I would like to call to order the city council study session of April 24th of April 23rd, 2024.

Clerk, will you please call the role?

Councilmember Bushnell.

Present.

Councilmember Daniels.

Councilmember Diaz.

Deputy Mayor Hines.

Councilmember Ramba.

Absent.

Councilmember Scott.

Councilmember Ashka.

Absent Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Woodards here.

Mayor and Council members the study session material sent to you at 1101.

Thank you.

Our first agenda item today is urban design review public hearing preparation.

And at this point, I'd like to call on planning and development services senior planner.

Nope.

I am not seeing the person whose name is in front to me.

Oh no, it is Stephen.

Stephen, you know what's so funny?

I see Stephen.

I saw Stephen A, and before I could see the rest of your name, I said Atkinson, he's not here.

Stephen, is it Antipo?

And two Pit, yes.

And two pit.

Okay, wonderful, Steven.

Sorry about that.

And I'm gonna call on Steven to begin the presentation.

Thank you, Mayor Woodards and Council members.

Um this is the first time uh we've been to study session, and so I appreciate the confusion because the the regular visitor um is the other Stephen A.

Um, I'm Stephen Antoupit, uh senior planner in planning and development services, and with me uh Carl Metz, senior planner, also in the uh urban design studio.

And we also have with us uh Brett Santa from the planning commission, also an architect at McGrana and Architects.

Wonderful.

Well, well, welcome and glad to have you here today.

Thank you very much for having us.

We really appreciate the opportunity.

And while we have had um a lot of uh contact with uh through the um infrastructure planning and sustainability uh committee and have briefed others of you recently, we're really excited to present um this body of work uh to hear here to you today.

Um I would like the next slide, please.

So what we'd like to do uh today in anticipation of um the hearing that's scheduled for this evening, um, is briefly review uh the logic behind why creating the urban design project review program um go through uh the at a high level the contours of the recommendation that came through the IPS committee um briefly uh point out the outline of implementation that we expect and then the proposed decision calendar, uh which we hope to move um expeditiously uh with you, although this has been a work in progress for some time.

Uh next slide, please.

Um so this is a good question.

Um what problems does this solve?

Why are we even doing this?

Well, there are um there are competing um challenges uh that we are are hoping to to come with a balanced response to.

Um we know that um across the city uh there have been um inequitable development results uh in various parts of the city.

Um and partly that's a function of the fact that what we do now with our land use code through standards which are prescriptive, they can't necessarily support um good outcomes or necessarily leave room for design innovation.

Um and in addition, and I think you're all very sensitive and aware to this.

There's also um been limited community awareness of large transformational projects um around the city, and is there a way to help um improve transparency while balancing um the other objectives that um the the city has?

And so the the basic guidance for this comes um from the comprehensive plan uh which has specific policy guidance creating this program, but even since then um your priorities uh for a healthy community are really um can be supported and moved forward uh with this uh proposal um around equity equity, about livability, um, about climate responsiveness and all those ingredients um for creating a healthy community are really what this is about, and it's just one more tool um that we haven't availed ourselves of in order to make that possible.

Um and and for those reasons um we we're moving forward with the sense uh that design matters, design matters um for everyone's well-being.

Um we've had an extensive process uh working through the IPS um committee.

Um next slide, please.

Um, and that concluded earlier this year in February.

Um, but really the guidance that we got from IPS um was over the course of working with the committee for about two years as we've been building the the program proposal and the guidance that is uh reflected that that came from IPS uh is important uh on a number of these these fronts to balance the objectives that we've that we've talked about.

And they're also very reflective of lessons learned from other communities and how they have improved how they're engaging the community and develop large development projects in a way that supports livability.

So the guidance that we've gotten, and you'll see on the screen, is is pretty specific, and we're really thankful to have had that kind of ongoing engagement with the IPS committee.

So effective early public engagement, focusing community engagement very early at a conceptual design step of the process.

That's important both for community understanding of what's what's possible and what isn't, but also to add value to applicants to development teams to designers' work before they invest a lot of effort in their projects.