May 17, 2007

By Lauren Heaton

At their meeting on Monday, May 14, Village Planning Commission members considered a request for a conditional use by two local residents to use the home at 502 Dayton Street as a gathering space for the members of the Yellow Springs Bahá’í community. Roi and Linden Qualls, owners of Corinne True Endeavors LLC, have applied for the conditional use of the residence as a place of assembly, required for its zoning district Residence B. Planning Commission will hold a special meeting on Tuesday, May 22, to conduct a public hearing on the request.

If the request is approved, the Village Board of Zoning Appeals will consider at its meeting the following day, Wednesday, May 23, the Bahá’í’s application for a zoning variance to build an addition to the west side of the home. Approval of both requests is a condition of the Qualls’ purchase of the property, currently owned by Rodney and Ellen Hoover.

According to a statement made during the May 14 meeting by Nadia Malarkey, a member of the Bahá’í community, the Dayton Street home in its current state will accommodate the majority of the Bahá’í community’s activities, including the feast gatherings that occur every 19 days, the bimonthly devotional gatherings, and bimonthly children’s classes, as well as smaller meetings and study circles. The Bahá’ís of Yellow Springs currently have 37 members, including 22 adults and 15 children and youth. However, for the community’s larger gatherings, many of which are open to the public, the Bahá’ís would like to build an addition on the west side of the home to accommodate up to 75 people. The addition would bring the edge of the house to within two feet of the lot line, where the code requires a setback of 10 feet, thereby requiring a variance.

Most of the concerns expressed by planning commission members related to whether the house and its surroundings would provide adequate parking for all of the anticipated uses. According to acting Village Planner Ed Amrhein, Residence B requires one parking space per eight congregants for places of assembly. If the driveway of the home were widened, as is shown as an option in the Bahá’í community’s plans, the property could provide as many as 10 parking spaces, he said. And if the north side of Dayton Street is still accepting parking, that too could provide some extra spaces, he added.

The Bahá’í community is also working to secure agreements to lease parking from both the Baptist Church, one and a half blocks to the west of the home, and from the Union School House, owned by Jonathan Brown. According to Malarkey, about 75 percent of the community’s members live within walking or biking distance from the Dayton Street home. And according to David Mader, a member of the Bahá’í community who spoke during the meeting, parking has not been as issue for the community which currently meets at the homes of its members in residential districts all over town.

Planning Commission President Bruce Rickenbach said that commission members appeared to be inclined to approve the conditional use if there are no objections raised at the public hearing and subject to seeing parking agreements with the neighbors mentioned. He added that although plan board could possibly grant the conditional use, it could not guarantee the BZA will grant the variance.

In other planning commission business:

• Local architect Ted Donnell, the lead designer for the K4 Greene Architecture firm, made a presentation on the concept of “new urbanism,” the principles of which Planning Commission is considering incorporating into Section 4 of the Comprehensive Plan to help guide future zoning legislation.

According to Donnell, new urbanism is an old concept that is being reapplied to remedy the city centers that have eroded over the past 30 years as a result of urban flight. The idea is to define a neighborhood by having a walkable community around a center of activity. Using the new urbanism definition of neighborhood, every city and suburb would have multiple neighborhoods that would be linked together through walkable and bikeable paths of travel. The idea, he said, is to preserve the essence of each neighborhood while bringing them all together to serve each other’s needs in the commercial, recreational, employment and educational sectors.

Donnell mentioned Seaside and Celebration Station in Florida, and Portland, Ore. as early examples of cities that have used the principles of new urbanism extensively in their zoning codes. New urbanism planners have coined new terms such as “smart growth” that involve community participation to design and create through zoning laws the kind of community that residents of a particular area desire, he said.

The Village Comprehensive Plan is a document that would easily accomodate the principles of new urbanism and urban design by community participation, Donnell said. It also presents an opportunity for the Village to establish the ability to trade zoning rights between areas that are prime for development and areas that need to be preserved.

“Zoning should be a tool for the community to use to create its own pattern language for how it wants to be and grow,” Donnell said.

• Plan board approved a motion to maintain the current Village charter that allows Planning Commission to have a representative as part of the Miami Township Board of Trustees.

• Planning Commission members discussed the revisions they made to the first three sections of the Village Comprehensive Plan. They agreed that the revised drafts of the sections General Purpose and Definitions, Current Conditions, and Projections better reflected the village’s current goals and values. Plan board will consider later sections at its next regularly scheduled meeting, Monday, June 11.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com