City Council - Regular Meeting

Being here, today is lucky number 22 of our 60 day public comment period that runs through October 24th. So we're right in the middle of it and we've got still 38 more days for residents to share their feedback on the second phase of zone in between the administration and council. And I know we've had a number of folks in the room have already taken the survey and I think about a number of events. We will talk more about the engagement both here tonight, but also engagement into the future, just to make sure that folks have every opportunity to weigh in on what we have before us here. We'll ge

Nothing much, because I know we have a ton to talk about today, but for those of you who live in District 7, we actually will be having a zone-in gallery date coming up September the 24th from 5 to 7 p.m. that I am inviting all of the area commissioners in District 7, so if you're an area commissioner that's here in District 7, you are welcome to come. We will have some more. Those dates will be given as we get closer to them, but the next date for District 7 is September the 24th, 5 to 7, and then we have another one in October

I also just want to acknowledge we had a number of events at the gallery that were postponed and that is because literally air conditioning went out in the conference room and with the heat spell we've had we did not think it was a great idea to put folks in a room that was 95 plus degrees so those events are going to be rescheduled so folks will still have every opportunity again if they want to go individually with a planner or go on a night with a council member we just wanted to be safe and not literally 90 degrees and a sweat box with folks as exciting as zoning is I thought that was prob

Janet, who said that zoning districts can't be fun on a Wednesday night? Thank you both for going through those. And again, I think it's important when we talk about folks understand the substance of these things, right? So again, I appreciate everyone bearing with us, because the goal here is to make sure that if you hear something here tonight that stirs a question, that you ask that question and get that answered. What we're trying to do is simplify a zoning code that, again, goes back 70 years, and there's been lots and lots of Band-Aids over the years. We're trying to start fresh and anew

Again, if I'm in the audience, I'm trying to interpret exactly what that means. You say we're almost getting both right, because the setback itself is operating as an open space, but also the setback is pushing whatever that use may or may not be further away from potentially the residential areas around. So you're still accomplishing the goal of having that open space, but also with that setback, again, you're pushing those uses further away. Is that a fair assessment?

And Shannon, I think you talked about this when we talk about sort of Class A office space. One, can we say what that is? Because some folks may not know what that means. But also, when we talk about different encouraging different uses within Columbus about when we talk about a focus on economic development, talk about commercial and industrial. Why does something like that matter for a city like Columbus? When we talk about land use is land use, but also at the same time, we're also trying to encourage or discourage certain things from happening in certain places. And I think when we talk ab

And again, just to emphasize the point, for a city whose primary form of revenue is income tax, we obviously want to encourage there to be jobs not only for our residents to earn a living at, but also to make sure that we're able to gather that income tax, make sure we're able to pay for things like Picking up the trash and the recycling and paving the roads. One thing I want to ask about, and we'll talk about residential here in a second. We've talked a lot about industrial and sort of manufacturing and commercial here tonight. That's I think one of the biggest differences in this phase as co

Turning back to housing, I'm going to ask one last question, then I know Councilman Ross has a question before we go to public comment. So I think, Louis, you mentioned this very briefly, but again, I know we've talked a lot about the economic development side of things from zoning, but I don't want us to get lost in the need for housing in Columbus and what this code means. So in phase one, we talked about, we had experts that looked at the proposed changes. We were very excited to say we went from, potentially 6,000 new housing units on those properties. And with the rezoning that we went th

that's so significant when we talk about just the supply and demand of what additional units coming along means for just housing costs for folks in Columbus. And as I started the public hearing talking about, we're already seeing the impact of phase one with just new housing units coming along, helping to stabilize those costs and in some cases start to lower them. That is just a massive opportunity where we've seen other cities across the country, whether or not it's Austin or Minneapolis, similar zoning efforts to modernize. They've seen also housing costs begin to stabilize and in some case

Just one question I'm interested in the emerging mixed use district and when you talk about specs for walkability specs for how you determine whether or not you're going to recommend this particular district in an area is that current state or is that aspirational. I ask that just because particularly in District 7, you've got underserved communities that maybe could be walkable, but for lack of investment or infrastructure are not. And are we considering what that could look like and then pairing that with investment in those neighborhoods so that we could potentially get there if there was a

obviously now current state, there are places and spaces within the city where this district makes sense already, but that we could be using the recommendation of this district to kind of drive future investment in places where we think this could benefit.

I think it's such an excellent point because right now what we have is sort of a system, whether or not we're talking about the capital budget or otherwise, that's sort of driven by development, by what people have decided to propose. Versus the inverse of this is where the city is saying, here's what we would like to see generally in these places. rather than letting you folks in development community, I think, drive that bus. It's more of the city now and the residents being able to say, no, we think these are generally the things that are acceptable within these areas. Here's what we would

thank you for listening thank you for all the tremendous amount of work you have done i appreciate your time thank you miss link um i think one thing you and i agree crystal clear honestly but love the city and wanted to thrive and have i think a better set of rules moving forward because i think the frustration that i have that i know you also have had is when we get into i think individual project by projects negotiations about think the inequities that that come out because I think as Councilman Ross's question around this is that we have not had a lot of central land use planning across th

I make just sort of on this topic I think generally is that just to sort of level set a little bit about the difference between like sort of land use and I think a lot of other topics that are associated with with heavy industrial or other types of things right so you know zoning is all about like what can go there it doesn't ask questions over water consumption or electricity consumption. I think on this particular topic, Council Member Weitsch, one of my colleagues, is really leaning in about what is the city's investment responsibility as far as if companies are gonna locate certain types o

So under the current code, and I'll let Louis comment, and again, just to let folks know, if we have a little bit of a back and forth, I'm going to need folks to come back to the microphone because this is getting streamed. All good. So I think just to repeat the question was just about sort of in the industrial category, are there additional restrictions in the place? And to be very clear, most, I think on this particular topic, most of the data centers are not within the city of Columbus. There is one data center campus that's on southwest, what? South High Street, I'm sort of across from th

Moving on to our next public speaker, Annalisa Rocha. Welcome back to council, and you're bouncing between city hall and over here, so thanks for joining us.

Thank you. Louis Shannon, I don't know if you have any comments.

I think the biggest point that I've taken, I think, from some of the engagement we've had in this particular topic both here tonight and I think prior to this meeting is, you know, I think an acknowledgment that is a fairly broad definition that's in there and I think the other aspect of this, I think, and I think Ms. Link and both of you have mentioned is that the size and scale of these things, like, really matter. And, you know, for example, there are a number of, you know, many of the office towers downtown have a floor that is essentially operating as a data center. There's many, you know

Which, again, I think is also a point about when we talk about modernizing the code to that point, Shannon, is that under 33 and M, they can go, right? There's no thought process around this because literally anything can go there.

So allow me to repeat that. Our current code allows, regulates things like basket weaving, but not things that power the economy in the 21st century. So we talk about things being 70 years old. Here we are. Hopefully everyone's enjoying my stand-up comedy tonight. Our next speaker is Anete Canseco. Canseco. Thank you. I was like, I am going to get 60% of the way there, so thank you for being kind.

Thank you very much for those comments. I know I could see Lewis shaking his head a little bit, so I think we got a couple of actionable things and I'm going to make sure that we follow up with the team about.

Our next speaker is Miss Kathy Cohen Becker.

Thank you, Kathy. I appreciate it. I did want to ask one follow-up question to the team on this particular point. So currently, if a property is annexed into the city, and again, this is a little bit different because when an annexation happens, it's currently under Title 33, not Title 34, which you heard talking about here tonight. So could you just lay out like sort of how that currently works, which I would assume is sort of how we would probably approach this in Title 34, because I think Kathy's point about, as I said earlier, I'm interested in seeing generally where in the areas that are

The speaker to come before council is Ms. Kathy Green.

Thank you, Mr. Green. This is one of my favorite things in these hearings, where someone brings something I had not thought about whatsoever and very actionable advice and questions to be had. So thank you. We will follow up. And I think that this is very worthy, especially when we have a template from the telecommunications Code to look at so thank you. That is very very helpful and why we do these so our next speaker come before council is Courtney Theron and

And one, I appreciate the engagement of the society, both during phase one and now. The historic preservation modernization effort obviously came out of phase one. I think that was a question that was asked by many residents in German Village of, hey, we're talking about this significant change in zoning. What about preservation? To be very candid, we didn't have a good answer, which is why we're going down that pathway, I think, now. One in which I don't think any of us should presuppose what the answer should be because I think it should be a lot of engagement both with residents and also th

Okay. Appreciate it. Next speaker to come for council is Josh Brown.

Thank you and appreciate being here tonight and certainly folks in bread to be at our last public hearing as well. I think since our last year and I've met with the team for the administration and challenged them on this topic about whether or not it's something within the zoning code or whether or not something outside of the zoning code around tree preservation. I'm not an expert in exactly how to go about doing that, but I do want you all to know that is something that since our last public hearing that we have met on and I've asked the team to really lean into this to see what we can do he

uh districts that you guys are talking about um you're you're you're presenting in in this phase too sure um so if i can make a couple comments and i'm gonna throw it back over to our technical folks uh who know some of these details a little bit better than me i mean one of the things i would say generally around from accessibility for new housing development to happen under the zone in I think one of the biggest changes that was made in the first phase, which carries over to this phase, is that prior to that phase, ground floor residential was not permitted in the vast majority of the city f

That's a fair point, and I think this is, again, going back to some of these things are sort of built on top of one another. So when you talk about the further route, as Lewis mentioned, that first phase really focused on those corridors where there is existing good COTA access, and especially with LinkUS now being implemented, we're seeing increasing amount of both the frequency of COTA, even before the bus rapid transit lines are being built out, which is a positive, I think, for everyone. But that's really where we wanted to focus as much of that density as we possibly could for a variety o