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PRESENTATION OF THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE NORMAN 2025 LAND USE AND TRANSPORTATION PLAN
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BACKGROUND: Since the 1997 adoption of the Norman 2020 Land Use and Transportation Plan (Norman 2020), and its successor, the Norman 2025 Land Use and Transportation Plan (Norman 2025), adopted in 2004, the Planning and Community Development Department staff has produced an annual report on the status of development in the City of Norman. This year’s report summarizes development activity for calendar year 2016. Staff provides this annual report to Planning Commission and City Council members to allow comparison of the pace of growth anticipated by the land use plan and its companion document Norman 2025 Land Demand Analysis (Land Demand) to the actual rate of development that has occurred in the community.
This report consists of nine sections. Each section describes different aspects of development and planning that has occurred in the City of Norman during 2016. The section begins with a narrative and is followed by maps and tables that include statistical summaries of the amount, type, and location of development and construction in Norman for Calendar Year 2016. Several tables include information dating back five years. These tables put the current year’s development into a temporal context and illustrate trends and changes that have occurred in recent years.
DISCUSSION:
SPECIAL PROJECTS:
Center City Form Base Code
Public meetings on the Form-Based Code were held in January, 2016. After those meetings, the work conducted on the Center City Form Based Code was focused on discussions with the Steering Committee to finalize the draft code. There were several Steering Committee meetings to define the approval process for development in the Center City boundary and additional meetings with developers to hear their concerns. City Staff organized meetings with residential developers from the Center City area. Three meetings were held on May 25, June 3 and June 17, 2016. The Steering Committee met on June 30, 2016 and finalized their comments on the draft Form Based Code.
Staff received the final draft of the Form Based Code from the consultant in September, 2016 and scheduled presentations by the consultant, Mary Madden, for Study Sessions with City Council in October and November. City Council held additional meetings to discuss incentives in December, 2016 and January, February and March, 2017 and directed staff to begin the public hearing process on the Code.
Comprehensive Plan
The staff concluded negotiations with MIG and submitted the contract for approval to the City Council on March 22, 2016. The contract was approved and we began preparing background information for the consultant team. The City Council approved the members of the Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee on July 12th. The consultants made their first visit to Norman on July 19 and 20. The consultants toured Norman and met with staff in various departments on day one. The meetings with staff provided an overview of the project process and objectives and then a facilitated discussion was conducted to compile staff’s input on assets, issues and opportunities for the future of Norman. The consultant team held stakeholder interviews, met with City Council and held the first Steering Committee meeting on day two. The Steering Committee meetings have been held regularly with the Steering Committee in July, September, October and December, 2016 and February, March and May 2017. There also were two intercept events in October, 2016, three community meetings held, one in September, 2016 in central Norman and one in March, 2017 in east Norman, and one in May, 2017 at City Hall.
Historic District
For the first time since 1997, Norman’s City Council designated a new local historic district at the request of the neighborhood’s residents. A committee of residents of the Southridge Neighborhood worked for many months gathering signatures and submitting the required documents. While this effort was not initiated by the City of Norman, City staff was available to assist the neighborhood. As part of that assistance, the City of Norman, with the use of Certified Local Government funds, commissioned an Intensive Level Historical Survey of the Southridge Neighborhood by a qualified architectural historian. That survey was completed in June of 2015. The area surveyed runs from Macy Street on the north down to Enid Street on the south and is bounded between the railroad tracks on the west and Oklahoma Avenue on the east. The final historic district boundaries were determined by the neighborhood and the support of the property owners in the Southridge Neighborhood. The neighborhood leaders with the information from the Southridge Historic Survey were successful in receiving support for historic district designation and in October 2016 the City Council approved a City Ordinance designating a part of the Southridge neighborhood as a historic district.
Zoning Petitions
There were three citizen initiated neighborhood rezoning applications submitted in 2016. The applicants and petitioners submitted requests to rezone from R-3, Multi-Family to R-1, Single Family. According to the Zoning Ordinance, Section 442.1-Amendments, “Whenever the owners of fifty-one percent (51%) of the land in any area shall present a petition duly signed and acknowledged requesting an amendment of the regulations prescribed for such area, it shall be the duty of the City Council to vote upon such amendment within ninety (90) days of the filing of the same by the petitioners with the City Clerk.” Each of the applications had the support of the owners owning more than 51% of the property within their respective application boundaries. These requests were brought forward in response to the rapid redevelopment of core areas from single family housing into large duplexes targeted at students.
CODE AMENDMENTS:
The City Council approved two major Code changes in 2016. One was an amendment to the Sign Code to allow feather flags and banners. In response to local merchants’ concerns staff amended the Sign Code to allow feather flags/banners in certain zoning districts with specific regulations regarding duration, location, square footage, height, spacing setback, illumination and number. They will be allowed in all zoning districts except low density residential and they are prohibited from locating in the public right-of-way.
The other change was in response to the newly adopted State Senate Bill No. 424 allowing craft breweries to serve and sell craft beers at their business site. Staff prepared an amendment to the I-1 Zoning District to assist local breweries in growing their business and allowing for the sale and consumption of alcohol on-site. The manufacturing of craft beer or spirits was an allowed use in the I-1 District, and the amendment will allow for the sale of beer, wine, and spirits, and associated retail merchandise in compliance with the Oklahoma Able Commission. In December, 2016 City Council approved the amendment to Section 426.1, I-1, Light Industrial District of the Zoning Ordinance.
DEVELOPMENT:
2016 was a very active construction year with more than $400 million of construction permitted which is more than $160 million more than the most recent year. Both residential and non-residential posted their best year of the five-year period. Since the 2004 adoption of the Norman 2025 Plan, Norman’s pace of multi-family residential construction has consistently surpassed assumptions made in the plan and Land Demand. 2016 was no exception to this with 993 units permitted. This is well above the 114 predicted by Norman 2025. The five-year average for number of residential units is 188% the number predicted in the Land Demand. The only category of residential that is below what was predicted is single family, which is 78% of the predicted number of units.
Non-residential had its best year of this five-year period. Over $184 million of construction was permitted, which is approximately $98 million more than 2012, which was the next best year of the reporting period. New non-residential construction in 2016 totaled $102.2 million up from $50.2 million the previous year.
The total value of non-residential construction was $184.2 million, which is up $105 million from 2015. The non-residential permits included additions and alterations to Norman Public Schools and Little Axe properties with a total construction value of $4,415,000. The Westwood Pool new construction permit has a total value of $10,552,000, and new construction permits in the University North Park area have a total value of $12,533,437. The permits for the Women’s Healthcare Building and the Best Western Hotel in the Healthplex development have a new construction value of $18,450,000.
The total value of single family houses permitted was $90.7 million and the average value of the individual unit is $275,800 down from $278,700 the previous year. This is the first year that the value of individual new single-family units has not increased during the period. The number of units was also the lowest of the reporting period. The soft single-family market was more than made up for by the booming multifamily market. Almost 1000 multifamily units were permitted this period and they included both student oriented complexes such as the Callaway House on Brooks Street and more traditional apartment housing in the University North Park area. The number of duplexes permitted jumped 300% in 2016 up to 66 from 22 the previous year.
Total construction value was more than $125 million more than 2014, which was the next highest year in the reporting period.
LAND USE PLAN AND ZONING AMENDMENTS
The City of Norman processed eight applications for amendments to the Norman 2025 Land Use and Transportation Plan in 2016. This was a decrease of two from 2015 in the total number of applications with 800 acres involved, about 680 acres more than in 2015. All but one of these changes was less than 10 acres. The largest was the Destin Landing Master Plan that moved 760 acres of land from Very Low Density Residential to Mixed Use.
The City of Norman acted on 22 applications for rezoning during calendar year 2016, four more than were processed in 2015. More than half of the Zoning Amendments were less than 5 acres in size. As with the land use amendments, the largest zoning application was for the 760 acres for the Master Plan for Destin Landing. Other large zoning amendments included the creation of the new Historic District and the three down zonings from R-3 to R-1.
RECOMMENDATION: Staff presents the Annual 2016 Status Report on Development and the Norman 2025 Plan for your review and information.