Sunshine & National rezoning to return to P&Z

A land-use dispute that started in August 2022 continues for the northwest corner of Sunshine Street and National Avenue.

BK&M LLC, the developer at the heart of a yearslong effort to develop the 2.6-acre portion of the University Heights neighborhood, received another chance last night to add a hotel to its list of acceptable uses for the property in its proposed conditional overlay district.

Springfield City Council last night voted 7-2 to allow the company’s zoning request to be remanded back to P&Z at BK&M’s request – one council earlier refused at its Oct. 6 meeting.

Councilmember Bruce Adib-Yazdi made last night’s motion to allow the remand, which BK&M requested because the Office 2 designation it is seeking for the parcels will not allow hotels when the city’s remapping and rezoning project is complete. That project will change all of the city’s O-2 zoning to the new designation of commercial mixed use, or C-MX1. That is expected to happen by April 1, 2026.

Ralph Duda, a partner in and spokesperson for BK&M, told council Oct. 6 that he was given bad information from city staff, who he said steered him toward O-2 and assured him that hotels would be permitted in O-2 with a conditional overlay district. In order to guarantee hotels among the allowable uses, the COD would have to be grandfathered in at the time of citywide rezoning.

When asked via email if Duda’s allegation were true, city officials declined to respond.

Duda said in an Aug. 21 neighborhood meeting and again at the Oct. 6 council meeting that he intends to sell the property and not develop it himself.

Now the issue will return to P&Z for the purpose of adding hotels to the COD. As currently written, the proposed COD allows the property to be used as a mixed-use property with multifamily or single-family residential units, a medical or professional office or assisted living.

At the Oct. 6 meeting, council voted 4-2-2 to reject the request for a remand, setting up an up-or-down vote on rezoning to O-2 from single-family residential. Councilmembers Craig Hosmer and Adib-Yazdi voted against the remand request. Brandon Jenson and Monica Horton abstained, and Callie Carroll was absent. Voting in favor of the remand were Mayor Jeff Schrag, Heather Hardinger, Derek Lee and Abe McGull.

In last night’s 7-2 vote on Adib-Yazdi’s motion to remand, one of the no votes was from Adib-Yazdi himself and the other was from Hosmer.

Adib-Yazdi said when he last voted on the remand, he believed the developer could go back and get a conditional use permit after the fact, but without the hotel use listed in the COD, that would not be possible.

“I did not want to put them in the position of not having that opportunity,” he said.

Nevertheless, when it came time to vote, Adib-Yazdi did not support his own motion.

Prior to the vote, Hosmer indicated to his fellow council members that when it comes to the BK&M development, he’s pretty much over it.

“As a council person, I’m tired of dealing with it,” he said. “I think the city is tired of dealing with it. I know the neighborhoods are tired of dealing with it. It seems that sometimes when we say no – when Planning and Zoning says no three times, when City Council says no twice – maybe somebody should take a message from that that you’re not going to just be able to make a zoning change when you don’t know what you’re going to build, when you have no plan, when you’re not even going to be the final developer.

“This is not a good way to do business in the city of Springfield.”

Hosmer said University Heights has been in flux for more than three years with a developer who has no plan for the contested corner.

“As a city, we need to sometimes say no. If it’s not the right project in the right location at the right time, we need to say no and mean no, because we should plan the city of Springfield as a city, not as one developer that wants to do one thing that makes profit on property that he speculated on,” he said. “The corner of Sunshine and National is too important to leave to just the whims of a developer that’s not even going to develop it.”

Jenson said he understands Hosmer’s sentiments and concerns, but he believes regardless of how any council member intends to vote, the developer should have the right to present a vision and let the proposal stand on those merits. That’s why he intended to allow the remand, he said.

“I will be voting in favor, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s support for the final product,” Jenson said.