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REQUEST FOR COUNCIL ACTION Date: 9/15/2014 Item No.: 14.c Department Approval City Manager Approval Item Description: Discussion regarding alterations to the use of the regulating plan in the Community Mixed Use (CMU) District (Twin Lakes) B ACKGROUND 1 The current Twin Lakes area is largely governed by the CMU zoning district (with a small 2 amount of high density residential). 3 The CMU district is unique in the City’s zoning ordinance because it has a very broad set of 4 permitted uses including residential, office, retail and even some quasi-industrial uses. This 5 amount of land use flexibility, by itself, is generally not desirable in a traditional zoning 6 ordinance because it can lead to a scattered land use pattern, intense uses adjacent to more 7 sensitive uses, and development can be restricted because property owners do not have assurance 8 that their development will be protected from future incompatible development on adjacent 9 properties. 10 In traditional zoning, cities address this concern of incompatible uses by creating a series of 11 districts that have very limited uses (office, single family residential, retail, industrial, etc.) and 12 then mapping those limited districts into areas that are viewed to be appropriate. This is the 13 approach that occurs in the entire city that is not zoned CMU. 14 This traditional, separated use zoning approach, has been falling out of favor in some areas 15 because although it prevents a lot of very bad situations created by incompatible uses, it also can 16 restrict the degree to which extraordinary development can occur by limiting creativity and 17 placemaking. Traditional, separated use zoning can lead to development that is considered to be 18 generic. 19 Form based codes were created a few decades ago to address this issue and have led to an 20 elevation of the concept of placemaking. Form based codes have led to a resurgence of creative 21 development and many popular developments from the past two decades included some level of 22 form based code regulation. 23 The method that form based codes use to allow a wide range of land use and design flexibility 24 without leading to the problem of scattered and incompatible land uses is that it introduces the 25 concept of a regulating plan. The regulating plan is a schematic diagram that can be similar to a 26 site plan and shows how the form based code standards will be applied. Regulating plans often 27 show the general arrangement of items such as the following: 28 29 1. Blocks and street network 30 2. Street functional types 31 Page 1 of 4