Providence City Plan Commission, June 18, 2024 meeting
Call to Order and Roll Call
The City Plan Commission meeting is called to order, followed by a roll call of the commissioners and staff present. The chair notes that there are no minutes to approve or director's report, and moves directly to the first agenda item.
Comprehensive Plan Presentation by Staff
Planning Director Joe Mulligan, Tim Shea, and Deputy Director Bob Azar present an overview of the draft Comprehensive Plan and its key elements. They discuss the extensive community outreach process, address feedback received regarding land use, housing, and mobility, and explain the proposed addendum changes.
Public Comment on the Comprehensive Plan
Members of the public, neighborhood association representatives, and elected officials provide feedback on the draft Comprehensive Plan. Speakers address various topics including housing affordability, historic preservation, transit hub relocation, and environmental justice concerns.
Staff Report and Recommendations
Deputy Director Bob Azar presents the staff report and outlines the procedural steps for sending the Comprehensive Plan to the City Council. He recommends specific actions, including a vote on the Ward 6 amendment and a zoning adjustment for a parcel on Dyer Street.
Vote on Ward 6 Amendment
The Commission votes on Councilman Miguel Sanchez's request to separate the Ward 6 zoning amendment from the main plan. The motion to approve the future land use map and zoning changes for the specified parcels passes unanimously.
Commission Discussion and Vote on the Comprehensive Plan
The commissioners discuss additional recommendations to incorporate into the Comprehensive Plan, including specific zoning changes and transit edits. The Commission then votes unanimously to approve the Comprehensive Plan with these recommendations and send it to the City Council.
Adjournment
Following the final vote on the Comprehensive Plan, the chair calls for a motion to adjourn the meeting. The motion is made, seconded, and approved, officially ending the session.
Speaker 0
-
Fire up your rods. Mike Can you do a Mike test every month? Just make sure. Check one, two. Turn up to maybe three quarters on your mics.
Speaker 1
-
Good. Testing. Testing. Oh, well done. Check one, Hello.
Speaker 2
-
Alright.
Speaker 3
-
Sorry. Go for it.
Speaker 2
-
Yep. That's live. Alright. Good evening. We will call this, this regular meeting of the city plan commission to order.
Speaker 2
-
Today is June 18. We'll start with a roll call. Noel Sanchez. Will Sherry. Dave Caldwell.
Speaker 2
-
Miguel Casado.
Speaker 4
-
Troy Yann, manager of our deputy staff.
Speaker 2
-
Robert Azar, staff.
Speaker 5
-
Sharon Gardner, legal counsel.
Speaker 2
-
And I'm Michael Gazzdaco, chair. We don't have any minutes to approve. I don't believe we're going to have a director's report. I think we're just going to get into agenda item number one, which is the comprehensive plan. Thank you,
Speaker 0
-
mister chair. The moment we've all been waiting for for, quite some time. What we're gonna do is, is, have a little bit of a introduction presentation by staff, and then we'll get right into public comment. So, to kick us off, we have, planning director, Joe Mulligan.
Speaker 6
-
Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, for the members of the public who are able to come this evening, but also who have been able to comment, and participate in the crafting of this comprehensive plan document. And thank you for the members of the commission who are here tonight to review and, and make a a determination on that. The process has been going on for about two years now.
Speaker 6
-
So a two year start up and, deliberation and review, for a plan that should last us for the next decade moving forward. And what is, occurred over that period of time is the a substantial amount of community outreach, including well over 80, public engagements with the community. The comp plan, by requirement, is one or two community engagements, and that's what you'll get in most communities. But Providence has has gone far beyond in order that we could reach out to as many folks and as many interested parties throughout the city of Providence and and beyond. So we we've got comments from visitors and and others who are also have an appreciation for this great city.
Speaker 6
-
The chapters that have been provided were prepared by subject matter experts, throughout the city, different department heads and their staff reviewed internally and and reviewed by the community and the public with the commentary and the and the edits that have come forward over the last several months and have been incorporated into the document that will be reviewed and discussed this evening. We believe that this document, based on the the amount of input that we've received and the the thoughtful incorporation of the comments as well as the structure and the, the overall content that has been provided is this comprehensive plan, as we, have it documented today, we believe meets the moment, meets the moment in which Providence has has got the plan for its future in a time of uncertainty in which our downtown businesses are are adjusting to a post pandemic world of work from home where prices have gone far beyond the affordability for many residents here, including rental costs with the in the midst of a housing crisis. And this plan really positions more so than probably any plan in Providence's modern history to position it in a substantial way for growth that we believe is is equitable, fair, and and the right thing to do.
Speaker 6
-
And in addition, it addresses concerns about our economic growth, about our physical form, about our open space, about mobility, about transportation, and and all the issues that we have come to love and appreciate about this city. So I'm hoping as the evening progresses, I'm sure there'll be lots of comments from those who are present today as well as, deliberation by the commission. But if we approach this, you know, this is this is a moment in time, for the plan in which it is reviewed by the commission and then advanced to city council for for further review and adoption. So we're hoping that the conversation, the dialogue is one that appreciates the work that's been put in, is cognizant of all the accommodations that are made, not only from the commentary, but for those who who might not be in the room, for those whose voices aren't here, who aren't present and appreciates the balance that we have to provide between public commentary and the interest of the city as a whole. Although we are a great city and comprised of many individuals, we have to look at things in a in a collective way in a spirit that is is respectful and and cooperative of all those different issues that are inputted into this.
Speaker 6
-
So with that, I'd like to hand it over to Bob to Tim Shea, who's going to run through some presentations here to update folks on the current plan, maybe a little bit of review of how far we've come, over time, and a little preview of what we're going to experience moving forward. And I also would like to thank Bob Bezar and his staff for the tremendous amount of work that's been put into this plan and the adoption of cumulative decades of experience and and a great love and affinity for the city of Providence. And thanks to the commission staff for taking your time and the the amount of effort that you put into this deliberation, and I appreciate all your time as well. Thank you.
Speaker 0
-
And just a, a shout out to our friends over at, Providence's Department of Public Property for the new chairs. For those of you, who might have food or drink, please be respectful of these chairs. We hope that they won't won't, be stained like the last ones at least for the next few months. They need to last until the next comp plan update. So Oh, cheers.
Speaker 0
-
That's a good goal. Put that in.
Speaker 7
-
Great. Okay. Thank you.
Speaker 8
-
Thank you so much. Thanks thanks, Joe, Bob, and the commission for for having us here today. As Joe alluded, I'm gonna share a brief introduction to remind us about the process that brought us here today and give a short overview of the draft plan as it is before deputy director Azar discusses the feedback we've received so far, and some of the changes that have been made in response to that feedback. So the draft before you today is informed by a participation process that took place over several years. It was designed to be inclusive, collaborative, meet people where they are in their neighborhoods, and iterate throughout the whole process from listening to how we all experience the city change and identify key issues to brainstorming collaboratively solutions to those issues to now sharing out those draft proposals and asking for feedback.
Speaker 8
-
So methods have really varied throughout this process from tabling at your block part at neighborhood block parties to workshops cohosted with community organizations and elected officials, to online engagement and more. And, you know, a few key takeaways that we've heard throughout this process and have repeated to the commission before, so I won't won't dwell on them too too long. But, you know, Providence residents are you know, we're we're fiercely proud of our city. We love our communities, their diversity, their culture, their walkability, but the city is changing as all cities are, do, and not always for the better. So we heard a lot about issues around housing affordability.
Speaker 8
-
It's a top issue in every neighborhood, improving our transportation system, preparing for climate change, and and much, much more. But, we've transitioned now from this period of community feed in to community feedback on proposals, and we've come to you with a draft plan that has nine different elements. So we're trying to guide change through this road map of goals and objectives and strategies across these topic areas. And just briefly to kind of sum up, keep all I'm gonna attempt in the next few minutes to just sum up, you know, a sentence for each of these elements to give you a quick reminder as we've introduced the draft chapters, in recent months. But in our chapter on sustainability, resilience in the environment, you know, we're really preparing for climate change.
Speaker 8
-
We're enhancing the natural environment by incorporating best practices in reducing fossil fuel emissions, improving resilience to extreme weather, more on environmental conservation, and importantly, centering equity and environmental justice. In the built environment, we aim to preserve and enhance Providence's unique urban design through improved design standards and review processes, embracing adaptive reuse of buildings and green building practices, expanding preservation efforts and historic districts. And then economic development strategies here aim to adapt and grow the city's economy through attention to key sectors like the blue and green economy, life sciences, arts and culture, but also workforce and small business development, improvements to city services and infrastructure. Housing is a very important area that's, discussed later in land use, but also has its own chapter that focused on responding to the crisis that we face by encouraging the production of new, units and the rehabilitation of existing units with particular focus on expanding long term deed restricted affordable housing, housing for people with special needs, housing near transit, and housing design that considers energy efficiency and accessibility. The mobility chapter seeks to accelerate the city's transition to a multimodal transportation system that improves safety and connections for all modes of transportation that increases transit and residents who use transit, who walk, who bike, and codifies a lot of local, state, and federal plans and guidelines that really emphasize a transition to complete streets.
Speaker 8
-
In our arts and culture, chapter, we codify goals and strategies that were created recently by the creative community, in the city themselves that aim to foster a vibrant and artistic culture in our city while centering the well-being of artists and culture bearers and creatives to all of our benefit to civic life in the city, to the vibrancy of our neighborhoods, to the vibrancy of public spaces, and much more. In people and public spaces, we try to continue investing in and expanding the city's park system with programming and infrastructure that's responsive to the needs of our diverse community, with investments in green infrastructure and stormwater management in these spaces with improved access and links between our parks and opportunities for community participation throughout and design of new parks and maintenance and programming. And then as we move into community services and facilities, we, outline ways to improve the quality and coordination of several different forms of city services and public facilities from our water system to school buildings to our three one one system itself. And finally, in the land use chapter, the chapter here, you know, responds to that question of where and how should Providence grow with proposals to make it easier to build housing and mixed use development across our city, while broadly still respecting the built environment and quality of life in our neighborhoods.
Speaker 8
-
Building types that we allow here range from accessory dwelling units in in all residential areas to missing middle housing types, including duplexes and small multi families to larger scale mixed use transit oriented development where appropriate along key corridors. And then in industrial land use, the draft outlines a shift toward prioritizing the growth of cleaner and more sustainable forms of industry and transitioning away from carbon intensive sectors. So as you can see, a lot is covered in this draft plan, and a lot of intention and thought went into it both on the behalf of our planning staff and city departments, but also on half the members of the public who participated in this process over the last few years. Most you know, all of whom shared thoughtful feedback, and ideas early in the process and then feedback later in the process. And so just briefly in the in the last few months as we've been sharing out the draft chapters, I just have some numbers on the feedback that we've received before I hand it over to dive into this this feedback a little further.
Speaker 8
-
So we we've gotten about 75 comments at various city plan commissions as we unveiled draft chapters. We held five feedback events at libraries around the city, Northeast, Southwest, and Central, and then we set up a a standing exhibit here in the building. And through that process, we received about 275 comments. And then we've also had individuals and community organizations submitting letters and submitting their ideas and and feedback, on these chapters. So I'm gonna hand it over to deputy director Azar, who's gonna talk us through through a bit of this feedback and some changes.
Speaker 0
-
Great. Thank you, Tim. So and, also, thanks to everybody for coming out tonight and joining us online. I think there are probably many of you, maybe a dozen or more who have been at every single one of these meetings, and
Speaker 2
-
I give you a lot
Speaker 0
-
of credit for that. I I, you
Speaker 2
-
know, I get paid to
Speaker 0
-
do this. You guys don't, and I really appreciate that that you have that kind of dedication to to follow along with us and and hopefully hopefully at least understand, if not completely support everything we're doing. So the first thing I wanna do is talk about the addendum that we published on June 11. This was in response to comments that we had received up to probably about a week before that. And then after I talk about this, I'm gonna talk about other comments that have come in since we published the addendum.
Speaker 0
-
So with respect to land use, there were a lot of comments about, specifically industrial uses and, and their impact on, neighborhoods that are next to industrial areas. So we have made some, changes to, clarify that uses that conflict with public health and or climate goals may be prohibited. We're not saying they shall be prohibited. We're saying they may be prohibited. That is a determination that will be made in the next phase, which is which is the formulation of the zoning changes that that come out
Speaker 1
-
of
Speaker 0
-
this. I wanna stress that that we believe that industrial uses should exist in the city, but that they should abide by abide by environmental regulations. If they can't, then this opens the door to further regulating them. So we've added language there about about that. We've added language referring to the cumulative impacts of different types of uses, and we have also, outlined future efforts to encourage clean, sustainable, and resilient industry.
Speaker 0
-
With respect to land use, we're gonna talk about that a little bit more. We finally included the historic district, well, the the overlay map that includes adding, 36 individually listed national registered properties into the historic district. And then we added six strategies with respect to, rail, bicycling, and driving in the mobility section. Okay. So then, we as I've mentioned, we've received some additional feedback.
Speaker 0
-
They are have been in in three, general categories, and I I wanna address each one of these bullets. A lot of the comments were in the first column came from the Providence Preservation Society with respect to expanding historic districts. So they would like us to talk a lot more about national registered districts, because they are distributed more evenly throughout the city than, our local historic districts. So a couple of things. First of all, we do identify all national registered districts in the appendix.
Speaker 0
-
We don't, it's important to dis distinguish national registered districts from local historic districts because without a local historic district, we don't have any regulatory authority. So local historic districts are the tool that are used at the local level. With respect to National Register and local, historic districts, There are 36 properties we're we're proposing to add to our local historic districts. One is a request from a homeowner, and the remaining 35 represent all of the individually listed national registered properties that are not already in local historic districts. So the the the aim is that all, individually listed national registered historic properties be in historic districts.
Speaker 0
-
That's included. And then we are continuing to evaluate new districts and new types of districts, on an ongoing basis. Alright. Adaptive reuse. We talk about adaptive reuse throughout this plan in the sustainability section, the built environment section, the housing section, and in the land use section.
Speaker 0
-
So I I do think that it's something that we stress. In addition, we have just implemented new regulations that, allow for the adaptive reuse of of nonresidential buildings into residential in all zoning districts. That's one of those provisions that came to us from the general assembly. So I think we're very strong on adaptive reuse. With respect to demolition, we we mentioned a number of times demolition, in the built environment section, in the housing section, in the land use section.
Speaker 0
-
In general, what we're saying is, discourage demolition, especially demolition of housing, and also enforce come up with new enforcement tools against illegal demolition. Okay. With respect to a citizen design review committee, this was a recommendation from PPS. I wanna start off by saying that we have a very strong tradition of design review in our historic districts, the Capital Center District, the downtown district, and and the I one ninety five commission has carried on that tradition. We also have in Providence a tradition, where where there are some voluntarily voluntary organizations that do design review.
Speaker 0
-
The WBNA and PPS have committees. We have, in at the end of last year, we we implemented new tools for the city plan commission to, conduct design review, particularly, when when it finds there are adverse impacts to the built environment, and and also when developers are asking for additional development capacity. This body has the ability to do that. We have we have a builder. We have someone with real estate experience, actually, two builders, and we have an architect on this board.
Speaker 0
-
So I think that that that you will see a lot more attention being paid to design with projects that come in front of this. For projects that don't come in front of this board, since January, we have implemented new practices within the department where every significant new building gets reviewed by the by professionals in the planning department and the zoning department, one an architect, and another a specialist in in urban design. And I have to say that project has has yielded some some very good results. So, respectfully, we don't believe that there should be yet another level of design review. Okay.
Speaker 0
-
I'm now on the last bullet in the first column, very concerns about the impact of of density. In the built environment, the housing, land use section, we talk about density, what it means, where it's appropriate, and we talk about the fact that that we need to maintain the city's character as we add new development. We say that multiple times, and, I would say that that's kind of the core of the comprehensive plan. If you had to sum up the comprehensive plan in in one sentence, it would be encourage and accommodate growth while while preserving the best of of providence. And in order to do that, we have to direct growth to certain areas, and that's what we do, and I think we do it in a very thoughtful way.
Speaker 0
-
Okay. Next, we're into the second column. A lot of these comments come from a form letter that that has been rolling in over, the past couple of days. I think we got maybe 30 or 40 of these. I wanna address the, the comments in that form letter.
Speaker 0
-
Okay. First, they call for, reducing lot size requirements. We've already done a lot of this. In 2022, we eliminated the requirement for merger of undersized, contiguous lots. That opened up, perhaps a thousand properties, to be, developed where the law prevented them from being developed previously.
Speaker 0
-
In 2023, we eliminated rules that reduced the number of units allowed on undersized lots. That's in response to the state law changes. For example, on a 3,200 square foot lot in a three family zone, you could get one unit. Now you can get three. Okay?
Speaker 0
-
We're also, proposing to allow for ADUs. The state just required it. We were we were moving ahead with that anyway. This will allow thousands of new units. They call for legalizing duplexes.
Speaker 0
-
Duplexes will be legal in all residential zones except for R 1, but we're gonna allow for accessory dwelling units in R 1. So if you have a single family home and an ADU, that's two units. That's the same number of units as a as a duplex. So our single family zones will essentially become single family plus ADU, two family, call it what you will, two units. K?
Speaker 0
-
Legalize small multifamily buildings. We're proposing to do that by special use permit in R 3 and by right in R 4. We're rezoning 2,800 properties to R 4. Legalize semi detached single family homes. We propose that row houses be allowed in single family zones, all residential zones.