09-06-2017 PC - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

The 2 Pine Tree Drive property has many of the same characteristics as our 3900 Bethel drive property – it includes many acres of wooded, somewhat secluded, “campus-like” land, largely invisible to the surrounding land users. It is a very unique parcel within the B-2 district (its current zone).  Second, making this change would provide the city with adequate capacity for placing a cap on the square footage allowable for higher education usage in the B-2 district. As your report indicates, placing a 25% higher education usage cap on the B-2 district would only allow about 20,000 additional SF of higher education usage as things stand today. Converting the 2 Pine Tree property to “INST” would bring the starting percentage to 0, thus allowing reasonable higher education expansion into that zone while still providing a cap.  Finally, zoning 2 Pine Tree Drive INST is consistent with the existing CUP between Bethel and the City which already provides that over time the entire property may be used for higher education use, including “administrative offices, general and specialized classrooms, meeting rooms, common spaces and related purposes.” (See CUP, page 1, Section 1.) Accordingly, it is highly appropriate to include that parcel in the newly proposed INST zone. HIGHER ED USE  The University prefers that no cap on higher education usage be placed on the B-2 zone, unless the 2 Pine Tree property is rezoned to INST. As stated above the proposed 25% cap would virtually eliminate any future higher ed usage in the B-2 zone since the remaining 20,000 SF available is not, in our opinion, large enough to allow meaningful higher ed use. Your report indicates that you could find no example where such a percentage cap is used in other municipalities. That may well be the case since, without a compelling public purpose, imposing a cap seems arbitrary, especially when your report lists 7 properties within the zone as vacant. If a cap is imposed however, one based on acreage would be better that one based on square-footage. We suggest this approach would get more to the heart of the matter than would one based on square-footage, as a given property owner has no control as to whether other property owners will invest in capital expansion on their properties, thus causing the square-footage cap to be almost immovable. But if a property owner wishes to invest in capital expansion or improvement on property they already own an acreage-based cap would allow for this possibility.  Specific to your recommendation to create a “Higher Education, Classroom/Office” conditional use component, we are concerned that the attempt to define this use by reference to mechanical or HVAC equipment is not workable. First, it would be quite difficult to clearly define what “typical