Commissioner J.R. Rigby: What You Should Know About Oxford Commons

*Editor’s Note: To see previously written news articles of the Planning Commission’s Jan. 8 and Feb. 12 meetings regarding Case 2267, read Planning Staff Withdraws Request to Change Zoning in Oxford Commons District and Angry Oxford Commons Residents Packed the Room in Planning Commission Meeting.

Monday night’s Planning Commission agenda included three cases concerning the Oxford Commons Planned Unit Development (PUD) on Sisk Ave. east of Highway 7. These cases raised concerns from residents expressed through numerous emails, phone calls and letters to the Planning Commission. Recurrent themes in these contacts suggested that circulation of some fundamental information in the cases might be warranted. The following Q&A is an attempt to address this need. I will begin with the big picture of what happened on Monday night regarding Case 2267 and what happens now. I will then address some more detailed questions relating to the development before closing with a short discussion of the vision for Oxford Commons, past and present.

What happened Monday night?
Case 2267 on the Planning Commission agenda for Monday night’s meeting was intended to be a public hearing for the details of a Planning Department staff recommendation to repair the errors and dysfunctional elements of the governing documents for the Oxford Commons PUD. The recommendation proposed to increase the development potential on the tracts where property owners had been left with zero potential due to mistakes and missing administrative details in the governing documents. In response to overwhelmingly negative feedback from Oxford Commons residents, the Planning Department staff withdrew their recommendation from the Planning Commission agenda at the hearing on Monday evening. With the withdrawal of the agenda item and the denial of requests to rezone constituent properties out of the PUD, no change to the zoning of Oxford Commons PUD that would keep the PUD intact and fix its governing documents was heard by the commission. This inaction is not a solution, however, and it leaves the problematic future of Oxford Commons in the hands of the developers.
What now?
Because no corrections were made to the governing documents of the Oxford Commons PUD Monday night, six commercial properties (totaling seven acres) will be forced to remain vacant. The governing documents do not specify how goals such as the 100 plus acres of land area devoted to recreational space will be created or preserved among the many properties making up the PUD. There is also still no mechanism to distribute the square footage assigned to undeveloped tracts of the PUD comprising multiple property owners where development potential is still available. Thus, development proposals will be received and approved on a first-come, first-serve basis by the Planning Department until all of the allotted square footage for each tract has been obligated.
Additionally, the current allocation mechanism does not effectively manage density for individual commercial lots within the larger tracts. With a five-story height limit by right in the affected areas, in effect the remaining square footage for an entire tract could be used by a single property owner building to the maximum height allowance on a single, relatively small lot. Thus, the current zoning in the PUD is also the scenario most likely to result in a high-rise at Oxford Commons, one that could further result in a tall building surrounded by undevelopable lots. This is one potential outcome of the current zoning that the city sought to fix.
What is the height limit for development in Oxford Commons?
For lots within 3,000 feet of Highway 7 and zoned Suburban Center (SCN) or Suburban Corridor (SCO), the existing allowance is five stories (max 65 feet) by right. These conditions apply to most of the commercial property in Oxford Commons. “By right” means that developers need no special permission from Planning Department staff, Planning Commission or the Board of Aldermen to build to this height. This height allowance was granted in the original PUD ordinance.
Are multi-family residential units allowed in Oxford Commons?
Currently, up to 414 multi-family units are allowed on tracts A and B1 with another 464 attached units (townhomes, condominiums) allowed on tract E. The original PUD documents (2005) included some residential potential on tract A1 as a mixed-use tract, but this potential was removed in a complicated set of revisions leading to the 2015 PUD documents. The staff recommendation for Case 2267 included restoring this potential to A1. The Oxford Commons PUD also includes a restriction that no multi-family unit may have more than three bedrooms.
Is rental housing allowed in Oxford Commons?
The only restriction on rentals in the Oxford Commons PUD is a requirement on tract A that units be marketed for individual ownership. This does not prevent individuals from renting out units subsequently, nor does it limit the number of units an individual may buy and subsequently offer for rent. No other tracts within the PUD have such a restriction.
Are the residential units intended for student housing?
Based on the Vision 2037 Comprehensive Plan, the Planning Department does not see a need for increasing student housing in the city, and policies to increase multi-family housing should not be interpreted as such. The housing analysis in the Comprehensive Plan demonstrates that Oxford needs an increased diversity of housing options to meet demand. The plan also recognizes, for example, that one of the groups contributing most to housing demand, and also most in need of diverse housing options, is the 25-44 age group, which includes young families. This demographic accounts for over half of the forecasted demand for new housing units. In the Vision 2037 housing analysis, this demographic also occupied over a third of the city’s rental units. Providing diverse housing options within walking distance of two city schools would be a significant benefit to the Oxford Commons PUD as well as the broader community.
What is FAR?
FAR is a piece of technical jargon that has come up in the discussion of development density in Oxford Commons. FAR, or floor-area-ratio, is the ratio of developed floor area to the land area of a parcel. If you own a one-acre lot and you have a one-story home that covers half the lot, your FAR is 0.5. If you instead have a two-story home with the same total floor area, your FAR would still be 0.5, though the building would take up less space on the lot.
Would an increase in commercial density result in development similar to West Jackson Avenue?
All of the commercial tracts in the PUD between Highway 7 and the high school will have FARs between 0.1 and 0.35 if developed to their current full potential. I asked Planning Department staff what other parts of the city have a similar FAR. The Galleria II shopping center on West Jackson Ave. has an average FAR close to 0.25. The Courthouse Square, for comparison, has a FAR of 2, or nearly 10 times that of the Galleria II.
The Oxford Commons PUD was once marketed as Oxford’s “second Square” for its focus on walkability and dense central development. While a FAR of 2 is unrealistic in Oxford Commons, limiting density to that comparable with the Galleria II should raise concern that the result of the current zoning in the PUD will be more sprawling development like that of West Jackson Ave.
Would increasing commercial square footage result in high-rises?
The Planning Department staff recommendation included an increase in the development potential up to a FAR of 0.75 on currently vacant properties in tract A1. Would this result in a high-rise? Since for a FAR of 0.75 the potential floor area of a one-story building would only take up 75 percent of the lot area, the most likely configuration would be a two-story building. If, for example, a three-story building were built, this would result in a building covering only a quarter of the lot. This might be done perhaps in order to allot the other 75 percent of the lot to green space and parking, but would certainly not in any way be a necessary result of allowing a FAR of 0.75.
Why increase density with the current traffic situation?
Development in the Oxford Commons PUD is currently limited by inadequate transportation connectivity. The city is addressing this problem with the Sisk Ave. extension and by seeking means of improving the exit from Highway 7 onto Sisk Ave. At issue in the zoning discussion is the future development potential of the PUD. If present transportation infrastructure were the determining factor, we should stop all development in the PUD at its current level. Clearly that is both unreasonable and undesirable. The question is, rather, what the development potential should be, given adequate transportation connectivity in the future. With Oxford Commons situated in proximity to three state highways, none of the zoning proposals under consideration should be rejected based on what is currently considered reasonable expectations of future transportation connectivity.
Why was the alternative proposal not supported by staff?
An alternative proposal to apportion the remaining square footage in the PUD was submitted for staff consideration which would keep the total square footage for the PUD unchanged and simply move some commercial potential among the tracts. The reallocation of remaining square footage would result in slightly reduced density on tract A to shift development potential to affected properties in A1. Property owners who would be affected by this plan objected to the limited square footage allotted to them through this proposal. Since affected property owners did not support the plan and there were already concerns about the character of development such low densities would attract, the Planning Department found little merit in this proposal for rezoning the PUD.
What is the vision for the Oxford Commons PUD?
Interestingly, to describe the aims of the development, the 2005 original documents for the Oxford Commons PUD reference the work of Andres Duany and the principles of New Urbanism – an approach to urban development stressing mixed-use, walkability, shared parking and higher density alongside open public space. These are the same principles behind the Vision 2037 Comprehensive Plan and the recently adopted Land Development Code. In essence, Oxford Commons was ahead of its time. In 2005, Planned Unit Developments were a relatively new concept and served as a mechanism for creating mixed-used developments in otherwise single-use areas.
In the dozen years since Oxford Commons was conceived, the rest of the city has caught up with these principles, at least where zoning is concerned, and in some ways, has surpassed it in terms of understanding the planning tools necessary to achieve those goals. We now have a Land Development Code and Zoning Map emphasizing mixed-use, walkability and higher density throughout the city to promote pockets of dense, mixed-use development with access to many neighborhoods. This is, in no small part, to avoid the mistakes of Jackson Ave.
The “second Square” of the original Oxford Commons never materialized nor did shared parking. We now know that in terms of FAR, the original development potential allotted to the tracts in the PUD made a “second Square” all but impossible – there simply wasn’t enough square footage to realize the densities pictured in the visioning documents.
The City of Oxford, its staff and officials have a clear interest in the success of something like the original concept for Oxford Commons. In the current situation, however, the Planning Department is concerned that Oxford Commons is on a development trajectory much closer to Jackson Ave. than the Courthouse Square. Extensive efforts to sort through the history of the PUD and find a reasonable solution led to the rezoning proposals on Monday’s agenda. The irony, of course, is that a once forward-looking development is now in danger of repeating mistakes of the past unless the developers, residents and the city can come to a consensus on how to amend the PUD zoning.

***

I have presented here answers to a few questions that I thought were pertinent to the concerns expressed to the Commission leading up to Monday’s meeting. This is by no means all of the information in the case, nor does it represent any position of the City of Oxford, but I hope it is of use to those residents who have shown interest and engagement in the issues surrounding the development of Oxford Commons. I encourage those interested in this matter to use all the information available in weighing the options for the best long-term solution as it impacts both the PUD and the wider Oxford community.
Having studied over 100 pages of documents myself in preparation for Monday night’s meeting, I sympathize with any resident of Oxford trying to understand the issues in this very complex case. Please ask questions — especially if you have specific questions or concerns. Ask a commissioner or a staff member. We have a tremendously competent and hard-working staff. Oxford only benefits if we take advantage of their expertise.

By J.R. Rigby, Planning Commissioner. Rigby is a research hydrologist with the National Sedimentation Laboratory. He was appointed as a Planning Commissioner with the City of Oxford by the Board of Aldermen in August 2017. To contact Rigby directly, click here. 
For other questions or comments, email us at hottytoddynews@gmail.com.