FAYETTEVILLE -- The family that wants to build up to 54 houses, duplexes and cottage-style apartments on 4 acres northeast of Cleveland Street and Razorback Road is appealing a much-debated rezoning request to the City Council.
Aldermen also are set to discuss a resolution requiring further study of a city purchase of the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce building at their meeting Tuesday.
Meeting information
Fayetteville City Council
When: 5:30 p.m. Tuesday
Where: City Administration Building, 113 W. Mountain St.
The Cleveland Street rezoning has been met by stiff opposition from residents in the adjoining University Heights neighborhood, who have cited traffic, parking and density concerns.
The Planning Commission on June 22 unanimously recommended denial of the request from property owner Arkansas Legacy LLC. City planning staff members want the City Council to uphold planning commissioners' vote.
"A project of this nature may be supported," Jeremy Pate, Development Services director, told aldermen last week. "We just feel this is not the zoning district to accomplish that goal."
Paul Jeske, whose family has owned the land near Leverett Elementary School and several university dormitories for decades, is asking for Downtown General zoning, a designation generally confined to downtown. It has been applied to residential areas south of the Fayetteville square and near Walker Park, where several row houses have sprung up in recent years.
Brian Teague, an engineer with Community by Design, has said the requested zoning district, because of its low lot size and street frontage requirements, is the best fit for what the Jeskes want to build.
"The property owner feels that the proposed rezoning is compatible with the surrounding land use and is encouraged by the city of Fayetteville's long-range planning goals," Teague said in a July 2 letter.
Teague has consistently argued the new zoning would allow development that meets City Plan 2030 goals of fostering infill, discouraging sprawl and making "traditional town form" the standard.
Planning staff members, planning commissioners and several aldermen have said they'd be more apt to support a planned zoning district, which requires applicants to submit specific site plans when a property is rezoned.
"We feel like a PZD in this case would be most appropriate, because it would allow you all to see the nuances of the development requirements," Pate told aldermen Tuesday.
The property owners have resisted officials' call for a planned zoning district. Teague said a planned zoning district would require a large upfront investment to create detailed designs for the project with no guarantee that variances -- from heightened tree preservation requirements, for example -- would be approved.
While some neighbors say they support the PZD process because they'd be able to see development details before zoning is approved, others oppose any rezoning of the land.
"The current zoning is appropriate for the neighborhood and should be left as is," Joe Paul, who lives southwest of the property on Gray Avenue, said in a June 21 letter to the city planning department.
All but a sliver of land on the western edge of the Jeske property allows for residential construction at a density of four units per acre.
The Jeskes are proposing about 13 units per acre.
The 54 units they're planning could feature as many as 132 bedrooms. The structures would have front porches and rear-access garages. Cars would access the site from a single point off Cleveland Street.
"We're trying to be respectful of the neighborhood," Paul Jeske told neighbors in a Ward 4 meeting earlier this year. "We want to contribute to the neighborhood. We want to help build the neighborhood."
Aldermen Adella Gray and Mark Kinion sponsored the resolution asking Mayor Lioneld Jordan's administration to further study buying the Chamber of Commerce building, 123 W. Mountain St.
"It seems to me like it would be an ideal property to hang on to if we could," Kinion said last week. "We pretty much own all the property around it."
Chamber President Steve Clark last month announced plans to move the chamber's offices to the second floor of the Bradberry Building, 21 W. Mountain St., where Tiny Tim's Pizza, Jammin' Java and West Mountain Brewing Co. are located.
That leaves the building the chamber has occupied since 1960 available. The nearly 6,000-square-foot building is listed at $998,000.
Paul Becker, Fayetteville finance director, said city administrators have considered the purchase and deemed it unnecessary.
"I don't see that we're going to have major additions to our staff here in the downtown campus in the near future," Becker said, adding, "I don't see how it would help us at this time in view of the cost."
NW News on 07/20/2015