City opens project to redo outdated, unclear zoning

From the Wednesday, June 27, 2007 Georgetown Current (and presumably reprinted in their other editions, posted by Scott Roberts to the Historic Washington e-list:

By CHRIS KAIN
Current Staff Writer

A nascent project to rewrite the District’s five-decade- old zoning code had its public debut last week, with the D.C. Zoning Commission inviting suggested changes at the first of two scheduled roundtable discussions.

A dozen speakers — including several activists who have spent years scrutinizing the District’s land-use policies — offered varied assessments. Some said the city should follow European examples, adopting design guidelines and altering regulations to discourage reliance on automobiles around rail stations and along transit corridors. Others urged the Zoning Commission to tighten, or eliminate, provisions governing planned-unit developments that permit extra density in return for community amenities and projects of special merit.

Jennifer Steingasser, deputy director for development review and historic preservation at the Office of Planning, stressed that discussions are just beginning. “This is the first wave of input,” she said in an interview after Thursday’s two-and-a-half- hour session.

Steingasser compared the upcoming work on the zoning code to the multiyear process that resulted in the new Comprehensive Plan adopted by the D.C. Council last year: “But not four years hopefully. Our first guesstimate is two years.”

Planners are now preparing a report for the Zoning Commission on “best practices” in place in other jurisdictions. More focused studies on parking and planned-unit- development provisions are under way. The permitted height and bulk of buildings are likely future topics, Steingasser said.

Later this year, the Office of Planning will consult with the Zoning Commission to develop a scope and timeline for the project. Still uncertain is whether planners will draft an entirely new set of zoning regulations or retain substantial portions of the existing code, which has been extensively amended since its adoption in 1958.

Zoning Commission chair Carol Mitten said she believes a major rewrite is necessary.

“There’s so much about the ordinance that is outdated,” she said in an interview. “It’s not an easily understood document. It needs to be restructured. ... I think the scope should be big, not narrow, speaking personally.”

Though the Zoning Commission is seeking to avoid a piecemeal approach by minimizing further revisions until the envisioned overhaul, Steingasser said some amendments to the present zoning map cannot wait but will come in concert with the broader effort.

“There are some neighborhoods that are just under too much pressure from development,” she said, specifying portions of row-house neighborhoods such as Washington Heights and Dupont Circle where current rules permit large-scale additions. “We need to get that taken care of.”

Better protections for row-house neighborhoods was one of several recommendations on a “laundry list” submitted by the D.C. Federation of Citizens Associations and endorsed by the Committee of 100 on the Federal City.

Dupont Circle advisory neighborhood commissioner Bob Meehan also testified that the current process should not subvert protections gained in the revised land-use map adopted by the D.C. Council as part of the Comprehensive Plan. The new map envisions the elimination of “freeway zoning” adopted decades ago when Congress sought a system of central-city expressways that would have required demolition of blocks of Dupont row houses.

Meehan also suggested tightening the process for granting special exceptions, saying unclear standards have proved a “profound threat” to low-scale housing stock by allowing conversion to art galleries, nonprofit offices and “now charter schools.”

In his testimony, D.C. Federation of Citizens Associations president George Clark urged that any rewrite tackle other long-simmering issues, calling for restrictions on diplomatic residences and authorization of penthouses “only when mechanically necessary.”

Clark, whose federation includes 50 member organizations from around the city, decried the lack of a “clean hands rule” barring violators of existing zoning orders from seeking further relief from regulations. He also urged elimination of “pipestem lots,” which allow for construction on newly created lots with minimal street access, and sought new limitations on “teardowns” and “McMansions.”

Clark, a Forest Hills resident, urged that the resulting regulations not erode longstanding concepts. The goal, he said, should be to protect the strength of the District’s 130 identifiable neighborhoods.

“Updating the regulations does not mean throwing them out in their entirety and starting from scratch with a totally different concept of zoning,” he said. “Washington, D.C., is a largely built-up city in which many hundreds of thousands of people have made significant investments in their property based on a certain set of assumptions ... .”

Barbara Zartman, chair of the zoning subcommittee of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, similarly identified the need for “better and clearer and new definitions” as a fundamental requirement for improved zoning regulations.

“I approach the revision with a strong desire to be sensitive to the implications of changes, and with the awareness that massive change can be socially destabilizing,” said Zartman, a longtime Georgetown activist.

But others urged consideration of some new approaches.

Richard Layman, a Capitol Hill resident who testified on behalf of the Citizens Planning Coalition, said the current zoning code is based on 1950s concepts, such as separation of uses, that were more appropriate for suburban development. He said the new regulations should seek to extend the qualities that make the District “a great place to live” by fostering good design and an urban form and context.

“Cities are about mixing uses, but zoning regulations haven’t caught up to this,” Layman said.

He said Seattle recently altered off-street parking requirements, expanding an exemption from the downtown area into additional neighborhoods akin to Georgetown and Capitol Hill and areas near transit stations. He also cited the Netherlands’ practice of rating various uses based on transportation demand and matching them to sites with appropriate access.

The future shape of the provisions on planned-unit developments —known frequently as PUDs — is already shaping up as one of the looming issues. Steingasser noted that developers and citizens alike are unhappy with the current process, which can lack predictability and relies on undefined negotiations.

“It’s safe to say there’s a lot of unhappiness with the way the process is constructed, and that’s from both the developers’ side and the communities’ side,” Steingasser said.

Laura Richards of the Penn Branch Civic Association suggested that planned-unit- development provisions apply only to parcels of five acres or more. She added that developers ought not be allowed to proffer community amenities required by other government programs or inherent in matter-of-right development.

Drew Ronneberg, who chairs the economic development and zoning committee of the Capitol Hill advisory neighborhood commission that encompasses the rapidly changing H Street corridor, urged an overhaul or elimination of planned-unit developments, as well as widespread adoption of design standards tailored to District neighborhoods.

He cited “uninspiring” architecture among the massive mixed-use projects constructed between the Washington Convention Center and Union Station, an area dubbed “NoMa” by city planners.

“... PUDs and the lack of design standards are transforming Washington, D.C., from Pierre L’Enfant’s city of beautiful vistas and memorable architecture to little more than a nondescript office park,” Ronneberg said. “A zoning code that does not set minimum design standards signals to D.C. architects that design does not matter, and D.C.’s architects hear this message loud and clear.”

Ronneberg also decried current provisions that allow developers to seek a change in zoning classification in conjunction with a planned unit development application, resulting in projects out of scale of the area’s existing streetscape.

“The current PUD process is broken beyond repair,” he said.

But the call for eliminating the often-debated provisions did not convince Mitten. She said planned-unit developments provide the commission with an ability to weigh in on issues such as design that are otherwise off-limits.

“There is value to the PUD because it gives you controls that don’t otherwise exist, design being an important one,” Mitten said after the meeting.