Council approves corridor-based, missing-middle housing zones

Where and how to include missing-middle housing in the city’s land development code and zoning map was decided May 4 by a vote of Springfield City Council.

A winding road led council to the policy, which is partially the result of a series of neighborhood meetings that sought resident input on which parcels in their neighborhoods should allow missing-middle housing. The meetings took place May-July 2025.

Councilmember Monica Horton said 10% of neighborhood residents did 90% of the heavy lifting on behalf of their neighbors when it came to identifying possible locations for missing-middle housing, with staff filtering their recommendations for eligibility. The result was roughly 3,600 parcels being identified for R-MX1 zoning.

R-MX1 is a new low-density mixed neighborhood zoning designation. The R-MX1 designation allows missing-middle housing, which is higher density than single-family homes but less than a typical apartment building. Examples are accessory dwelling units, duplexes or townhomes, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting.

When the citywide rezoning legislation was in front of the city’s Planning & Zoning Commission on March 26, that body voted to recommend a scaled-back version of the shift from single-family residential to R-MX1, limiting the new zoning designation to corridors and neighborhood perimeters and keeping it out of the centers of neighborhoods. That scaled-back plan, to shift only 1,009 parcels from single-family to R-MX1, was the one being considered for a council vote on May 4.

Horton began the discussion of the council bill by offering a substitute bill that reverted to council’s original plan, with missing-middle housing permitted in the centers of neighborhoods.

The vote on Horton’s substitute bill failed 6-3, with Horton, Brandon Jenson and Bruce Adib-Yazdi supporting it. A subsequent vote on the scaled-back map passed without objection, and a vote that followed allowed nine properties to opt out of the new designation.

In arguing for a return to the proposal created with feedback from neighborhood residents, Horton asked her fellow council members to weigh the merits of the original recommendation through the lenses of livability for residents and ability to attract business, both aspects of the city’s Forward SGF comprehensive plan.

She said people who choose to downsize in their later years should not have to relocate, but she said from a practical standpoint, they could do so if the city had more townhomes, row homes and pocket neighborhoods, allowing them to move out and free up single-family homes.

Horton asked why the city would adopt a more restrictive map in a city with identified shortages of housing.

“The alternate map not only shortchanges the community engagement process, but the restrictive map contributes to undermining the city’s efforts to wipe out the housing shortage,” she said.

Horton added that mixed neighborhoods with scaled housing diversity are more attractive places to operate locally owned businesses, with mixed-income residents integrating into disinvested neighborhoods.

“Ask neighbors who have a pleasant, short walk to Cherry and Pickwick about neighborhood-serving businesses that areas like West Side Betterment would love to have more of on West College, a key corridor on Route 66,” she said.

She added that national chain fast-food stores, smoke shops and car washes have left behind a trail of food deserts in Zone 1.

Councilmember Derek Lee said he did not support Horton’s substitute map because homeownership is important.

“If we vote this down, we are still supporting having over a thousand new opportunities on corridors for people to do this," he said. "It's just a more measured approach. It's not something that’s permanent. It’s something that can be changed later.”

He added that it’s the city of Springfield making the changes, and not an individual developer.

“This is the city of Springfield coming in and really flooding these neighborhoods with rental property,” Lee said.

As an engineer who designs missing-middle developments, Lee said he has done hundreds of those properties, and all were rental.

“The vast majority of this will be developers who in the center of neighborhoods are going to put rental property in the middle of the neighborhoods,” he said, adding, “I’m just asking that we do some restraint in the very center of neighborhoods for the sake of homeownership.”

Councilmember Craig Hosmer said it’s not often that he agrees with Lee, but he said it doesn’t make sense to start out with 3,600 parcels when council could start with just 1,000 to see how it works.

“It doesn’t seem like you go full-bore into a change that we don’t know what the impact is,” he said. “The very reasonable impact is that this is devastating to single-family home-ownership neighborhoods.”