Salt Lake City has approved its long-discussed plan to consolidate its mixed-use zoning code — but the vote came after a last-minute complication that some council members said could derail a large redevelopment in Central City.
Members of the Salt Lake City Council voted 4-3 during their formal meeting Tuesday evening to approve the ordinance, narrowly passing with a plan to include a three-month delay before the new zones take effect. The new zoning, which eliminated nearly two-dozen mixed-use zones and replaced them with new form-based code, will take effect in early November.
Council Member Eva López Chávez told the council that she would not vote for the MU zoning ordinance with a three-month delay, as she feared that timeline could ruin the current plans for the Northwest Pipeline Building, also known as the old Public Safety Building located at 315 E. 200 South. The new development, which is in López Chávez’s council district, is slated to become 56 total housing units.
“This particular building relies on LIHTC funding, they have a deadline to meet by Nov. 15, assuming everything within their project goes as articulated on their timeline scope, that is the minimum deadline,” López Chávez told the council Tuesday. “So I will not be voting for your motion, because it kills a $250 million project that potentially could bring attainable home ownership in the form of condos and townhomes into District Four.”
It wasn’t clear why the citywide zoning change would delay that specific project, and council members didn’t agree that it would.
López Chávez said council members were contacted by the developers behind the project shortly before the formal meeting, and she said, “I cannot believe that we are considering moving forward rapidly. We have had ample time to work on this, and I personally have communicated with these partners. Unfortunately, they’re out of the country, and they communicated last minute, as of an hour ago.”
She said it would be best to delay the vote and take up the issue at another time.
“I think that we miscommunicated something very critical to a project and agency that’s working with HAME (the Housing Assistance Management Enterprise) that needs to be rectified,” she said. “I think that was a mistake on our end, so I will not be voting for this today.”
Part of the issue revolves around a recent review from the City Attorney’s Office. Initially, the council was banking on having a six-month window where both the current and new MU zoning standards could be used. The council voted and approved that plan during a meeting last week.
But since then, the City Attorney’s Office reviewed the city’s proposal to allow the six-month transition period, and the office recommended against that route, according to a staff report for the Tuesday meeting.
“Their reasoning is that because the consolidation requires extensive text revisions and property rezonings that are inherently conflicting, they cannot be applied simultaneously,” staff wrote in the report.
Based on the City Attorney’s review, council members discussed whether to delay the new MU zoning start date by three or six months, though they ultimately didn’t make a concrete decision during the work session Tuesday afternoon. It appears the council learned of the Northwest Pipeline Building issue sometime between the work session discussion and formal meeting.
Council Member Victoria Petro was also worried the tightened transition window would throw the Northwest Pipeline project into peril. Petro wanted to give a four-month window instead of the three the council narrowly passed, which she said would allow developers to submit projects in time.
“If we did something that knowingly harmed a significant project by a trusted developer and gave them good faith time to get it through because of a 30 day failure of ours to extend, that would be a really terrible thing to put on my conscience,” Petro said. “I won’t be voting for three months. I know that four months is the bare minimum good faith we need for that project.”
Council members seemed to be between a rock and a hard place — some argued the narrow window would kill the Northwest Pipeline Building project, while others argued delaying the new zoning puts other prospective projects in jeopardy.
Council Member Alejandro Puy wasn’t convinced the three-month window would kill the Northwest Pipeline Building plan, saying that tacking on an extra month wasn’t a surefire way to keep the project alive, either.
“We’re talking about the one project, but there are probably dozens of other ones that need this ordinance to be on the books to be able to get the financing,” Puy said. “So, while this project is amazing and I don’t want to jeopardize it as well, we are also hurting on the other side by delaying it. So there is no good way out of this one.”
Council Chair Chris Wharton sided with Puy, saying that delaying any vote could negatively impact other projects down the line.
“I also don’t want to delay this any longer for the other projects that, as Council Member Puy said, are waiting for us to pick a date — and to pick a date that’s as soon as possible — without harming other things that are in the pipeline to try to add more housing stock, which I think is the goal of all of us,” Wharton said.
Ultimately, Council Members Petro, López Chávez and Sarah Young voted against the ordinance, while Council Members Puy, Wharton, Darin Mano and Dan Dugan voted in favor of it.
With its passage, the city’s mixed-use zoning code will soon be consolidated from 26 mixed-use and commercial zones into six. The new parameters also, depending on the neighborhood, could allow for taller building heights.
The approved mixed-use zoning overhaul could be the first in a series of changes to the city’s zoning code in the coming months.
The council has also recently discussed making changes to the city’s design review process, and the Salt Lake City Planning Commission has already approved changes to the city’s RMF-35 and RMF-45 zones — two missing middle zones that have been a lingering zoning issue for years.
Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected to reflect that the City Attorney’s Office reviewed the council’s six-month window proposal, not the Utah Attorney General’s Office. We regret the error.
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