There’s been a lot of talk about development in this town since I got here in the fall of ‘06 — smart growth, no growth, whatever you want to call it. And the talk has intensified now that we’re in campaign season. Bob McDavid’s entry into the race suggests some concern in the business community about which way the council will lean on development after the April vote.
Columbia is at a crossroads. With the slowdown in development over the last couple of years, Columbia has been given a chance to take a step back and see how it does things. If you didn’t know, the Planning and Zoning Commission along with the Planning Department have been meeting for months to draft planning documents dealing with Columbia’s Eastern edge, ostensibly the area where much of the city’s future growth will occur. The new Comprehensive Plan Task Force just started working last week on an overall plan for the city’s growth.
The city is getting serious about planning, and they’ve made substantial progress on the East Columbia Area Plan. Back when the comprehensive plan work was just getting off the ground, Planning Director Tim Teddy told me that the criticism of such plans was that they ultimately become bookshelf decorations. Some would cast that label on the city’s Metro 2020 plan, an early attempt at a comprehensive plan. Why? Because you rarely, if ever, hear Metro 2020 mentioned.
The point of these plans being constructed is to serve as a reference for staff as they review zoning, annexation and development requests. Yes, they do spell out some restrictions and goals that might be more onerous to a developer than an anything goes approach. But, if used, they could also serve the purpose of steadying the moving target developers often call the city development process.
That’s how Planner Pat Zenner described it: not telling developers what to do, but describing the playing field for them.
That’s the lofty aspiration, a reference document that puts everyone on the same page. And thus the P&Z Commission and staff go back and forth each week about what is included in the text of the plan. But how specific should it be? And will it even be used?
That was an interesting issue raised by commissioner Stephen Reichlin Thursday night. What happens when the council approves a project that doesn’t sync up with a plan the staff and the commission spent hours upon hours developing?
“It makes us look like we created a song and dance,” Reichlin said.
There’s a fine balance between guiding development with clear guidelines and backing elected officials — or business people for that matter — into a corner.
“You don’t want to tie elected officials hands so they feel if development doesn’t follow this plan there will be retribution,” Teddy responded. “Then they won’t support plan making.”
The East Columbia plan, like any document, can be interpreted in many ways. But how large a role it will play, and thus compel future developers and neighbors to interpret to their liking, remains to be seen. It will be up to the council to decide if a project that doesn’t meet the requirements laid out in a plan is still worth passing, and whether it’s worth adhering to the plan at all.
As Zenner noted: “What you’ll see is when the plan doesn’t produce an outcome a politician wants, they’ll ask you to amend it.”
I suppose that’s just the political process. But the council won’t feel it’s worth amending a plan that becomes a bookshelf decoration.
Categories: City Politics.
