The potential to rehash a once-fraught debate over neighborhood building rules is not moving forward in Prairie Village.
The Prairie Village Planning Commission on Tuesday agreed there is no need to update neighborhood design guidelines first enacted in 2019 that lay out rules dictating what the city wants to see in single-family neighborhoods. Commissioner Jon Birkel was absent from this week’s discussion.
This latest decision by the planning commission comes after a back-and-forth between the commission and the Prairie Village City Council on whether to revisit the neighborhood design guidelines in the first place.
The planning commission previously warned the city council that reviewing the neighborhood guidelines would be potentially exhausting and controversial, but — as part of a larger, similarly contentious conversation about housing — the city council prioritized updating the guidelines nearly two years ago.
The original neighborhood design guidelines were the product of sometimes-testy debate over teardown-rebuild projects. The prescriptions the city ultimately came up with are aimed at limiting the height and size of newly rebuilt or remodeled homes, among other rules.
How did we get here?
- In 2023, the previous city council signaled support for updating the neighborhood design guidelines as a way to address the ongoing teardown-rebuild trend in some neighborhoods. The responsibility for that would first fall to the planning commission.
- Due to other priorities like zoning code updates and a major redevelopment site plan, the planning commission was unable to get to the neighborhood design guidelines until two months ago.
- The commission at that time asked city staff to confirm that the new city council — which includes four councilmembers elected in fall 2023 who were backed by a citizen group opposed to any zoning code changes in single-family neighborhoods — still supported an update to the once-controversial design guidelines.
- Citing teardown-rebuilds as one of the main concerns heard from residents during the 2023 campaign season, the city council agreed in December 2024 to ask the planning commission to move forward with providing input on a potential update to the guidelines.
Commission wants to give existing guidelines more time
- Planning commissioners generally agreed with Chair Greg Wolf that the existing guidelines need to be on the books for about 10 years before their impact can be properly evaluated.
- Wolf said he opposes making changes based on the concerns of a few people. He and commissioners Melissa Temple and James Kersten also said they opposed changing the rules too often.
- Commissioners agreed that at this time, a complete overhaul of the guidelines is unnecessary.
- Nonetheless, Commissioner Jeffrey Valentino said that if someone can prove that there are either bad actors mistreating the guidelines or unintentional consequences of the guidelines, then he is “absolutely for trying to course correct those issues.”
- “Otherwise, I think, in my opinion, between those two are really allowing the market to dictate what is overarchingly a product that’s desired within our community in a future reinvestment,” Valentino said.
Staff, commissioners will address issues as needed
- Deputy City Administrator Nickie Lee said city staff “consistently monitors” new construction for patterns and, if staff discovers someone abusing the system, then city staff would alert the planning commission.
- Lee asked that the planning commissioners keep an eye on the requests for home rebuilds and other residential improvement projects, and bring up any concerns at that time, as well.
- Wolf said he believes that the planning commission expects that staff will alert the advisory body about patterns in construction that need to be addressed.
Go deeper: Watch the entire planning commission discussion online here, starting at 50:45.
