Four Corners planners clear density hurdle

 By Michael Tucker, staff writer

While Gallatin County officials hammer out zoning regulations to help manage growth, neighborhood planners throughout the county are marching forward with writing their own regulations to supersede anything the county drafts, county planners said.

In the past two weeks, the Four Corners neighborhood plan steering committee has struggled to come up with baseline population densities that would provide developers and landowners a definable parameter. But after lengthy debates, the group appears to have arrived at some numbers.

Neighborhood plans are a tool in the Gallatin County Growth Policy, adopted in 2003, for residents to write their own regulations. The idea rests on the belief that locals, rather than government agents, have a better understanding of communities and should have a say in how their areas develop. But the outcome still needs to fit within the confines of the growth policy, county planners said.

Four Corners has been designated a receiving area under the growth policy, which means developers can ramp up density within the area, surpassing the baseline, according to the growth policy. But in order to do so, developers must purchase transferable development credits from large landowners out in the agricultural areas of the county, where development overall will be discouraged.

But not everyone on the steering committee is happy about Four Corners being slated for additional development. Members said additional growth in the area would produce more associated ills, such as crowded schools and a host of infrastructure demands.

“If the plan is to send people here and not send people there, then how are those costs going to be incurred?” steering committee co-chair Deb Wahlberg said during a planning meeting. “Growth needs to pay for itself. There is a disproportionate cost if this area is deemed a growth area.”

The county is exploring that problem, and may match a percentage of the transferable development credits to developers for off-site infrastructure mitigation, county planning director Greg Sullivan said.

But the plan is still being sorted out is and far from authorized.

Some members of the group even went as far as questioning whether being labeled a receiving area is in the best interests of the community.

But county planner Warren Vaughan, who is spearheading the neighborhood process, took a firm stance on that subject.

“I’m going to be blunt,” he said. “If Four Corners doesn’t participate then your next step is to go door to door gathering signatures to start a 101 district. And you are looking at hundreds and hundreds of people.”

But on Tuesday, the situation appeared to be defused, and the steering committee agreed on some density numbers. As it stands, the baseline density number for rural residential, the bulk of the area, will be 1.75 homes per acre, with a maximum cap of 3.5 homes per acre. As it stands, more open space will be required as the density increases.

And taps should be able to flow and toilets flush if the draft proposal is adopted by the Gallatin County Commision, Utility Solutions owner Barb Campbell said. The Four Corners area water and sewer provider said the utility could accommodate the range.

But Campbell said a higher baseline might have been a little more to her favor to recoup start-up costs to supply services to the area.

The transferable development credits program would allow for higher densities, but Campbell and other developers are wondering if the market will support the program.

“I don’t have a problems with those parameters they have set,” she said. “The great unknown is what will it be. Will this system work so that those higher densities can be reached?”

Sullivan agreed and said the TDC program “has challenges.” But he stressed the commodity venture is just one part of the planning process.

“TDCs aren’t the end-all, be-all,” he said. “The strong part here is the planning process. That hasn’t happened before where people can strengthen what they like about their neighborhood and what they want to change.”

Even so, nearly all of the new developments in the Four Corners area have densities similar to the proposed baseline, with open space and parkland set around 30 to 40 percent, Vaughan said.

The commercial and mixed-use areas of the plan, mostly along the main corridors of Jackrabbit and Huffine lanes, will not have density guidelines, which could allow for higher numbers, Vaughan said.

Setting densities was the biggest hurdle for the group, and after years of work, Vaughan will begin to write the zoning regulations for the area. The draft should be available in the coming weeks.

Drafts of the Four Corners and two other neighborhood plans are available on the county Web site at gallatin.mt.gov under the planning department’s “What’s new?” link. At the moment, Gallatin Gateway is about to unveil a draft next month and the Churchill/Amsterdam steering committee is writing zoning regulations for rural landowners.