City seeks rezoning for Grant Avenue Parkway corridor

Springfield City Council is preparing to vote on a pair of bills that would create a new zoning district for 72 acres surrounding the Grant Avenue Parkway project.

Council members heard a city staff presentation during their June 14 meeting to establish an overlay zoning district for the corridor’s development code and to rezone parcels within roughly 72 acres into the new zoning district.

“It’s not every day we draft a new section of zoning and propose a rezoning for such a large area with so many parcels,” said Randall Whitman, principal city planner, noting it has 221 parcels. “The existing zoning represents almost every type of zoning and land use category we have in the city.”

The Grant Avenue Parkway Corridor Plan was adopted by council in March as part of the city’s comprehensive plan.

Whitman previously told council the corridor plan area covers 1.25 miles of Grant Avenue between College and Catalpa streets. That includes areas within 500 feet east and west of the Grant Avenue centerline.

The Grant Avenue Parkway project is designed to create a greenway trail system and transportation improvements along a 3.3-mile stretch of Grant Avenue between Sunshine and Walnut streets.

“We’re making this substantial investment in Grant Avenue Parkway and it’s intended to be a multimodal connector between Sunshine at Wonders of Wildlife to downtown,” said Tim Rosenbury, Springfield’s director of quality of place initiatives. “We’re looking at doing something much more than a street for vehicles. It’s also for pedestrians, for joggers. It’s a street as a place. So, the development along the sides has to reflect that.”

Whitman said the proposed zoning district has six subdistricts and housing is allowed in all of them. Use is regulated by design, property limitations and location. Parking is not allowed in front yards and is not required for nonresidential uses, Rosenbury said.

He said pulling parking lots back and the buildings forward acknowledges that street frontage matters.

At the council meeting, Andrew Doolittle, co-owner of property management company Everett Homes LLC, suggested the city issue a blight study in order to incentivize better development projects for areas of the parkway, as opposed to “spot blighting.”

Councilperson Richard Ollis said it’s an option worth exploring.

“It seems to me to be reasonable to at least look at the option and get a cost and maybe determine if that’s financially feasible for us to move forward,” he said.

Springfield Economic Development Director Sarah Kerner said the last blight study the city issued was in 2017 for a Kearney Street corridor plan. She said it cost roughly $100,000.

City Manager Jason Gage said staff will research the matter and report back to council.

The city was awarded $21 million in federal grant funding for the Grant Avenue Parkway project in 2019, and it’s required to provide roughly $5.2 million in matching funds. Grant provisions call for the parkway to be complete by 2026. Other elements of the plan include opportunities to improve the corridor’s framework, roadway, future development and placemaking.

A council vote on both bills is scheduled for June 28.