The East Side Planning Commission is debating whether open space is of actual benefit to the community.
Traditionally, open space is traded in exchange for developers being given permission to build larger or more dense projects. The commission is reconsidering that habit.
Last February, the commission issued a moratorium on all applications for Specially Planned Areas (SPA) to give itself six months to review the criteria for approval. On May 4, at Kamas City Hall, the commission will welcome public input about the process at a meeting beginning at 6 p.m.
When a developer has a proposal that conflicts with the planning code, they may apply for permission as a SPA. The intent is to allow exceptions for projects deemed to be a good idea for the community but that violate some provision in the development rules.
According to commission chair Mike Brown, the process is preferable to a rezone because of the interaction and negotiations that occur between developers and the commission. The decision is a subjective one, so there should be a lot of negotiating happening, he said at a Monday meeting of the subcommittee examining the process.
Currently, the code allows a SPA approval if the developer can provide “community benefit.” What that means exactly is unclear to the commission, Brown said in a Tuesday interview.
Usually it involves an exchange of money or land for rights to build more density within a new project. That money or land is turned over to the East Side’s open space advisory committee.
“We always struggled with whether that was benefiting the public as a whole. A lot of these conservation easements the public does not have access to the property. So does that meet the demand of a benefit?” he said Monday.
The land is preserved for the public, but can they, or would they, have a picnic there? Can they fish in the stream? Can they enjoy the land somehow other than just looking at it? Brown asked.
If the tradition is to perform a trade for something of value, would it not make more sense to trade for a new fire truck or something else the community really needs? Brown asked. And should there be a formula that outlines how big the benefit should be for each level of density? The commission would like some guidelines on these issues, Brown said Tuesday.
Brown formed the subcommittee to come up with some principles the commission could agree on by summer. It is seeking public input from both residents and developers.
“We’ll be going back with a skeleton of concepts. The commission through public hearings will need to fill in the concepts and put skin on it,” he explained.
New language in the code clarifying the SPA criteria could be passed by the Summit County Council in July or August.
At the subcommittee meeting Monday, commissioner Diane Foster said a SPA should be something highly beneficial, not someone with 100 acres asking to build 50 homes which is what most applications are.
Foster said she’d like the commission to be approving applications it is excited about because they are good for the East Side, not because it is “horse trading” for a check.
“The whole burden is really on the developer to sell it,” Brown said Monday.
A rezone doesn’t guarantee the developer will provide a benefit, he added.
Brown, Foster and subcommittee member Tonja Hanson all agreed that there should be more public input invited for the approval of the “sketch plan” a preliminary application a developer submits prior to sitting before the commission.
If the community hates the idea of a project, that should be made clear before the developer pays tens of thousands of dollars in fees and for designers, Foster said.
Developers Doug Clyde and Pete Gilwald gave professional input at the meeting. They told stories of people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to go all the way through an approval process with a project that never stood a chance.
Brown said the eventual new wording should be clear enough to encourage projects that are likely to be approved, and discourage those that won’t.
Clyde said he preferred rezones to SPAs because the criteria for approval are usually clearer. The commissioners disagreed, but said they would like their SPA process to be equally clear.