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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-12-13 DevCoDEVCOLLC December 12, 2019 via: cityclerk@m eridian city. org City of Meridian Mayor and City Council 33 East Broadway Avenue Meridian, ID 83642 Re: H-2019-0101 (Minimum Buffer Lot Policy) Dear Mayor and City Council: DevCo has completed many successful projects in Meridian, and we have more in the pipeline. We participated in the comprehensive plan amendment process through the steering committee and have been following the public hearings on the new plan. We are concerned with proposed policy 3.07.01F, which would require minimum one -acre residential lots adjacent to existing five -acre rural estate residential properties. This strict policy would benefit county residents, not the City. And the City's current transition and buffering policy (3.05.02F) is a better, more flexible approach that allows the City and planning staff to tailor transitions and buffering as needed. If adopted, the mandatory one -acre lot buffer would frustrate creative infill development projects and reduce density in areas where density is planned and warranted. The current and future comprehensive plan encourages a mix of housing types, density, and affordability. Over the years, we have designed projects to meet these goals. These goals will be undercut if the City begins using its valuable and limited buildable area for buffers to county estate properties by decreasing density and increasing development costs. There are more problems with the proposed policy. For one, it is too rigid. It is more like a zoning standard than a policy goal because it implements a strict one acre lot minimum. This type of development standard should be reserved for the City's UDC, which also implements minimum lot sizes but ties the size to zoning. As drafted, the proposed policy would operate the same on land zoned R-2 and land zoned R-40. This is inequitable because parcels with higher density designations will suffer greater density loss. Overall, the policy will interfere with land use designations and zoning goals by diminishing density in all zones where property abuts a county estate lot. DEVCOLLC Re: H-2019-0101 (Minimum Buffer Lot Policy) Lot size transitions are part of smart development and planning, and the current comprehensive plan allows the City to make smart transition decisions, weighing the need for buffering versus the competing need for residential units. The current policy states: "Require new urban density subdivisions which abut or are proximal to existing low density residential land uses to provide landscaped screening or transitional densities with larger, more comparable lot sizes to buffer the interface between urban level densities and rural residential densities." The current policy serves the City better than the proposed policy because it allows special circumstances to be considered such as FLUM designation, surrounding uses and development, development layout, the likelihood of redevelopment, and proximity to existing residences. We have all seen that over time, county RUT lots redevelop with valuable infill projects that help with connectivity and provide needed housing. If this proposed policy is adopted and implemented, we believe that in many cases the density lost to one -acre lots will only be a temporary benefit to the county estate parcel until it redevelops, likely with higher density than one unit per acre. For all of these reasons, the proposed policy should not be adopted into the plan. Sinc ely, Laren Bailey, MCRP, PMP cc: Caleb Hood (via email, choodgmeridiancit�org)