City officials reviewed a stark decline in commercial valuations and residential building permits, noting that high construction costs and stagnant rent growth are steadily worsening the local housing deficit. To stimulate development and reduce costs, the city is implementing dozens of regulatory strategies, including a new comprehensive plan that eliminates most parking requirements, eases zoning for middle housing, and dramatically shortens land-use review times for projects under 200 units. Officials also discussed ways to combat a severe lack of state funding for affordable housing, exploring local interventions like land valuation discounts, pre-development funding, and allowing existing market-rate projects to renew tax exemptions by converting units to affordable housing.
Building_development
City Center Redevelopment Authority · Mar 19, 2026 · 1:25:27–1:25:41 · Watch on CVTV ↗
Keywords: zoning comprehensive plan building permits affordable housing infrastructure density
What was said
1:24:24 So we already mentioned the first two earlier. We did reduce development review times on the engineering side of things, and Chad's team is gonna continue to look at other parts of the development review process, or other words we can squeeze out time there. Single stairwell code, like I mentioned, we are working on the six-story wood frame code, as I mentioned, so hopefully that's something that we can add to this list. And then we are on track to adopt the comprehensive plan I guess it's going to, I heard yesterday it's going to Council-- - June 1. - June 1, right, so and it gets, so then effective date of it would be-- - I guess 60 days after that. - So 60, so it's a massive change in land use for the city, and so you can see this is just a highlight of some of the things that are gonna be coming through there.
1:25:21 Elimination of most parking requirements. There's gonna be substantial change of single-family zoning that will allow for this middle housing to happen in a lot more places, and then there's some of the things. So massive changes coming, when we look across the state and say okay, who's doing what on housing when you look at the broad spectrum of things from on the land use side, on the investment side, fees, and then kind of our own advocacy on this. We're not sure there's many communities that are doing more, and so there is a frustration on our part that we really are, negative rent growth is still dominating, it overrules everything that we do. - Patrick, could I add-- - Yeah, please do. - One thing, it doesn't show up here, but another way we're reducing development review timelines as part of the comprehensive plan
1:26:20 is any projects that's 200 units or fewer will be classified as a type one land use action, which is a 28-day land use review instead of 90. So a huge decrease in time spent by the developer. We're gonna have to really improve our processes
Evidence (1 match)
direct keyword 1:25:27–1:25:41 zoning, comprehensive plan, building permits, affordable housing, infrastructure, density
it's a massive change in land use for the city, and so you can see this is just a highlight of some of the things that are gonna be coming through there. Elimination of most parking requirements. There's gonna be substantial change of single-family zoning that will allow for this middle housing to happen in a lot more places, and then there's some of the things. So massive changes coming, when we look across the state and say okay, who's doing what on housing when you look at the broad spectrum