Did anyone attend the workshop last night? The TW article this morning didn't indicate how productive the meeting was.
Officials explain form-based code for Pearl District
Property owners are given a chance to hear about and debate the merits of the city's proposed code plan.By KEVIN CANFIELD World Staff Writer
Published: 1/30/2013 2:15 AM
Last Modified: 1/30/2013 4:09 AM
City officials on Tuesday night took another crack at explaining exactly what property owners within the Pearl District can expect should the form-based zoning code be applied there.
At the end of the hour-and-a-half meeting - held at the Family and Children's Services building at Sixth Street and Peoria Avenue - that goal was accomplished.
Charts were exhibited, experts were made available and questions were answered.
Less clear is whether Pearl District property owners, informed of the code's details, will embrace it.
Planning Director Dawn Warrick, for one, thinks that moment has not yet arrived.
"We're not there yet," she said of finding common ground with opponents of the plan.
The city's form-based code is an alternative to the traditional use-based zoning code that separates properties by use types, such as residential and commercial. It is intended to create pedestrian-friendly environments such as those common in urban settings.
The form-based code focuses less on a building's use and more on its form - including the use of doors and windows, location on the property and height.
But it is just those types of specific regulations that have dogged the new code since it was first established in 2011 and continued to irk some property owners Tuesday night.
"We just want to get something that is flexible enough to accommodate everybody," said Charlie Keithline, who with his wife, Nancy Keithline, owns two dental practices in the Pearl District.
The code is currently applied to a small section of the district. The Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission rejected in September a proposal to expand it to the entire district, which runs from Interstate 244 to 11th Street and from U.S. 75 to Utica Avenue.
The latest proposal calls for the district to run east-west along the Sixth Street corridor from Peoria Avenue to Utica Avenue, then north-south from the corner of Sixth and Peoria north to Interstate 244.
The proposal includes properties north and east of the area in which the form-based code now applies.
Charlie Keithline said the code seems to have been designed to replicate the Sixth and Peoria area, where buildings are multilevel and built up to the street.
"They wanted to make sure that could be repeated throughout the entire Pearl District," Keithline said.
Vic Sherrell's family has owned a paint and auto body shop on Peoria between Fifth and Sixth streets since 1959. He said he is concerned with the new code's requirement that certain expansions of existing structures adhere to the code's standards.
Those standards, including building up to the street line, just won't work with the type of business he operates, Sherrell said.
"In the real world, you never know what you are going to do," he said.
Tuesday's meeting began with a brief explanation of the form- based code. The crowd then sat around tables and peppered city planners with questions and concerns.
Joey Toler, who with his wife, Shannon Toler, owns businesses in the Pearl District, stood back and listened as the conversation got heated at times.
"I'm all for it," he said of the new plan.
If the city wants to grow and make progress, he said, "you have to make some changes."
City officials plan to hold two more public meetings before presenting their findings and recommendations to the Planning Commission, which will then consider recommending to the City Council that the code's use be expanded.
Form-based code meetings slated
The city has two more public meetings scheduled on the latest proposal to expand the use of the form-based code within the Pearl District.
When: 6 p.m. Feb. 6 and Feb. 11
Where: Family and Children's Services, 650 S. Peoria Ave.
Read more from this Tulsa World article at
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20130130_16_A7_Cityof848815