This section deals with the statement from Planning Commission Vice-Chair Judith Mayer that it is possible — even desirable — to have a Form-Based Code with discretionary review — that the two aspects of planning are indeed not mutually exclusive, but can work hand-in-hand well together.  She said:

Planning Commission Vice-Chair Judith Mayer

1:24:10

Thank you very much [to David Loya] for your explanation.

I would just like to add, or counter a little bit, that Form-Based Codes are not mutually exclusive from Discretionary Review.  In fact, the exemplary Form-Based Codes that you suggested we read – and I’ve actually been teaching about one of those for a while in a university course — both have extensive Discretionary Review involved as well as some aspects that can be ministerially approved based on standards in the Form-Based Code by a Development Director or a Zoning Code Administrator.  But I think the way that you’re presenting this as it’s either/or.  It is actually quite misleading.  In the examples that you put before us, those particular examples actually counter this sense of these two options being mutually exclusive, at opposite ends of a decision-making process.

I think that Arcata can develop a robust Form-Based Code through a community process that also still has a place for the Planning Commission and the City Council to have discretion over certain aspects of approval, especially for the largest projects, new types of projects, and projects with really unique characteristics.  And I would appreciate going forward with that in mind rather than with the idea that Discretionary Review is somehow anathema to adopting a progressive and robust and participatory Form-Based Code. These things are not mutually exclusive.

And I think there are many of us here who are not really willing to give up some Discretionary Review in order to serve the speedy decision-making needs of major developers.

1:26:40

The partial transcription, in proper time sequence.
The full video can be seen at this link.

Form-Based Code
1:04:30

Community Development Directory David Loya

Okay so, yeah, Form-Based Code.  I’m going to do less talking.  I’ve got a couple of videos for you to watch that will help to explain the Form-Based Code. But I do want to just emphasize one quick thing before we do that.

And that that is that we’ve been using the terms “Form-Based Code” or “community design” sort of interchangeably.

I just wanted to point back to, again, many of you were on the Commission when the Village project was being reviewed — as a discretionary decision to change the zoning and approve this four-story buildings out on the Craftsman’s Mall. One of the key things that we heard through that process was “I only get three minutes at the mic at a time. I want to have the ability to, as a community member, to get in there and help the developer design them.”

In order for the developer though to have a hearing, we require that they have very specific plans that show that their project meets our code. So they have to invest the money up front to build out a set of near-engineered plans — at least 30 percent design plans that meet the code.  And then when they come to a discretionary hearing, again they’re in that quasi-judicial process.  They are allowed due process.  And though there’s no explicit requirement for a speedy process, I think that is what’s expected — is that you’re either going to vote me up or down or give me some conditions to modify the plan — it meets the code and so approve it.

So that doesn’t feel great to the community members who feel like: “Hey, I wanted to have a better hand in helping to say what this is going to look like — I don’t like the look of that building.”  But the Commission is sitting here saying:  “Well, it meets the design criteria, so we we’re feeling fairly limited in our ability to modify this.”

So we leveraged that experience and realized that with this planning process we have an opportunity to really get engaged with the public, try and find out what elements do they want to see in the future of Arcata and have them participate in designing out the code.  We haven’t gotten there yet — that’s still forthcoming –and so the Form-Based Code will reflect the design biases, I guess I’ll say – you know, the design criteria — that we as a community can sit down together and understand what our future building is going to look like.

1:07:04

Okay.  So  I’ve got a couple of a couple of things here.  This one’s really short. It speaks for itself and I’m sorry I can’t expand it because the it’s too grainy. Yeah, give me a second.

[Section from 1:07:20 to 1:09:25 (2  min 3 sec) not transcribed. while David Loya makes an attempt to show a video.   The video is 1 min 29 sec of Roxanne Qualls (Vice-Mayor, Cincinnati, Ohio).  The video is available at:  https://formbasedcodes.org/definition/   or vimeo.com/video/89351836 ]

[ On the screen at the Planning Commission meeting:]

Form-Based Codes Defined

Form-Based Code

/fôrm-bāsed kōd/

noun

1. 1. 1. A form-based code is a land development regulation that fosters predictable built results and a high-quality public realm by using physical form (rather than separation of uses) as the organizing principle for the code. A form-based code is a regulation, not a mere guideline, adopted into city, town, or county law. A form-based code offers a powerful alternative to conventional zoning regulation.

1:09:25
This is going to be a 10 minute video at the most.  Let’s see.  Okay, okay. We’re going to try something different. We’re going to it up through the zoom window.  And we’re going to skip one.

1:11:11
Planning Commission Vice-Chair Judith Mayer – off-screen:
For anyone who does want to see it the URL is going to be up on the recording of this session so people can watch it themselves.

1:11:31
Planning Commission Chair Julie Vaissiade-Elcock – off-screen:
It’s in the link in the agenda for those of you at home who are curious.

Planning Commission Vice-Chair Judith Mayer – off-screen:
Page 8 on the agenda there’s a link. They can watch it at home can watch if they’re curious

David Loya:
1:11:44
If you Google or if you YouTube “Form-Based Code” you can watch a Form-Based Code 101 from on the YouTube.

Okay, so, moving on then.

David Loya summarizes Form-Based Code:

1:12:02

I think that the main points of the Form-Based Code that I wanted you to get us a sense for out of the videos — and I guess I’ll just ask for maybe a show of hands how many folks had an opportunity to look at some of the resources that were in there, okay, great. The main thing I wanted to bring up — Scott’s raising his hand as well — main thing I wanted to bring up is the concept that the Form-Based Code is really de-emphasizes segregation of uses and emphasizes the entire public realm. And so it takes into consideration everything from the streetscape and how that integrates into the private realm and the buildings that are built on an individual’s project sites.

The difference between the code that we have today and what a Form-Based Code could do, for example, is that the code we have today has a specific set of standards that applies to every parcel within a given zone.  And so if you’re in the Commercial-Central for example you’re allowed to build right up on the street frontage on the back of sidewalk, four stories tall. You can go up to 45 feet without having any kind of variances or anything like that, and that applies regardless of whether or not you have 50 foot wide parcel or an entire city block. The buildings that result from those different sized parcels with the exact same standards are very different.  And we don’t have a regulatory authority necessarily to limit someone based on what’s allowed for in the code.

And then in addition the interaction, the intersection, between individual parcels and other already developed parcels is less well understood with sort of a blanket standard applied.

Form-Based Code will allow us to go into a lot more detail about how buildings can intersect and interact with one another how they intersect with the public sphere.

David Loya summarizes Building Height and Amenities to increase Building Height

1:14:17

And so, for example, right now the Barrel District the draft plan suggests that there’s an allowance for eight-story buildings. The Form-Based Code would further refine that allowance and prohibit that eight-story buildings be either no more than ‘X’ or that they

would have to be separated by a certain distance or and that they couldn’t be close to other buildings, closer than certain distance from other buildings to try and ameliorate some of the impacts associated with those taller stature buildings.  The Form-Based Code can be very site-specific in addressing how those buildings interact with one another in ways that your traditional Euclidean zoning can’t.

And so even though right now in the downtown, for example, in the Central-Commercial surrounding it every parcel is allowed to have a four-story building on it, based on the zoning ordinance that we have today.  In the Form-Based Code we would evaluate where is it appropriate to have four-story buildings, how big is the setback need to be to ameliorate those impacts, where is it appropriate to have a five or six story building, et cetera.

I will say that we’ve taken enough public comment at this point [April 12, 2022 – results from the Community Center Open House are still not officially evaluated]  that I can say with confidence that staff is going to make a recommendation of the City Council to reduce the number of floors that are that are allowed or at least to consider doing that.  Clearly there’s a connection between the financial feasibility and the density of the building once you’ve paid for the parcel. There’s a say a cost savings in each floor that you put on top of that parcel that’s already buried in the parcel cost.  Clearly there’s a there are some break points in in the cost of construction but we’ll leave that to the to the private developers to figure out where the break point is for them.

But if we reduce the building footprint too low if — we don’t allow for a high enough density —  then some of the other amenities that we want to get out of the plan likely won’t be cost feasible.  And so there’s a conversation that we need to have around what we’re getting out  the  amenity program and what we’re getting out of the density.

But we’ve done enough engagement at this point that I think univer [sally] — There are very few folks out there that are saying “We haven’t gone tall enough” or that “Eight stories is the perfect height — That’s where we need to stick to our guns.”  But the vast majority of people —including many of the architects that we’ve engaged with in the area — say that six stories is really the tallest you want to go in this area.  And even at six stories I wouldn’t see that happening on every single parcel.

[As many citizens have strongly pointed out, in their own ways, having 8-story buildings in Arcata is undesirable and perhaps impossible, for may reasons, including the financial cost/reward ratio. Because of methodologies of construction, a six-story building (and higher) is far more costly to build, on a square-foot or per-unit basis, than a four-story or five-story building.  As Andrea Tuttle wrote in her letter of February 13, 2022, “It is disingenuous to propose a plan that is dependent on unrealistic building types.”]

David Loya summarizes Form-Based Code, more:

1:17:15

So the Form-Based Code gives us a lot more nuanced approach to what the built environment will look like it turns over a little bit of the decision making around mixed uses to the land-owner.  If they feel like they can provide for a Light-Industrial space on the ground floor and residential on top then that’s more power to them. So it has — It’s lighter on the codes.

And then just finally to address Julie [Planning Commission Chair Julie Vaissiade-Elcock], the comment that you had made because there are some people who are saying “Hey, look, I don’t want to lose the Discretionary Review process.”

I guess what I would say to that is:

Discretionary Review — you put an application in, you get a public hearing that’s noticed, the public come out, they comment on your project, and that’s the process we have right now. That’s the process that people feel frustrated by right now, in large extent in terms of their ability to change the way that projects look and so on and so forth.

So we can certainly stick with that program.  The reason why we’re doing what we’re doing now is from lessons learned over the past 10 or 15 years the conversations that the Planning Commission, the City Council, have had around those lessons learned.  And the guidance that we’ve been given from those discussions, to develop a plan that allows us to identify in advance what our community is going to look like and then make it really straightforward for people who want to come to our community and provide that.

David Loya on the Village project

1:18:50

Again I’ll point to the Village project as an object lesson. You could love the Village project, you can hate the Village project, but just looking at it as an object lesson.  They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars redesigning that project, at least seven times.  They went through 17 public hearings to get to a point where their project was so watered down that the major funding backer to the project backed out.

[Note:  This has been a consistent theme from David Loya – that the major funder and/or the developer backed out because either a) the approval process took too long or b) the project was so watered down.  It is the opinion of this writer that this assessment of the situation is misleading.  The original project was 100% student housing.  The developer, AMCAL, has a track record of what is a good business model for them, and good also, it seems, for the communities where the student-housing is created.  It involves building specific student housing, arranging a long-term lease-option with the local university so that they can purchase the property, and then selling the property to the university.  They have done this in Sacramento and Monterey, and indications were that it would occur here too.

For further reading on this, with multiple links to other sources,  see the article on this website The Village project:  What went wrong?

AMCAL can build affordable housing, as well as market-rate housing.  But this project was designated as student housing.  In essence, AMCAL should never have let the project veer away from that model.  Certainly there is a community need for other-than-student housing.  But this project was not that.

We don’t know what was going through the minds of the developer.  The project did not become “watered down.”  It became a different project.  If they were aware at the time that they were not willing to take on this other project – one which would not be managed by the university, and not sold to it – then they should have made that clear as part of the process.  The project was approved, and 11 months later, they cancelled it.  We can only speculate why, but a strong possibility is that it simply did not fit into their business model of constructing student housing which would be sold to the university.]

1:19:06

They said “I’m done with this project.”  So if we have a public review process that that relies on that sort of public engagement on a project-by-project basis we are not going to have development in this community. People are going to be so averse to coming to this community and going through that process the holding costs the risk is so high that we’re just not going to get any takers. 

[Note:  That is an opinion stated as fact.  There were many issues related to the Village project.]

You’ll recall one of the early discussions that we had around this this concept that’s ultimately evolved into a Form-Based Code — that the community designs that. We then make it simplified for developers to build by was around this time-money-certainty triangle. You all remember that from the early proposals where regulation typically increases times uncertainty and the cost. And most developers are willing to pay up front they’re willing to pay to get a streamlined process to give us what we feel like we need many developers say “Hey, you tell me tell me what you want me to build, tell me what you want it to look like.”  And then we say “Well, I can’t design your project for you — that’s up to you and your architects.”

So they design it with them, and their architects they think it meets our code they bring it to us.  And then they go through a public process, maybe 17 meetings long. That process again as an object lesson where they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on paper, that they submitted to us time and time again — on meetings like these meetings.  It didn’t result in any impact in our community, it didn’t result in increased taxes, it didn’t result in increased safe housing for students, it didn’t result in the trail we thought we were going to get out of it.  None of the amenities that would have come associated with that project were invested in this community.

All of that money was invested into an architecture firm outside of the community.

The way that the process is designed here it would allow us to extend beyond the typical conditions of approval and ask for community amenities. And so instead of investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into a process, we can ask them to invest some of that money into our community.  That’s the conversation that we had that led us up to the process that we’re leading to right now.

1:21:35

David Loya, continuing:

Certainly, we can we can add elements to it that would involve some public participation. I would caution the decision makers from going too far in that direction, responding to the fear now that we don’t know what someone will bring to the community.

Recognizing we’re going to go through a community design process, number one, and number two, recognizing that we, by investing in a new process after we’ve gone through this process, doesn’t create that certainty.

And so it’s okay to say we don’t want to create the certainty, it’s just that if that’s the decision then we should stop doing this and just do something else that says — that goes back to a more traditional model.

We can still go mixed-use, we can still say we want high density, we can still say that we want a maximum of X stories, we can even go through a process and do a little bit of design work so that we know generally what we’d like to see that goes into a little bit more depth of the design work we have now.

But what I would caution against is going the next step and saying:  And then we’re going to have Discretionary Review of these projects.

If we’re going to develop a streamlined process, if we’re going to go through a community design now, if we’re going to put all the money and time and energy that it takes to create this really robust vision for the future that we can all understand — we may not all agree, I don’t want anybody to walk away from here thinking that we’re all going to agree, but we’ll all understand what the future could look like — if we’re going to put that investment in now then we need to include a significant streamlining component to it that allows those developers to actually bring to us what we’ve asked for. 

[Note:  The Form-Based Code and the “streamlining component” — i.e. Ministerial review — are separate items, as most cities see it.  Redwood City has an excellent Form-Based Code and retains Planning Commission review.]

Planning Commission Chair Julie Vaissiade-Elcock: 

1:23:28

Yeah, I agree. So I just want to make it clear so you, you’re talking about the six, eight stories, whatever — none of that’s written in stone right that’s what we’re doing her. And then we’re going to present it to the Council and they can do whatever they want, because we elected them to do whatever they want. So, I agree, yeah, we’ll say:  We do need to tell developers what we want and then we need to make it easy for them to do it. That’s our goal here.  That makes such perfect sense. Anybody could understand that.  So shall we open up to the public or do we have… Go ahead.

Planning Commission Vice-Chair Judith Mayer

1:24:10

Thank you very much [to David Loya] for your explanation.

I would just like to add, or counter a little bit, that Form-Based Codes are not mutually exclusive from Discretionary Review.  In fact, the exemplary Form-Based Codes that you suggested we read – and I’ve actually been teaching about one of those for a while in a university course — both have extensive Discretionary Review involved as well as some aspects that can be ministerially approved based on standards in the Form-Based Code by a Development Director or a Zoning Code Administrator.  But I think the way that you’re presenting this as it’s either/or.  It is actually quite misleading.  In the examples that you put before us, those particular examples actually counter this sense of these two options being mutually exclusive, at opposite ends of a decision-making process.

I think that Arcata can develop a robust Form-Based Code through a community process that also still has a place for the Planning Commission and the City Council to have discretion over certain aspects of approval, especially for the largest projects, new types of projects, and projects with really unique characteristics.  And I would appreciate going forward with that in mind rather than with the idea that Discretionary Review is somehow anathema to adopting a progressive and robust and participatory Form-Based Code. These things are not mutually exclusive.

And I think there are many of us here who are not really willing to give up some Discretionary Review in order to serve the speedy decision-making needs of major developers.

David Loya

1:26:40

Yeah, I’m sorry if you understood me to say that they’re mutually exclusive. I believe I specifically said that I wouldn’t go too far in that direction [the direction “that would involve some public participation”] and that I think that there is a way to incorporate some public review. So I wouldn’t say that I was being misleading.  I think I said specifically that.

[Note:  He had said:  “But what I would caution against is going the next step (that is: develop a Form-Based Code) and saying:  And then we’re going to have Discretionary Review of these projects.”  He also said (see below, occurring prior to Commissioner Mayer’s comment) “if that’s the decision then we should stop doing this and just do something else….” In the past and in other comments he has strongly stated that a Form-Based Code would NOT work or would NOT be worth pursuing if it is not accompanied with Ministerial review.  See the further article on this topic, click here.]

In addition, I specifically put in the plans that are in your packet with the knowledge that they also include extensive Discretionary Review.  I think the economics of Arcata are slightly different than the economics of Redwood City as well, you know. So that’s something to consider as well.

Planning Commissioner Judith Mayer

1:27:10

Just one other thing:  One of those plans is actually a kind of a corporate creature.  The East Whisman Plan is actually Google’s housing plan, where they were over a barrel. They needed to address the jobs/housing balance in Mountain View, and this plan was the result.  Including an area that was largely drawn from their own land [i.e. Google’s land] with the promise of, I can’t remember how many millions of dollars of investment.  So Arcata is really different.  I think we have different goals and aspirations. But even there Discretionary Review was a big part of that form-base code.

1:17:47

End of this portion of the transcription

[The two Form-Based Codes in the Staff Report are at these links, below.  Of the two, Redwood City’s appears to be very applicable to Arcata, with modifications to fit our needs of building heights, size of buildings, our 50-foot street widths, proximity of single-family residences, bike paths, and dozens of other items.  The Mountainview plan is not  applicable at all — As Planning Commission Vice-Chair Judith Mayer points out, it was a plan organized for Google to tear down some R&D space and build housing for its employees.

To read articles on this website about Redwoods City’s Downtown Precise Plan with their form-based code, link here.

In the Redwood City Form-Based Code, a project would be subject to Planning Commission review if it was over 3 stories or over 30,000 sq.ft. of floor area, or at the discretion of the appropriate city planning personnel.  To scale this for Arcata, the requirements for review might be anything over 2 stories or over 15,000 sq.ft., or perhaps anything over 12 housing units.

Redwood City: https://www.redwoodcity.org/departments/community-development-department/policyinitiatives/general-plan-precise-plans/downtown-precise-plan