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REGULAR MEETING February 12, 2018 BILL NO. 89-17 PUBLIC HEARING ON AN ORDINANCE OF THE COMMON COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SOUTH BEND, INDIANA, AMENDING CHAPTER 21 OF THE SOUTH BEND MUNICIPAL CODE,ARTICLE 3 COMMERCIAL/MIXED USE DISTRICTS TO REVISE PERMITTED USES AND DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS. Councilmember Tim Scott made motion to accept the Substitute Bill for Bill No. 89-17. Councilmember Karen White seconded this motion which carried unanimously by a voice vote of seven(7) ayes. Councilmember Oliver Davis, Chair of the Zoning and Annexation Committee,reported that they met this afternoon and send this bill forward with a favorable recommendation. Angela Smith, Deputy Director of the Area Plan Commission with offices on the 11th floor of the County-City Building, South Bend, IN, served as presenter for this bill. Ms. Smith stated, Before you is a text amendment to repeal and replace the MU, Mixed-Use, Zoning District in the Zoning Ordinance. There were several changes made and due to the length and amount of changes, we decided it was easier to repeal and replace a chapter than develop a long ordinance to replace things. In general what this ordinance is looking to do is realign the Mixed-Use District with the goals and intent of South Bend. When the Zoning Ordinance was adopted in 2004,this was pretty much modeled after an Indianapolis Ordinance that was in place at the time. Over the last thirteen (13) or fourteen (14) years, we have discovered that in many ways this district has not worked in the South Bend area. There have been numerous variances for setbacks, parking, and legal non- conforming buildings. The Department of Community Investment worked together with the Building Department as well as our office to draft an ordinance that looks of what would be an appropriate alignment of a pedestrian oriented district. This comes to you from the Area Plan Commission with a favorable recommendation. Updating the MU, Mixed-Use, District to better reflect the intent and application of the pedestrian oriented district in the urban context will simplify development and strengthen the Mixed-Use Neighborhood Centers. Michael Divita, Planner for the Department of Community Investment with offices on the 14th floor of the County-City Building, South Bend, IN, served as petitioner for this bill. Mr. Divita stated, Here are the series of changes that are proposed to the existing Mixed-Use District to promote more whole Mixed-Use development through a more straightforward code. The distribution of MU zones is showed on the screen(referencing a presentation which is available in the City Clerk's Office). They do tend to be along the City's major corridors and on the fringe of downtown. As with the other text amendments recently approved, these changes will reduce provisions that hold back investment and will decrease the number of rezoning special exception and variance requests that tend to always get approved. The changes will allow property owners to more fully utilize their properties by revising setbacks. The changes will also reduce the number of legal non-conforming properties and will clarify a few ambiguous provisions found in the existing code. These changes would also allow buildings to be built in a manner more consistent with traditional design to better blend the existing neighborhoods with new development. Councilmember Jo M. Broden stated, Thanks, I missed saying that in Committees. Your office, the planner and the Area Plan Commission staff have done a lot of work on this. I just commend you for the hard work in drafting it so thank you very much. Councilmember John Voorde stated, There was a reason we continued this before. There was concern that some developers may have a problem with this.Have you heard from anyone that this is not a good thing? Mr. Divita replied, On the contrary, there is a general enthusiasm about it. These changes make development easier. Councilmember Oliver Davis stated, Could you talk about the ADA compliance of this? 10