ROGERS -- There's a reason the city's downtown is thriving with new businesses and revitalized activity.
John McCurdy, community development director, believes the Downtown Rogers Development Code paved the way. It was written a few years ago and took some time to implement, but now residents can see the benefit the city hoped to get -- a place where people could live, shop, eat and work all in the same small area.
That's called mixed-use development in city planning terms. Right now, there's very few areas for that to happen in the city, McCurdy said. He'd like that to change.
Planning Commissioners on Thursday heard ideas from Matt Lambert, a partner at DPZ, for how they could simplify city code and see more mixed-use development around town.
DPZ is a company creating urban places with "walkability," pedestrian-friendly streets and a way to interact with built and natural surroundings, according to its website.
"Downtown development of having mixed use in a single structure ... would have been illegal before the [Downtown Rogers Development Code]," McCurdy said before he introduced Lambert. "It's time to consider a similar move around the Pinnacle area."
DPZ makes those urban changes by using form-based code, which typically narrows the number of zonings a city has by combining zones with similar uses. They also create a more user-friendly code manual to encourage more development and economic growth.
"We're seeing more adoption to code changes," Lambert said in the presentation. "There's an ever-growing demand for this type of development across the company."
While serving Miami, Lambert said officials saw the number of variances requested by developers drop drastically. Such a drastic change also reduces the frequency of rezoning requests, he said. Rogers' Planning Commission has rezoning requests often.
Form-based code is more appealing because it centers on use of land and the vision the developer has for it, Lambert said.
McCurdy said a lot of the conversations with developers in Planning Commission meetings lean toward what the project will look like in the end.
"The discussions tend toward things like 'What's the vision for the place?'" McCurdy said. "It seems like that's what the public is more interested in."
The interest in vision makes the city's current way of doing it, which focuses more on minimum number of parking spaces, building heights and signs, irrelevant.
DPZ would focus on creating code to make the way for housing types in high demand, such as town houses and small apartment buildings, as well as more creative businesses. Lambert gave the example of a combination coffee shop and dog daycare service that wouldn't be allowed under many traditional city codes.
Commission Chairman Don Spann said the Rogers code could use some cleaning up. He recalled an instance where the city created a code for a specific business only used in one instance.
McCurdy said he could imagine urban centers popping up in more places around town if only the code was different and allowed more mixed-use. He gave the intersection of New Hope and Dixieland roads as an example.
Commissioner Eriks Zvers agreed with the example and recalled a project petitioned for that area and was tabled twice before giving up.
DPZ would also focus on streetscape context, or looking at land use to dictate how street lighting and parking is decided. A few commissioners agreed current code requires creating too much parking that's often unused.
Spann noted Pinnacle Hills Promenade has a lot of unused space even on Black Friday. Assistant Planner Lori Ericson mentioned a Lowe's parking lot created across a five lane street from the store just because of the minimum parking space requirement. They agreed it would be nice to see those areas repurposed rather than sit as empty asphalt.
DPZ isn't under contract with Rogers. Lambert and McCurdy made the same presentation to groups of developers, Realtors, bankers, Chamber of Commerce and city staff, as well as members of the Walton Family Foundation.
Realtors in the previous meetings said they were losing developers to other cities that have form-based code, Spann said, which would make for extra incentive to opt in.
Discussions will continue in Mayor Greg Hines' office and with senior staff attorney Jennifer Waymack. No timeline for contract decisions was available Thursday night.
NW News on 09/22/2017