Edgewood wantsmixed-use developments

By Clare Jensen

Six months ago, Edgewood City Council put a halt on residential construction along the Meridian corridor.

After a couple of large-scale residential developments were coming through the pipeline, the council saw its vision for a bustling commercial zone slipping away and needed to figure out why. In September they voted to put a half-year moratorium on residential development to review zoning issues and evaluate whether or not the city was encouraging residential over commercial development in commercial zones along the Meridian corridor.

Since then, the planning commission has been evaluating zoning restrictions and project definitions’ alignment with the city’s comprehensive plan.

By early October, the planning commission had made three key findings: the current policy framework in the comprehensive plan for the Town Center and commercial zoning areas prioritize non-residential use; residential use is allowed and encouraged in Town Center and commercial zones, but is not considered the primary use; and the Town

Center and commercial zones were not being implemented consistently with the comprehensive plan through the development regulations – primarily Title 18 of Edgewood’s municipal codes.

“The crux of it is we really looked at issues of different land uses, density requirements and how the development regulations were implementing that,” said Edgewood Senior Planner Eric Phillips. “We strived to go for the things that were the clearest fixes.”

The most tangible change that resulted from the direction of the council during the moratorium was an update to Title 18 of the city’s development regulations, which is expected to encourage more mixed-use projects instead of 100 percent residential projects.

Phillips said this change was made because the existing development standards did not quite line up with Edgewood’s comprehensive plan. He said he feels the update to the code works toward addressing the issues the council was concerned about.

The Title 18 changes went into effect April 8, right in line with the expiration of the moratorium on April 9.

The changes basically put more lot restrictions on exclusively residential projects, which planners hope will make mixed-use projects more appealing and worthwhile for housing developers.

“The essence [of the change] allows greater use of the property for the mixed-use development…versus one that would be exclusively residential,” Phillips said.

During the period of the moratorium, Phillips said there were no new residential development proposals submitted, and there have not been any since. He said he thinks the work accomplished by the planning commission for that time period was successful.

“It was good,” he said. “It was a short period of time, and it helped clarify for the council” where they needed to go on that issue.

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