Bricktown Urban Design Committee – April 10, 2024

for testing good morning we'll call the meeting to order at 9:10 a.m. uh of the April 10th Bricktown Urban Design commission committee meeting uh welcome to the meeting my name is Brent Wall I'm the vice chair of the committee when called upon applicants and speakers will come forward to the front of Podium to speak only one person at a time should come to the podium sorry we'll get this only one person at a time should come to the podium please speak in the microphone identify yourself and provide your address for the record when you begin speaking address your comments to the committee and please limit your comments to 3 minutes citizens May address the committee on agenda items by responding to to chair's call for speakers during discussion on each item and signing the speakers log on the podium all comments must be relevant to the item being heard the chair or presiding officer May in his or her discretion prohibit a person from addressing the committee and or remove that person from the council chambers if that person commits an any disorder or disruptive behavior please refer to the meeting agenda for more information about these requirements if you parked in the Sheridan Walker parking garage north of John Rex elementary school or in the arts district parking garage just south of of City Hall staff can provide you with a parking validation ticket the agenda and documents are located on um okc.

Primo.com public portal you would select the Bricktown Urban Design committee meeting once there you would then click on an agenda item and the related documents will come up below the item Keith will you please call the role wall present Egan here um MC scari Thompson present all right we need to approve the minutes from December 13 2023 Mo that we approve do I have a second Sano I second all right the motion is passed moving on to item number three cases withdrawn case bc- 23007 has been withdrawn item number four continuance requests we have none item number five the consent docket we have no items item number six cases for individual consideration no items today item number seven other business uh does design review District consolidation ordinance thank you Mr chairman um this item before you uh this morning uh is a uh recommendation from the Bricktown committee to the Planning Commission on a proposed ordinance Amendment um that would uh modify chapter 59 to reorganize the city's five uh design districts that we currently have um since 2019 the Planning Commission miss or planning department has been working on a comprehensive code update and one of the areas that the um identified by the codeup Consultants stakeholders and staff for improving efficiencies is the consolidation of these five design districts into fewer bodies um we actually brought this issue up to uh all the commissions at our training session just about a year ago uh in Spring of 2023 three and uh we raised that issue at that time as a possibility of something that might be coming down the line and sure enough here we are so uh what this ordinance would do is um it would uh combine a number of our districts from five down to two and the way that would happen is that uh the downtown design Review Committee would absorb the Bricktown Urban Design Review Committee and then the Urban Design commission would absorb both uh the riverfront committee and the Stockyards committee and what that accomplishes um we've kind of outlined a number of the bullet points on the second page of the staff report but basically we are reducing the number of appointees uh to our design review bodies from 37 to 18 we are uh reducing um the number of um meetings maximum number of meetings that would occur over the course of a year from 52 to 24 um and that obviously is going to have uh translate to some um significant efficiencies at the staff level in terms of number of meetings we have to you know prepare for uh demands on um the volunteers times that are serving on the Committees and so on so forth it also helps um the mayor's office in terms of having to monitor 37 different appointees uh as opposed to 18 um and um keeping tabs of the terms and term limits and making sure that everybody is fits into the slot they're supposed to fit in because there's obviously specific uh criteria for membership on the Committees that we have now and those will continue um the important thing to note is that um I'm sorry didn't have this available to me before but here are the five committees we have now you can see that in both Urban Design and Scenic River there's a bunch of subdistricts in those areas that cover a lot of territory um so um this is kind of a little bit a brief rundown of the districts we have now we have uh Bricktown which was established in 93 with seven members um usually I think it was initially five when they first sorted out we I think we raised it to seven in 2016 um downtown is was established in 27 2007 with seven members uh Scenic river is uh established in August of 2007 with nine members and you can see it covers a lot of territory along the river um Stockyards is a relatively small area established in 96 one of the first two design districts with five members and then we have Urban Design which again I think it was initially seven but it's been expanded to nine um and it has territory all over the place you can see all the way from Asian District up at 23rd in class and all the way down to Capitol Hill at Southwest 25th in Walker um and the one area that's not shown on this map is the Lincoln Boulevard Corridor because couldn't get the proportions right on the map so that's just kind of overview of everything so here's where we stand today um these five committees review these districts um Bricktown has the BC district downtown has three downtown design review districts is a core and then a couple transitional areas that surround the core Riverfront has um six subdistricts that are along the river and they all have their own uh specific um regulations and guidelines in each one Stockyards has both the core of stockyards which is at the basically the inter intersection of agu and exchange and there's some transitional areas to it uh north east and south of the core and then of course Urban Design has a bunch of subd districts including poo Plaza Capitol Hill uh Cottage District which is a little about an outlier because it's really in downtown but it's designated to be reviewed by Urban Design so in the reorganization we're proposing in this ordinance Amendment um that would end up with uh transitioning downtown to handling both Bricktown as well as the three districts that they already cover and then Urban Design would um take on both Stockyards and Scenic River districts um the important thing to remember is that only the bodies reviewing these areas are changing the standards and regulations that are in place in all these design areas remain intact and unchanged um so um here's how the composition is going to change uh one of the things we're doing is that um for um we're modifying somewhat the membership criteria on Urban Design number of members is going to remain at nine but we're shuffling around a little bit the uh criteria for membership um we've made a special provision there to uh allow two slots for people that are either from Stockyards area or uh areas that are covered by Riverfront and then uh the other thing that's happening uh with respect to downtown is first of all we're changing them from a committee to a commission so the two remaining bodies will both be commissions second of all we're increasing membership from Seven members to nine and when we go to nine we are adding um a provision that at least one of the members would be designated as a property owner or tenant in Bricktown so that will maintain some representation uh for uh this body um or that area excuse me in uh in the the transition to the downtown design review commission um so we've taken April as our Target month to take this through all the design view B bodies it went to Riverfront last week and they recommended approval prior to that it went to the river trust and they made a recommendation uh to the Planning Commission uh of approval uh of this ordinance Amendment uh we have two more meetings this month uh downtown is next week and then the April 24th is the meeting for Urban Design and then the fifth uh meeting is uh on May 8th with Stockyards and then uh after that time we will have recommendations from all the design review bodies on this ordin ordinance Amendment and we will take uh start taking this through the process for adoption by uh Planning Commission and then on to city council so there a time frames there for you in May and June for Planning Commission and then June and July for city council so that concludes uh the presentation we have for you this morning and I'm prepared to respond to any questions that any of you may have thank you Michael I did want to note that commissioner Macau has joined the meeting um was there any information that we needed to backtrack on so that it would help you okay you read the staff report you you know um okay yeah will open it up for questions to Michael I think it's moving in the right direction because we rarely get to meet there was my personal opinion and it's usually just to set calendars are established new chairs um one question is for the downtown design review I see in the membership terms and organizations why was it struck out one member shall be a resident of the Oklahoma of City of Oklahoma City is one of the requirements for the downtown I see it's still in the Urban Design committee but it's no longer as part of the requirements for the organization for the downtown design review I think we're pretty we're pretty certain that um anybody that fits into the the nine categories we have okay here uh in the proposed rules would more than likely at least one of them would be a resident um without having to specify that as as a requirement we we also carried over the Bricktown representative position and then Bricktown has a provision that at least one member be knowledgeable in historic preservation um which downtown previously didn't have so I think in the interest of having both of those positions added to downtown um like Michael said then you know all the spots were essentially filled by other qualifications so that that maybe made me think about this uh list a little differently because I do see that it kind of adds up to the to to the proposed uh membership so um I guess the way that these that the well let me ask two operative questions the first is Will these commissions uh as as this is approved be like completely receded um and then second question is me in many cases you can have several of these things can be true but will the will this will these members be filled based on sort of checking a box for one of these things so that mean and the way reasonal mess is like you could be knowledgeable in the field of historic preservation attended in Bricktown um and a registered architect so um it is a tricky game um we have pretty much a matrix that we've lined up um because we pulled all the existing members of all five committees to find out whether number one they're still interested in serving and a number of folks uh told us they weren't so that took a few people uh out of the mix um but with everybody who was left who expressed an interest uh in continuing to serve we uh talked with them um extensively about um uh what their backgrounds are what their qualifications are and so we could figure out which of the various slots that they could fit into either under downtown or Urban Design um and we've created a matrix for the mayor's office um of those folks who are interested and we and in some cases um people qualify for both positions on both in some cases people have expressed an interest in only serving on one or the other and we're not notating that in our Matrix as well so that they will have all that information um to your first question um we're working through the logistics of whether or not they're all going to be receded um we were uh a little a bit panicked in that we thought that we had a lot of members on ddrc and UDC that might have been turned out and when we dug into that and started figuring out all the dates so on and so forth we found out that there aren't that many people that are close to being turned outs most people are eligible if they've expressed an interest to continue they're still eligible be reappointed now if they are reappointed they would not be starting from scratch their previous terms um would still Main be um counted in terms of their term limits and so on and so forth however folks that have not been either on the ddrc or the UDC if they're appointed uh to either of those bodies they would be uhu getting a fresh start and none of their terms from previous bodies would be counted towards their term limits so that's kind of how we're handling it right now so in the course of the history of the design districts and at least in the tenure of the of Staff here have you all Ever Had a period where it's been difficult to find volunteers to be on the Committees yeah it's challenging yeah go ahead some yeah some committees are more difficult than others depending on what the I would say the historic preservation commission is the most complicated because we've got residency requirements we've got limits on how many can be from any one his historic district we've got um lots of professional qualification requirements but um on all of these finding people who can who meet the requirements professionally who meet requirements as far as where they live or work um and who have the time and the interest to commit to serving on the committee um and then also finding people who are not so um professionally engaged in an area that they have to rec themselves on every item every time we turn you know sometimes that is is an issue too that we constantly lose Quorum because um people are having to recuse frequently um so yes I would say at I mean especially during um during covid we had a lot of challenges we had especially when we went back to in-person meetings we had members on various commities that were not comfortable meeting in person that was a struggle um and then you just have periods where there's a lot of turnover and you lose a lot of people all at once and getting back to where you can meet Quorum every month is hard so I can see we're reducing the overall number of volunteers would help in that that case I think the the the potential downside of this is that the meetings are going to be longer you know and um I could see where that could be a challenge where somebody's like I don't have four hours to do a meeting you know I'm sure this has all been discussed and the lead up to it but definitely pros and cons but just kind of thinking through how this impacts as a as a Committee Member volunteering and making that commitment that is something we did take into into account in consideration and in um coming up with the combinations we came up with I think primarily our first um pass was does it make sense geographically for these bodies to be together and um for RBG toown and downtown was you know made perfect sense um but to your point about the length of the meetings I mean part of part of um what we as Staff feel like is that when we have these meetings that are 15 20 25 minutes or 30 minutes and we're thinking man we're making all these volunteers come down here once a month for these short meetings and and it you know we know you have buic schedules and you have other things to do and when the meeting takes shorter than it does for you to park and then to leave um we kind of feel like um it's an inefficient use of your time and partially our time to a certain extent as well so we do realize and understand that the meetings uh do have the potential to run longer um but we feel that's a benefit uh we feel like it's making better use of everybody's time we don't have five bodies meeting every year we only have the two so we're cutting the meeting number from 52 down to 24 and I think that's a significant um change um as to the length of the meetings they we we do agree there probably will end up being longer because there's just going to be more cases on each agenda um however um I think I don't think it's unreasonable for people to come down here and expect to be here for an hour and a half or two I don't think we're looking at 4 Hour meetings at all so yeah and you know more often than not Bricktown goes months without items that require commission review so that's really not adding much to downtown as far as a volume of cases um Urban Design's pretty consistently busy um river is pretty consistently busy but still even with those it's not a huge volume of cases and then Stockyards is is pretty quiet so I don't think I don't think Urban Design's going to be overwhelmed um and yeah hopefully it feels like a more meaningful um you know worthwhile use of people's morning or afternoon to come and meet than coming down as Michael said for one item on a consent docket and you're done in seven minutes so s did and did I hear I might have actually this might just been an example that was given but is um is HP being folded into this as well no hp's HP stands alone it's okay it's its own animal and stay and and they have consistently very lengthy agendas so we didn't feel like that one needed to be absorbed into any other committees okay well if we don't have any more questions for Michael we'll um ask for a motion to recommend approval of this ordinance Amendment to the Planning Commission I'll make a I would like to move this motion I'm just GNA read what it says I'll second the motion I don't know when to move or make a motion I pretty all right the motion has passed I think we all just put ourselves out of a job yeah well I was going to say don't delete us from your calendar yet because it will be several months before this takes effect so please uh please continue to hold your Bricktown meeting dates open for us and we will keep you posted on the timeline for when everything changes over okay maybe we'll have one last case oh yeah Michael I am curious I am curious was there um was there a noticeable concern that kept the thread that kept going through all of these meetings did anyone continually voice the same concern whether it was us or another group was there something that bothered people about combining or was mostly everyone in favor of such um we we were actually um prepared for a lot of push back from a couple of the groups um most notably we we figured Riverfront would push back and we thought for sure Stockyards would no nothing okay and I think partly you know everyone's comforted by the fact that the guidelines and regulations are staying the same the boundaries are staying you know the function of what happens in their districts is not changing um so all right moving on to item number eight Communications um does anybody have any questions or comments about the administrative approval report okay uh moving on to 8 B comments from planning department staff nothing at this time okay 8C any comments from our committee members good all right item D1 our next uh meeting is scheduled for Wednesday something something it doesn't M doesn't say what it is uh May 8th May 8th thank you it's cut off on my on my screen May 8th okay um item number nine a motion to adjourn the meeting moved thank you right well

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