I agree that it would’ve prevented a LOT of people on all sides from being confused and concerned if Kane didn’t push this as a simple rezoning case. But I think the reason is simple: a simple rezoning requires less work, and no one forced them to do the harder thing.
Click here for more details on what Owen described.
A Planned Development (PD) is a special type of zone according to Raleigh’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO).
Normally, you’d submit your building plans each time you need a building permit -or, if you need 'em, in rezoning applications. This lets City Council (and before them, relevant subcommittees like the Planning Commission) check whether individual buildings agree with the city’s long-term wish lists and planning rules.
But what if you want to build a whole development or a district based on multiple buildings? That’s where you would re-“zone” your land as a PD special zoning district. With this, you’ll tell the city exactly about all the buildings you want to build (and check them against the UDO and other city expectations) at the very beginning.
When a developer and the City agrees on what will be built, you’ll have an approved “master plan”. Every time the developer wants to build something on PD-zoned land, they’ll just need to show that their proposal is consistent with the approved master plan. Even though a master plan can let developers get around some kinds of red tape, it’s not really a “blank check”. Instead, the developer’s just doing the work upfront.
In the application they submitted in October, Kane Realty wrote that PD requirements are not applicable to their project. If that was a problem, city staffers should have required Kane to fill out the PD-related pages. The city asked for (and got) some corrections in Kane’s application in the end. But the need for a master plan was not among the flags raised. That decision is on city staffers just as much as the applicant.
City Council has the right to deny the zoning request, though, and ask Kane to re-submit with a master plan. Kane’s already done like a majority of the work for that, anyways, while answering environmental and affordable housing-related questions.