Category Archives: Form-Based Code

City Council, City of Peoria, Form-Based Code, Heart of Peoria Plan, Traffic

Council Roundup: Ferrell-Madden presentation leads to questions on group living, one-way streets

The City Council had two big questions for Ferrell-Madden and Associates after their presentation at Tuesday’s council meeting:

  1. Group Living — As stated in a previous post, the new Land Development Code includes general provisions for all of the Heart of Peoria, and specific form-based codes for the four “form districts,” namely, the Prospect Road Corridor, Sheridan-Loucks Triangle, Renaissance Park (or West Main corridor), and the Warehouse District. Within these form districts, there are stricter standards for the form of the building (i.e., the facade, how it fronts the street, etc.), but the use of the building is relaxed.

    For example, under our current zoning laws, any kind of residential group living (more than three unrelated persons living in the same house) is restricted; you have to get a special use permit to legally have a household so constituted. But under the form-based codes, such arrangements are allowed by right, without having to get a special use permit.

    What’s wrong with that? Well, one potential problem is right over in the West Main corridor — by Bradley. It sets up a situation where one side of the street may require a special use permit to allow, say, 4 or 5 Bradley students to share a house, but the other side of the street would allow that use without a permit. This can lead to inequities for landlords and headaches for neighbors who want to have tighter controls on that particular type of use.

    From the way the council was talking, expect there to be a revision to that part of the code.

  2. One-way streets — Ferrell-Madden made it very clear that there are two issues critical to the success of the form districts: (a) implementation of the form-based codes (the Land Development Code, or LDC), and (b) “fixing the streets.” We’ve already talked about the LDC. By “fixing the streets,” they mean slowing down the traffic to make them more pedestrian-friendly by widening the sidewalks, putting in street trees, and converting one-way streets to two-way.

    Councilman Sandberg specifically singled out Adams, Jefferson, and Washington streets and asked Ferrell-Madden what would happen if the council did nothing to improve these streets (including conversion to two-way on Adams and Jefferson), yet still implemented the LDC. Answer: very little. Private developers would not want to invest money in a business that would front a street that is unsafe or perceived as unsafe. There might be some investment on cross streets where there is less traffic, but overall the initiative would be unsuccessful.

    There’s a part that the public sector has to play and a part for the private sector. The council can’t put businesses in there form districts, obviously. All they can do is provide the infrastructure that will make it attractive to developers — and part of that infrastructure is streets. Streets that are “fixed” in the public’s eyes, and will lead customers to the doors of new businesses that open in these form districts.

Any neighborhood groups or other organizations that would like to have a presentation can contact the Planning & Growth department at City Hall to schedule one. They want to get as much public input as possible before putting a final version of the LDC before the council for enactment. Formal public hearings will be held Nov. 8, 29, and Dec. 6.

City Council, City of Peoria, Form-Based Code, Heart of Peoria Plan

City Council to get form-based code presentation tonight

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If you missed last night’s meeting at the Gateway building (you can read about that meeting in the Journal Star today) and you want to know more about the proposed form-based codes for the Heart of Peoria, watch the City Council meeting tonight at 6:15 on Insight cable channel 22 (or head downtown to see it live on the fourth floor of City Hall). Ferrell-Madden and Associates will be presenting the new “Land Development Code,” as it’s called now, to the council early in the evening’s proceedings.

The whole idea of this new code is to recognize that zoning needs in the older, urban part of town are different than zoning needs in the suburban part of town. Right now, we just have one zoning ordinance that applies to the whole city, and it’s based on suburban standards (e.g., strictly separating residential and commercial uses of land, extensive parking requirements, fast arterial streets, large setbacks for buildings, etc.).

That kind of zoning just doesn’t work for the older part of town where density is so high that they often can’t meet the extensive parking requirements without tearing down buildings to put in parking decks or large surface lots, where buildings and neighborhoods were designed for mixed uses of land (corner grocery stores, residential apartments above commercial shops, etc.), and where businesses are supposed to front the street, coming right up to the sidewalk.

In addition to these general provisions for maintaining the character of older neighborhoods and commercial districts, the Land Development Code also includes additional, highly-detailed provisions for four specific “form districts”: the Sheridan-Loucks Triangle, the Prospect Road Corridor, the West Main Street Corridor (Renaissance Park), and the Warehouse District. These provisions are tailored to these individual areas, taking into account their unique features and needs. The time it takes to develop such a detailed code for these areas makes it impossible to do this for all 8,000 acres of the Heart of Peoria all at once; but more form districts will be added over time.

As mentioned before, this is not coming before the council for adoption tonight. There will be an intense public hearing process over the next month or so, and hopefully the code, with revisions, will come before the council for adoption sometime in December.

City of Peoria, Form-Based Code, Heart of Peoria Plan, Peoria Streets

The Cold War is over; no need for sprawl anymore

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At Thursday’s form-based code “Work-In-Progress” presentation, I learned something new. Do you know what one of the big contributing factors to suburban sprawl was? Civil defense. Really!

In 1951, as a way of protecting us from nuclear attack, President Truman announced his National Industrial Dispersion Policy. The idea was to provide incentives for cities to get their industrial plants away from densely populated areas so that, if the bomb drops, it would minimize the damage. This assumes the old-school mentality that our enemies would only go after military targets and want to minimize civilian casualties.

Well, city planners started planning with this “dispersion” principle in mind, and, lo and behold, our cities are now dispersed! Everything is separate and safe from those Soviet nukes. Except the Soviets are gone and our new enemies are just as happy taking out civilians, so our sprawling cities offer us no protection now. Truman couldn’t have seen that coming.

Other than that, Thursday’s meeting was nothing new for a regular HOP presentation attender. That’s not to say it wasn’t good, because it was. But it’s lost the “wow” factor for me because I’ve seen so many of these artists’ renderings and Photoshopped pictures of what Peoria could look like in the future: tree-lined streets with landscaped boulevards, historic streetlamps, angled parking, wider sidewalks, and bustling pedestrian traffic. It’s time to take the next step of turning those pictures into reality for Peoria.

It all starts in the black and white minutiae of zoning rules and regulations. Nothing is as powerful as zoning at shaping a city.

For example, take a drive down Knoxville and check out the new doctor’s office on the northwest corner of Knoxville and Corrington. All the other professional offices along that stretch of Knoxville are set close to the sidewalk with parking in the rear. But the new office has to conform to one-size-fits-all suburban zoning laws which require it to be set back from the street and provide parking in front. As buildings are replaced, you can see how, over time, that kind of zoning could change the whole character of that stretch.

Because the stakes are so high in tinkering with the zoning ordinances, getting citizen input is essential. But at the same time, it’s the fun part of the job. The real work begins when you try to codify the citizens’ desires into regulatory language, working with public works staff, planning engineers, and other government officials. That’s why Ferrell & Madden get the big bucks.

Perhaps the hardest sell and the most controversial part of their presentation is their recommendation to create another dreaded TIF (tax-increment financing) district for the Warehouse District. Their reasoning is that it’s the only financially feasible way to turn that area around. There are myriad infrastructure needs (from environmental cleanup of hydrolic fluid to upgrading power lines), and no reasonable way to finance them other than through a TIF.

However, they reason, what people are really upset about is the abuse of TIFs in Peoria, not the proper use of them. They stressed that this is an example of the type of project for which TIFs were created. This TIF would benefit a whole area, not just one business or developer like we’ve seen at MidTown Plaza, for instance.

When Ferrell Madden Associates are done, here’s what we’ll have: (1) very specific form-based codes for the Sheridan/Loucks Triangle, Prospect Corridor, and Warehouse District, and (2) zoning changes for the rest of the Heart of Peoria from euclidian zoning rules (dispersion) to traditional city planning principles (mixed-use).

Things won’t change overnight, and we certainly need to work on other problems in tandem (crime, schools), but this is one piece of the puzzle that will help transform the Heart of Peoria into a more desirable place to live and work.