News

By Tim Pallesen  
 
    The city has ordered a halt to new downtown development applications as city commissioners try to agree on new height and density limits.
    Commissioners are split over whether to limit new buildings to four floors and 30 residential units per acre — or give bonus incentives to allow a fifth floor and higher densities.
    “We’re a four-story town,” Mayor Cary Glickstein declared at an Oct. 14 workshop where three commissioners discussed proposed new downtown development regulations for the first time.
    “It’s time to show restraint,” the mayor said, receiving a standing ovation from about 40 residents in the audience.
    Commissioner Shelly Petrolia agreed with Glickstein, but Commissioner Jordana Jarjura supported the incentives.
    “The bonus program would provide exceptional development and tangible public benefits,” Jarjura said. “We will have missed an opportunity for better designed buildings.”
    Glickstein said incentives are pointless until the city knows what it wants downtown.
    “We still lack any coherent policy, other than more-is-better, that reflects who we are today, what we want in our downtown and what is the best path to get there,” the mayor said. Commissioners Adam Frankel and Al Jacquet were absent from the meeting.
Downtown developers scrambled a week before when commissioners voted 4-1 for the immediate moratorium on new applications.
    The developer of a proposed Federal Highway hotel said he raced to file an application the day before the vote. But Steven Michael, the developer of the Sundy House townhomes on Swinton Avenue, didn’t make the deadline.
    “This is putting us into a holding pattern that could really be devastating,” Michael told commissioners at the Oct. 7 meeting. He pleaded for his project to go forward if he promised to meet the proposed new regulations.
    “People didn’t know this was coming down now,” real estate broker Jim Knight said.
    Frankel and Jacquet sympathized with the developers, but Glickstein said they would “have to be dropped in from Mars to not know about the significant ongoing discussion about changes to our code.”
Developers are most concerned by a proposal to require developments of 40,000 square feet or more to set aside 5 percent of the land for public open space.