The Future of Zoning Downtown

In the fall of 2014, the University of Missouri announced it had broken its enrollment record: 35,441 students now attend the university, which is 30 percent of Columbia’s population and a 31 percent increase in enrollment over the past decade.

In 1950, Columbia’s population was 31,774: almost 4,000 fewer people than MU now enrolls. During that decade, the city configured its zoning ordinances to guide the growth of a blossoming college town. MU enrollment had risen sharply with the adoption of the GI Bill and a shift toward affordability in public universities. For a time after World War II, college towns flourished, and Columbia was no exception.

In this 1950s zoning, the area bounded by Elm, Walnut, Providence and Hitt was classified as C-2: the central business district. The ordinances were tailored to create a vibrant downtown, one that was close to campus and accessible for all the new students.

Sixty years later, the C-2 zoning has become a point of contention in the debate about Columbia’s continued growth. After MU responded to funding slashes by pumping up enrollment in the mid-2000s, downtown has been flooded with development. Student housing complexes have fixed themselves among retail shops and restaurants, and they have easily found tenants willing to pay to live in The District. A 2014 report from the Columbia Vision Commission listed the downtown vacancy rate as 5 percent, which seems microscopic compared to the 25 percent the report listed for downtown in 2003, before MU began more aggressive recruiting efforts.

The city is now in the process of bringing downtown zoning up to date. Opinions are mixed. All this growth has inflamed passions and concerns from various perspectives. Some say the proposal is too flexible; others say it’s too rigid. Many aren’t really sure what effect the new ordinances would have. Zoning can be complicated.

Last fall, a failed petition gathered 5,400 signatures wanting to halt development of the District Flats, a 259-bed student housing complex being constructed on Locust Street. More recently, the impending demolition of Shakespeare’s Pizza spurred a proposed moratorium that would have halted any demolition downtown for six months. The proposal failed in City Council by a vote of 5-2. A similar proposal, intended to stop demolition of the Niedermeyer apartment building, the oldest building in Columbia, failed in 2013; that building was only saved from demolition when an MU math professor, moved by protests, purchased the property. Shakespeare’s purists had no such luck.

This summer, the city will draft ordinances based on suggestions from a consulting firm, Clarion Associates, and gather public comments about the new zoning, all to answer the hottest question around: What should we do about downtown?

The gist

The proposal currently on the table will replace C-2 with M-DT, standing for mixed-use downtown. It’s a form-based code, which puts emphasis on the type of street a building is located on rather than the current use-based code. “It’s a little bit of a different code,” says Tim Teddy, director of community development. “It’s more generalized.”

Under the proposed ordinances, any new residential development would have to provide parking. The area stretching from Locust to Walnut between 10th and Sixth would have a 10-story maximum height — the same number as Columbia’s tallest building, the Tiger Hotel. Outside of the 10-story area, there would be a six-story maximum. Conservation is a major theme of the plan, according to Teddy, and new development would have to be environment friendly.

The proposal, he says, “will enforce a more compatible transition” concerning new development’s congruency with existing structures.

The city has already adopted interim zoning based on parts of the proposal, including a two-story minimum height, minimum parking requirements and an extra layer of City Council review for buildings taller than 120 feet.

“I think people have a lot to say about it,” Teddy says. “But I think there’s been a general agreement that our ordinances need some work. It’s been a need that’s been postponed over the years, and these things tend to fossilize with time.”

The grabbing

“I’ll just be really blunt,” says John John. “There is no need for a new zoning ordinance. It’s a knee-jerk reaction from people who want more control over something that they really shouldn’t have more control over.”

John is a local real estate agent who acts as a development intermediary. He finds land for developers to build on, and he sells land for people who want it developed. After some time away from the city, John moved back to Columbia in 1990 and sat on City Council from 1999 to 2004, serving the Sixth Ward. He’s alarmed by the new ordinances — and he thinks property owners should be, too.

“It is a taking of value,” he says. “If I could sell Bengals to someone who wanted to put up a 40-story building and pay me $5 million for my half block, and if now I can’t do that, and the only person willing to buy from me is only going to pay me $3 million, then I just lost $2 million.”

John worries about a ripple effect this potential loss, and other limits on development, could bring. If developers are limited in their proposals, he says, they have two options: don’t build, or increase rent to make up for lost profit. The rent increase, in turn, would limit how many people, especially students, are able to live downtown, which would create a demand surplus, which could push rent up even further.

John estimates there is 3,000-bed deficit in student housing right now, and that number could increase if MU fulfills promises to expand further.

“Some people say, ‘Oh, I don’t go downtown anymore because of all the students,’” John says. “I’m sorry, but you haven’t been going downtown for the last 40 years. That’s why it died in the ’90s. This is a fear of the unknown combined with a false memory of the past.”

John does make some concessions. He says the zoning codes are probably out of date and don’t account for things such as car transportation. Still, he’s no less critical of City Council’s move to revamp the ordinances.
“It’s a disease of the elected,” he says. “You get asked to control things. You’re put in charge, and people come to you and say, ‘I want you to stop them from doing this.’”

The growth

Clarion Associates began working on Columbia’s new zoning in January of 2014, having been commissioned by the city for $150,000. During the process, Clarion, partner firm Ferrell Madden and the city have tried to maintain an open dialogue with the public, inviting people to suggest changes and see what’s being changed.

Caleb Colbert has been among the most dedicated followers of this process. When he was interviewed for this article, he had two three-ring binders filled with various documents related to new zoning open on his desk, along with a stapled packet from the latest meeting and several zoning-related tabs open on his computer.

Colbert is a lawyer with Brown Willbrand, a firm located on Broadway, near City Hall. One of his specialties is housing development; he’s currently getting approval for a new complex to be built near the Stadium Boulevard and Highway 63 interchange. He graduated from MU in 2007 and completed law school there in 2010. Colbert is still sympathetic to students, especially students needing a place to live and even more so if they’re looking to live downtown.

“At the end of the day, students are just consumers,” he says. “Students patronize a lot of the businesses downtown. A lot of those businesses make pretty good money on weekend nights, and that allows us business folks to eat lunch there Monday through Friday.”

Colbert pulls out a map of the proposed M-DT area, color-coded to show which new rules apply to what area. He cites a criticism he’s heard about the breadth of the proposed ordinances, including the interim two-story minimum that’s already in effect. “So now you’re going to say that Jiffy Lube and Plaza Tire have to have two stories?” he asks. “You just can’t apply the same rules to the Jiffy Lubes of the world as you can to all the things on Ninth and Cherry.”

Colbert’s objections with the proposed ordinances boil down to Columbia’s diversity. Different businesses have different needs, and different people have different needs. As he sees it, a strong downtown population translates to more business revenue, which means businesses can develop or not develop based on their individual needs rather than conforming to a new zoning code.

Predictably, Colbert doesn’t buy the notion of a student housing bubble burst, a situation where the flood of development overshoots the demand for downtown housing.

“I don’t think an influx of students are going to change the way downtown operates,” he says. “It’s all just supply and demand. You could see students that currently live in duplexes move downtown, which gives opportunities for affordable housing in the duplexes to lower-income folks. You’ll never convince me that more housing is bad for Columbia, considering the population growth.”

The good problem

The Shakespeare’s building was purchased by McAlester Park LLC, which is jointly owned by Columbia’s Rader and Odle families. The Odles operate Trittenbach Development, which built the Brookside student apartment complexes downtown.

Shakespeare’s will temporarily relocate while its building is demolished and rebuilt; once the new site is completed, the pizzeria will return. They’ve promised the original atmosphere of the restaurant will be recreated, down to the last detail, and employees have documented the interior with extensive photography.

For many Columbians, Shakespeare’s is a bitter casualty in the continuing development boom. After the April 1 announcement, the restaurant had to deny claims that it was a cruel April Fools’ Day prank.

Representatives from Trittenbach didn’t respond to requests for comment. First Ward Councilman Clyde Ruffin, who was elected in April, says it’s too early for him to comment on the zoning, as he is still gathering opinions from his constituents.

Colbert says he’s waiting to see a final draft before “digging in our heels.” He acknowledges that zoning is a delicate issue; it involves political ideologies, but it also involves the identity of the city and whether to preserve a small mid-Missouri town or embrace bigger city growth. John commissioned the MU College of Business to conduct a projection report that estimated Columbia would be at 200,000 residents in 25 years.

“We have a fantastic problem on our hands,” Colbert says. “People want to live here. People want to invest here. No matter what happens with the code, no matter what happens with the projects, Columbia is still going to be a great place to live, and people are still going to want to come here.”

Teddy says they hope to have new ordinances in effect by the end of the year, and the time has come to address the aging zoning ordinances. “Ultimately,” he says, “we’ll have to deal with a changing downtown.”