I agree that the area for more dense/height development should be expanded some. Article from the Ithaca Journal about Collegetown's future develpment plan:
Council group not thrilled with Collegetown plan
Development limits too restrictive, some fear
By Krisy Gashler •kgashler@gannett.com • September 29, 2010, 9:25 pm
One year after Ithaca Common Council voted to endorse the Collegetown Urban Plan, lawmakers are now seeing the first attempt at implementation -- and several of them are not thrilled.
After a new zoning plan for Collegetown was presented to Council's planning committee earlier this month, four of the panel's five members said they don't think it goes far enough to spur new development in the area's core.
The committee must approve the plan before it sent to the full council, with two public meetings scheduled in the next couple of months.
Alderman Svante Myrick, D-4th, said he was "entirely unsatisfied," while Alderman Dan Cogan, D-5th, said the projected increase in maximum developable square footage "is pretty anemic."
But Alderwoman Ellen McCollister, D-3rd, the only member of the planning committee who was part of an internal city group charged with taking the Urban Plan and implementing it, said she isn't sure her colleagues realize just how much new development the rezoning will allow.
According to calculations done by the city Planning Department, the new plan would result in a net increase in allowable maximum building space of 3.6 percent or 154,845 square feet in the Collegetown core and surrounding neighborhoods. In the core area alone, the increase would be 6.5 percent or 454,590 square feet.
Myrick, whose ward includes Collegetown, said that a 6 percent change is not going to provide an incentive for property owners to redevelop the most expensive land in the city, and won't result in enough safe, new housing for his constituents.
And when demand isn't met it doesn't disappear, it just moves, Myrick said, citing The Commons smoking ban as an example.
"When we put in the smoking ban, people moved to the edge of the smoking ban, closest to the center of The Commons. They didn't move 20 feet down from the borderline or around the corner, they moved right to the borderline. Similarly when we put in the Collegetown moratorium ... we saw development pressure move directly across the border, which in this case is the heavily trafficked State Street," he said, referring to developer John Novarr's proposal for the Collegetown Terrace Apartments.
"To me it's no coincidence that this popped up literally right outside the edge of what we restricted," Myrick said.
McCollister said that the proposed development increase will be "more than enough" to meet student housing demand, and will hopefully provide other benefits, such as office space or a hotel that could provide 365-day activity in Collegetown, rather than the nine-month activity and three-month "dead zone" that currently exists.
To put the increase in perspective, in the Southwest commercial district, the city allowed 800,000 square feet of retail and 200,000 square feet of office development over 360 acres, she said.
In Collegetown, with the proposed zoning increase and an incentive zone at the core allowing even more height, "what we're talking about is an additional 575,000 square feet of development build-out potential in the area of three or four city blocks."
"I want to make sure I'm protecting the residential life for people who are trying to hang on here and maintain their homes and have some quality of life," McCollister said, noting that 75 percent of the city's housing stock is rental, as compared to roughly 50 percent statewide.
Alderman Eric Rosario, I-2nd, said he thought the plan did an admirable job protecting surrounding neighborhoods but questioned, "is there enough in the center to actually make this work?"
Committee Chairwoman Jennifer Dotson, I-1st, said she wants to "make sure we're getting what we can out of the areas that can handle more housing, while still holding it down in the periphery."
While much of the focus in last year's debate was on building height, Dotson said her primary focus in implementation is changing the parking system.
"To me the larger impacts are not necessarily the density of people, but they're the density of cars. And the more we can de-couple that, the better," she said.
The Collegetown plan calls for implementing a payment-in-lieu system that would allow developers to build apartments with limited or no on-site parking in exchange for paying for other transportation improvements for pedestrians, bikes, and buses.
Implementing the new parking system won't increase the maximum developers can build, but it will make it easier for them to achieve that maximum, Planning Board Chairman John Schroeder said.
The incentive zone, which would apply to properties just south of the intersection of College Avenue and Dryden Road, allows developers to build up to 75 feet high, in exchange for other benefits, such as providing green space, building something besides student housing, or converting a rented home in a nearby neighborhood back to single-family use.
Council members had originally intended the incentive to allow two extra stories, but the working group learned that because of building code requirements, it may only mean one extra story. The council members said they're now considering raising that height to accommodate two stories.
"For a developer it makes no sense," Myrick said. "You add one extra floor of apartments and two floors of office space and you're losing money. Why not just build the 60 feet and make it all apartments?"
"I would be open, and I say this with some trepidation, ... to the idea of a second floor for an incentive zone, if it can be proven to me that that's what it's going to take to get people to buy into the incentive zone, and only if we take all this pressure off the periphery and put it into the core," McCollister said. "That is the essential piece. And if that's what it takes to get this proposal through, then I am certainly willing to have conversations about it."
The planning committee is tentatively scheduled to discuss the Collegetown plan again at its next meeting, 7 p.m. Oct. 20 in City Hall, 108 E. Green St. A special meeting of the full Common Council on the topic is scheduled for Nov. 17.
Here's the link:
http://www.theithacajournal.com/arti...llegetown+plan