City Beat: Council won’t let BK&M return to P&Z with rezoning proposal

Ralph Duda, partner in development company BK&M LLC, came to Springfield City Council Oct. 6 with the hope that a request he submitted prior to the meeting be approved.

Duda asked that council remand his company’s rezoning request for the northwest corner of Sunshine Street and National Avenue back to the city’s Planning & Zoning Commission. Doing so would allow him to add hotels to the allowable businesses under the conditional overlay district he has designed to go along with a requested Office 2, or O-2, zoning redesignation for the corner. The 2.6 acre lot is currently zoned single-family residential.

Council voted 4-2-2 to reject Duda’s request for a remand, with members Craig Hosmer and Bruce Adib-Yazdi voting against the request, Brandon Jenson and Monica Horton abstaining and Callie Carroll absent. Voting in favor were Mayor Jeff Schrag and Councilmembers Heather Hardinger, Derek Lee and Abe McGull.

It was only after the remand vote that the reason for Duda’s request became fully clear to those in the audience, and that had to do with a recently announced citywide rezoning and remapping process.

With the planned consolidation of zoning classifications, O-2 would be folded into commercial mixed use, or C-MX1, a designation that does not allow hotels as a use except through a conditional use permit.

That’s according to Steve Childers, the director of the city’s Planning and Development department. Childers said he anticipates rezoning and remapping to be completed with a new zoning code adopted by April 1. The applicant has an option to apply for new rezoning after the remapping is complete.

After the failure of the remand vote, a first reading of the rezoning bill was held at the council meeting, along with a public hearing that included nine participants.

Speaking during the public hearing, developer Duda expressed frustration with the proceedings.

He said leading up to the Sept. 11 P&Z meeting, he had planned to request a general retail zoning designation, allowing eight to 10 uses, including a hotel. He added he had been told by city staff that a conditional use permit, or CUP, could allow for a hotel.

“I specifically asked staff, ‘Can we still have a hotel?,’” Duda said. “They said, ‘Yes, with a CUP.’”

Springfield Business Journal asked city staff if the city had given Duda incorrect information, but they did not provide an answer by press time.

Duda said the new C-MX1 designation, which he learned about at the P&Z meeting, would cap temporary lodging at 12 units, which he said would make no economic sense.

“Why were we steered to go O-2?” he said. “We’re not going to be able to go forward.”

Duda said three out of the four corners at the intersection are zoned commercial, with two corners’ zoning designations changed within the last seven years.

“My company is being treated differently, and I don’t know why,” he said. “Actually, I do know why – it’s because the property values of University Heights are much higher than other areas that you’re rezoning in this city, and that’s a fact.”

He said he had proposed low-intensity uses that were appropriate for the site.

“It’s been three and a half years – hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, on top of what we paid for the properties,” he said. “Yes, we took a risk, but we never knew it was going to be this kind of a nightmare.”

Chris Wynn, an engineer with CJW Transportation Consultants Inc. representing BK&M, said the conditional overlay district that has been proposed would allow the 2.6-acre property to be used as a mixed-use property with multifamily or single-family residential units, a medical or professional office or assisted living. In its present form, however, the COD does not allow for a hotel.

The other seven speakers in the public hearing, after Wynn and Duda, were neighborhood residents or representatives, all voicing opposition to the rezoning.

Multiple residents or representatives said they did not feel the burden should be on the neighborhood to make BK&M profitable.

“Rezoning of these properties will not improve quality of place,” said Barbara Sue Robinson. “It is not up to the city, nor is it up to the neighborhood, to make this developer successful.”

Councilmember Hosmer pushed for council to wait until after the city’s $720,000 Sunshine Corridor Study is completed. A final report is anticipated in early 2026, according to past SBJ reporting.

“This would make a lot more sense if we continued this until after the corridor study,” Hosmer said. “Before we do a development that’s going to change the nature of what Sunshine and National is, I think we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the community, to let the corridor study get completed and then make a determination of what the best use of this corridor is.”

Councilmember McGull said he believed council should allow a remand as requested by the developer, as he said has been done in the past.

“If this individual is asking to remand it back to P&Z, I think we should treat him just like any other person that has made that request to this body,” he said. “I think we should adhere to the wishes of the developer and allow him an opportunity to be heard before the Planning and Zoning Commission.”

A vote on the rezoning is scheduled for the next council meeting on Oct. 20.

Transit committee proposed
Continuing his ongoing efforts to focus on transit improvements, Councilmember Jenson offered a referral to the Committee of the Whole of a proposed resolution seeking to establish an ad hoc committee – the Transit Funding Committee – to investigate how to pay for improvements to the city’s transit system.

Council voted 5-2-1 to advance the measure to the Committee of the Whole – that is, a work group composed of the entire City Council, as opposed to a committee within council’s quartet of four-member standing committees.

Voting against the referral were Schrag and McGull, while Lee abstained and Carroll was absent. Hardinger, Horton, Hosmer and Adib-Yazdi joined Jenson in support.

If the Committee of the Whole recommends formation of the Transit Funding Committee, its charge would be to evaluate the feasibility of and to prioritize funding options for funding implementation of the medium-term plan of ConnectSGF, a transit optimization study commissioned by CU and released in January 2024.

According to past SBJ reporting, the study had short-term, medium-term and long-term recommendations, and some short- and medium-term recommendations have already been enacted; however, there are not currently plans to implement the rest of the recommendations.

During council’s discussion, Hardinger expressed reservations about the referral to the Committee of the Whole while noting she believed the measure was well suited for the Community Involvement Committee.

Jenson said he modeled the idea after the Citizens Commission on Community Investment, a group of 30 residents appointed by former Mayor Ken McClure to evaluate the best ways to use proceeds from the Spring Forward SGF sales tax passed by voters last year.

Schrag said at the outset of the discussion that he didn’t have enough information to vote in favor of forming an ad hoc transit committee, and Jenson said he understood some may not agree that transit should be a priority at this moment for the community.

Jenson’s proposed committee would include key stakeholders, including council members, City Utilities of Springfield board members, members of the public with a vested interest in a well-functioning transit system and the representative of the Ozarks Transportation Organization.

Jenson said ConnectSGF recommended implementation of a medium-term plan within five years of the study’s adoption, which would place that benchmark in January 2029. Jenson said to meet the timeline, the ad hoc transit committee would need to provide its final report and staff finalize a corridor plan for council consideration by May 2027.

Jenson’s referral points out that transportation is identified in two council priorities – quality of place and economic vitality – and is a core component of the economic growth priority identified at the Sept. 5 council goal-setting workshop.

Before voting against the referral, McGull suggested it would be more reasonable to break the issue up among existing council committees; for instance, he said, the Finance and Administration Committee would be a good first step to see if the idea was even feasible.

“It is like trying to eat an elephant. It is a big issue – a very big issue,” McGull said.

Adib-Yazdi reminded council that transit improvements are one strategy it has set to meet its economic growth priority.

“We’re going to have to meet the moment when it comes,” he said. “We’re going to have to start planning for something like that much sooner than we really need it. It’s going to take a lot of planning and a lot of coordination with those stakeholders.”

Adib-Yazdi said transit is important to many residents, who want to reach workplaces as well as parks and open spaces. He added that the bus system is not just for lower-income people and those who cannot afford a vehicle.

“Transit is on the minds of the next generation, and in order to attract and retain them, we’re going to have to think about it as well,” he said.

Other action items

• An immediate appropriation of $500,000 of Spring Forward SGF sales tax revenue was approved for engineering, community outreach and project development for neighborhood projects to be completed in fiscal 2027. Another measure passed by council was a resolution to declare its intention to reimburse itself for expenditures related to construction of a regional convention and event center prior to the issuance of financing by or on behalf of the city; Spring Forward SGF funding in the amount of $30 million was previously approved for the convention center.
• Council heard first reading of a bill to dedicate $750,000 from the Tourism/Convention Fund in the current budget year toward planning, designing and constructing a regional convention and event center.
• Council accepted a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a community-wide brownfields assessment.
• An appropriation of $2.5 million was OK’d from retained earnings from the Clean Water Enterprise Fund to fund the Inman Sanitary Sewer Improvement project, replacing undersized sewer mains along Inman Creek. The project is scheduled to be bid in the fall.
• Council OK’d an agreement with the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission and BNSF Railway Co. to close an existing grade crossing near Mill Street between Campbell and Boonville Avenues. The measure accepts $200,000 from the other two entities for the project.
• Council considered first readings of three zoning measures: 3 acres of recently annexed property at 3358 N. Beaver Road to highway commercial from a Greene County commercial designation at the request of CREDC Strafford LLC; .2 acres at 1544 N. National Avenue to general retail from general manufacturing at the request of 3 Patel LLC; and 6 acres at 1012 W. Buena Vista St. to single-family residential from planned development. Votes are scheduled for Oct. 20 for the first two measures; the Buena Vista rezoning ordinance will have an additional public hearing Oct. 20 with a vote slated for Nov. 3.