU is within the same the same lot as that single family house whereas a backyard lot is a entirely separate fee simple parcel. Um so you can subdivide it, put a house there, share that driveway and it's it's a whole different property. Um so one of the other uh recommendations um in addition to expanding that backyard housing opportunity is to also establish some cons consistency between the different housing options such as a proposed maximum square footage of 100 of a thousand square feet max height of 24 feet and setbacks of six feet. This chart kind of breaks down the main differences um as proposed by staff at the time having that minimum lot area for small backyard lots being 40t by 40 feet.

Um staff proposed, we'll talk about this in a minute, that the parent house would have to have been occupied by the um resident for five years pri um as a prerequisite for making this backyard lot. Um, let's see. Those are kind of the the main differences. This should I think it's on a future slide, but I just want to make sure I don't miss saying it. One of the big advantages of the backyard lot since it is a separate property is that a homeowner could subdivide the lot and then sell it to a home builder. Um, what we've learned, I think, across the entire country with ADUs is that can be very difficult for a homeowner to access the capital needed to build an ADU. they can be more expensive than many folks realize. Um even if there's an existing structure, so the onus is on the the homeowner to either get equity out of their house to get a loan or some other uh way to be able to build that ADU. Um whereas if they were able to subdivide their backyard and sell it to another entity as a separate property, it's much easier to get financing for that type of product. Uh so at that May 1st meeting uh the planning zoning commission recommended approval of the amendments uh to the uh backyard lots. Uh there was a proposals to change the maximum lot area with a possible minimum dimension change the applicability to be to have the requirement be located behind any residential structure. I think there was some um details about the placement of the other structure that was um maybe seen as a little too restrictive. Uh track the implementation to understand the effectiveness and number of units created. Eliminate the requirement that there be an existing resident for five years on the parent parcel. Allow for that as a

minor subdivision. Increase the maximum gross floor area of the structure to,200 square feet. verify the compatibility with MSD sewer easement requirements. Uh review the corner lot provisions. I think that we're getting us a little bit twisted up because they get a little bit complicated as it would relate to some of these geometric requirements and then continue ongoing community engagement for holistic anti-displacement strategy. Um, so th so those were recommended for approval by PNZ. Did not get picked up by council yet. Um, they're still technically recommended for approval. Um, if we do take them back up, you know, we can talk about whether makes sense to bring it back before you all again. It might be worth um, kind of refreshing them a little bit, but that's the current status of the the backyard lot creation. And

do you have any context on why the any discussion at council or was it just not taken up there? it was not scheduled uh for a hearing. Um I don't I don't have a lot of insight. Um at the moment, um I think a lot of it goes with that kind of uh you know, we're talking earlier about that kind of two-way uh approach with the anti-displacement work and working with neighborhoods and then implementing these changes. I think maybe that one got a little bit ahead of that anti-displacement conversation and it kind of had to it's kind of been waiting I think for that kind of work to to happen first.

All right. Um, so kind of changing gears, the kind of next round of proposed zoning amendments that uh that you all had helped develop and that staff took and kind of tweaked and and ran through our, you know, uh, uh, gears and whatnot were relating to three distinct elements of the UDO that were seen um, as barriers to um, specifically housing development. one related to the level of review for threshold of projects, the thresholds for project review, uh things that require conditional zonings and then things that can just be by right development. Another one was minimum parking requirements and the final one was uh the limitation of um square footage of new buildings for residential uses and commercial districts. So um I'll go back. So yeah, at the January 22nd, 2025 meeting, um, planning zoning commission recommended approval. At the March 11, 2025 meeting, city council adopted those changes with some tweaks that we'll talk about.

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. Could you repeat what that third point was for the zoning district?

The final thing. Yeah, that means that uh we basically uh increase the allowance for residential uh building uh area in some commercial districts. All right. So the first item uh was regarding the thresholds for when a level three conditional zoning is required. Uh so uh the the staff proposed and PNZ recommended version I think was a little more uh permissible than what ultimately got adopted. So, um, the original proposal, I think, was that the, uh, level three conditional zoning would not kick in until 100,000 square feet of building area, regardless of affordability proposed. What ended up getting adopted is that we we retained the existing 50 unit uh trigger for um residential projects to to require conditional zoning except if a project has some level of affordability, they can basically add more square footage to the building without requiring conditional zoning. So in the biggest scenario, I guess if a project is proposing 15% of the units at 80% AMI or 8% of the units at 60% AMI, area median income, they can have a building of 200,000 square feet before they have to get a conditional zoning for it. So we're trying to incentivize affordability um and also allow for the creation of more residential uh units by right.

So will council passed this almost a year ago? Yeah. Have we had any any projects come through since this policy changed?

We've had a few uh a few that are close and a few upcoming that are going to be able to take advantage of that if they if they haven't already. So, they've been um last month the planning and zoning commission and next month the city council will review a conditional zoning uh on North Louisiana Avenue next week actually for city council. that would have been a level two by right project because they have affordability except they needed a technical modification for a different zoning requirement relating to the building footprint. So that's kind of a good example where we tweaked the thresholds but we weren't really in a position to go and you know just either remove restrictions or really spent a lot of time looking at those kinds of um restrictions that already were existing in zoning districts. So, it's a good it's a good point that um there are other requirements in the zoning that make it difficult maybe for some larger scale projects to happen. Um there are a few projects that we know about that are affordable housing projects that are going to be applying for LITC tax credits that would have required a conditional zoning, but because they're zoned in a resident commercial district and they propose affordability, they are not going through a conditional zoning process. They don't need to. They're going to apply for their tax credits as a buy right project. They're already entitled. Um, so that's I think it's a win right there for sure.

Is that one of the river district?

No, that one does require conditional zoning. River is not one of the um It's a good point. So, not all districts were brought on this new threshold level. Only commercial districts and uh districts that were not adjacent to um our rivers. So um mainly like highway business um office can't I can't name them all but um we could have included river and rad river but we felt given the environmental and flooding sensitivities was very close still to Helen it still is um we did not include those districts. Can you remind me what the the funny trigger was on the Louisiana Avenue project?

Sure. So, the office uh district um has a maximum building footprint size. So, your building can only be That's right. That's right. such area and it's pretty restrictive. would have required that for their project it for the number of units they were proposing it be in like five or six different smaller buildings which is obviously much more costly. They felt it was better to get that conditional zoning for that purpose to alleviate them of that requirement. I could just add a lot of the districts that have those um footprint limitations I'm going to say like office obviously neighborhood business community business are those that often back up to the residential zones.

Yeah. So that they've always acted or intended to act as like kind of a dimensional step down into districts. So that's kind of the mechanism of why some of those districts are there. Uh our broader districts like HB and RB have much much higher almost you don't need them footprint restrictions. So that's helpful. And in in tandem to the uh footprint limitations, we also have height step down in like the office district. So there's other controlling standards if we did want to revisit the footprint as a limitation.

Yeah, I was just more wondering whether that was some of the lowhanging fruit to help make this more effective, but I understand it's helpful to get the context of the reasoning behind it.

Yeah. Uh okay. So this chart just kind of shows an example. Um it's it's a little hard to follow, but um the idea being that um uh if you currently if you're a 5% affordable project and you go up to 100,000 square feet, you do not need council approval. Similar for 10% at 150,000 square feet. And then the regular cap for the commercial uses at 100,000 square feet still applies. So that's that's kind of the breakdown of that. We also remove some um thresholds for um situations that would trigger a level one review and full site compliance. So, um there are, you know, situations where, uh, and there were, um, like an example being that if a building was vacant for a year or more or they're changing a use to a higher impact based on our our land use table, they would have to go through a full level one site plan review. um which honestly is not the end of the world, but it can be things like well you have to install new sidewalks and street trees and old new landscaping and open space and um and that's that's great for new for new developments um to provide those amenities and and raise the standard of of the built environment in our city. But there are many instances where those requirements were were keeping um businesses or residential uses from coming online. If if you're a dentist, you want to put your, you know, new business in this old storefront that's been vacant for a year or two, but now you have to build a $50,000 sidewalk. That that kind of makes it tough. So, um, you know, through consult consulting with some our staff and we heard from the planning zoning commission who um

were aware of some of these issues, we removed uh those triggers for site compliance for vacancy and changes of use. um they're now kind of more of like an expedited zoning residential review step. Um we also raised the threshold for additions. So previously if you had a 500 square foot addition, you would have to come into full-sight compliance, we tripled that to 1500. And we also remove the triggers for um for for um uses that generate the need for more parking based on our parking requirements or displace required parking as well as resurfacing parking lots. So so we made it a little bit easier to to do business I think in the city without um you know requiring potentially expensive site compliance. Kind of right sizing that requirement I think. Has the impact of the level one thresholds been tracked? And do we have are we seeing more volume of expedited permits that would have been level ones?

Yes, we are. We are tracking that. We were trying to pull out data together for tonight, but we need some more time to work on it. Um, but we are seeing that there are a pretty significant number of um reviews that are happening at that expedited level outside of the level one site plan review. So, it definitely has impacted a number of projects. That'd be great if you could still tell us about it when you do get it together. Yeah, we can follow up next month month with some more data on that.

Um yeah, so that's that and this was and this was citywide. So to repeat the threshold changes for level one, twos, and threes were only for commercial districts. So, um you'll see some conditional zonings in a couple months that are in um residential or river districts that still require conditional zoning even though they're affordable. Um but the level one threshold trigger change was a citywide change. Um the other change uh so the first thing um is that in commercial districts um it was proposed and it was adopted to basically remove minimum parking requirements for residential uses and a lot of commercial uses. So kind of the same districts not exactly as the threshold changed commercial districts only where there's no minimum parking requirement now and there's still a maximum. Uh we are we are tracking that information as well. I think what we're finding so far is that there's I think less parking being provided than would be required but it's maybe not significant. So, as we suspected, the market is still going to provide parking for most uses. Um, but we've, I think, been able to reduce the amount of parking that would otherwise have been required. It's worth noting the planning and zoning commission recommended that um the that city council eventually adopt an ordinance to eliminate all parking minimums citywide. So that's I think they heard that they adopted, you know, what what was what was recommended for approval, but they heard that recommendation came from you all to to get rid of all parking minimums.

Sorry, just to make sure I understand the the count the planning and zoning commission recommended eliminating them from all districts. Council only adopted residential commercial. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Technically what was presented was just removing it for residential uses and some commercial uses for commercial zoning districts. So that was what that's what was before you all um almost a year ago and that's what was recommended for approval but that's what we that's what we were proposing um but then you all um stated that you as a body felt it was appropriate to go further and remove it alto together. So, we took that forward as like a recommendation, but we didn't we didn't implement that or and council didn't adopt that.

Okay. Yeah.

Uh the last change, um I'll be honest, I get a little spun around on these numbers when I look at them. Um usually I understand it, sometimes I don't. So, it just depends on on the day of the week to be honest. But essentially um these commercial districts here on the left, neighborhood business, office, commercial, community business, highway business, regional business, they have um limitations on the total square footage uh for buildings, new buildings, uh in yeah, the total square footage, not not necessarily just just the footprint. So, like you can see for office, it's a first floor has a max 4,000 square feet and the total square footage for office is 8,000 square feet. But if you're building residential, you can actually go up to 16,000 square feet of residential um while keeping that total non-residential square footage at 8,000. So essentially what we proposed and what um you all recommended for approval and what got adopted by city council was um raising that limitation on building square footage if it's residential. So essentially whereas before you could do maybe a three-story building um you can now do a four-story building if that fourth story was residential. So we kind of raise that cap just for residential square footage land use. So we hope that makes a difference when you know folks looking at doing a project and they can say well if we do you know more residential we can actually do a larger building and that hopefully will incentivize the creation of more units without artificially kind of keeping that at a lower lower threshold. Along with that uh there were also the proposed changes to flag lots. So it

reduced the dimensions for the flag pole area. Um it increased the uh structure size limitation and reduced the required setbacks for cottage development. It um reduced the number of minimum units to two. So you could have a cottage development with just two cottages. Um so those were approved by city council as well. Uh along with that came uh appendix 7F. So as a reminder um 7F was basically created by combining two different geographies. One is the identified legacy neighbor legacy neighborhood boundaries shown on the left and the second is from the missing middle housing study. Uh it's a map based on an analysis of areas most vulnerable to change. it's based on property values and incomes of of households and that sort of thing. So, kind of overlaying those two um got this geography and that became appendix 7F. Um let's see, I don't want a slide on that. Essentially what that said was um for those flag lot standards and cottage development standards, if the property is listed on that list of pins associated with properties in those areas, they are subject to the old rules of flag lots and cottage development. If you're outside of those um 7F properties, you abide by the the new cottage development and flag lot standards. Any questions on that? And then the final change, most recent change I should say, um recommended by

you all for adoption and and adopted by city council on January 27th is um that for accessory dwelling units that are have a nonconformity such as um they're they're not compliant with like required setbacks. They do not require a variance by board of adjustment. They can be a byite conversion to an ADU. And we've already had couple thought I had it on me. I did get some data on a business card before this meeting. Um we had a couple sites uh 115 uh Beey and 407 Lakeshore that would have required a variance as they were looking to do ADU in a existing structure that was non-conforming, but they no longer do. So, we've already got a couple that are

in the last like six weeks. Yeah. About last maybe a couple months, probably probably a lot more that would will benefit from this, too. So, that'll that'll free up agenda space on the board of adjustment and cut down administrative cost of homeowners to go through that process, hire an attorney, etc. So, we're already seeing some some good progress on that. That's great. So that's it for the presentation. Any questions on the content before we get into the discussion elements?

No, just yeah, thank you for that summary. It's since there have been so many sort of fits and starts, it's good to have it all in one place as a reference point. So really appreciate that. Yeah, you're welcome. For those of us that are new, it's extremely helpful. So thank you. You want to do some homework? Those links to the to the materials are really helpful. Well, I've been I've been boning up on it myself with those materials that are available. So, if you want to get into what was into the nitty-gritty of it, um that's a good kind of summary of all the all the progress, too. Yeah. Thank you so much, Mr. Valquist, and everyone else on staff for putting that together. It's super helpful and inspiring. Sometimes it feels like nothing is moving forward. It is nice to actually see like, okay, stuff has happened.

Yeah, it's just slow, but it's happening. Um hopefully we can pour some gasoline on this fire and keep it keep it burning. Thank you. One uh clarification question that might be kind of a segue into discussion also. So can you remind me the thresholds in CBD preceding all of the changes and thresholds to the other districts are level three is still 100,000 square feet for residential. was previously and still is.

Yes. Um that's correct. And but CBD CBD does benefit um for affordable housing projects that have higher thresholds. I think it's a a difference of 50,000 square feet since they were already at that 100,000 baseline. So yeah, they that was already 100,000. They can go higher with affordable projects. should also note a mixeduse project that has a minimum amount of commercial space also gets like a 50,000 square foot bump before it's a level three. So yeah, that's another factor too that we look at as well. And I guess yeah the question is really what the baseline is because um the and teeing up kind of some of our discussion the version of the thresholds that council adopted um there is a minimum affordability amount five or 3% depending on level of affordability whereas in CBD the baseline is no affordability at 100,000 square feet. So, we kind of have a little bit of a mismatch. And I think it begs the question of like I I understand trying to incentivize affordable housing. That's my work. It's what I do every day is um affordable housing development, but that baseline standard having a requirement of some affordability for the ability to, you know, have a level two project, I think may be worth investigating. Yeah, I think it's definitely a good good item to discuss. Uh yeah, and just to say that I think the thinking of the time to raise the baseline for any project to 100,000 square feet instead of 50 units was that you're changing the the measurement of projects from units to square footage which um I think the the idea is that you know you have maybe more units that were smaller, maybe more attainable, not

as expensive. So you're kind of incentivizing the creation of units, not necessarily trying to artificially keep it low and keep it and match the measurement and level of the CBD, which is always 100,000 square feet regardless of use. So I think that's a good good point through these um go through them one by one or bounce around as we want, but really thinking about um I That first that was a good response to that first question Jeffrey actually is that um you know are the previously approved amendments still relevant impactful relatively low barrier changes to make um things like removing the off streetet parking requirements entirely. Is that worth taking that to the next step next level? Is it worth revisiting the thresholds and and thinking about that baseline um taking back up that amendments for backyard housing lots and ADU tweaks which were really just kind of raising the square footage of ADUs. Um, and some other small tweaks to make them a little more viable. You know, those are some examples of of things that you'll have reviewed already that are they still the right fit, right solutions?

Can I ask a little can I sort of pose the question a little bit back to you of like when as you see you know, since you're seeing the most applications come in, like where you see there could be opportunities based on, you know, housing applications that are coming in that you think could either go through the process more smoothly or or are sort of artificially being reduced in scope or something like that based on the ordinance. Let me say um kind of frame it this way and you can think about an answer. Um so larger developments approaching the 100,000 square feet or 150,000 square feet, they take a very long time to mature and then get through the process. So, um, we see the results of those changes a lot more slowly than we do smaller things like we will mentioned the change to non-conforming structures becoming ADUs. We've already seen a couple of those within a few weeks, right? Um, so I think that's just kind of framing it a little bit. There's a big difference between thresholds and backyard lots in how quickly you can realize the gains, but the gains may not be as large, right? Um I don't that doesn't fully provide an answer to your question, but it just kind of says you can make some of these smaller changes and you can start to see things happen within six weeks, right? Um, and the larger changes, we're just now seeing solid things coming down the pipe that are probably going to hit the affordability levels in the right districts to take advantage of those. Or like are there maybe said a different way like are there are there consistent

like items that you negotiate around on conditional resonings or or or with any application that are to remove certain

provisions in the ordinance or restrictions in the ordinance. I think what we've seen um with the ones that you all still seen as conditional zonings post uh threshold amendment, we've seen things that are in like the RM districts which weren't included in that transit supportive corridor district. And then the example that will already gave of the Louisiana Avenue where those you saw the table up there with those building footprint limitations on there. um it's things other than the thresholds right now that are holding it back. It's that base district itself, right? Yeah. So, it wasn't included in that amendment or it's the fact that yes, building sizes were expanded for residential but not the footprint, right? Um so it enabled people including residential to go up more but not out more. Right. So it's like the use isn't the issue. It's the it's the design requirements associated with like the base district that doesn't really permit the residential use. Is that what you're saying?

In in some instances, yeah, the building design, building height, things like that. Those are things people often with the conditional zoning process, people often go into that just to try and modify certain standards, right? You might see one that and once they're in there, they'll once they have the hood open, they'll modify more standards. They're like, "Oh, we're already going through this process, so now let's ask to get our sidewalk down from 10 feet to 8 feet or whatever." Um, obviously there's something driving that, making their project pencil or whatever they're doing. Uh, but there's usually one primary driver, right? Primary driver used to really be identifiable as that 49 unit threshold, right? Once you go over that 49, you're you're resoning. You're you're going to go visit planning and zoning commission and city council as part of your development journey. Um, now that's gotten we're starting to see that maybe take hold. I mean, I think there's three, four on the horizon seem at least very likely to go through the process. Um, so I I don't know. I think that's there's details within the districts. Um, and there's so many I it kind of supports while we're taking an endeavor to kind of rewrite this code a little bit. It's hard to go back and and find all these and catch all these. We we even just found one in the the flag lots where a cross reference was missed and we're going to have to do some gymnastics to make it work, but we will. Um, so there's stuff scattered throughout that's kind of limiting development right now. But I would say anything that pushes things. Let me back up as a part when we were prepping for those March amendments. Um, actually like the last thing I did before Helen was held a focus group with housing developers to talk about what's holding you back. And the biggest thing was the conditional zoning process. So, I'll reiterate that because some y'all were on the commission at the

time, y'all weren't. That's what we heard the most of. It takes adds uncertainty. It adds time and adds cost and makes financing a project more difficult.

That's really helpful and I think, yeah, good kind of lens for where we're at and where we need to be. Um, one one comment, you know, to to answer that first question. I do think the um the ADU tweaks and backyard lots are still relevant as well as revisiting some of the parking and and tweaking some of the standards that were adopt adopted. Um I I definitely think that that is worth continuing to look at and more you know I think that understanding um the limit the process limitations and you know capturing what we're now creating through those level one um revisions is is huge. In tandem with that, by adopting um an an ability to do more by right, we have a really complicated spreadsheet to determine which threshold is applicable. And so, um, it it really takes a lot of, um, I mean, I think those early project assistance meetings that the city offers are probably a good time to, uh, help communicate what's possible to developers. But when a developer is looking at pieces of property and figuring out what they can do with it, then you start to dig through all these subcategories and substandards of what triggers the um to to tuck just under that level three threshold. It's very very complicated still. So, I I think that that's something we want to continue to look at is um I'm appreciative that staff took the work and worked within our overly complicated UDO to get a progressive, you know, some progress on thresholds. And now I think

what we have is um as we look towards new UDO, reducing that complexity tremendously would would be beneficial. And I think eval kind of evaluating is it um what's the logic behind the differential treatment of the districts at a threshold level. Um do we make the development thresholds consistent citywide and then use the districts to then uh truly dial in what it what should be permissible within that district?

I would like to echo that point. Um, I think my reaction to uh I'm in I'm in support of the ADU tweaks in the backyard lots uh and then also very much in support of removing off- streetet parking requirements. Uh but that was my reaction as well is that uh but the 80 the backyard lots much more so but very technocratic very uh very complicated and then I think that there are a number of cities that provide I think a slightly more elegant more simple I think a lowerhanging fruit option which would um which would be like you know more by right um or I think using Houston as a model uh they've had like an Like if we're expanding the definition of what we saying middle housing is, Houston's minimal lot size is like400 square feet. It's been that way since the '9s. And so because of like how the state requires certain uh like building code standards, uh there's just been an explosion of single family housing, but it's all been on like400 square feet. And so I think if my thought would be we should con I would like to consider minimizing square footage minimizing or reforming or rethinking the way that lot widths and then setbacks are being implemented which are all things that we can do within the existing zoning districts. We wouldn't have to change any of the boundaries of where any that's existing. Um, and then it then it would make it really easy for if you have a lot if you're on like 5,000 square feet and you just want to give a thousand 2,000 square feet of it to someone to develop on like using Houston's numbers, 1400 square feet, you could you could build like a you know of a tall skinny basically is what they

call them there. Um, that was my I have many thoughts, but I'm gonna I'm gonna yield and then I

I'll I'll echo that. I had a similar thought like when you when you had the intersection of height restrictions and square footage restrictions and lot width and you know you you end up taking like the lowest common denominator or whatever which can sometimes just be more restrictive than the intention of you know if you're talking about just for example like a neighborhood business district next to a residential district where you're not trying to let somebody build a 10-story you know office building or that you know you might only need one of those three restrictions to achieve that rather than the others which then inadvertently prevent certain development from occurring. So it's like and I think the square footage one is the one that's the hardest probably to get right is my guess. So I I would be more inclined to tweak that to be lower but I'd want to see data to back that up but that's my gut.

Say that again. both. I would either um I just think there's too many there's too many scenarios probably to plan like I'd rather let the market kind of dictate that a little bit more so than the

jumping jumping on that as well. One of the other things I noticed in the imaging for the backyard lots was that the um it's a backloaded parking structure or a parking lot and so the uh yeah right here. So like the we have a good amount of these where like the I mean that's I think the that's got to be like a five foot setback and then but we probably have quite a few I don't know the numbers off the top of my head but we have a lot of houses that have a driveway that's got a like the parking part of the house is like in the front uh which would make this like kind of difficult to produce in a lot of like suburban styled like uh houses. So one other thing I would kind of like to bring up is that a lot of cities will do like setback maximums. So it would be like uh 5 foot max so that and then you can have different require and this would be a larger thing in the UDO but you would uh so that you and then you different Pomona California does this where they have u I I believe it's like the fireland they've they've built out their code so that basically they're forcing developers to do uh to build alleys. Um, but you can there's other tricks and stuff that you can do to get to get this outcome where there's like driveway but then all the parking just can't be within like you know it can't be that close and then it allows you which I think is another maybe thing that would make backyard laws kind of difficult. Uh because like if somebody's living in the back house they're not going to park their car in your garage. Uh yeah. Um on the same kind of discussion about square footages, I feel like

the flag pole lots um restriction to,400 square feet was kind of limiting. Um and I also feel like the limiting of 1,000 square feet to the backyard lots

is limiting. Um, but I understand them wanting to put guard rails because the legacy neighborhoods and other neighborhoods in general don't want a giant three-story house behind a normal house. However, my counterargument is there's a lot of very deep lots in there. Like a backyard lot can be 5,000 square feet, 10,000 I mean like sliding scale like you know x amount of acres equals x amount of square footed allowed because I mean some of these backyard lots they're going to be as big as the parent lot almost

and so why don't why couldn't you put a 2,000 square footer there but I get that if you're like in Shiloh and it's like a smaller one we don't want to allow that. So like I think a sliding scale is much more appropriate for the geography of the lots that are I I actually see on a daily basis. And I I feel like and we also I'm a little worried that people who already owned flag lots before this happened just suddenly went, you know, had the had their building square footage cut down to a limit that was like not there before. So we did suddenly erase those people who wanted to build a full home on flag lots.

Yes. Well, they they could still could do a flag lot. Um you know, this is just sort of another tool in the toolkit, right? Like they still could do what's allowed as a flag lot if they could get the flag width and frontage. this. I think what is exciting about this as a concept is it opens up those different lots that maybe have geometry that prevents a flag um from from coming out to the main road. Right. And I'm kind of talking I know I realize I'm talking about two different things right now. Flag lots and ADUs. I understand what you're saying that like this is

to help us avoid some of the flag lot problems. But yeah, I think the square footage thing applies to both scenarios.

Totally. Yeah, I agree. And I think the one thing that we didn't really we had a good discussion I think on the ADUs when it came through the first time on um height limitations. I don't recall if we went into the weeds on backyard lots, but how we define um height in the UDO might be challenging once you define a backyard lot because you're no longer height from the road to the maximum the highest occupiable floor, especially if that backyard lot is like downgrade. Um, so there needs to be some flexibility for topographic variation across the residential areas that we have in Asheville.

Yeah, I remember. Yeah. So if if it comes back figuring out what doesn't create a new limitation just with uh the way we define height in the UDO. I'm curious if um the commission's thoughts on duplexes or just other there was a slew of missing middle recommendations that um in addition to what had already kind of been teed up. I'm so glad you asked.

That was actually my next thing. Um, I feel like the changing of duplexes and triplex being allowed to districts like RS4 and RS8 is important and I think it cannot wait for the UDO overhaul if there's only 2400 vacant lots left two years ago. If the UDO overhaul is going to be done in two or three years, how many more vacant lots are actually going to be left to even do this on? I think that's something that should happen like yesterday now. Yeah.

Um if it was up to me, I realize I'm only one voice. Um but I I feel like that's pressing enough to push ahead of waiting for the UD. I mean I' I'd vote to make that a ZTA like my thoughts.

To totally agree. I think um especially if it's just use table change to open up duplexes and triplexes and more residential zones that seems like a very easy and achievable thing to do. And one, you know, to get on my soap box, one thing I like to point out is we always talk about the 1997 adoption of the UDO as being a a pretty significant um reallocation of our land use, preferential to single family zoning. If you go back to 1929 when the city adopted its first city plan, the John Nolan plan, as problematic and as racist and segregationist as it was, it allowed duplexes in every residential district. There was one residential district and it allowed single and two family homes. So, the fact that we have districts that don't allow that is is more regressive than our original city plan in 1929. And you're probably all aware the county uh recently added duplexes to all its residential districts.

Y So yeah, I think um and and builders are even now being creative about how they can build two family homes as an attached ADU. So why not codify it within our, you know, more conventionally understood definition as a duplex and just allow it. Um, thanks for the question.

Yeah, I would absolutely be supportive of that too. I I do I do wonder to the extent, you know, that um I I guess with the ongoing the parallel path of like some of the engagement with the Legacy Neighborhoods Coalition to, you know, adopt some of their requests or, you know, how to integrate that with this like I I have a I think partially just because I'm new here have a little bit of a hard time I think knowing what the extent of what could be passed like or or would that need to be implemented with the appendix 7F I'm forgetting what the letter and number are um restriction like would are we operating under the understanding that any of these changes would be subject to that or or more that we would do that in in tandem with the other conversations and that these would just need to evolve together.

Yeah. Okay. It seemed Yeah. pretty clear from the ADU non-conforming um amendment that just came through that there's not really appetite to double down on appendix 7F as a preservation strategy. So um I think it's open question what the replacement alternative will be to get the to the Yeah.

You know, a couple others I'll throw out there that are going in a slightly different direction, but um our our hotel overlay, we've kind of revisited a couple times. It's been a while since a hotel has come through for approval, you know, but what it currently does is um caps, especially in the downtown areas, it caps the maximum number of rooms allowed, which then disallows a hotel developer from maximal use of the land. and then spreads out hotels on a much larger number of parcels. So that there's there's several things every time a hotel comes through where understand that that was a um negotiated process to kind of respond to community concerns about proliferation of hotels. But what is on the books is not only creating more parcels by reducing the size of hotels allowed, it's also then driving up the cost of land in the limited areas where hotels can be built so that we're not seeing multifamily development in those areas because we've created artificial scarcity on where we can build. So those are things that um may be more complex. They aren't really surgical tweaks, but worth mentioning in this discussion. On the note of developing downtown, I also wanted to one of the one of the items that I would be uh that's that I would like to see going forward. I'm sorry, we're trying to read through the phrasing of the second point, but the um the the downtown like height restrictions that are like require over like two stories. Um I there's a lot of parking downtown. There's a lot of

parking lots downtown that uh seem to be like this, you know, would be prospects for development. Um I'm not positive, you know, I'm sure it's death by a thousand cuts, but um if we are requiring two stories uh on kind of oddly shaped lots and then that uh I don't know, it feels to me like if it's expensive land, it's a very productive land and if it's not currently being developed uh like I would like to look at all the potential regulations that are maybe impacting that the the height being one that I've looked at recently and was kind of scratching my head about like why how effective is this

would be my potentially I don't know

it's a minimum minimum for most things.

Yeah.

Yeah. I just I just have to imagine that you know land that expensive like what like you know how is being a parking lot the like the most like productive use of it. You know I think I heard you say kind of take a look at regulations that could be creating that situation or helping that situation these

underutilized I did have there was one other thing I wanted to kind of highlight was the um I know this because it's like on the street or it's down the street from where I live and so there's one lot that's on Klingman that's like underneath 40 feet minimum lot width. and then has been vacant. It's like a bamboo forest. Uh so I just wanted to highlight I think that like for in terms of like one of the things that I would also be interested in seeing just to highlight again and read you know I think the minimum lot would reform is would be would be desired.

I think we changed the area the a lot areas to allow for a little bit more flexibility, but the width. Yeah, requirements for street parking. That was a while ago, but I remember that being a big deal,

I think. Yeah, we talked about citywide parking, you know, reduce the minimum to zero, especially with the ADUs. You know, right now you have to have a dedicated space to build an ADU and um off street um that was flagged in the missing middle housing report as something that's a potential barrier to ADU development. So, it was included in the suite of ADU reforms that are awaiting a council agenda, but just wanted to highlight that one. A question about residential and commercial. I uh I don't have an answer to this but the that's all comp the structures have to be attached

the residential has to be attached to the commercial for this development or is it for like the um like that that table of the yeah it's like one it's a I think so yeah it's talking about building footprint maximum building size so I think it's envisioning like a multi-story building and then yeah be within the same building Um yeah, I think that's correct. That's correct. Yeah. So that's like a mixed use building in that case. Okay. Okay. Might be some there might be some variation allowed, but I think the prototypical standard would be like residential above commercial is what it's envisioning trying to

trying to develop. Yeah. Gotcha. Is there an appetite for doing like ADUs on a on a commercial property or something like that? I don't know. Yeah, it's um yeah, ADUs are only allowed with a single family house already on site. Um which yeah, that's the most I think natural fit for like a character standpoint, but something to think about. Yeah. commercial districts allow multif family by rights. So you can you don't really need an ADU. You can build a unit per zoning, right? I'm going to speak to whatever the building code might do there.

It hasn't taking shopping centers and encouraging them to be redeveloped with um maybe smaller retail, but you can have more more of a retail space if you didn't somewhere. But sometimes that's why your questions are good like what have you done these results and you didn't get these results. So I you were talking about, but that would have been a concept where they wouldn't have to put the housing on top of the grocery store, but they I'm sorry. They wouldn't have had to put the housing on top of the grocery store, but one of their out parcels could have had a little apartment building and then they could have built more commercial than was allowed. And then it also encouraged smaller retail as well in within that development instead of just big box.

Yeah. Well, and I guess the scenario I'm also thinking of is that if you had a uh if you had a large lot with a large like parking lot and then if you wanted to subdivide part of the parking lot and develop like up with a separated you know like multif family development then have like you know you could do like a Dallas donut and like the parking side so you don't lose any of the parking but uh but it would be detached from the commercial which is why I was thinking maybe that would be

if that if that was like language we maybe wanted you might want to look at the what's there for urban centers and see if that is the idea even though it hasn't come really to fruition. It was for bigger um commercial lots. Um, so while we're on urban centers, this is probably more for UDO update stuff, but um I am con increasingly hearing neighborhood concerns about Tunnel Road and just the decline um from individual experience, but then also big picture like that is a dying corridor. Um, and so when we're thinking about the UDA updates, Town Centers was trying to give it a revitalization strategy and a housing strategy and it hasn't come to fruition. Um, but I think that's just like for all of us nerds like a great afternoon Googling exercise like, okay, if urban centers in our context didn't really pan out the way we wanted, what are some broader redevelopment strategies that might come to fruition? um because it's it it's a problem already and it's a problem for tax base but it's also a problem for quality of life and community and um that's such a such a big opportunity for housing and other stuff too. And I know that urban centers has come up a lot with this group. Um I guess the best way to say it is that for a property redevelop the owner of the property has to want to redevelop it. And that's what I'll say about urban centers. Another you know kind of uh separate issue is uh and I don't know that this would address tunnel road but as we move towards um an appetite towards more formbbased districts. It seems like every time we kind of modernize an update we're

migrating towards formbbased which I think is good in aspiration and intent. And then I think where our current form districts have struggled is when we get too prescriptive on the the elements. And you know one example is in the RAD form district. Um I think it's neighborhood transition doesn't exactly require ground flooror commercial but through uh opening and fenestration and access standards effectively does. And so you're you know the wire which was built has uh residential on the ground floor through stoops which would not have been allowed in the RAD formbbased neighborhood transition district but was allowed because it was a predecessor conditional zoning that just continued. So I think that yeah it's form form districts can be good but we can't get too prescriptive on what we want to see otherwise we're not going to see anything in urban places I I think an example of that too and you know I think there's certainly some property owner um lack of interest in redevelopment but also what they'd have to redevelop to um maybe more than just the vision. It's like the exact standard of how we expect to see it, which may preclude it from being redeveloped.

I've been talking a lot, but we are Oh, no.

I've been talking a lot this meeting, but this will be my last thing. Um, on the on the note of the BNT prescriptive, there was that one item in the land use table that uh sorry, not in the presentation. Um, I was just looking up there. Um, uh, we have a couple of different, uh, housing typologies that are specifically called out like cottages and like town homes. Um, and then I, uh, which I I personally think is like a little is quite prescriptive. Uh, I've seen other cities, Durham being like an example where they basically just give you like you can do what you can here are the number of units you can get based on the amount of lot you've got. uh and then they just uh you know regulate that way. And I think that's like something that could be easy that we wouldn't have to do a whole lot of changing to just um uh to well in in Durham's case it's like I think for it's in their new code it would be it's like every and this is very ambitious. It's like every 625 square feet you get on the lot you get one unit. So, if you've got like 5,000 square feet, you would get, you know, 625 times, you know, whatever. Um, other places I know in um Tiger, I think it's Tiger, Oregon. Uh, it does not matter. It's a it's somewhere up in the m uh in the Pacific Northwest, they basically will just uh say there's a couple different like multi- middle or missing middle housing typologies. And then they will uh say like if you want to do if you want to do like a cottage court or if you want to do a townhouse, they just give you the setback regulations of like how far the structures need to be from each other. And I think that that's a little bit more elegant than having, you know, RS8

you get to build townouses here, but you know, in RM8 you maybe don't. Um yeah. forbased on formbbased just that's another example we've had you've had several reasonzonings they to reszone out of the formbbased but formbbased was supposed to be oh that's really you know that's easy to do and it I don't think, you know, so that's it's good to look at the things that didn't materialize. And I I was also I always think about the cottage lots and flag lots because this raised that whole concern of boy, we're going to have all this development and and this is why we have the seven 7F. Um but I don't think the the data is showing and maybe it's it's what you're saying, Mr. Mr. fair cloth is that the the the limitation on what was unit size, but I thought there were no enough it just seemed like everybody said if you just narrow the flag width and the number of flag lots are permitted, you're going to get that development and I don't I think we've had one cottage development in in the areas that are permitted and there's still a lot of areas where that would be permitted. Did you have did you guys have that data? Yeah, we're we're working on getting it together in a format that's decipherable, but but in general, what you're saying is correct. We've seen very little activity on that front. The I think will the largest impact we've seen is from the level one threshold changes, dramatic reduction in burdensome site compliance for very small projects. So,

I don't know what your thoughts are on why that hasn't happened, but it also could be maybe maybe the legacy neighborhoods were right. There were a lot of lots that would have worked in their neighborhoods that may have been not that you you're going to force somebody to sell their lot, but it could have been. I think I think it's a combination of all the above.

Okay. um you know, potentially those lots were just more set up for that kind of stuff and that's why they were quick to defend themselves. Um but I think it's also like a market conditions versus ideal world thing. Like people aren't building thousand square foot homes anymore. You know, I know I know we want them to and we need to be more sustainably minded as a society species, but it's not what people are buying and building right now. So you can't force the market too. I mean you can guide it but you can't force it into a box unfortunately.

That raises a question that I had a little bit about like I know I know the missing middle housing study. I wanted to look back at this before this meeting and I didn't have time but references some of the challenges with like getting financing for these kinds of developments like that it's harder to get capital to build a you know a duplex or town homes than it is to build a larger apartment building. Um so I I think I don't know how we can necessarily answer this question very easily but I think certainly for the broader UDO update I think it would be really helpful to understand where we have the ability to make the most impact with regard to that limitation. Um, you know, is it there's a little bit here of just like what's the lowest what's the most easy to implement and what's the what's the thing that's going to change the most number of parcels for example but what you know I think what's the thing that is most like you know what I guess what specific adjustments or what specific recommendations in that study have the most potential to um you know get capital to be created or to meet, you know, market demands in Asheville.

Yeah, I think that's a really important lens. And then in I think in tandem, you know, to kind of hearken back to the duplex like looking at it from a uh a justice standpoint, you know, and uh ending exclusionary zoning kind of as a philosophy should be something that we align ourselves with as we look for those levers that, you know, unlock capital and investment. Um but if we, you know, if we do that stuff without kind of an overhaul of u ending exclusionary zoning and ending uh differential treatment of different residential typologies, then we're not going to get there.

Well, this has been really fruitful. Commissioner Faircloth, two last things. Yeah, go for it. And I'm done. Um, the first one is uh maybe not popular, but uh in fee and Lou. We don't want your money. We want trees. We want sidewalks. Just eliminate fee and Lou. Just force people to start building trees and sidewalks or seek a variance. Yeah, I think that's

or see a variance. I think that's a good I mean I I just feel like understanding where Fenlu can't be redeployed. I mean the the tree Flu I think is stuck right now and something that has been a subject of you know continual re revisiting but yeah I agree it's like if we are charging it we should be able to redeploy it and so if we can't then what's the purpose? I mean, I understand like the Hall Creek sidewalk projects going on and stuff happens, but I I'm of the opinion I'd rather see a patchwork start being built little by little than wait for a giant project every few years. Um, maybe not the popular opinion on the board, but I'm going to throw it out there. Um, the second thing, and I know we don't usually do this chair, but like we have a member of the public here. Do you think he might want to say anything? I I'm fine with a general public comment even though we don't have a public hearing if that's permissible.

No pressure. We will open for general public comment at 7:24.

Uh so do I need to state my name? Blood social. Uh so I'm Scott Adams. I'm a land development planner for Compact Cottages local home here on small footprint more affordable housing. uh worked on the text amendments for the cottage courts and flag lots and uh Commissioner Antelo, thank you very much for your comment on a phrase that I've come across a lot in a lot of site planning is uh focus on numbers not names. Meaning, if you're hung up on what a duplex is, if it's detached, attached, stacked, whatever, if you go to one to two unit housing allowed, attached, detach, however you need to figure out on a site, and in parallel to that, and I believe you may have alluded to it as well, the state residential building code is evolving to basically allow one to four units under residential code. And that's a I think that that's a potential simplifying framework to align zoning with particularly if you can build one big house easy. It's you know here's your here's your single family development waiver. There's a really an SFD waiver that you get in the permitting process. The minute you call that a triplex or a quadplex, in some ways you're being treated like you're building a 30 or 40 unit building in terms of open space, tree canopy, landscaping, storm water, all these other things. Um potentially I mean right now in the realm of one to two unit housing under single family and duplex you can clearcut a site to the nth degree and you you're not you know subject to any kind of storm water or anything else like that. So, something I've actually sort of teased through in my mind and uh is I'd have to really go into, you know, the state law on, you

know, one to two unit housing, but essentially bringing up standards for one to two unit housing, potentially lowering your lowering lowering it or calibrating it for one to four unit housing. And to your point about uh you know lot lot sizes or house sizes, I think a a larger discussion around performance zoning, basically looking at how a given site uh would allow a building or you know different conditions on that. But yeah, definitely going back to the, you know, the general concept of look at numbers, not necessarily names. uh to your point, you know, Houston, the detached rowhouse, which is kind of a a jumbo shrimp uh bit of phrasing. You know, uh Durham has detached row homes and they've got way too many way too many names for the same types of housing. You know, this is detached, this is not attached. And again, just looking at numbers and what can be supported on site is a good framework and discussion to have around that. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Comment. Anyone else from the public wish to speak? Seeing none, we'll close public comment at 7:28. Um, well, appreciate staff for kind of prompting and revisiting kind of level setting where we are at and where we could go as we embark on the bigger project of UDO reform. Um, any parting words of wisdom or thoughts? Did you have something?

This is this is a very long-term thing. But something I also did want to bring up as like a Portland has a um on the topic of uh it's not just the regulations, it's the broader like you know rules and reg uh for like how like the project goes through um through the city. Um Portland has a I think it's called like a missing middle. I can't remember the name. It's a missing. It's basically like a like an ad hoc like unit where they help shepherd projects through and like identify like laws and it um to uh to identify things that are getting in the way of uh missing middle housing getting developed. For example, um access points. I believe they once you get a it was for quad plexes and then they the rules that were in place were that you had to have like four different access points to utilities or like four different um driveways. Uh and so there were uh things that they were look the unit this uh this team within their government was looking at was just like how do we start solidifying all of these other rules so that they uh so that we can start like proliferating quantiflexes and things like that. I apologize. I wish I had a little bit more information about the specifics of what this group was called. Uh but it just came to my mind.

Thank you. Any Any last comments? Like to ask Miss Ashley about the difference between a workg group and a subcommittee and give some examples of that. I'll only need about two hours. I'll take a motion to adjourn. That will take us to 10:00. We have reached the conclusion of our agenda. Um our next regular meeting of the planning and zoning commission is no joke, April 1st. So we'll see you back here then. I'll take a motion to adjurnn. All right, we're journed.