The vision of Springfield’s comprehensive plan, Forward SGF, is closer to becoming the law of the land as city planners and consultants begin drafting a new land development code.
Over the last several months, planners from the Springfield city government and consulting firms Multistudio and Urban3 have been sifting through Springfield’s community development code and gathering input on the strengths and weaknesses of the city’s building regulations.
As the officials and consultants begin drafting a new code, which is slated for adoption in the last quarter of 2024, the Springfield City Council will consider what codes can be changed, what needs to be eliminated and what the comprehensive plan recommends adding.
“We recognize that we may not get 100% of it right by the end of the year,” Multistudio planner Graham Smith told council members at a March 5 study session. “But what we’re striving for is to address those big picture items, those big ticket things that are really causing issues or need to be implemented from Forward SGF in that code, and then we can continue to tweak as we go.”
‘Place teams’ share ideas
A major component in the implementation of Forward SGF, the comprehensive code update — the first since 1995 — is meant to overhaul regulations for development and public infrastructure, specifically addressing Chapter 36 of Springfield’s Code of Ordinances.
The process began in 2023 and will continue throughout 2024 with further discussion among policymakers and the public, the drafting of the new code and its subsequent adoption by the City Council.
In their initial round of engagement on the project, planners interviewed neighborhood representatives, developers and community leaders and collected feedback from “place teams” and a technical committee comprised of city and Greene County government staff.
“As you can imagine, our response to your current codes vary, everything from ‘throw it out completely’ to ‘there’s some good things in there that are working for us, so we need to keep those’ and everything in between,” Smith said. “About as many responses as people we’ve asked about the code, we’ve gotten different responses.”
Protecting character and providing connectivity to destinations is important for the neighborhoods place team, as is ensuring the redevelopment of commercial properties doesn’t encroach on the neighborhood.
The corridors place team encouraged city planners to look at corridors “in a different way,” as opportunities to create destinations more accommodating to pedestrians. The destinations place team emphasized the importance of that destinations be scaled appropriately “within the context in which they’re placed.”
“So if we have areas like Pickwick in a neighborhood, make sure that the scale of that area is similar to that of the neighborhood, where we have larger destinations like downtown, the scale can grow, the mix of uses can grow,” Smith said.
The fourth place team, which focused on employment, suggested different uses — commercial, residential or open space — should be integrated within business districts.
Through a series of interviews, various stakeholders shared their issues with the current codes, including long-term enforcement of certain requirements and “an inconsistent application of the standards and the processes to which we get to a decision about development.”
In a new and improved land development code, they see an opportunity to encourage infill and redevelopment, simplify standards and processes, and provide flexibility where appropriate.
“That flexibility may come through a process, may come through a variety of different criteria or things like that,” Smith said. “But if there’s a better way to achieve the vision, a better way to achieve Forward SGF goals, then show us how you’re going to do that and let’s be open to those ideas.”
Guiding principles of code update
In addition to engaging with focus groups, the planners also analyzed development patterns throughout Springfield and completed a code review to determine the deficiencies of the current code compared to the vision of Forward SGF.
On top of closing those gaps, the City Council will also consider reorganizing them. Currently, the land development code has 19 different articles. Planners are proposing scaling that down to 11 articles with a “far more direct tie to Forward SGF.”
“We think there’s a much more efficient, user-friendly organization where you can either relocate those, adopt and incorporate them more simply,” Multistudio planner Chris Brewster said.
In addition to implementing Forward SGF, planners also aim to rewrite the code in “more plain, spoken term,” streamline procedures and provide for flexibility in numerous ways.
“Really, our main job is to raise expectations of everyone, staff, applicants and you all as decision makers under the code,” Brewster said.
When it comes to creating quality of place — the “north star” principle of Forward SGF — planners are working to strike a balance between land use and community design across different typologies, or types of urban spaces.
“Open spaces are different in one part of your community than they are in the other, and codes often have the habit of just valuing open space as a percent of land — 10%, 15%, whatever it might be,” Brewster said.
“And what we find is that’s kind of too superficial. 5% or 3% might be okay in a really compact site with well defined open space, and 30% might be what’s appropriate and a larger area that’s trying to incorporate natural features or preserve areas. So we want to make sure your code has the right solutions for the right types of places.”
More information on the community development code update can be found on the Forward SGF website.
