A divided Overland Park City Council approved changes to the city’s development code that include new limits to the height of apartment buildings.
Though city staffers characterized the changes — that also included other amendments to the city’s Unified Development Ordinance — as “interim” and “incremental,” the proposal still sparked a heated discussion among councilmembers at the meeting on Monday, Nov. 4.
Ultimately, the council approved the changes by a 7-5 vote, with Mayor Curt Skoog casting the decisive affirmative vote.
Notably, the amendments to the code set a height limit for apartments in the city’s highest-density multifamily zoning areas, labeled RP-6.
They also eliminate a height minimum in the same RP-6 areas and codify what are called “transition zones” between higher-density multifamily projects — that typically rise multiple stories — and established areas of suburban homes nearby.
Apartment height limit split the council
The discussion of the item — which was initially listed as part of the meeting’s consent agenda but was removed at Councilmember Jeff Cox’s request — lasted for more than an hour and at times devolved into debates about the philosophy of housing in Johnson County’s biggest city.
Previously, the amendments to the Unified Development Ordinance sailed through the Overland Park Planning Commission without objection, passing 9-0.
Additionally, city staff have said these amendments are meant to serve as a “patch” of sorts as the city prepares to embark on a widespread overhaul of city development codes to bring them in alignment with the new comprehensive plan, Framework OP.
Ultimately, the city council approved the updates to the development code 7-5.
Council President Logan Heley and Councilmembers Cox, Melissa Cheatham, Scott Mosher and Richard Borlaza voted in dissent. Mayor Curt Skoog’s yes vote was required to pass the amendments.
Councilmember Chris Newlin was absent from the meeting last Monday.
What development codes are changing?
Most of the updates are focused on residential development, though there are a few pieces for other types of land use.
Current Planning Director Brian Monberg said at last week’s meeting that the changes that have been made so far are reflective of concerns from neighbors in recent projects that have come through the planning process and common deviation requests from developers as well as changes in the development industry.
The changes approved last week include:
- Apartment buildings in the city’s densest residential zoning districts, RP-6, cannot exceed five stories without a developer’s deviation request.
- The apartment building height minimum of four stories in the RP-6 district has now been eliminated.
- The new height limit does not affect multifamily housing portions of bigger mixed-use developments.
- The update also codifies transition zones between the two densest multifamily zoning classes, RP-5 and RP-6, and neighboring single-family residential areas. They also cannot go into areas designated as Suburban Neighborhood or Rural Transition Zone in the new Framework OP long-term plan.
- Buildings can now be as long as 500 feet — provided there are some design elements or modulations to break up the facades. Before, buildings could not exceed 200 feet without an approved deviation request.
- Additionally, these amendments make way for the city’s permit-ready housing pilot program, aimed at fast-tracking pre-approved housing designs in certain parts of the city.
- It also carves out some changes related to commercial building materials and deviations from requirements on that front.
These amendments are “interim,” Monberg said, meaning they are intended as a stop-gap measure to bring some of the city’s development code up to the new standards laid out in Framework OP ahead of a bigger update that is likely to take several months to complete.
‘Why are we boxing ourselves in?’
During the meeting, councilmembers were divided over the changes to the Unified Development Ordinance, with tempers flaring at times.
The primary disagreement was the new height limit on apartments in RP-6 zoning areas, with multiple councilmembers questioning the need for such a limit.
“We shouldn’t be adding roadblocks to adding housing in our community. We should be doing everything we can to encourage housing,” Heley said. “I think this seems like an unnecessary way of making building housing in our community more difficult, rather than easier.”
At one point, Councilmember Mitrisin offered an alternative motion that would have approved the amendments without the apartment height limit.
“Why are we boxing ourselves in?” Mitrisin asked. “If somebody thinks that they can support housing in our community, I don’t want to negotiate against that right now.”
That motion failed 4-7, falling short of the nine affirmative votes that would have been required to diverge from the planning commission’s recommendation. Borlaza, Mitrisin, Cheatham and Heley voted in favor of Mitrisin’s alternative motion.
Ultimately, Mitrisin voted to approve the amendments as recommended.
‘I don’t want Overland Park to be that’
For his part, Cox railed against density in housing developments but did not go into detail about the problems he has with these specific updates to the Unified Development Ordinance. He said the council’s housing decisions are “degrading what Overland Park is and why everyone loves it.”
“I’m trying to preserve, what’s wonderful about Overland Park, and there is a big cost to density,” Cox said. “There’s a cost to this incessant drive for turning us into a city from a suburban community … I just don’t want Overland Park to be that.”
In the end, support for the amendments won out.
“I see this as a way to fix some of the challenges that both our residents and our developers have faced on projects that this council has looked at,” Mayor Skoog said.
Cox also complained that the item was initially listed on the consent agenda. (Typically, items that are approved by the planning commission unanimously, as these proposed changes were, are put on the consent agenda, to be approved by the council without discussion.)
Cox, though, felt the proposed changes centered on major issues that the city council has clashed over recently. He said he’d have preferred to discuss these changes in a study session before they wound up on a city council agenda.
In response, Skoog said any insinuation that the city council wasn’t being transparent or had ill intent in its approach to this issue “is outrageous and wrong.”
Next steps:
- The city still plans to do a full review of its Unified Development Ordinance in the coming months.
- City staff have signaled that it’s likely those upcoming changes would include additional or other changes to Overland Park’s standards for apartments, though it’s unclear what that might look like.
- Any future amendments will also require approval from both the planning commission and the city council.
- Overland Park also continues to develop a new special zoning overlay district for the College and Metcalf area that could establish separate standards for building height, width and other factors to encourage mixed-use redevelopment in that prominent corridor.
Keep reading: After hitting snag, plan for apartments at 97th and Metcalf in Overland Park wins rezoning
