Starkville city leaders and members of the public have been focused on one aspect of the rewrite of the unified development code: proposed restrictions on short-term rentals such as Airbnbs in residential neighborhoods.
But that only takes up half a page of the 384-page draft code that has been on the city website for public viewing since the end of September, and the ongoing short-term rental debate has “totally eclipsed” other parts of the code that the public should be aware of, city planner Daniel Havelin said.
The rewritten code has been in the works since 2017 with the goal of modernizing development in Starkville, and includes goals that the city adopted in its comprehensive plan in 2016.
The comprehensive plan and the unified development code are often assumed to be the same thing, Havelin said, but the former is a set of goals and objectives and the latter is the regulatory document that carries them out.
Much of the code will be the same as it already is, community development director Sungman Kim said.
“There are some sections that we felt we needed to insert, like the short-term rental regulations,” he said. “We drafted it, and until it is adopted by the board of aldermen, our role is just to make it streamlined and clear.”
The final version of the short-term rental regulations was originally going to be adopted with the unified development code when the board of aldermen votes on it in December, but Havelin said city officials have since decided to adopt them at the same time, but separately, so they don’t delay the rest of the code.
Many of the zoning districts that dictate land use throughout the city will change either in name or in purpose, Havelin said.
“All property owners would ideally be aware of it,” he said. “For single-family, single-dwelling unit developments that already exist, there’s really not much that’s going to have an effect on them. The main place it’s going to affect is if stuff redevelops or if new stuff is built.”
The city has held two public input sessions this month for the code, but only a handful of people have attended, and about a dozen have left questions in the code feedback form on the city website. Havelin said the planning division will publicly release a response to those questions.
The board of aldermen approved updated placetype maps that Havelin and assistant city planner Emily Corban presented on Oct. 15. Those maps are available on the city’s webiste.
Zoning changes
Two proposed new residential zoning classifications are suburban detached (SD) with two or six dwelling units per acre. SD2 would mostly be in the southeast part of the city, in subdivisions off South Montgomery Street, but also north of Highway 182 off Jackson Street and Old West Point Road. Another proposed district is rural neighborhood, which allows one unit per acre, on the southwestern and northeastern outskirts of the city.
Existing traditional neighborhood zones will be mostly in the center of the city, and new traditional neighborhood zones will be south of Highway 12 and north of Highway 182. Both zones will allow limited commercial use, Havelin said.
“It’s limited in square footage and what kind of use is allowed so as not to adversely impact surrounding properties, specifically residential properties,” he said.
The code also changes the transect districts, or transitional zones from the most rural (T1) to the most urban areas (T6). The city currently has districts from T4 to T6 — general urban, urban center and urban core — and the new code would eliminate the urban core districts and split the urban center (T5) districts into three subgroups: downtown, the Cotton District and University Drive between the railroad and Highway 12.
Each zone has different requirements for its buildings, such as what materials can be used and how big the windows can be, in order to fit the character of the area of town, Havelin said.
“For example, a downtown building that’s made of brick and has large glass on the bottom floor would not look appropriate in the Cotton District, and the Bin 612 building would not look appropriate downtown,” he said. “They have similar forms, but they’re different enough that they contextually don’t fit.”
Structures that do not conform to the rezoning will still be allowed to exist as they did beforehand, according to page 76 of the draft code.
The northwest portion of the city will be zoned as optional districts, and developers who want to build there will have to present to the city a master plan for how the land will be used. The land would then be zoned commercial, industrial, conservation or traditional neighborhood for that project.
Much of that land is currently zoned as general business or high-density, multi-family residential.
Other changes
The city will implement a new architecture review process, including a board of at least three independent consultants, to make sure all development conforms to the city’s standards, according to the code.
Architecture review will apply to “all land areas in the city which are zoned for commercial use, industrial use, mixed-use, or multi-unit residential greater than two (2) dwelling units per site,” according to page 54 of the code. The board of aldermen and any applicable advisory boards must approve the site plan before the architecture review consultant and development review committee can do so, and only then can the developer receive a building permit.
The planning division also added a section that protects trees at new developments. According to page 255 of the code, at least 50 percent of trees with a diameter of at least 10 inches would have to be preserved.
“(It’s) really relaxed compared to other communities, but it helps us protect trees that shape the public realm or are adjacent to the neighbors’ property, and at the same time allowing people to build within the buildable areas,” Havelin said.
ONLINE:
https://www.cityofstarkville.org/DocumentCenter/View/2950/Placetype-Map-Update-2019
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