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3. Building massing for each street face 32 4. Public amenities and spaces 33 5. Use or development character sub-districts 34 6. Protection/enhancement of key amenities or resources 35 (Note: Because the term “regulating plan” is both the name of the zoning tool as well as the 36 common terminology for the plan created for the City by the consulting firm, Cuningham 37 Group, for the purposes of this memo, references to the tool in general will be 38 “regulating plan” and the specific plan elements will be referred to as “Cuningham 39 Plan”). 40 The regulating plan can be a flexible tool where landowners and the City can examine the 41 development in terms of whether it is or is not creating the desired character and can assist in 42 continuing the desired character across property ownerships rather than having a series of 43 unrelated developments. Regulating plans can be created through a City planning process, as 44 was done with the Cuningham Plan, can be developed by the underlying land owners or created 45 in partnership between landowners and the City. 46 Cities have far more discretion in the approval process with regulating plans than other 47 approvals. Neighborhoods generally have more input because a regulating plan approval is 48 considered a zoning amendment and regulating plans are often created with a public participation 49 element whether initiated by the City or private landowners. Landowners can benefit from 50 regulating plans because they can proceed through the most expensive portions of the design 51 process with more certainty of approval since the development character/concept would have 52 already been created through the regulating plan process. 53 One key benefit of regulating plans is that they can allow cities to better control issues such as 54 sense of scale through various subdistricts based on character which can be very important in a 55 large area like Twin Lakes. For instance, the use “office” could be appropriate throughout the 56 Twin Lakes area. However, the appropriateness of an office project on any particular site may 57 be more an issue of its form than the use. For instance, a high rise office building might be 58 perfectly acceptable across the street from the high rise office building for Symantec on 59 Cleveland, but may be considered inappropriate if located on the north side of Terrace Drive or 60 adjacent to Langton Lake where other, less intense, forms of the use “office” might be 61 considered appropriate. 62 One aspect of the City’s current regulatory framework that is challenging for development is that 63 the Cuningham Plan was actually placed in the City Code rather than approved by reference (i.e. 64 instead of treating it similar to how PUDs are approved and are not placed into the City Code). 65 Placing the Cuningham Plan in the City Code makes the plan inherently inflexible because of the 66 constraints of City Code text norms and that any proposed change would need to be evaluated in 67 great detail to ensure it does not impact other regulating plans or sections of the City Code. In 68 addition, the City Code does not really allow for the preamble text that might be desirable to 69 outline goals and desired character so there is clear guidance for both the City and private 70 landowners. 71 Regulating plans often are changed as the development process occurs because additional 72 information is known about the proposed end uses and the developer’s architects/engineers may 73 propose creative alternatives that better meet the desired development goals of the city. This is 74 not a negative situation. The regulating plan process should encourage creativity providing the 75 Page 2 of 4