Workforce & Business Development Committee - April 21, 2021

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] go [Music] dog [Music] oh [Music] do so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Music] do do [Music] so [Music] [Music] ladies and gentlemen welcome to a special edition of the workforce and business development committee meeting i am your chair tariq bakari and let's do council and then staff and guest intros starting with my vice chair please uh malcolm brown vice chairman charles city council district 2. and next we have greg phipps if you'd introduce yourself yes uh greg phipps at large and committee member and renee and dimple renee johnson district 4 committee member simple entrepreneur committee member i also see some special guest non-committee members but very important people in our heads and hearts uh the mayor braxton and anyone else that's on could you introduce yourselves i'm by liz i serve as mayor of the city of charlotte braxton winston serving at large any other council members that i don't see and haven't heard from and then let's go to staff starting with tracy then taiwo and then we'll go around uh tracy dodson city manager's office thai job our planning director manager's office deputy director of economic development donated jackson office of constituent services todd delong economic development set it for staff great and then special guests in southeast unmute tim cinema crosston southeast peter pappas pappas properties and then all any staff members that are joining us virtually felicia foreign allison craig deputy planning director okay speak now have i not introduced anyone excellent so allow me to start by framing today's discussion and uh what we're going to do this is a very very important part of a broader process that we've laid out around the 2040 comprehensive plan and our path towards making sure that all feedback is heard understood analyzed and decisioned so i'm going to go through what the agenda is today and and how we're going to go through today um so where we are in the process is after many years of work by a lot of different folks a lot of parties we are now in a stretch of three committees that have been tasked with various parts of this uh by the mayor to discuss to analyze and to provide a broader feedback back to all of council on what that analysis needs to provide we've already heard from the tap committee and as well as the great neighborhoods committee for their first meeting i believe we're all in a series of two meetings there as well as each in conjunction has a public forum of which those committee chairs are speaking with the community so this is our council committee conversation now but tomorrow night for example is the community version of this dialogue at 5 30. you can sign up on the city website to participate and have your voice heard there so that's where we are in the process as it relates the scoping of today is pretty simple it started with um with a a scoping that really held two parts to it when is a fiscal impact analysis and economic impact analysis appropriate for a comprehensive plan versus a udo and what are other options for communities to realize benefits of development projects and how can residents participate in the development process after shortly after that was released the mayor and i had a discussion and we agreed that when we are talking about fiscal and economic impact analysis more broadly it really needs to apply to the scope of the entire document as well as to the structure and level of detail that the comp plan takes on so that we can ensure we're asking the right questions as a committee and we're asking the right questions of staff and for feedback so our scope as it exists for today is slightly genericized and broader in the in that it is an economic analysis and a fiscal impact analysis of the 2040 comp plan with a special emphasis and focus on community benefit agreements on single-family zoning and on some of the concepts we see in our goals like 10-minute neighborhoods and things of that nature it's also going to be a bit of a fiscal and economic impact analysis and a feasibility analysis on the overall structure of the comprehensive plan um so that is the scoping um i am going to start in a series of events that are going to lead to our main event which is our committee members having a dialogue and discussion that will lead to some takeaways but i'm going to start with a framing set of questions so we know what we're talking about because some of these terms are not just random terms like fiscal and economic impact analysis they have very specific meanings so i'm going to ask five questions that i've already discussed with taiwo our planning director so that he can tee up for all of us some definitions some scoping understandings that we need to have as a group and then once that's done we're going to hop over to our uh development community partners that have joined us today peter pappas and tim cinema and this actually evolved for the background of everyone um earlier in the week at one of the committee members um the topic came up have we or have we not had a formal uh um venue for the developers in the development community to come in and relay to us the concerns they have have they been heard so the goal of today and we have talked to these uh two fine gentlemen who are representing a much larger coalition who's done a lot of work and has sent all of council a very detailed document of their commentary of the entire plan the goal today is for them to bring that up to an executive level and tell us in the community what their perspectives are and what their concerns are and what they would hope we would do so that that will be a very important part of this process because never again after today can we say the development community has not had a seat at the table and a voice well check that box the only thing that will be left is are we clear on those takeaways and as we move forward in the next steps of this process have we incorporated those into changes in the plan or are we not willing to make them and we can tell them why so that will hopefully solve what is a very large and outstanding um component of the the body of work we have before us so that is ultimately um where we will um kind of end our teeing up process and then we'll be at the main event which is our council discussion and we're going to go through the committee members and others that are here um with really a framing of questions comments and feedback in relation to the scoping i've laid out but it's really tactical that we get this right which is this is one of two meetings for this committee so we don't need to solve everything today what we do need to do is leave with staff having a set of agreed-upon high-level takeaways four five or six things they say this is what we're going to go do this is what we're going to analyze and figure out and then we're going to bring back to you as a body in the next committee meeting of which then we'll see their recommendations their thoughts and how they interpreted what we all said and then we'll have the ability to tweak make it our own and ultimately decide what we vote through to be discussed with the broader council ending the referral that we now um have before us so with that i'm going to stop this long-winded intro but the intro is important because we have a lot of heavy deep topics and we need to frame it properly so we can get through it and get the feedback here are my rules of engagement as the chair of this wonderful committee so i ensure that we have the best outcome possible one i want to focus very intently on the members of this committee first and foremost there are five of us that are on here and while i will certainly save time for other non-committee members to have an opportunity at the end to speak and and relay their um comments and feedback this is again about us breaking things apart and having a chance to have a deeper conversation amongst a smaller group of us there will be opportunities at the broader council level for that two please pose your questions if possible when we have that discussion more generically and i will help direct them to the appropriate party understanding that we don't have to have all the answers today we need to leave with an agreed-upon set list of things we need to seek and find and three and finally um please answer all of your questions directly and succinctly because we have a lot to get through and it's very important that we directly answer them you may hear me jump in and and restate the question um so that we are as crisp and efficient with our time as possible so with that i would open it up for questions but we're not going to do that we're going to move right into that agenda and i'm going to start taiwa thank you so much for being here and your efforts um to date can we start with these five questions that help us frame our dialogue today and i'll start with number one just in definitional terms in planning terms and where you are what is a fiscal impact analysis thank you council member carrie good morning a good afternoon everyone feels like running in here um yeah so a fiscal impact analysis or an fia essentially just measures the financial impacts of a particular study or vision on government in this case land use policy decisions so in the case of the comprehensive plan what the fiscal impact analysis is is which is typically for any 20-year land use policy plan is to assess the different impacts of various land uses over a period of time say 10 20 years and then have in our case designations of different land use characters such as place types and what the impact will be overall uh on the city so the the analysis will do diff it will give you more or less an understanding of what benefits that the various development patterns will bring if you've been following this story you'll know that we had four different scenarios back in 2019 one was business as usual one was whether we grow around centers one was whether we grew around corridors the last one was an hybrid and so what the fiscal impact analysis did was to essentially compare everything to that base case and see what would be the impact of any land use decision that this city makes over the next 20 years and that's what we've done for the um for the comprehensive plan excellent thank you what is an economic impact analysis that's um that's a very interesting because sometimes when i hear people say economic impact analysis what i think they're saying and correct me if i'm wrong here is market demand analysis so to speak how does the market respond to this so while the fiscal impact analysis looks at the growth pattern over a 20-year period the market demand analysis essentially is saying what's the demand for a certain use type that will ensure that you have the capacity such as buildings and uses uh that will be allowed in the ordinance based on the demand so for this one the plan was to have a maybe i'm jumping ahead of you but the plan was to have a market demand analysis or an economic demand analysis as you move into the udl because then you have those specific uses that are not just couched in vision unlike the compressor pan but they're becoming real yes that and that is a good segue into the third question which is of those two major standard land use planning mechanisms for assessing which has been done to date for the 2040 comp plan and all of its components that are before us versus what pieces are planned in what later steps so we've done the fiscal impact analysis uh to date um consumer vocary and it is i know it's it's a lot of pages but it's on the website um it's been there for about a year but actually since the beginning of this year i should say so it's if you go on clt future 2040.com and then you see the resource link it you'll see it right there that's what we've done essentially what we did was to develop some evaluation metrics for that fiscal impact analysis the types of changes in land use you have templates types so what exactly does the impact of that look like over the next 20 years what's the difference in fiscal impact from the different amounts of growth in other words jobs versus housing that's in the fiscal impact analysis then what's the impact of the growth on the fiscal health and services of the city of charlotte that's also included in the fiscal impact analysis and then what which departments or divisions are going to be impacted by different land use decisions such as water fire police county park recreation cms all of them were involved in the conversation around the fiscal impact analysis and then finally he talks about what are the fiscal benefits in terms of revenues versus the cost of the venture growth pattern and that growth pattern is summarized in what the comprehensive plan is so that's what we've done for that 20-year period because you can only measure growth pattern over a long period of time not a very short period for the economic impact analysis or what i would say is market demand analysis it is going to focus on economic output for the most part it's going to evaluate specific projects and actions such as we say trees sidewalks density impact of you know roadway infrastructure it's going to be more detailed once we start getting into the udl process during the place types mapping which follows the adoption of the plan for the next six or seven months we're going to continue to improve upon our fiscal impact analysis during that place types because we're going to have developers at the table we're going to have researchers at the table we're going to have more importantly residents at the table and then that leads into the economic impact analysis which we will do during the unified development ordinance as a matter of fact i have this scope with me uh that the consultant has developed for us to be able to do that and some of what she started with consumer bukhari in your scoping are actually reflected in that and definitely we will be happy to share that with you uh before we even have the work done on that so that work will be done as we move into the udl helpful and um i think uh as as i'm hearing from councilwoman johnson as well as probably others i think it would be helpful as a follow-up um one takeaway of seeing that that side-by-side kind of in writing at an executive summary i know you've provided us those documents in great detail that we have but i think putting a little bit of a matrix of the difference between those two and what happens when and what outputs we can expect that will help us with our decision making could be very helpful that's great so i only have two more questions left for the scoping part number four do we as a city or have we do we as an in your industry analyze and quantify the impact to the affordability of housing based on the decisions we make so um typically for us when we do this type of long-range plan municipal agencies like us will have to look at what impacts your provision of services the most right fire services police water storm water roadway construction all of those things and when you look into the fiscal impact analysis that we've developed we actually have quantified the impact of the growth pattern that is being looked at in the uh in the fia on each one of these services that we provide including the ones that we don't provide like i said earlier by correct that's typically what i have seen done and a good example for us as a city is the 2030 transit system plan that was developed in 2006 uh was a 2030 plan and over looking forward into uh 2030 but there was no specific dollar amount associated with that visionary plan because you do not know exactly what a blue line will cost or whether it will be done in segments or what a red line would cost or what a silver silver line would cost until you actually put a you know a distance on it it's going to be 26 miles it's going to have 10 stations it's going to have you know 15 stations it's going to go and that's when you actually start to do your market demand analysis for those specificities um that's the same approach we're taking now for the first time for example we've had the 2030 transit system plan since 2006 but only was until the uh charlotte mustard force came together that finally said putting all of this together in addition to you know what you had in the 2017 charlotte works uh or sorry transportation action plan that this may be in the ballpark of 12 to 13 billion the same thing is what you're looking at here what would be the impact on single family only density for example what would be the impact of compact development and every time we do an analysis like this you will see in the fiscal impact analysis that it actually says that the direction that we're heading with the type of growth pattern being proposed in the comprehensive plan is actually fiscally sound for the city because its impact on the services provided are better than if you were to continue on a business as usual or you have a pattern of single family density throughout your city uh services are easier and not necessarily we don't need to go into services i think that so let me just recap because this was an important one one if i was to summarize no we have not done any fit any impact analysis on what what we are proposing does to the affordability of housing yet no actually we have we have so you you have quantifiable results as to what it can do have that information so what is because i've read all your documents nowhere in the fiscal or economic impact analysis does it say anything about even doing the affordability analysis of housing let alone what those results are when you say affordability of ours and i use can you i mean if we for example abolish single-family zoning and you can buy right build a triplex essentially anywhere we have a general logical understanding of what that will do to density but nowhere do we have actual results and financial quantifiable analysis of on average prices per square foot will go up by x or y or go down this is not the time to do that that would be that's why i said earlier that so we haven't done that was mike i'm not trying to trap you or anything that my question was we haven't done it now but you are planning on doing it in the future yes excellent that's perfect that's all i need to know and then finally five is this a land use planning document yes it is uh it's a language planning document okay so hopefully that helps in the framing of the scope of what we're talking about and the definitions again i thought that was very important because these are not just terms generically used these have very specific meanings in the planning industry so with that now we're going to go into listening mode and talking mode amongst the community we're going to start with the development community and the summary of what they have to say and what they would like to see done and then our committee discussion and again i i just want to frame the goal of this the end goal the outcome we're looking for is to take notes and at the end i look over at mrs dodson our staff member that is assigned to this committee in this effort and we say this is what i got this is what i heard these are the takeaways here so we don't have to solve anything but we do need to really kind of focus in from that point so with that um our friends from the development community welcome to the committee and i open it up for your comments and if you can keep it to roughly under 10 minutes give or take we'd appreciate it thank you mr chairman and members of the city council councilman winston and phillips councilman graham ms ashmere miss johnson who i haven't met personally look forward to meeting you and working with you and thank you very much mayor lyles and the staff for providing this opportunity for uh tim cinema and i to share some thoughts about the 2040 plan you know my name is peter pappas i'm the ceo of pappas properties in twilight pappas i'm a native of charlotte grew up in lansdowne on providence road which growing up there that was the end of the city limits of charlotte in fact i'm not sure we were in the city limits so have certainly seen a great deal of change over the last 35 years since i've been in the real estate industry this is not the first time i've been involved in a rewrite of planning and zoning ordinances and i think what's been a bit of a challenge for me is the process as i was listening to the chairman ask our planning director who i'd like to commend for taking on such an ambitious task this there's been a tremendous amount of work done here and a lot of that work is very very helpful to setting a framework for charlotte's future uh i am a bit confused though about the process and you know when i look at the council's priorities which is i understand them are economic development housing and affordable housing and transportation it seems to me that understanding fully the economic impact of increasing the whistle sidewalks tree canopy other regulatory requirements you know should be heavily vetted out before we pass the concept so that the council has the full benefit of knowing what these items are doing to the cost of housing much of which is passed on to the to the consumer i think the other thing about the process that has been interesting from my perspective is the you know the there's 312 pages of information and a group of us in the real estate industry have gone through the comments as has the charlotte apartment association naop rebic and other groups and i think for the most part those comments have been passed either to the planning staff or the council in writing but there hasn't been a lot of attention to the app to the actual land use planning and that to me seems to be a very important part of this discussion are the land use plans and the place types and really giving the community not just the development community but giving the community at large a better understanding of what these concepts will look like and i'm just i'm puzzled why we would wait to do that because certainly getting community buy-in from everyone is important we're not going to please everyone with any document but really understanding those plans has been i think a lot of the success that charlotte has had i go back and think about the small area planning processes that we went through for many years they were helpful they were guidelines they were frameworks unfortunately for whatever reason we didn't update those a lot and i think you can see that on a lot of the rezoning requests that are approved many times it says inconsistent with the small area plan i don't think that's a reflection on the petition i think it's just the reality that the market's changed and with that market change we've got to think about our framework in the future growth of our community so if i sound a bit like a overly enthused planner maybe it's because i am because i think what our success in charlotte is is that we have talked about these concepts at tremendous length not in a hurried fashion this the south corridor plan that started back with martin crampton in the 90s and was further refined and then was studied by the regional committee for the regional business committee for transportation who brought the uli in to study all five corridors back in the early 2000s before detailed plans were done to talk about land use i recall budgets being part of those studies now those budgets greatly changed as the plans were refined and as time went on and costs were inflated but nonetheless we started with some economic uh baseline i might say so you know i i'm more than enthusiastic about a comprehensive plan i i would strongly urge us strongly urges to take the time to get this plan right and to go back and do some of this land use planning that you typically do as part of this type of process now you know there may be a thought going through your mind well you know we can do that later but let's think for a minute about some of the proposed concepts in the current draft plan and let's think for a minute just about some of the unintended consequences that i know staff didn't didn't clearly doesn't want to do but as i read the document and as others have read it some a few things i'd point out economic development and job growth the key to our city job growth will help us deal with many of our challenges cities that don't attract jobs are not headed the right direction attracting new jobs to our community requires certainty those that make the decision to move a company to another community want certainty they want to understand the process they want to understand the codes and they want to understand what they need to do to get their building built or their facility built the community benefit agreement which we haven't had in charlotte and which i don't think exists in the cities we compete with which is an important point as complexity and uncertainty to that process are we going to complicate a process that i would maybe make the point is working very well at the moment we have district representatives when we go for a rezoning we typically meet with those representatives concurrently with meeting with the planning staff to understand what's important to that area of the city to understand the planning staffs objectives normally these district representatives point us to community leaders who we can interface with and the process begins and it's a collaborative process for the most part i think it served us well do we want to introduce legally binding agreements when we don't know who's going to be part of that agreement who determines who is the representative of that area that you negotiate with how long does that take what is the cost associated with that implementation will someone looking to move jobs to our community wait on that process i do not believe they will in my experience they won't i would encourage you to speak directly with your staff about that because i think they will reaffirm that that when they come in to look at charlotte as a place to bring their business they want to know what they're dealing with and i don't think you can say we're going to go to the community at large and talk about how to do this the process does not allow that kind of time the uh the concept of office campuses again focused on job growth here for a minute and those that moved our city the the concept of requiring public open space as part of an office campus is interesting it's a it's a good idea in the sense that some office campuses that also may be an objective of that particular company to have that kind of open space and perhaps they can find a way to make that available to the public but there are other companies that are very conscious of security and they may see that whole provision much differently from a security perspective perhaps the solution here is to think about that as an option maybe there is some incentive for that company that does that and makes a portion of their campus open to the public but not a requirement so that we don't deter someone from making a decision to come to charlotte if you go to cupertino and you look at all the tech companies some have really fantastic campuses with a lot of open space some have very secure office campuses where it's clear you know they they don't really want the general public in that facility i think that ought to be the choice of those that move their jobs here to our community but there's a way to perhaps incentivize them to help with the challenge i'm going to mention a couple of things here and i don't want to go really too far in the weeds but i think i'm just trying to make my point about unintended consequences you know industrial development in charlotte has long been a staple of our economy as i understand the plan and as those in our industry group have drilled into the details i believe now we're proposing shorter block links i think the market reality is that these industrial facilities are getting larger in size the footprint's bigger so it seems like that idea is running contra to the market realities that we face seems to me that wouldn't be too hard to fix but i see that in many different sections throughout the plan you look at innovative mixed-use districts and we talk about activating the ground floor space of a four-story residential building again nice objective but not every sub-market can support ground floor retail and in the changing retail landscape we're all operating in that seems to me to be just an opportunity for confusion and not totally in step with again the marketplace i build multi-family housing where appropriate i incorporate ground floor retail in fact the first mixed use project in charlotte was built in the suburbs was phillips place where we built retail with housing above couldn't be a bigger proponent of that concept but it's not universally applicable and i think setting an expectation like that is it it really makes the process the zoning process even harder because those in the neighborhood say where's my restaurant where's the palm the palm doesn't go to every sub market in charlotte i understand the comments about encouraging drive-throughs i mean discouraging drive-throughs i have a starbucks in front of my office that's got a drive through it's right in the heart of south park some people in the neighborhood walk to it which is great we walk down there from our office but a lot of people use that drive through some park on our main street and walk into the starbucks starbucks is saying to the development industry our next 200 stores are going to have a drive-through i think you can find a way to do a drive through without limiting you know that use and i think we've got to demonstrate that kind of flexibility there are a few things something that's not permitted by law why why do that maybe another approach would be to think about how to expand the use of tax increment financing and grants as part of improving our infrastructure when you're doing a project building a community or a mixed use project or whatever development's occurring that's the best time to deal with any infrastructure improvements while we're out there working on that particular project why not expand the use of tax increment grants why not give the staff more latitude to allocate them why not think about how the cip dollars can be matched up with those so we can fix more of the infrastructure while we're out there working on the project versus introduce a concept that's not permitted by law again a site consultant reading this report would say they have impact fees there question mark what does that mean why introduce that uncertainty why not work with some of the tools we've got i'm only speaking for myself when i make this comment i would love to have a discussion about how to take dollars we contribute to the public infrastructure when we do a large project and put them in a pool to be matched up with cip dollars so that we have a structure and a policy about infrastructure investment that everyone who develops a project is required to contribute to not just the big project and as long as that money stays in that area and benefits the area where we're doing the project i will try to close here with just a couple of more thoughts but i would share with you i spent six and a half years on our state board of transportation no one when i served on that board asked me to get their road built slower take a little more time p i never heard that no one came to me and said hey peter take as long as you want they said get that infrastructure built we need the infrastructure we're not opposed to other things but we need the infrastructure why not use the tools we have let's think about what we've got that we can work with so you know to wrap this up and i apologize for taking a few extra minutes i think those of you who i've worked with and i've spent a lot of time with many of you in this room and i would say to you i consider you our strategic partners in what we do in charlotte and while we may view this document in certain areas much differently the goal is to create a great community and to create a great community we've got to collaborate and we've got to get this document right i would strongly urge you to pass something in the short term that outlines guiding principles and general framework and then take the time to do these plans so everyone understands what we're trying to what we want the future of charlotte to look like wouldn't that be a great process to get people on board while we concurrently go through the 312 pages that have already been written to try to sort out some of these things where good intentions but maybe some unintended consequences that won't be helpful to your priorities i hope you'll strongly consider that the the way we have been successful in charlotte is the private sector in the public sector working together the business committee for regional transportation was totally a private sector effort but was done in lockstep with the public sector that the south corridor we got a lot of things right we learned a lot of things that we're trying to do better on our future transportation initiatives but that discussion and having everyone at the table to do that is invaluable i don't expect the planning staff to understand what starbucks wants to do or google or you know any business they're you know they're not in touch with that business like the development community is and as much as i'd like to have first floor retail in all my apartment communities with a great restaurant the market a lot of times just won't support that so i think through collaboration and maybe adjusting this process a bit i think we can come up with something that's really exciting i don't think we really want to say to the rest of the country that we want to limit the height of buildings in downtown to 20 stories the energy spent on creating the vibrant downtown we have is what's making young people move here they're excited about living on the light rail or downtown and having a little more urban environment what better place to put density why not work on these plans a little more so we figure out where to put density that will work well with the existing community so again i apologize for taking a bit longer i have a lot of i just have a tremendous amount of passion around us getting this right and i can't really fathom why we wouldn't take more time to get it right because i think we'll have more consensus and the better we explain our vision to those that are thinking about come to shore coming to charlotte the better results we'll have so thank you for letting me share these thoughts mr chairman thank you to the members of council and the staff again sincere things the work you're doing is hard it's not easy and you know i i have a real appreciation for the amount of effort taiwo that you and your team have put into this so thank you for letting me share these comments our pleasure and i i let you go on there because um it's not just you you're speaking on behalf of you guys have put in the work you're representing dozens of stakeholders in your industry that have come together and put countless hours into a very detailed document so hearing your feedback now as the umbrella and executive summary is very worth it for us as a committee to be able to have that and with that tim will you uh will you then provide the second chapter of of what is a is a large body of work for us to consider thank you tarik i'm tim cinema again with crossland southeast peter and i are here representing a large industry coalition there are at least a dozen of the larger more active companies in town that have been huddling together for weeks it took us a long time to read 312 pages i can only imagine how long it took to write the 312 pages i'd like to add my acknowledgement and thanks to taiwo and allison and the whole team for the incredible work they've done we support the comprehensive plan effort we support much of what's in that plan but as we look at it the development community the practitioners that are actually executing some of the industry needs haven't really been involved to date and i'm gonna you know as peter peter talked about more economic development uh concepts and i might just put a little um asterisk on that um growth and economic opportunities for charlotte are not guaranteed investment capital is fungible it can go to any city and if we make it too hard here they will take the capital elsewhere we can mess up the economic opportunities that we have here if we're not careful and that's what what peter was talking about i'm going to speak uh on a couple of points the first is kind of housing affordability and again this plan is all about balance balancing um more housing opportunities and and more integration of different housing types against the affordability aspects of that housing there's no question we have a shortage of housing in charlotte and i should have said with all the different practitioners that we represent any one of them could be speaking here we just peter and i are two of us i guess that were the only two that were available perhaps today but there absolutely needs to be more housing here so generally i support uh and we support the addition of more middle housing duplexes and triplexes the concern i have with the approach that's taken in this plan is um as i see it when you look at the actual data and i i had conversations with several council members about this recently data from the realtors association indicates that there are 20 homes sold in mecklenburg county at the price point of 300 000 and below for every one home that's sold in mecklenburg county at 900 000 and above let me say that again for every one home sold at 900 000 or higher there are 20 that are sold for less than 300 000 what that says is the demand is 20 times greater on the lower end of the housing spectrum it it makes sense so when you open all of charlotte up or propose opening all of charlotte up to duplexes and triplexes maybe that's a good idea because we need more housing supply but where is that growth going to go the demand is on the lower end of the scale so they're not going to be buying duplexes and triplexes for 900 000 in south charlotte they're going to be buying duplexes and triplexes for 275 000 in hidden valley or in greer heights or in ederle park or camp green or any of the other areas where housing is more affordable and in my view what that's going to do is further densify those areas and further tax the infrastructure the already crowded schools the already crowded traffic situations there so i i i fully get the fact that we want more middle market housing i'm not sure this approach is the exact best approach and the last point i'll make there is in many of these neighborhoods almost two out of every three houses are investor owned the investors are going to be selling for more dollars to speculators that are going to be wanting to do duplexes and triplexes and that will lead to involuntary displacement at rates that we're not contending with today so um how do we address that i mean that's that's the hard question but um you know so so that's point one under housing affordability point two the plan mentions wonderful concepts like saving our trees and wider sidewalks in some cases 10 to 12 feet wide all these are great ideas who wouldn't want wider sidewalks who doesn't want to save trees but every one of those increases costs because to do a 10 foot wide sidewalk you're going to get less land yield to park on the streets you're going to need wider streets that runs counter to zero tree loss it also runs counter to housing affordability because you're getting less uh density you're getting less uh land yield and you're also getting higher construction costs and then lastly under under this concept the plan does mention as peter pointed out several controversial ideas impact fees and inclusive zoning those are not legal today and in some sense that kind of sort of is a poke in the eye of some of the folks at the state level but even more importantly the plan does not mention several other less controversial ideas that have proven to be incredibly effective in other states like south carolina like georgia like colorado and other states and those are the state tax credit that parallels the federal latex credit if this is an aspirational plan why wouldn't we put the less controversial more effective aspirational goals out there let's adopt the state tax credit that parallels the federal tax credit states that have adopted that have exploded the development of new affordable housing and and using as peter pointed out tax incentives to include uh affordable housing that's a big deal and it's very effective the last point i'll mention i know we're trying to make up some time here um kind of on the on the higher level uh concept balance idealistic planning with with market realities um again i applaud taiwa i know he's got his heart in the right place and so does the entire staff they love the city as much as we do they've done a fabulous job putting this thing together you know things like we want to end food deserts and daycare deserts who doesn't want to end that i spend my life trying to build grocery stores all over god's green earth if i could build grocery stores where they don't exist i'm going to try to do that but it's not as simple as saying okay private sector if you don't put a grocery store here we're not going to prove your development i don't see that directly in the plan but it's but it the the plan seems to indicate that that could be a requirement a condition of a plan approval is satisfying one of these social needs like a food desert or a daycare desert it's freaking hard to build those things and you can't force the private sector to force a public company to build a grocery store when they don't want that has to be a public-private partnership that has to include novel concepts that have been tried elsewhere like food co-ops and so on um so that's another point love to see zero tree loss but how can you do that and still grow our city it's not economically viable in most places to have three stories of multi-family over a first floor commercial you typically need four stories of multi over a first floor commercial if you're in in many of those areas and as peter pointed out we're in the days of e-commerce and amazon retail is shrinking not expanding in this country um yet first floor commercial and active uses are required almost almost everywhere so i'll end my comments there there's a lot of granular things this coalition of active developers put i think a 12-page memo together that sent to council members um again we're not casting you know throwing stones at staff or anybody else you know the intentions are absolutely in the right place but we would certainly um like a more active role as we go through this and and thank you for giving us an opportunity to share our uh thoughts today uh absolutely thank you gentlemen both for representing your coalition that's put in a lot of work like we said the entire council and mayor and staff are in receipt of your 12-page much deeper document that provides a breadcrumb trail for exactly what you guys are thinking but i've i've captured thus far as as is the objective of today's meeting some high-level thematic things and now as we turn for our committee to be able to have a dialogue of what we've heard with the objective of adding to that list and leaving with staff saying these are the takeaways we would like you to look in further i believe i've got the start of that list based on what we've heard you say at that executive summary level beyond that very detailed report that we have from you all so with that i would like to open it up to committee members i want to start with my vice chair councilman graham and just ask for responses thoughts outstanding questions as well as comments for staff take away as as i will continue to take notes thank you mr chairman and i just want to thank um the guests for providing their overview um i did receive the document on yesterday so i'm currently reviewing that um as well i i just want to again you know thank staff too right i you know a lot of work has gone through this document over the last year and a half a lot of did work and i just want to acknowledge that uh right up front um because i think that's really important right uh i don't have any outstanding questions as you know i posted the town hall meeting last last week uh relating to subjects in terms of affordability as well as making sure that we don't displace residents as a result of the 2040 plan and we had a great discussion there i will review what was submitted last night um from peter and his group uh and i'll just kind of listen to my other colleagues to see where they have any outstanding issues thank you excellent thank you mr vice chair let me move over to um council member phipps yes sir thank you mr chair and and our guest mr pappas and mr cinema thank you for joining us today uh i guess uh and hearing some of the comments uh i've heard uh many of them before and my discussions with some of the uh development community members and uh one of the things that just that's really uh perplexing me is this concept of affordability and and and filling in the middle market uh housing options with the duplexes and triplexes and such i'm just trying to figure out i mean i just have to be assured that we can find evidence of affordable duplexes or triplexes now we're talking about new construction uh triplexes of duplexes in a in a range of 274 thousand dollars i mean i'm trying to figure out in some of our most vulnerable communities is that a price point that that a lot of them can afford um you know i think we've already seen that we do have duplexes and triplexes going up in a lot of our neighborhoods here in charlotte but you know have and i asked this to staff have we done any kind of analysis to see what has been the impact of that construction since we already have a model that you know that we see these kinds of units being built i mean have we measured whether or not you know the impact of that development i mean have they produced i mean do we see any any trends toward more affordability or just do we see high-end duplexes or whatever and i'm speaking about you know uh duplexes and such structures in belmont community i've driven through there and and i see some wonderful projects some wonderful duplexes i mean they're looking good sitting on those lots but you know i i how affordable are they to the people that we're trying to reach you know in an affordable way and also with respect to the concept of uh the community benefit agreements i'm trying to uh one of the things i want to be clear on is what will be the city's role in are we going to be evaluating those uh agreements it's a city responsible for enforcing those agreements because i thought that we took a hands off approach to any kind of agreement that was more or less uh negotiated between a community and a petitioner that you know peter paul i thought we didn't get involved with any enforcement of that so i'm curious as to how that would work and in as much as the plan itself as it's written is is really uh you know a visionary plan you know some of the things that's in it are aspirational for sure i didn't read the plan as something that individual developers on their own would have to pursue like you know uh um financing or just uh acquiring uh grocery stores or daycare centers on their own i saw that as something that would evolve over time as the market would dictate and that you would have different stakeholders having a part in that so i wouldn't think that that was something that the development community would have to embrace on their own accord um so um you know when it comes to unintended consequences i live over here in university city and i can see a lot of tree canopy is being demolished because there's a lot of uh there's a lot of construction and development going on both multi-family and single family so i'm beginning to realize too that our goals for our tree canopy while they're lofty at this point you know i think we uh we're losing we're losing a battle uh in that regard so uh and if there's a choice between you know what's more important a sidewalk or a tree you know i mean i would like sidewalks to be a little bit i mean i don't know that they have to be as wide and long as they are but but uh you know i think those things can be negotiated and negotiated and i think we can be flexible on those and so uh so some of the things i i agree that we can have some i would think that we could have more flexibility in it and i don't see this document as something that's so etched in stone as that would as it would scare potential investors and companies away from charlotte i think in as much as people are coming here to charlotte there's going to be a demand for housing a demand for services a demand to come here and and create more jobs so uh you know uh and talking to uh other members of the uh development community they indicated that they thought the plan uh conceptually was good they thought that it didn't need a complete rewrite but some areas could be tweaked so i'm hoping that we can come away from this experience and then the additional meetings that we're going to have if we can reach that result and i'm looking forward to it thank you mr phipps um i've got um i've got a laundry list of of the takeaways incorporated into this master list of notes i believe we already had an answer from uh taiwo in the beginning around the affordability uh questions you've done on duplexes and triplexes we don't have that analysis yet but i think that's a good one tracy as our staff member here for you to take away in working with taiwo just to to understand what type of analysis based on the granularity of what we put in here can be done in the time frame that we're working on so at least we could start to get some of those insights um same around the expectations of how developers are going to work in relation to grocery stores i think a big one you listed there the contradiction between existing policies today sidewalks and trees is the one we always go back to how wouldn't this be the time to address those so i think that's a solid takeaway there is one question i would i would like taiwo to to address because i think you probably have an answer now which is um councilman phipps question around community benefit agreements and what would the city the developer and the community's role be is this something that is designed by right to happen or is this back to more of a deal-making premise that is occurring at a much lower level at of development practices than as today as they're thought of in large commercial deals so um thank you councilmember mukairi um you know peter and tim mentioned something during their statements that we do well together as a city when we work together that's the concept behind the cba essentially in the comprehensive plan the way it's defined is that this project specific agreement between a developer and a broad community coalition it does not involve city mandating developers to do anything outside of if it involves city money or city property which we do today whether through a development agreement or even through a rezoning we do do cbs today through a rezoning process um so it is really about working together with the community to make it happen and yes it is true that while we may not be able to require it it is allowed and you know it is a conversation that the community and the specific developer has to have and lastly i will say on this one in with regards to enforcement once there's an agreement it becomes part of overall project development process and then the comprehensive plan specifically calls out for an ombudsman office to work with developer and residents in making sure that whatever expression they had from the developer from the community is called codified in the document going forward so that's the way it does not say that the city will require it it doesn't say that um you know we will we we can um make developers do it but it's a contract between them and the community but we want to make sure that when that happens there's an office that can help to track how that's working so so just as a follow-up so obviously there's a lot we don't know and that would be addressed theoretically in next phases around community benefit agreements however by what i'm hearing from you when those scopings happen and when something is in the scope of that happening it is not something that happens in a by-right nature it is something that happens in a conditional nature where developers and community members have to essentially deal make with one another in order to happen today i understand but in the future in the future it will be a conversation between them between the community and yes it will be right now you have council members get involved in negotiation between community and the developer this really is strictly between developers and the community but what we have today if i could take a little bit of liberty with the time is that it's done but it only works in the communities where where community groups are well organized and they know what they want what the comprehensive plan seeks to do here is to bridge that inequity and to say it should be able to organize communities regardless of where they are in our city so that they know what they want and they can help and you answer carrie brought up a sound idea with us a couple weeks ago with regards to a playbook and we believe that that's an excellent idea that not only do we define parameters around it in a comprehensive plan but during the place type mapping with everyone at the table that can be something that we address further uh before we get into the udo and then our end with this i i don't want to debate anything like that but the concept of cba isn't new i mean it's it's done in atlanta it's done in georgia as part of their tig process it's done in nashville um it's not in that comprehensive plan because it's been done before they had their 2040 plan in nashville but it's done very well there and it succeeds tremendously atlanta have worked on it along the beltline worked successfully there's a council resolution as a matter of fact that supports the use of cbs along the beltline in atlanta that has generated thousands of units in affordable housing units now it will be different i'm not saying we should copy any city so it's just that the concept that is novel and it's never been done that's not necessarily correct i think we just have to find a way to make it work so it doesn't become a burden on developers but it also doesn't leave the community out of the process of development i think that's really the sweet spot where you should understand tracy if you wouldn't mind i think the takeaway here other than a lot of additional scoping and understanding it that's going to be very important is going to be tactically how would we go down that path but particularly to our scope what are those fiscal and economic impact analysis points of which if we go away from more you know buy right planning to a more deal-making approach well we know right now over 30 percent overhead by our current process jacks up affordable the affordability of housing what will this do um creating bureaucracy there so i think we need to understand that for sure so with that thank you for your comments council member phipps i'm going to move on to councilwoman johnson thank you mr chair so i i have a few questions um the first one i want to ask taiwo one of the speakers mentioned a developer pool of dollars if that was an option i think you and i have discussed that in the past can you elaborate did you hear that and can you elaborate um on if that would be a possibility like if each developer contributed to some type of fund that could be used for future projects or future infrastructure improvements and then i have a couple more questions yeah go ahead tyler i'm not sure maybe i'm the one to respond to that maybe it's peter who can clarify what that idea is but if i if i'm hearing correctly i think it's like you have a cip for example uh to fix a road where to contribute to a road system and then a developer will match that so to speak but don't we do that right now in a way i don't know so unless i understand that properly i don't know well the way i understood it and not impact fees we know we can't do impact fees here in charlotte but um no we could we have a lot of growth here in charlotte and i know the council members who talk about uh a comprehensive view or a comprehensive look at develop at a siloed approach for traffic improvement so if is that something that we could do here in charlotte would that be legal where developers could contribute to a fund um and then the there be a matching support from the city yeah i and i'll i'll take that away um and ask tracy to actually do a little analysis for us on that i think that is indeed something in some form we do today in relation to finding concessions between neighbors and developers in certain deals where that fund gets matched and ultimately improves sidewalks or this or that perhaps the question for you ms dotson is um is that something that's more scalable and potentially done by right in a way where we're we're harnessing the forces of the market versus trying to create essentially a mandatory fund miss johnson what what else did you have yeah we talk offline because um i don't i don't know that you're understanding but because i don't think we do that today when we talk about different zoning and i'm looking at it from a zoning perspective when we look at different zonings and the the amount of traffic to certain areas specifically sugar creek if we're going to talk about that councilmember wildlings and talks about highway 160 but we don't require um developers to make improvements because they're not responsible because their specific project doesn't warrant i i see what you're saying miss johnson i i think the actual the better example of what we do today which is somewhat similar to that is if someone goes above and beyond a certain thing they want to do like height or density in a project we have certain funds that they can contribute to like the affordable housing fund or other things of that nature by which they're allowed to go above and beyond and we get what we want out of it which is a greater either they commit to affordable housing on the property or they put into the fund where we can develop it elsewhere is that more aligned to the example uh maybe miss mathis can explain because my next question is for him as well so um he also in his document he mentioned the uh the udl and us requiring i guess that the udl be complete or at least that we take a look at that before we make a final approval of the comprehensive plan his suggestion i i understood is to kind of approve this as guidelines or in a draft form and then when we have the detail that we're that we're looking for such as the economic analysis or such as a completed udo then then we could complete it i think that that's a concern for i'll speak for myself for for me uh let's keep in mind we were originally supposed to vote on this i believe april 22nd and yet we still had all these questions there was there's been three town halls referrals to three committees that we didn't have the answers to so i i don't even know by june that we're going to have all of the answers that we're seeking so my question i guess as for the executive summary is that a possibility to approve this as counsel in draft form or in stages because um we don't have all all of the answers that we would that all of us will be comfortable in in signing on for a 20-year plan and not understanding the unintended consequences or having enough information to be associated with that legacy so if mr this can explain um if you will what he was referring to with the developer pool of dollars and also um just a little detail maybe uh or or elaboration on the uto and the the intricate uh connection that you were referring to in your document and i will uh thank you councilwoman i will direct that question to you peter but i will also just make a little asterisk to say i think the the second question you have of what is the art of the possible based on the feedback we are going to aggregate and take away really is the task of staff as they leave here today and to come back with to us with okay well these are those things so we would obviously be very interested in both of your gut reactions to that now but but i i would just ask yourself to say that is the the responsibility of what staff has to do next okay and then let me just say but please councilwoman he can answer your question if you'd like okay kind of for mr pacquiao's he'll be able to answer this he mentioned process or one of one of the gentleman mentioned process and that they didn't feel that the developers were involved in the process that would be another question you know this document predates me on council what was that process it's a great document but was the was there a group or community whose input was really taken into consideration in developing the plane great thank you councilwoman peter you can go ahead and respond to all of those that you are able miss johnson i'll try to respond and i'm going 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2021-04-25 16:25

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