^ A glitch has developed with the above approval. Ithaca, please
From the Ithaca Journal:
Three-year Collegetown rezoning process hits 11th-hour snags
Residents protest two ordinances
7:36 PM, May. 5, 2011
Written by
Liz Lawyer
Three City of Ithaca rezoning ordinances based on the 2009 Collegetown Urban Plan and Conceptual Design Guidelines are in limbo despite approval by a majority of Common Council members Wednesday.
A protest packet submitted by property owners in the affected area may require the ordinances to have the support of 75 percent of Common Council's votes, which would mean eight members.
Two of the ordinances had votes of 7-3, with council members Joel Zumoff, D-3rd; J.R. Clairborne, D-2nd; and Maria Coles, D-1st, opposing. Only an ordinance on a height incentive district got the necessary 8-2 vote, with Clairborne and Coles opposing.
However, City Attorney Dan Hoffman said he's not sure which ordinances the protest packet was targeting. To trigger the 75 percent requirement, 20 percent of the affected land would have to be represented in the protest. Hoffman said his office was working on confirming that the owners represented in the packet are the actual owners, and that the total land included amounts to the necessary 20 percent.
The district ordinance would create small districts in Collegetown under code that regulate physical form as well as use and density. The ordinance on the height incentive district would create an area in which developers have the option of building up to seven stories if they provide space for an acceptable use, such as a hotel, high-quality office space or a grocery store. A parking overlay zone ordinance would create an area in which developers may opt to give a payment in lieu of the parking spaces required by zoning code.
Of the two ordinances in question, the parking overlay zone is much larger than the area affected by the districts and rezoning in the other ordinance. Therefore, more land would have to be represented in the protest packet to affect the parking overlay zone ordinance.
About 25 people came Wednesday to speak in opposition to the rezoning ordinances, which City Planner Megan Gilbert said have been in the works for about 3 1/2 years.
Several Collegetown residents and others said the rezoning ordinances were not ready for approval. The most common concerns were that the ordinances contained no incentives to encourage the establishment of a grocery store in Collegetown, that the plan will not achieve a stated goal of reducing car use in the area, and that the plan benefits developers at the expense of the area as a whole.
Some residents are also concerned that the rezoning will allow the development of Collegetown Terrace, a large student housing project on East State Street, and say they are concerned with the possibility of property going off the tax rolls if Cornell University buys it. Project developer John Novarr has denied there is any plan to sell the development.
Collegetown resident Anne Clavel asked the council not to pass the ordinances Wednesday night, saying, "There are innumerable problems. I'll start with the fact that we have not had an overall look at the environmental impact of the plan. You have said you will take each building as it comes, but as each building comes, you do not know what the cumulative effect will be of all of them."
City resident Todd Saddler said, "I ask you to vote no because I think it will do more harm than good. There has been lots of discussion, but there are still no concrete changes to the proposals. If you vote no, we can make some changes over the coming weeks ... If you vote for them as they are, (developers) will probably tear down a lot of buildings like they're doing on State Street now and build one or two tall, block-long buildings."
Saddler offered an alternative to zoning in the ordinance that would limit building lengths to 100 feet or less, but the council did not consider it Wednesday.
Coles said her "no" votes on the ordinances were because of several things, including a lack of a credible traffic study, and that the plan has not been re-evaluated since the introduction of the Collegetown Terrace project on State Street.
"Until we have these answers provided to us, we should postpone voting on this project," Coles said.
Clairborne said whether or not the plan is good, members of the public at the meeting showed there is enough resistance that it wasn't the right time to move it forward.
"No matter how much work is going into something, if the public don't understand it, it's not ready yet," Clairborne said. "It becomes an imposition on the people."
Alderwoman Ellen McCollister, D-3rd, disagreed with those concerns.
"There is an awful lot of logic to this," she said. "We've been working on it a long time. I feel very comfortable and feel a lot of pride for how this is turning out."
Alderman Svante Myrick, D-4th, said, "What's possible in Collegetown (under current zoning) is building one monolithic building on every block. That's what this zoning tries to avoid. Leaving it as it is, to me, is very dangerous."
Alderman Eddie Rooker offered an amendment to the height incentive zone to include a grocery store as an acceptable use to allow developers in the zone to build an extra story. The amendment passed.
A vote on an ordinance establishing binding design review was 7-3, with Zumoff, Clairborne and Coles opposing.
Zumoff said, "I don't think we should have a handful of people dictate what a building should look like. I don't mind suggestions, but it doesn't sit well with me that people should decide what a building looks like (rather than) the person paying for it."
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http://www.theithacajournal.com/arti...text|FRONTPAGE