The Bellaire City Council recently approved entering into an agreement with Kendig Keast Collaborative to make revisions to the city’s Urban Village zoning district.
Changes to the Urban Village zoning district is part of the Bellaire Comprehensive Plan. The comprehensive plan is a framework for guiding future development and redevelopment in the city. Council budgeted for a planning consultant to make revisions to the Urban Village zoning district when it approved its 2011 budget in September.
Council approved an ordinance during its Jan. 17 meeting to execute a standard form of agreement with Kendig Keast for planning services not to exceed $44,980.
“I’m going to support this ordinance tonight,” Councilmember Andrew Friedberg said. “I expressed during the budget process that I wanted to keep the foot on the gas.”
Councilmember Mandy Nathan agreed.
“I’m enthusiastically in favor of this,” she said.
The Urban Village includes the City Center and the Bellaire Rail Station transit-oriented development area in north Bellaire near Westpark and West Loop 610.
Kendig Keast will work with the city to draft revisions to the planning and zoning code of ordinances for the Urban Village.
The zoning provisions will include:
- An urban development character appropriate for use in a transit oriented design and mixed-use development
- Innovative zoning techniques to improve flexibility in design and development, as well as potential incentive mechanisms to encourage desired outcomes (e.g., vertical mixed use, residential uses, public open space or other amenities)
- Design guidelines with graphic representation of key development concepts
- Innovative techniques to deal with traffic and parking needs and impacts
- Consideration of pedestrian scale and needs to include mobility and open space
- Protection for existing single-family neighborhoods that border such districts
- Standards and procedures for managing nonconforming situations that may result from the zoning transition in the area
The project is expected to take nine months to complete.
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