Developers, business owners express concern about driveways under revised city code

At last night’s Springfield City Council meeting, Councilmember Derek Lee proposed suspending driveway code revisions approved Jan. 12 and referring the revisions to council’s Community Involvement Committee for review.

Lee presented his bill for a first reading at last night’s council meeting, with a vote anticipated March 23.

Lee, a civil engineer and owner of Lee Engineering and Associates LLC, said he had received feedback from the development community about consequences of the revisions to Chapter 98 of the code, which would require more space between driveways and would result in the removal of some of them.

Lee said he had reviewed the city’s driveway spacing requirements with driveways belonging to those who contacted him, and not one of them was in compliance with the revised code. The newly adopted code revisions aim, in part, to reduce conflict points on roadways to improve safety.

At issue is the potential loss of driveway access that could be triggered by permit applications for construction or change of use.

The revised version of code also limits property owners’ appeals of denials of driveway permits to the city’s Planning & Zoning Commission.

Several businesspeople showed up to express their concerns with the revisions.

Amy Blansit, founder and CEO of Drew Lewis Foundation Inc., addressed problems posed by new regulations to the foundation’s Blue House Project, which she said works to create attainable homeownership for working families.

Blansit pinpointed difficulty with appeals.

“We’ve experienced repeatedly in the current appeals structure that there’s no path to resolve conflict between code interpretation and some of the practical housing development plans we’re trying to do,” she said.

She offered the example of the organization’s St. Joe’s Cottage Courtyard at 1108 N. Campbell Ave.

“If we make any improvements to the existing driveway at 1108 N. Broadway on this site, current requirements are going to eliminate the existing driveway, leaving no access to the property or the property behind it, where we want to develop,” she said.

Blansit said the code requires the Drew Lewis Foundation to do significant infrastructure upgrades, legal work and design work, adding substantial cost and time. Ultimately, that work would add $10,000-$15,000 to each new home, she said.

She also brought up the pocket neighborhood called the Broadway Cottage Courtyard, where the foundation is spending money to manage traffic flow by adding a median and speed bumps.

“Despite those investments, we are unable to add driveways,” she said.

Blansit said in predevelopment meetings, it is not a collaborative choice between good options.

“It’s often presented, ‘We do it this way according to code, or the project will not move forward,’” she said. “Therefore, we have to agree.”

That remains the case even when she and city staff agree that the way decided upon is not optimal, but she has to move forward because further delays would make projects untenable.

“Innovation requires collaborative pathways to solve the problems when they arise,” she said. “Without the appeal process or with a longer appeal process, it prevents these meaningful reviews, and organizations like ours are often stopping or not even pursuing the development, knowing that we’re not going to put the density that it’s going to take in order to have affordable housing.”

Councilmember Monica Horton said she knew there would be tradeoffs with Forward SGF, the city’s comprehensive plan.

“I knew that the lofty idea of having affordable housing and micromobility and multimodal transportation – I knew that the tradeoffs would seem to be in conflict with one another,” she said.

Horton said Chapter 98 was mainly aimed at larger arterials that jeopardize safety of pedestrians and cyclists. She asked if the existing appeals process was sufficient for the moment, but Blansit said she has not tried them.

“It wasn’t recommended by individuals who have been through it,” she said. “Honestly, we didn’t do it because others have not had good results in similar situations.”

As another example of the difficulties posed by the revisions, Blansit said that she has a project where she wants to combine properties from two zoning designations.

“When we combine those two properties to make one lot, we would lose the righof way – we would lose the driveway,” she said.

Horton said she hopes staff can hear the nuances of Blansit’s message.

“Sometimes the drawback is you don’t move forward at all with an appeals process because there is a preconceived notion about what the outcome would be,” Horton said.

Driveway spacing changes
Daniel Richards, an engineer with Lee’s company, spoke in support of the recommendation.

Richards outlined three different spacing criteria for different types of roads. For primary arterials, like Campbell and Glenstone avenues, the old driveway criteria required driveways to be spaced 200 feet apart, but that has increased to 440 feet in the new criteria.

Secondary arterials, like Kimbrough and Jefferson avenues, increased requirements from 150 to 330 feet between driveways.

For collectors, like Ingram Mill and Fort avenues, spacing requirements for driveways have grown from 100 to 220 feet between driveways.

“These numbers clearly indicate a substantial shift in the access management criteria, and I think it at least warrants further review and implications or unintended consequences with shifting these to the extent that they’re shifted,” Richards said.

Brett Foster, assistant director of Public Works, said the old code measured spacing from edge of driveway to edge of driveway while the new code is measured center to center. The increase for primary arterials is thus from 275 to 400 feet – an increase, but not as severe as Richards’ figures suggest, according to Foster.

“Any time you decrease driveway density, you increase safety,” Foster said. “The larger your driveway spacing is in our major streets, the safer those streets will be.”

He added that a consultant procured by the city found that Springfield’s requirements are far less restrictive than requirements in surrounding cities and ones that the Ozarks Transportation Organization and the Missouri Department of Transportation recommend.

Other examples
Developer and commercial real estate broker Tom Rankin described some difficulties with his Springfield Plaza project on the southwest corner of West Sunshine Street and West Bypass. There, he said, he built Seminole Street to the standards required by the city to include a center turn lane.

“That center turn lane that was required of us to be built cannot be used,” he said. “We are only allowed right in and right out off of Seminole into the project. I feel quite sure that’s probably an unintended consequence – surely we wouldn’t be building a center turn lane that we can’t use – but nonetheless, I think there’s issues with this ordinance that need to be reviewed.”

He added that there are probably issues like his across the city.

Councilmember Brandon Jenson said it is clear Seminole was built out with the understanding that left turns would be permissible, and the problem arises from the difference between the old and new versions of code.

Foster, with Public Works, said that is the kind of variance that would be addressed.

“What we would do is just see what the development is and where the traffic’s being generated and what could be used,” he said. “Under the new code, they’d be able to submit that plan and it would be reviewed by staff to make that variance request.”

Jenson asked for clarification that the developer would not be able to appeal the staff decision to the Planning & Zoning Commission, and Foster said he did not think so.

Shannon Handwerker, vice president of operations for Magers Management Co. LLC, described a tenant who sought to rent available retail space at the company’s Battlefield Marketplace development.

Handwerker said switching from retail to fitness tenants would change the use of the property, and that would trigger the loss of the plaza’s two driveways on the east and west sides.

“I would have to put my driveway right in the center of my development, which is where my monument sign is,” she said.

There are also streetlights that would have to be removed.

“That’s going to cost me nearly a million dollars just to do that,” she said. “It just doesn’t make sense for us to spend that kind of money on a potential tenant that in the first five years of their lease is only going to be about $350,000 in rent.”

Bill Reed, owner of Reed Properties Inc., described multiple projects his company has developed in the last 30 years, including 250 retirement condominiums, 100 offices and storage facilities.

“About 12 or 13 years ago, I built my last 20,000-square-foot office complex,” he said, noting it took him six months to get a building permit and only four months to build the project.

“At that time, I said I’d had it,” he said, noting he went outside of the city limits for future projects, though he has property inside the city he would like to develop.

Reed said he has owned more than 2 acres at the corner of Lark Street and Fremont Avenue since 2021, and his architect told him the new code may require him to remove the central driveway. That kills his project, he said.

“I’d like to dip my toes back in the water in the city limits of Springfield, but the first thing I’d do is throwing up a roadblock,” he said.

Richard Ollis, owner of Ollis/Akers/Arney on Sunshine Street and a former member of City Council, described how he has battled MoDOT over the possible closure of his driveway. MoDOT has relaxed a plan to put a median along the full length of East Sunshine Street in the city and has been open to discussion about access points.

“I am currently working with them on finding access into my business – which would be nice, given that I’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into that building,” he said.

But he said if he works out his problems with MoDOT, he doesn’t comply with the city’s new code.

“I’d like to improve my building, but you know what happens if I take out a permit? I’m at risk for the closure of my driveway,” he said.

Ollis said Springfield is a difficult place to do business.

“It is very difficult to develop; it is very difficult even as an existing business to have the government come in and want to close your driveway,” he said.

The lack of certainty is a problem, he said, even though businesses can apply to make an exception.

“We have other communities outside of our areas that are thriving because they are willing to work with business through the development process, through the closure of driveways and other means,” he said. “I’m a little old to get a pilot’s license, but I’m going to need to because I’m going to need a helicopter to get into my property.”

Dan Brown, director of Public Works, said the comments offered in the meeting will be useful moving forward.

“Stories like this are very helpful to evaluate the existing code,” he said. “There’s nothing like real-world examples to look at things and make sure that you have the right balance.”

A two-year process led to the code revision, according to Foster. Brown said it makes sense to go back to the stakeholders that contributed to the code revision, though he declined to estimate how long it would take to do so.

A new zoning map is anticipated to come into effect for the city in April, and it corresponds to new land development regulations, Chapter 36 of the city code.

Foster said there are about 20 new definitions in Chapter 98 – the portion of city code covering streets, sidewalks and public places – and another 30 that are revised.

“I know this was a little AI search, but it looks like those are referenced about 3,000 times in the new section of Chapter 36, so it’s really hard for one to function without the other,” he said. “If you have Chapter 36, new land development code, and you don’t have 98, you’re going to be enforcing a lot of stuff in Chapter 98 that doesn’t exist in the existing code, so it really makes it unusable.”

Lee said if the revisions go forward unchanged, that could cause much more harm than a delay could.

“They don’t have a real variance process, and so how do these things move forward?” he said. “We don’t have an answer.”

A motion by Horton for an amendment to Lee’s bill would have sent the issue to committee without suspending Chapter 98, but it failed, with Councilmembers Callie Carroll, Heather Hardinger, Abe McGull, Mayor Jeff Schrag and Lee opposing it.