P&Z commissioners ponder complete streets, design guidelines, sidewalk banks, other topics

City Planning Director Howard Koontz has apparently spent a significant amount of time pouring over the city’s ordinances, many of which he said were drafted quickly out of necessity, and discovered a host of changes he thinks should be made "to update them, to modernize them." He shared a number of those ideas, plans, concepts, proposals — whatever you would like to label them — to four of the seven members of the Planning & Zoning Commission during a workshop last night.

Chairman Mike Rubsam and fellow commissioners Dex Ellison, Allison Wilson and newly appointed Bradley Growt attended. Lori Huey, Timothy Kay and Irene Melendez were absent.

Among the subjects discussed were complete streets (a concept I was somewhat shocked to realize was a completely new one for the commissioners), design guidelines to compensate for the inability to use conditional zoning, a sidewalk study and a companion sideway bank, new guidelines for commercial parking lots to make them more pedestrian friendly, impervious surface ratios and a dark skies ordinance (something I would love to see if it meant that finally it would force the school district to turn off the lights at the football stadium that are left on every single night of the year, regardless of whether anything is happening at the stadium – talk about light pollution!!!).

"Tonight’s meeting is about you educating me," Koontz told the commissioners to open the workshop. "I’ve been here about a year and in the past year I have looked at our codes, policies, procedures and am looking to update them, modernize them, look at strengths, weaknesses. One of the things I keep going back to is when Dan Ryan was on the (P&Z) Commission, he told me the genesis of our zoning codes which was when Kyle went from being general rule to home rule they needed to put a code together ASAP. They put that code together very quickly. They said they started basically with the City of Austin’s code and made some minor tweaks and amendments to make it fit Kyle with the expectation that they would throw that code in under the door and get it in place knowing full well that it was a workable document that needed to be upgraded later to respect the fact that Kyle is not Austin. That was, to the best of my math, 11 years ago.

"So 11 years now we’ve been working with a document that was known to be in need of upgrading, updating and modernization. So I’ve gone through the code and I’ve looked at some things that I’ve wanted to change or at least wanted to discuss. I’m hopeful that you all drive around the city and see things you think could change in the build environment that we could do from a regulatory standpoint. Not just what we do regulate, but maybe things that we over-regulate and maybe would want to release a little bit.

"To that end, I wanted to find out first of all if you had any of these thoughts yourselves and wanted to let me know about them. But otherwise I have made a list and I could start going through the list."

Which he did, because none of the commissioners present really came with any ideas for possible changes they wanted to discuss.

It was not the first item on his list, but the one I found most intriguing and in need of immediate discussion not only at P&Z but even at the City Council level was the concept of a Sidewalk Bank. The first step would be the creation of a "sidewalk map" that not only inventoried where all the sidewalks were in Kyle but, more importantly, those areas in the city where sidewalks are desperately needed. Rebel Road was cited last night as just one location that is in obvious need of sidewalks. Under current ordinances, a new development is required to provide sidewalks for that development even if those sidewalks prove to be superfluous. One example cited last night was the Polo Tropical and Taco Cabana developments currently under construction on the northeast corner of I-35 and Kyle Parkway. Sidewalks are not needed at that development, but the ordinance requires one so apparently there will be some sort of loopy unneeded sidewalk winding around the back of both establishments that no one will ever use. In fact, Koontz argued, sidewalks are not needed for any development along the I-35 access roads. Under provisions of Koontz’s "Sidewalk Bank," instead of constructing unnecessary sidewalks, developers would be required to deposit money equal to the cost of constructing that unnecessary sidewalk into the bank and those funds would be used for the construction of sidewalks in established neighborhoods where those walkways are necessary, such as along Rebel Road.

Although I found the idea of the Sidewalk Bank one that is not only necessary but one that could be implemented comparatively rapidly (in fact, the sooner the better), it was not the first item on Koontz’s list. That was a Complete Streets resolution.

"I’m not sure you’re familiar with what Complete Streets is," Koontz told the four commissioners, "but it’s a national initiatives to make our rights-of-way not solely for the benefit of automobiles. Complete Streets makes assurances for pedestrian connectivity, making sure you have sidewalks, making sure the sidewalks are detached from the traffic rights-of-way so that there’s some form of intermediate buffer be it on-street parking, a landscape buffer or it can be a multi-role path that is completely removed from traffic."

The commissioners seemed receptive to the idea, while admitting that today Kyle is far from being a walkable community. But Rubsam wanted to know if Koontz was also talking about "redesigning the existing street or just adding sidewalks to them?"

"Typically, there would be two expectations," Koontz replied. "By and large, infrastructure like streets is not constructed by the City. They’re built by whomever it is that is developing. So one category would be anytime a new street is constructed it would be built to a standard such that there would be additional width of right-of-way — not necessarily of pavement — that would make an allowance of minimum for automobiles, bike lanes and then acceptable sidewalk widths. On the other hand, there would be a line item in the Capital Improvement Plan that reads anytime the City does a renovation project to a corridor that you don’t simply go in there and refresh and revitalize the existing, but build it to the current design standards. So we would retrofit some roads as appropriate for bike lanes and sidewalks. That means you might consume on-street parking or you substitute bike lanes for on-street parking. It all depends on the street section that you’re working."

The purpose of Complete Streets, Koontz said, "is to link higher-use areas in ways that are not necessarily tied to the automobile."

On another item on his list, Koontz suggest the implementation of design guidelines could be helpful because Texas law prohibits conditional zoning. In other words, zoning decisions can’t be made based on precisely what a developer wants to put on a piece of property. That was the sticking point, for example, in the recent truck stop debate when certain commissioners said they had no problem with rezoning that area for warehouse but we’re going to vote against that zoning request because the developer wanted to put a truck stop there. Texas law prohibits those kinds of zoning decisions; i.e., zoning decisions can not be conditional on what exactly the developer wants to use the land for.

"Here in Kyle, if someone wants to come in and build an office park, the only allowable zoning for that is warehouse," Koontz said. "Well, we all know what’s allowable in warehouse and for those reasons we know why warehouse is considered nefarious. You can go through just about every zoning district and think of a use that’s allowable in that district that would think would be objectionable in any place here. Using that thought process you could find a legitimate reason to deny every request for zoning.

"So my thought was, what if it wasn’t necessarily what was going on there that was so objectionable, what if it was what it looks like was so objectionable?"

That led him to the subject of design guidelines; i.e., "should we institute design guidelines that get really specific in architecture standards." The requirement should be specifically not what was located at a specific spot, but the aesthetic of what was being developed. "Is it really such a challenge what’s going on inside that structure as long as you pass it on the road and it doesn’t strike you as being objectionable?"

Rubsam wasn’t buying this at first. "I think people would have objected to that truck stop down there even if it had looked like the Taj Mahal and smelled like an evening in Paris," he said.

Allison, however, said she favored such an idea for all zoning.

Koontz warned the commissioners that establishing these design guidelines "takes a lot of work." But, he added, "Fortunately there are a lot of design guidelines nationally" that commissioners could adapt to fit Kyle, Rubsam asked if there were any locally, and Koontz said he hadn’t examined that.

"I don’t want to turn anyone away" because of strict design guidelines, Koontz said. "But, at the same time, I don’t want to just allow anybody to be here. I’m not necessarily crazy about letting somebody build a 4-side steel or panel building because it’s the cheapest way for them to build their business. There’s plenty of places for that in the county. I think we just change the nature of what people build here, just prescribe what it should look like. It might be more expensive but there are plenty of suppliers and architects out there that make their business on creating a means for these businesses to build in communities that have a higher standard. There’s a reason why businesses want to locate there because people want to live there. You want to live a nicer place. And if enough people want to live in that nicer place then the businesses will want to follow them because they need patrons.

"I’m not a huge proponent of letting the business community tale wag the city dog," Koontz said. "I’ve always decided that make the best city you can and then let people come to you rather than having to go out and chase something that might not ever show up.

"I don’t think we’re being obstinate" by instituting design guidelines, he continued. "I don’t think we’re saying ‘No, we don’t want that.’ We’re still receptive to anybody that wants to locate here. But, at the same time, we’re not going to abandon any standard we have for quality by just letting anybody show up and do whatever they want in whatever manner they want."

Rubsam said he would like to see a Texas-based workable model where such design guidelines have been employed "and custom tailor that model to fit Kyle’s requirements rather than just start writing from the ground up. If we could come up with somebody that is doing this, take a look at that model and see how we might modify it, that might work better than anything else."

"If we elevate Kyle to a place where we don’t have to have fights with Economic Development about lowering our standards low enough to let people come here," Koontz said, "someday we’ll be a place where it doesn’t matter what we make them do they will want to be here so badly they gonna build whatever it is they’re required to build. I have worked in places where the developers come in and say what they are going to do for the municipality and not asking what kind of tax breaks are you going to give me. If you’re not trying to make the community better, why are you coming here? I’m not looking for the people who want to build the lowest common denominator projects. There are a lot of people who have invested in Kyle and our responsibility is to make that investment worth it by increasing that quality of life however we can. I think design guidelines are a good way to do that."