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General : Growing Bigger
Time To Change the Mixed Use Height Limits?
Dan Voelpel’s column today focuses on Tacoma’s 45 foot height limit in our mixed use zones. Is it time to raise it to 60 or 75 feet? Would that create the conditions for the ‘right’ development for the city? Or would that simply provide a way for developers to make more money on limited land?
I’m generally pro-development and pro-density. However, I’m still looking for the long term vision for the city that can provide us with the insight needed to guide the regulations and move us forward. The article focuses on quotes from developers and a few members of the City Council. It’s not the developers that should be defining that vision and driving the discussion. Merely my opinion…
Link to The News Tribune
Link | Posted on 17. September 2006, 12:05
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Most lower-density places in Washington (Tacoma included, I believe) have a height limit of 35 feet for residential buildings. Allowing taller buildings in the business districts and higher-trafficked areas makes good design sense. It’s everything that you learn in urban planning school: high density in the middle, and decreasing density the further you get from the center.
The problem in Tacoma is that our neighborhood centers are not easily identifiable by their densities. If you didn’t know they was there, you would drive right by Fern Hill, McKinley, Manitou or many of the other ‘neighborhoods’ in the city. Also, most neighborhoods have no defined boundaries. How do we know where Proctor starts and 6th Ave begins? We don’t.
The problem is that Tacoma, like every city in the Pacific Northwest, has historically been built as a city of single family homes, many of them cheaply built, plain homes built right after one of the World Wars. So it’s very hard for neighborhoods in cities like Tacoma to create an identity among waves of sprawling, single family homes.
Allowing much higher density in certain areas helps create that neighborhood identity. The City should do everything in its power to not restrict medium-density development in the neighborhood centers and business districts. Setting a height limit only makes sense to me if the goal is limiting nonconforming development, and seeing that there is almost no major private development anywhere in the city outside downtown, I see no reason for implementing a height limit anywhere at this time.
1 | Posted by drizell | Sep 17, 10:36 PM
I agree with the above post- but would add a few other thoughts:
Many of our main arterials are based on old streetcar lines. On the routes in between our neighborhood business centers, you may notice vintage apartment buildings and former retail/office buildings that have been converted into apartments over the years.
The concept of a transit cooridor to encourage density along main arterials is missing from our current planning. I’m not sure why.
Taken a step further – dare I say – I would reduce parking requirements along transit cooridores to strengthen the need for a transit system… such as streetcars.
In addition to relaxing building height limits (why are we afraid of anything over two stories?!), I would encourage mixed-use along main arterials- this would encourage density, which would help our subsisting business districts, create a more walkable city, and increase the opportunity to connect with a regional transit system.
By the way- did anyone notice that Sound Transit has on the table an option to extend the downtown LINK up to the Stadium District?
2 | Posted by morgan | Sep 17, 11:01 PM
Excellent points, Morgan. With higher densities and mixed uses along the main drags, people wouldn’t be forced to drive everywhere and the streetcar would thrive again. The reason transit is so widely used in many large cities is because the absence of height limits (and the concept of zoning when such cities were built) enabled higher density, which makes subways, busses and streetcars the most economical way to get from Point A to Point B. Today’s zoning seems to be all about protecting existing single family ‘neighborhoods.’
It would better if the Link ran up St. Helens; that street really seems to be the backbone the area’s rebirth.
3 | Posted by drizell | Sep 17, 11:30 PM
It is hard enough for us to get a building over 65 feet in our downtown core. Can we really get 65 feet in the Biz Districts?
4 | Posted by jake | Sep 18, 11:05 PM
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