Mission Residence: A Cautionary Tale

Last week, Mayor Pro Tem Brett Lee warned about the power of three, stating that “the zoning is the zoning until the city council changes the zoning.  Sometimes we feel that there’s certainty because of the zoning and because of the design guidelines, essentially three city council members can change that.”

His cautionary tale was Mission Residence.  Before there was Trackside, there was Mission Residence.  The mayor pro tem explained, “That’s a good example of where the neighbors in the core area had come up with a fairly recent review and plan for what that neighborhood should look like and it was not adhered to by the council majority.”

The B Street area around 2006 underwent the B Street Visioning Process.  It was an extensive multi-year process – it might have been on the scale of what the city is looking at for the Core Area Specific Plan.  The process included a large amount of community feedback and extensive community buy in – give and take and compromise.

There was no sort of unanimous agreement in that process.  Even at the end of the process, as you might expect, neighbors and other residents complained about the alterations to the neighborhood.   But ultimately the council approved it and set the rules to guide infill and redevelopment along the B Street corridor.

However, what happened was that following the visioning process, each project that came forward attempted to move the line toward more height and density.

In one case, the council held that line by rejecting a project put forward by Marie Ogydziak, but on other projects the council altered the rules without changing the overall zoning of the area.

As we wrote back in August of 2013, the key lesson was that the council will break the agreements and rules without further input or going back to the drawing board.

So here we are in 2017, the council has just approved a structure for the Core Area Specific Plan Update advisory committee and we continue to say we want public participation, we want public buy-in.

But the lesson of Mission Residence is, if the city is simply willing to throw out the agreements without even a reasonable showing of change in circumstances, it will undermine that process.  What incentive do residents have to compromise if the city is not willing to stick to their bargains and agreements?

That is what happened in late August 2013 – the council voted 4-1, with Brett Lee dissenting, to approve the development of the Mission Residence project.  It was a four-story, 14-unit condominium complex near a one-story and three-story apartment building and Black Bear Dinner.

The main objection from the neighbors was that the project didn’t fit within the B Street Visioning Process completed in 2007, just a few years earlier.

The project exceeded the allowable density by nearly a two to one margin, with 42.4 units per acre compared to the allowable 24 units per acre.

The building also exceeds the 38-foot height guidelines, with a 45-foot height.  And there are only 21 parking spaces compared the required 28.

Does any of this sound familiar?

The problem the residents of Old East Davis are going to have is that the precedent has already been set to go to four stories – the council did it with Mission Residence right smack next to single- and two-story buildings.  The council was willing to throw out the guidelines that were just six years old in the case of Mission Residence, so they won’t hesitate to throw out 20-year-old guidelines.

And look at the statement from the council – that could be written today and that could be applied to Trackside.

“There are times when (there’s) a compelling reason that we have to, as policy makers, look at the overarching needs of the entire community,” Councilmember Rochelle Swanson said. “And this is something that we continue to hear about … people that want to be able to age in place.

“We want people to move out of their big homes and move into something smaller, some sort of a walk-away, being able to take their Prop. 13 protections and move them down, out of their five-bedroom home and into a three-bedroom home; and what that would do for our schools and what that would do for the economic vitality of downtown.”

“It’s smart growth, it’s infill, it’s downtown, it’s sustainable (and) it’s owner-occupied,” said Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk. “That’s exactly the kind of thing we should be thinking about moving forward in our community. … I recognize the impacts to the neighbors but I think this is a good project, and I’m happy to support it.”

Even Mayor Joe Krovoza, who was far less likely to approve such projects, ultimately supported it with the compromise that the project be a conditional use of the B Street zoning, rather than represent a corridor change to the zoning.

The debate over Mission Residence suggests that the Trackside neighbors probably are not going to win this fight.  The same arguments were made by the folks near Mission Residence, and the council ultimately rejected that argument and agreed to approve Mission Residence.

But the lesson here is even broader than just Trackside, the lesson goes to the heart of the Core Area Specific Plan – there will be considerable compromise and give and take, but in the end, there was compromise and give and take in the B Street Visioning Process, and council was willing to overrule it just six years later.

—David M. Greenwald reporting