Outgoing councilman Jim Glover said he hopes the new boulevard standards will lead to higher-quality development on Linwood.
The city council yesterday backed a set of boulevard and parkway standards that including several compromises proposed this month by developers.
The parks department had been working for several years with neighborhoods, citizens and developers to create a set of design standards for boulevards and parkways. But as the standards reached a city council committee – and with the current city council facing its last days in office – controversy erupted around several key issues.
The council passed a compromise plan yesterday, at its last meeting before a new council takes over August 1.
Councilman Ed Ford, whose Planning, Zoning and Economic Development committee had recommended the compromise, presented the substitute proposal to the council.
There had been discussion around creating standards “as far back as I can remember,” said Ford.
“We wanted to get everyone on the same page. Eight years later, we are still not on the same page on five issues,” he said.
Those issues included the orientation of drive-through windows, transparency of buildings (essentially the percentage of ground floors that is glass), parking on the front and side of buildings, orientation of residential units, whether gas stations would be allowed on boulevards and parkways, and how nonconforming buildings would be treated in the future.
The full council accepted the compromises the committee agreed to on Thursday. These included a final standard that allows gas stations at the intersection of a parkway and an arterial road, but not on boulevards, and a standard that allows the backyards of residential housing to face a parkway if that is the existing pattern that has already been established.
Council members agreed that it took a long time to develop the standards, with a great deal of frantic discussion taking place in the last month.
“Maybe we didn’t get it quite right, but the new council can address it,” Ford said.
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