05-29-19 Zoning and Annexation - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

*CITY OF SOU'T'H BEND OFFICE OF THE CLERK lot of people are finding different ways of doing it. Part of their zoning,one(1)person parked their tiny house on a neighbor's driveway and that was allowed. I'm not saying we should do that here, but we need to put many different options on the table. Mike Keen is looking in different areas to find different options. Look at our City. It is cookie cutter. Single-Family house after Single- Family house. You go to one (1) neighborhood after the next and there aren't options for people. Mr. Corcoran stated, That affordability piece, it is sort of the opposite side of that same affordability coin.Yeah,Australia and New Zealand,the property values are extremely high as are San Francisco and Minneapolis for that matter. There is an affordability problem in South Bend, as well, it's just the different side of that coin. So, we are trying to answer that and that is to be more flexible in how we look at housing. Ms. Smith stated, One (1) of the other nice things about the SF-Three (3) district is I think it kind of eliminates some of that fear you get from the neighborhood. If you want to do a triplex in a neighborhood, right now they would have to rezone to MF-One (1). But, that could be anywhere from three (3) units to one hundred (100) units. There is no cap unless you put one (1) on it. This kind of gives people the built-in protection and they know it won't be more than four(4)units plus an ADU. So, they know it won't suddenly be a high-rise apartment. It responds both to the neighborhood character and also helps address the use fear that comes with what could be. Councilmember Scott asked, So, we've asked before, but how much of this takes away all the special exceptions that keep coming before us for zoning?That might be a hard number to quantify. Mr. Corcoran replied,There is only one(1)main special exception. What we don't want to happen is, for instance, we are doing a major rezoning that would cover existing homes. What that would mean is, you could take a Single-Family home into two (2), three (3) or four(4) pieces. What we are trying to say is we don't want conversions of homes. It is still possible, through the special exception process, but that has to come before you guys if we are going to allow it or not. So, it still gives us the control over existing homes. This is also pretty important for historic areas. We don't want people cutting up historic homes. Councilmember Scott stated, Yeah, I like that. Mr. Divita stated, Moving onto the next piece, it will be a bit quicker. I'll pass this around, it is a form with the CBD standards (which is available in the City Clerk's Office). I won't go through this line by line, but I wanted to summarize the rationale and big-picture things about what we are proposing here. We've done some of the fixes for some of the common things that people come in, ask us for, and always get approved or other pieces that, in retrospect, didn't really make sense. So,we are proposing some reforms to the CBD District and its standards. Overall,they are actually very similar to the MU District reforms the Council passed last year. The changes fall within one (1) of three (3) categories. One (1) is permitting more of the lot to be used. So, it's an efficiency question and anywhere you should be using the land most intensely is probably in the CBD District. There are pieces to clarify some existing ordinance provisions. The third (31-d) is adding some basic design principles. The first(1st) set deal with setbacks and buffer yards. Then there are clarification pieces on how plazas are used or not used and on outdoor operations, essentially sidewalk cafes.The backside information deals with reworking the building material requirements to make it a little bit more flexible but also asks for higher quality. EXCELLENCE ! ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION I INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227W Jefferson Bvld South Bend.Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f574.235.9173 TTD574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 7