After postponing a vote on the item in late September, Bellaire officials unanimously adopted an ordinance Oct. 19 further amending regulations for the city’s Corridor Mixed Use zoning district.
How it happened
City Council approved an initial set of amendments recommended by the Planning and Zoning Commission back in March, according to agenda documents.
These amendments sought to remove unnecessary verbiage from city code sections relevant to the CMU district, as well as clarify permitted uses of multifamily dwellings, establish new dimensional requirements and revise former setback regulations.
City Council expressed a desire to allow single-family detached dwellings and townhouses for stand-alone use or as part of a mixed-use development in the area. This ultimately led city staff, along with the P&Z commission, to create and review a new proposal, per the agenda.
Bellaire’s CMU district stretches from North First Street to Chimney Rock Road and runs adjacent to Bissonnet Street and functions as a hotspot for dozens of the city’s mixed-use developments.
More details
City staff brought the ordinance before council members on the dais for a public hearing Aug. 3, and subsequently for voting consideration Sept. 21.
Both times, however, Bellaire officials identified numerous language inconsistencies throughout the proposed single-family regulations. Some areas, for example, incorrectly utilized standards intended for townhouses, whereas others did not match R-6 Small-Lot Residential Attached District standards, on which the suggested general provisions were based, as Community Impact previously reported.
Because of this, City Council deferred taking action on the item at the Sept. 21 session, allowing city staff time to revisit the materials and adjust their language as needed.
What’s changed
At the Oct. 19 meeting, Director of Development Services Travis Tanner explained to council members that the ordinance was drafted as a hybrid of CMU and R-6 district regulations. This means that not all of the details associated with R-6 district rules are applied in the same fashion within the CMU district.
Nevertheless, to address the concerns raised by Bellaire officials, Tanner said that the following revisions were made to the text to ensure consistency throughout the larger ordinance:
Making the additional height language (for cooling towers, chimneys, etc.) consistent with the R-6 district and not with the standards for other (largely non-residential) uses in the CMU district
Removing the “requests for additional height by specific use permit” language, which is not as fitting for residential uses as it is for non-residential uses
Removing the front height-setback plane language, which is not as fitting for residential uses as it is for non-residential uses, particularly if residential uses will not be located on Bissonnet/Bellaire
Changing the lot coverage to 80% from 75% for consistency with the R-6 district rather than with nonresidential uses in the CMU district
Quote of note
Prior reporting from Community Impact indicated that council member Ross Gordon was among those on the dais who pushed for the ordinance to be fine-tuned before any formal action was taken.
Before City Council took a vote, Gordon expressed his gratitude toward Bellaire’s Development Services Department and the P&Z Commission for their continued work on perfecting the item.
“I think it now fully accomplishes our objective and is consistent, so I’m excited to move forward,” Gordon remarked.
