Note: What is shown below is a copy of the original letter.
Commissioners:
In my message to you “Issues with the Urban Field Studio – Gateway Test Site document” sent on Sunday, July 9th, I refer to the parking shown for the test building at the Tomas site as a “parking structure.” That is incorrect. It is “structured parking.” As shown, it is a 7-story building composed of two levels of parking and five stories of residential apartments above it.
As the authors of the study state, this design is not financially feasible to construct. The authors suggest as an alternative a 3-story structure with surface parking (i.e. a parking lot). This takes the theoretical 113 dwelling units per acre of the authors’ study down to the 45-55 range.
It does not seem that density of 45-55 units per acre is going to provide the yield of housing that the Gateway Plan is promising.
My question is:
Disregarding the decades it might take for the buildings to be developed, is that figure of 3,500 still a workable number? Or should it be decreased to, say, 2,500? Or, to 1,200?
Is this something that the Commission can look at, in the next month or two?
We can keep in mind, on a simplistic but real basis:
Sorrel Place is a blend of 1, 2, and 3-bedroom units. Average size is 864 sq.ft. It is 4-stories, 44 units. (Or it could be built as a 5-story building with commercial space on the ground floor.) It has a density of 64 units per acre. It takes up the entire block in length, and approximately a half-block in depth. It has a shared driveway, and so has some economy of acreage there. It also has a deeper front setback — so it could be considered a wash on the shared driveway.
To build 3,500 units along the average density of Sorrel Place would take 80 buildings of the size of Sorrel Place. If the average size of the units were half as big — 3,500 units of 432 sq.ft. average size — it would take 40 “Sorrel Place size” buildings.
There does not appear to be enough room in the Gateway Area for 80 “Sorrel Place size” buildings. And that is a density of 64 units per acre.
The Gateway Area is declared as 138 acres. That figure includes the road rights of way — removing that gets to about 109 acres. Wetlands and open space reduces that further. The City’s GIS could give us accurate figures. I look at about 80-85 actual acres in the Gateway Area that would conceivably be available. And that 80-85 acres would be available for redevelopment if every single building in the Gateway Area were to be torn down and removed.
Please consider a realistic re-evaluation of the potential sites of the Gateway Area.
Thank you.
— Fred Weis
————————-
At your previous meeting on June 27, Commissioner Lehman asked if the stated figure of 3,500 apartments in the Gateway Area could be reached if there was a minimum density of 25 units per acre.
Community Development Director David Loya’s response:
“It would require basically maximizing the build-out on every single parcel. And I haven’t done an analysis recently, excuse me to look at the unit count for you know, for the reduced building heights that the Planning Commission is working off of right now. So that would probably affect it to some extent.And then again, because we’re not regulating unit sizes, I guess the other thing I would say is that, you know, if the market really drove towards, you know, 3500 one-bedroom units, you could probably still get there. I don’t think the market is going to sustain one bedroom units, or, you know, for 3500 units that are projecting.
Commissioner Yodowitz pointed out that there is currently no limitation on size or number of bedrooms per unit — that it is not regulated.
David Loya’s response:
Currently, we don’t have that regulated. It’s left up to the market. There are certainly some jurisdictions that do regulate. We used to have a code that would strongly incentivize having larger bedrooms. So it’s certainly something to discuss. But the philosophy to date has been to let the market decide when it’s time to build one– bedrooms and when it’s time to build three–bedrooms.
The proposal was to increase the minimum to 32 units per acre, which the Commission accepted.
————————-
Below (and attached) is a modified map of the Gateway Districts, from page 45 of the October 2022 draft. It shows the target numbers of units for the four districts. Together, it adds up to 3,500.
The Arcata Trailer Court parcel at 7th and K is in the Neighborhood District. It is 1.04 acres. Other than that site, other Neighborhood redevelopment opportunities involve, for the most part, tearing down a 2-story building in order to build a 3- or 4-story building, which may not be what an owner wants to do. It is difficult to see how 500 units can be achieved in the Neighborhood District.
The Hub District includes the Reid & Wright mill site at the far north (14th & N) and some other larger parcels along M Street near Bug Press. It also contains buildings that are unlikely to be torn down over the next, say, 30 or 40 years. In other words, it seems unlikely that this area will yield anything close to the 1,200 units shown. There just are not enough likely buildable acres there for that yield.