BLUE SPRINGS, MO - New standards for building multifamily housing in Blue Springs are in place. The City Council on Monday voted unanimously to pass revisions to the Unified Development Code to improve the quality of multifamily projects. The council also lifted a moratorium on starting subdivisions that include multifamily housing.
The amount of multifamily housing built in Blue Springs was an issue in municipal elections, and correcting that balance was a plank for Mayor Carson Ross' platform. In a city survey, 72 percent of respondents said too much multifamily housing was being built too fast. Ross had appointed a task force led by Councilwoman Sheila Solon to recommend changes. The council held a public hearing Monday before voting on the revisions, but no one spoke for or against changes.
Solon noted that legal research showed the city couldn't apply caps or percentages to control the number of units, but she said if the city continues to follow its comprehensive plan, the percentage of multifamily housing should return to a more-historical level of about 25 percent. Currently, when all projects approved have been built, the percentage will reach 34 percent.
The task force considered ordinances from Independence, Lee's Summit, Lenexa, Overland Park and other communities to determine where Blue Springs needed changes to meet current best practices. The group met nine times, held workshops with developers to fine-tune proposals and took them to the Planning Commission before the final version came to the council. "We were given a pretty daunting task," Solon said. The work was done without hiring a consultant, so there was no extra cost to residents, she said.
City officials hope the changes will attract quality housing while still being viable economically for developers, Solon said. For example, the ordinance increases the open space for those projects from 10 percent to 40 percent, but the new code also allows buildings to be five stories high, up from the current 45 feet.
Design guidelines require more than one material be used on buildings and for architectural details to break up broad, flat planes and call for deeper setbacks from the street. But developers can qualify for a lesser setback if they use fancier architectural details, such as carriage doors for garages.
The revisions also eliminated central business zoning, which was obsolete, with a new plan and ordinances already adopted for downtown Blue Springs. It added a review of multifamily projects by the Police Department so that it meets elements of crime prevention through environmental design, which asks that buildings be placed so residents can observe what's happening in their neighborhood. Private streets within multifamily complexes will have to meet the same standards as city streets.
The city also will strongly encourage developers to meet with adjacent neighborhoods about proposed projects, making that part of city reports when considering approval. When designing a project, developers are required to consider how it will blend with the character of surrounding neighborhoods.
Michael Parker, a builder and Planning Commission member who served on the task force, said the new design guidelines set high standards but are flexible enough to allow variety. "That way, each project won't continue to look the same," Parker said. Each project will have to be "sealed" by a licensed architect so "what we see is what we're going to get," he said.
Source: The Kansas City Star