F.C. seeks to knock down barriers to infill projects

08/05/2005

Source: Northern Colorado Business Report

Author: Tom Hacker

Developers, land planners, brokers, engineers and city workers who steer development projects will put their heads together for four days beginning Aug. 8 to explore ways to dismantle barriers to redevelopment in Fort Collins.

The result, city planning officials hope, will be changes in city codes to make sure infill and redevelopment projects that could help revitalize the economy go forward.

“The question we want to answer is, ‘What can we do to strip away the impediments?’” said Cameron Gloss, director of the Fort Collins current planning department.

“We want to be able to change policies and regulation to make these kinds of projects possible.”

Developers and others who are familiar with the process — and almost all have been invited to attend — include many who have protested longest and loudest about ways city codes and regulation strangle redevelopment projects that could become economic boons for the city.

Some say they see a probability that the changes city planners are seeking will come to pass following the hands-on workshop — or “charrette.”

“I know that Cameron’s excited about what he’s doing, and that he’s the guy to do it,” said Stu MacMillan, president of newly formed Everitt MacMillan Development Inc. and one of the city’s most successful infill project developers.

“I also think they’re serious about this. They see that streamlining the process would be a great benefit to the community.”

Real estate market experts, designers and architects, developers, builders and city department employees will gather for four days at the Bas Bleu Theatre, a venue that the city chose to showcase the new charrette process.

“The theater works well for a couple of reasons,” Gloss said. “First, it’s an example of the kind of redevelopment project that this process is designed for. It’s also a place that offers great visibility for what’s going on.”

Bas Bleu opened last year ago in a former industrial building at Pine and Linden streets on the northern edge of downtown Fort Collins, one of the geographic sectors that participants in the charrette will partly focus upon.

More than a talk session, the charrette will put designers, architects, land planners and others to work drafting plans, pen to paper, for projects ideally suited for infill sites.

Gloss’ search for models for the process in other American cities yielded none.

“We did a pretty extensive literature survey,” he said. “We have yet to find a community that has gone through this process.”

Issues that daunt developers in Fort Collins run the gamut from costs of street paving to solving drainage problems to financing purchases of land that often has some sort of building in place.

The charrette process is intended to allow private developers and city planning, engineering, transportation and utility employees to find ways around the barriers that those issues impose, Gloss said.

“What we hope we’re heading for are changes in policies and regulations that resolve some of those issues,” he said.

The process also makes room for citizen involvement with a series of public meetings (see schedule); members of the public may also “look over shoulders” of charrette participants at the Bas Bleu theater during the two days devoted to design work, Gloss said.

An issue central to the process is City Plan, Fort Collins’ recently updated framework for regulating growth and development. Even with last year’s revisions to the plan, it still makes no distinction between projects in urban infill sites and those on raw land on the city fringe.

It’s a flaw that might be fixed during next week’s sessions, said Bruce Meighen, senior associate at the Fort Collins land-planning firm EDAW Inc., who has consulted with Gloss on organizing the charrette.

“People talk about the importance of redevelopment,” Meighen said. “It’s another matter to make the hard choices necessary to make redevelopment happen. What I hope we’ll emerge with is a menu of choices that the city can take up, things that say, ‘This is what the city can do to make this work.’”

Gloss said results of the charrette will be shaped into a set of recommendations that would be presented to the Fort Collins Planning and Zoning Board in the fall, with City Council action on the proposals possible before the end of the year.