Important thing though, is she pro-urban living? Transit? 15-minute city? Is she afraid of building shadows?
"Janet will limit the use of spot rezonings, which hurt our ability to build a community that works for everyone since they lack the input and review the comprehensive plan requires. "
What does this mean?
Her endorsements are pretty big.
Personally, I like MAB. However, she hasn’t managed her personal brand very well. I think the city is better for it, but it’s certainly a challenge when every good decision or goal she makes has a veil of distrust cast upon it by local groups.
In particular, I’d like to know more about the following she says as part of her goals:
The city’s comprehensive plan ensures we have equitable and accessible citywide transportation, sufficient housing, and spaces for businesses of all sizes to find success. Janet will limit the use of spot rezonings, which hurt our ability to build a community that works for everyone since they lack the input and review the comprehensive plan requires.
This can really go in two ways. Is she hoping to apply zoning en-masse using the comprehensive plan as ammo, or is she hoping to limit any and all rezoning? And, how does she expect to accomplish it.
I’ll add that, to me, I agree. Spot rezoning is dumb and takes way too much time. If we agree with the goal of a single rezoning case, it should be applied to all businesses in the area. Not just a single one.
These fluffy, ambiguous, non-statements are definitely worrisome because they seem “work-shopped” to send feelings instead of actual policy positions.
Be careful!
Quotes from her website:
Everyone in Raleigh is feeling the effects of our city’s rapid growth. As a result, the cost of housing has skyrocketed and is preventing teachers, firefighters, law enforcement officers, and others who serve our community from being able to live here.
So rapid growth equals high cost of living? I think it’s high demand for our region that results in the higher costs, and development is needed to reduce costs. We’ve beat this horse dead over the years in this forum.
Janet will work to solve this problem by diversifying housing options across the city, while ensuring that any new developments keep the character of our neighborhoods.
Analysis by paralysis and try to please everyone. This looks and feels like “save our neighborhoods” and the Livable Raleigh drum. I bet they toss their endorsement behind her very quickly.
Janet will limit the use of spot rezonings, which hurt our ability to build a community that works for everyone since they lack the input and review the comprehensive plan requires.
I tried using the Googles to figure out what “spot rezoning” is, and no luck. “Spot zoning” is a thing, and not legal. Rezoning is just that, rezoning in spots, but it’s just rezoning and she wants to limit it’s use? I’m surprised anyone on this forum is behind that.
That said, I respect her contributions to the city in various forms and appreciate most of it, but her seemingly anti-growth tone is not something I can get behind.
Please note Anna Johnson wrote, tried and convicted Saige Martin. A consential date between two gay men- she ran him out of town on a rail. #notafriend
The TOD rezoning would be an example of non-spot rezoning. Where as, going for a single plot would be spot rezoning. At least that’s the way I considered it.
It sure sounds to me like being against spot rezoning actually means she’s against any rezoning that isn’t part of a comprehensive plan. This is likely to be exactly what Livable Raleigh wants…no rezoning!
At the end of the day, MAB and the council has rezoned a ton of properties that languish unimproved. We need these properties to bear fruit so that the city sees their positive financial impact on city revenues, and how an abundance of housing can keep inflation at bay compared to our current dwindling supply.
ding ding ding, my interpretation as well
Janet Cowell definitely is not a breath of fresh air for the pro growth and Urbanist movement here in Raleigh based on what I’m reading on her website smh and also her time as State Treasurer wasn’t without controversy, MAB is definitely not a great communicator but the woman has got alot done as far as moving Raleigh Forward when you look at her body of work.
Indy Week Article on Janet Cowell
There’s been a lot of growth and development in Raleigh, which causes tensions … opportunities and wealth for some and displacement and burden for others.
NIMBY sheep are going to love this one. I don’t necessarily disagree with all of her points/perspectives, but I really don’t think she’s any different/better overall than Terrance Ruth from a couple of years ago. I am really interested to see how LR officially reacts to her.
Not saying I’m singing her praises, but I will argue she’s already infinitely a better candidate considering her actual experience in both city and state gov’t, as well as being CEO of the Dix Conservancy, an important city organization.
Yes, 100% here.
In a way, I think Janet is squarely in the shoes of Nancy McFarlane and Charles Meeker - someone who understands the need for new housing to meet the demand that we are seeing, but who also gets the difficult politics of development. People don’t like change and I think that handwaving that doesn’t set you up for success. It might be that Janet becomes a consensus candidate and the “battles” (if there are any) are then happening in district races, assuming Melton and Stormie run for reelection.
Of course, the flip side to this is that you can only hold people’s hands to the extent they’re willing to let you - we saw this with Liveable turning on Nancy in 2016. And it may also be that Janet takes the lane of Caroline Sullivan - taking votes from the Liveable and AfAm candidates and allowing the pro-housing/development candidate to eek out a plurality.
She could be implying that the previous zoning comp plan from 2015 (?) is the holy bible and set in stone–40 story zoning should only go on Fayetteville street–rezonings are a no-go or that the current zoning plan should be updated to fit the needs for a much bigger city? People want to live on Glenwood South, it should get more density. She’s carefully commenting so that she doesn’t reveal which way she’s leaning.
The comp plan is scheduled to be updated next year - RFP for consulting team was approved by council this month. So that should result in a UDO update which also hopefully informs a zoning map amendment. FWIW I really like this approach compared to developer-initiated requests as long as the resulting # of units allowed is sufficient to meet demand.
City of Raleigh Retreat online now. You can really see how half the city council wants to do things that are not allowed by state law and may cause some issues in the future. If a developer with connections to someone in the NCGA is angry that the city of Raleigh City Council is basically now demanding affordable housing provisions to approve rezoning we can see the NCGA come down on us and all cities in NC.
Here the city lobbyist explains how the City of Raleigh lost any say in downtown state properties development:
What does zoning map amendment mean here? Just trying to follow the line of thinking.
I was contacted by a pollster yesterday (Public Policy, a legit enterprise). There were a few of the standard national questions, but the poll was clearly focused around local politics.
They tested five candidates for mayor:
Corey Branch, Janet Cowell, Paul Fitts, Terrance Ruth… and Jonathan Melton.
I chose not to @ anybody here because I don’t know what this poll says about Melton. I also note that the poll did NOT include MAB. I don’t know about Ruth, I suspect they included him because he ran last time but last I knew he had specified that he was not going to run again this time. I might be wrong.
It was a message poll - asked me how I felt about each candidate, then read a short statement about each person, then asked me again. FWIW, the statements about Branch and Melton made me feel pretty great. Fitts gets some things right and some thigs wrong. The statement about Cowell was VERY anti anything we generally believe in on this board.
Gotta run but wanted to drop this little bombshell…
If @anon8787296 runs for Mayor, he has my vote. Simple as that.
In theory, this is great.
What Raleigh (and most other larger cities) often practices is “pretextural zoning” where zoning is just a pretext, an opening offer for negotiations. Across from Dix Park, on the block between Lake Wheeler Road and Curfman Street, the comprehensive plan shows “Regional Mixed Use” (“Heights could be as tall as 12 to 20 stories in core locations”) – but the zoning code is R-6, or pretty much 6 detached houses per acre. (There are now ways to do townhouses in R-6, but it’s still suburban residential zoning.)
What the city should do is to preemptively change the entire area’s zoning to DX-12 to legalize 12-story buildings. They’ve said in the Comp Plan that 12+ story buildings are OK, but somehow they’re still not allowed under zoning – because zoning is being used as a pretext. A landowner can ask for a zoning change for 12-20 story buildings, but only in exchange for… something.
“Spot zoning” is the practice of rezoning a single parcel at a time. This rewards, primarily, the lawyers who get paid $X00,000s for rezonings, and secondarily those well-connected developers who can get rezonings done. Pretty much nobody else wins. Those who understand that the city has to grow might read this to say “we should proactively rezone everywhere.” Those who unrealistically oppose all change could read this to say “we should never rezone anything.”
Sounds like having one’s cake and eating it, too.
I got this poll, too. I’m not sure if the messaging was truly representative of the candidates’ stances, but it definitely made Janet Cowell appear anti-density.
