After an unofficial hiatus of more than a year, Prairie Village is picking up the baton of tweaking neighborhood design guidelines.
On Tuesday, after city staff suggested a few options to update the city’s guidelines that address single-family housing issues, the Prairie Village Planning Commission punted the conversation to the city council.
Planning commissioners said they wanted to hear feedback from the city council before discussing any changes to the design guidelines.
In October 2023, before four new councilmembers were elected into office in November, the city council directed city staff to get the planning commission’s input on ideas to update the neighborhood design guidelines.
However, with other projects taking priority over the past several months, Tuesday night was the first time the planning commission discussed an update to the neighborhood design guidelines all year.
Neighborhood design guidelines — a topic that received significant attention in Prairie Village six years ago — dictate requirements for items such as lot size and lot coverage for new construction.
Why is the city discussing neighborhood design guidelines again?
- In April 2023, during the height of the Prairie Village’s years-long housing controversy, the city council prioritized addressing teardown-rebuilds by updating the neighborhood design guidelines.
- The city updated neighborhood design guidelines in 2018 to address the teardown-rebuild trend.
- By October 2023, the previous city council expressed support for reducing the massing standards in the neighborhood design guidelines.
- The city council at that time asked city staff to take the issue to the planning commission for input.
- This past year, the planning commission worked through zoning code updates and a new site plan for the Macy’s redevelopment at the Shops of Prairie Village.
Revisiting this issue “could cause a storm of controversy”
- Commission Chair Greg Wolf said he wanted city staff to take the current city council’s temperature on the neighborhood design guidelines.
- Wolf said single-family housing districts in Prairie Village are controversial, and he wants to avoid anything that would “potentially chill” reinvestment in the community.
- Wolf said that if the planning commission is going to revisit the neighborhood design guidelines, then it needs “political support.”
- He said the city council needs to be asked if it still wants to move forward on this, “recognizing that that could cause a storm of controversy that perhaps they don’t want to create right now.”
- “I remember when we went through this process and it was painful, to say the least,” Wolf added.
Next steps:
- City staff anticipates taking neighborhood design guidelines back to the city council to ask whether it is still something the planning commission should revisit.
- There is no specific date for when this will appear on a city council agenda.
- Still, city council meetings start at 6 p.m. on the first and third Monday of each month at city hall, 7700 Mission Road.
Go deeper: Watch the planning commission’s entire discussion online here, starting at 1:00:16.
