I thought we had a thread or at least a mention of this in a thread but I can’t find it.
The request is consistent with the 2030 Comprehensive Plan.
The request is consistent with the Future Land Use Map.
The request is consistent with the Urban Form Map.
Looks like this was approved by the Planning Commission and is going to public hearing on 2/1. If you are in favor of this rezoning, you may want to sign up to speak or send in an email. I believe there are NIMBY positions against this that will be speaking.
I listened to the Planning Commission meeting for this one. Seems like with the conditions to have some setbacks from The Dawson and parking deck screening, and to most likely have some sort of open space between the two buildings (that won’t be for dumpsters or the like), it seemed to mostly calm the residents of The Dawson who were initially against it. One of the main reasons is that if there was no rezoning, and it was built under the current conditions as 12 stories, there would be 0 space between The Dawson patios/windows and a new 12 story building if built to the property line. With the setback proposed, there’ll be space now. Planning Commission unanimously approved, so I think it should be mainly smooth sailing at City Council, unless the residents come up with some new concerns.
That’s really good to hear. I hadn’t had the chance to hear the concerns but I did hear setbacks being one of them. I’m glad it wasn’t shadows/traffic/view as those are all inherently downtown things. This reminds me of the complaints the Boylan Heights crew had with the Kane Cabarrus project. The were going to get more of what they wanted with the Planned Development proposed than with the existing IX-7, but they dug in thinking they’d prevent development altogether. Clearly that isn’t the case, so I’m glad to hear the developer in this case working with the Dawson community to arrive at a more advantageous design.
They definitely did bring up the shade concerns, and the developer provided shade renderings showing that there would be minimal difference between the current zoning and DX-40 with setbacks (I believe it was actually slightly better (although both basically provide no sunlight) with the DX-40 with setbacks. And the view concerns are taken care of as much as they can be by the parking deck screening and setbacks. They were obviously very unhappy about a building being built right up to their balconies/windows, so the setback really does help with that, especially if the setback area is used as some form of mini-plaza as shown by some of the sketches that were shown during the meeting. This way, the windows/patios will look into some presumably nicer open space.
People generally have a massive misconception of dense/mixed-use projects and their impact on traffic. If traffic were really their only beef with development and they really understood mixed-use, they’d be for the development. I have to keep going back to the study I got access to that shows over a 10+ year period of downtown streets (without referencing it something like 2007-2017?) and traffic didn’t even increase on average over those years 1%. I bet you do a study of 440 and you see a stark contrast. And I don’t think our buildings downtown are the largest contributor to 440s traffic increases.
323 & 327 West Morgan St. Rezoning was Approved. The two lots at 330 West Hargett St. are zoned for 40 stories & plans are for a apartment high rise with ground floor retail. Haven’t heard how many stories.
