Opinion: Next council should fix site review process


The stimulus to write this came from a recent article in the Camera about how the developer of Pearl West — the huge office building at 11th and Pearl — allegedly didn’t have the money to finish the theater that the developer promised when the site review was approved by the Planning Board. What good is a promise if there is no requirement to deliver?
The problem is that there is a fundamental flaw in Boulder’s planning process. Developers of projects, other than small ones, are required to go through the “site review” process, where the judgment of a majority of the Planning Board as to whether the project meets vague criteria is substituted for actual numerical rules about height, setbacks, density, etc. The bounds are much looser, and the Planning Board almost invariably approves structures considerably larger than the underlying zoning would allow. This size inflation generally has a negative impact on the neighbors, so the only guaranteed outcome is a giant fight. And because it’s not clear what rights developers really have, the Planning Board flounders trying to determine what it can or cannot require.
But this doesn’t happen if the development has to fit into an existing “area plan” or a “sub-community plan, like the North Boulder Sub-community Plan or the Transit Village Area Plan. These plans limit the development’s size, designs, and use, while guaranteeing the property owners certain rights. Thus the site review process can focus on ensuring that the project fits the plan, and so is much less challenging and controversial.
But instead of moving ahead with this level of planning elsewhere, the majorities of recent councils have let things slide, and substituted project-by-project “let’s make a deal” reviews for doing real planning. This is a waste of staff, board members’, and citizens’ time, and has produced some pretty awful results, like the enormous hotels going up at Canyon and 28th.
Fixing this problem city-wide would require, for the more static areas, putting in place zoning requirements that would yield acceptable outcomes. Site reviews should be limited to dealing with locations that have significant complexities, rather than being opportunities to give away massive increases in the amount of allowed development. A fundamental principle should be that site review would not yield any net increase in development.
But where there is a lot of potential for change, like in the area around Community Hospital, detailed sub-community planning that the neighboring residents and businesses have a strong voice in – so they actually like the results -should be done.
To do these plans properly, a transportation plan would need to be created that is actually possible to implement and fund, and that ensures that congestion and emissions won’t increase. Then the plan’s required fees and other site-based requirements could be integrated into the development approval process.
These area plans would also have to prevent further imbalance in the jobs/housing ratio, and maintain our population’s income diversity. This would require, for example, re-zoning areas from commercial/industrial to residential, raising the jobs/housing linkage fee, increasing the required percentage of permanently affordable units in both new rental and owner-occupied buildings, and fixing the inadequate fee-in-lieu calculations for affordable units in rental developments.
This would be real comprehensive planning. But to do this, the Boulder government would have to own up to the inadequacies of its current ad hoc planning processes. This would require some brutal honesty and real willingness to change.
But making these changes would be worth it, because the outlined approach has huge advantages: It creates certainty and acceptability, solves current problems, and prevents new ones. And in terms of workload, it probably wouldn’t require more effort than is now being wasted with the current project-by-project review done under vague and ridiculously flexible rules.
To get there from here would require making some moves that the development interests won’t like. For example, to keep things from getting out of hand in areas where there is significant potential for development or change, there would have to be severe limits on site reviews and resulting opportunities to increase development potential above the underlying zoning. For example, in commercial areas, the rules could state that the by-right height limit of 35 or 38 feet cannot be exceeded, and the setback and step-back rules cannot be varied.
No doubt there are other ways to fix the process. But doing real planning is far better than continuing the current craziness. And with more certainty and better outcomes, the citizens of Boulder would regain some trust in their government.


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