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North Carolina Smart Growth Recommendations: Community and Downtown Vitality
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Session:Successful Planning Statute Reform 2001 (March 12, 10:45 am) |
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Adopted by the Legislative Commission to Address Smart Growth, Community and Downtown Vitality WORK GROUP VISION North Carolina communities and downtowns will grow in a way that enhances economic well-being and quality of life for existing and future generations through a partnership of private and public efforts at local, regional and State levels. This will result in stronger communities with robust downtowns, vibrant older neighborhoods, and new development in centers of concentrated economic activity, which makes efficient use of public resources and preserves the natural, physical and social environment while promoting sound economic development. The state will develop and implement a comprehensive system to accomplish the following goals: Establish a Statewide Planning framework that guides local, regional and state development decisions Strengthen local government planning for growth and development. Expand the use of growth management tools that enhance existing community character. Increase reuse of existing buildings and sites. Encourage more investment in downtown areas and other activity centers through partnerships, public investments and private investment. Stimulate a full range of housing opportunities in downtown areas and nearby neighborhoods.
Goal 1.1: Establish a State-level management structure to provide policy and program direction, research and program administration. Strategy: Establish a commission to develop and oversee the statewide planning programs. Strategy: Promote State level growth principles and goals. Develop policies and set standards for minimum levels of local and regional planning. Among other responsibilities, the state commission would promote models and demonstrations; administer planning grant program; provide technical assistance; monitor and evaluate State, regional and local performance. Strategy: Determine how State programs should require local growth plans as a prerequisite for eligibility, and develop legislation and rules to modify programs as needed. Strategy: Develop procedures to ensure consistency between State investment decisions and local growth plans. Goal 1.2: Establish a regional structure to plan and coordinate inter-local growth issues. Strategy: Designate and staff regional planning agencies and technical committees. Strategy: Prepare regional plans using statewide policy framework and integrating local government plans. Strategy: Identify and review projects of regional scale, major transportation projects and areas of environmental concern. Strategy: Promote interlocal coordination, mediate land use plan inconsistencies and coordinate with State management organization.
Goal 2.1: Ensure that all local governments in North Carolina have comprehensive local growth plans that meet minimum State standards, with incentives to reach beyond minimum standards to produce excellent plans. Strategy: Establish a minimum level of planning for all communities. The level of required planning will vary based on growth rate and population density or other suitable criteria that reflect differences in the growth pressures, needs and capabilities of communities. Strategy: Provide for flexibility for communities to vary from the minimum planning requirements through a negotiated ‘scoping’ process tailored to the specific needs of the community. This would apply to local governments in planning tiers 2 and 3. Strategy: Provide State funding on a matching basis for all counties and municipalities with local match based on ability to pay and other criteria, such as size of the community, and rate of growth, and need for protection of environmentally sensitive areas, to be determined. Strategy: Require that all plans analyze the need for affordable housing, based on available data and established criteria, and how needs will be addressed. Strategy: Require all units of local government to convene a planning task force to participate in developing plans, with representation from community based organizations who represent residents in affected communities; and provide for meaningful public participation in the development of plans, with continued public input through the development process. Strategy: Require that local growth management policies be consistent with the community’s plan and that implementing land use ordinances be adopted. Strategy: Offer technical assistance to municipalities and counties from State agencies and regional organizations.
Goal 3.1: Develop smart growth management tools that encourage mixed use developments and promote community character, compact neighborhoods and more intensive use of land. Strategy: Expand the availability of growth management tools for all communities by enacting legislation enabling tools such as transfer of development rights and the use of impact fees. Strategy: Prepare model ordinances that promote traditional neighborhood design, mixed use and transit-oriented zoning districts, and other smart growth principles. Strategy: Conduct workshops and provide other forms of education for various audiences, including local officials, developers, citizens and other interested parties, to explain "smart" development principles, practices, and tools.
Goal 4.1: Increase the number of brownfield sites that are redeveloped for other uses. Strategy: Provide permanent funding for DENR’s brownfield program, including positions needed to process a backlog of applications for Brownfields Property Reuse Act projects, and provide outreach and technical assistance to communities and prospective developers. Strategy: Eliminate the disincentive of variable fees to fund the State brownfields program, and instead use a reasonable flat fee for applicants. Strategy: Encourage and facilitate local inventories of vacant sites and buildings that can subsequently be marketed by the Department of Commerce, regional, and local economic development organizations. Strategy: Develop an "up-front" application process to pre-qualify brownfield properties for prospective developer liability protection. Include appropriate pre-qualified sites in State Certified Industrial Site inventory. Strategy: Implement State financial incentives where needed and appropriate to stimulate more brownfield projects, especially for sites or in communities that are less attractive to private developers. Options could include income tax credits for environmental studies or remediation costs that exceed a certain amount, partial state subsidy of environmental insurance, and state grants to local governments for environmental studies or remediation of sites proposed for reuse as a public facility. Examine the feasibility of using local revenue bonds to finance brownfield projects. Strategy: Examine potential use of land banks or land trusts to acquire and dispose of brownfield property. Local land trusts in other states are involved in acquisition of brownfield sites, but this has not yet happened in North Carolina. The National Trust for Public Land is also involved in such projects in other states, and it could expand this activity to North Carolina. Strategy: Expand outreach and public education on brownfield and brown building reuse issues, principles, and techniques. Develop education material specifically for target audiences including local governments, developers, consultants, planners, lending institutions, attorneys, and the general public. Goal 4.2: Facilitate the reuse of older buildings. Strategy: Provide State financial incentives to stimulate reuse of buildings with asbestos or lead-based paint contamination. These incentives could include developer tax credits for environmental studies or remediation costs that exceed a certain amount. Strategy: Provide additional State resources for the Main Street Program to add a staff design professional to work with owners of buildings considering renovations, and an incentive fund to upgrade downtown infrastructure and stimulate renovations. Strategy: Establish a tax credit to offset some of the cost of making upper floors accessible. One of the biggest costs in renovating older, multi-story buildings to make them accessible is either upgrading the elevator or adding one. Credits would be designed as an incentive to bring upper floor spaces into the residential market. Strategy: Establish property tax relief for the reuse of older buildings by allowing local jurisdictions to phase in the new assessment rate of the renovated building over a three-year period, thereby allowing investors time to lease the building prior to experiencing a significant property tax increase. Goal 4.3: Increase the rate of rehabilitation of historic properties. Strategy: Provide funding to increase the number of Cultural Resources staff who review applications for historic tax credits in order to decrease the backlog of requests. Strategy: Establish a 10% State tax credit to equal the Federal 10% credit for rehabilitation of non-historic, non-residential income-producing property put into service prior to 1936. This would support projects in downtowns involving non-historic properties. Goal 4.4: Make building codes more user-friendly for rehabilitation and reuse projects. Strategy: Direct the State Building Codes Council to study and revise, as needed, North Carolina’s code for building rehabilitation to make it easier to rehabilitate older buildings consistent with protection of public health and safety. Integrate the revised rehabilitation code into the International Building Code (IBC) when it is adopted. Strategy: Provide technical training for local building inspectors to interpret and apply the updated building rehabilitation code. Strategy: Establish new state building code official positions in the Department of Insurance to function as "circuit riders" to advise and assist local inspectors who are dealing with rehabilitation projects.
Goal 5.1: Increase the proportion of North Carolina public school classrooms that are located in built-up areas. Strategy: Direct the Superintendent of Public Instruction to develop and promote smart growth guidelines for new school construction and for maintenance and rehabilitation of existing schools. Among other features, these guidelines would minimize the acreage required for school construction, promote use of multistory structures and the joint use of school facilities between local governments and local school systems. Strategy: Direct the Superintendent of Public Instruction to review current legislation regarding school reuse feasibility studies and update to provide more realistic parameters and examples and revise school building and maintenance standards. Strategy: Provide resources to local governments to install sidewalks, bikeways and pedestrian systems within a one-mile radius of every school being built, and to those currently in use, so that walking to school will again be a safe option for neighborhood children. Schools should be sited and constructed in such a way as to minimize the use of automobile transportation. Goal 5.2: Locate more state offices in downtowns. Strategy: Re-issue the Governor’s Executive Order to require that State offices be located in downtowns or other major centers of concentrated economic activity. Where feasible, such offices should be located in areas of the state where economic development is most needed. Strategy: Direct the State Property Office to notify downtown development organizations, city managers, local governments and economic development organizations when the State is looking for office space. Goal 5.3: Redirect more state infrastructure investments to downtowns and surrounding neighborhoods. Strategy: Develop and implement funding programs for communities to maintain and upgrade infrastructure in downtowns and older neighborhoods. State programs often fund new roads or water and sewer expansions that will serve new residential or commercial real estate projects, but few programs are designed to improve decaying infrastructure or stimulate infill. To address this discrepancy, the State should develop and implement new programs to help communities improve existing public infrastructure, including sidewalks, water and sewer lines, parking lots, fiber optic installations and other needs. Strategy: Direct state agencies to evaluate the impact of proposed grants, incentives and state-assisted projects on sprawl. Evaluations would include impacts of State programs on older neighborhoods and downtowns. In general, the state would not subsidize projects that increase or accelerate suburban sprawl. Similarly "green fields" development would not be eligible for state grant funds or tax credits unless part of locally-planned growth areas.
Goal 6.1: Increase residential resources in and around downtowns and growth centers. Strategy: Enact legislation that specifically enables all localities to implement inclusionary housing programs. Such programs would require all large new housing developments, both single-family and multi-family, to include a minimum portion of housing that is affordable and would include density bonuses for developers. Strategy: Require that all local growth plans address the issue of affordable housing, including both single-family homeownership and multi-family needs. Goal 6.2: Increase the availability of market rate housing in downtowns. Strategy: Provide state tax credits for new market rate residential projects in high poverty areas of State Development Zones. This would allow homebuyers, developers and investors to claim credits for building new, market rate residential projects in high poverty center city areas. The revision could apply to both building rehabilitation and infill construction projects in State Development Zones. Strategy: Enact a 10% State tax credit for the rehabilitation of non-historic, residential property put into service prior to 1936 in high poverty areas of State Development Zones. There are many homes built prior to 1936 that are not designated as historic but are worthy of renovation. Having a modest 10% tax credit would encourage more property owners to repair and renovate this important segment of the housing stock. Note: This credit would mirror a federal tax credit for non-historic, income producing commercial property put into service prior to 1936. Goal 6.3: Expand funding to increase the supply of housing that is affordable to low-income people, and located near jobs, transportation, and services, but not over-concentrated. Strategy: Provide $50 million in recurring appropriations for the NC Housing Trust Fund, to help address the full range of housing needs in keeping with Smart Growth principles. Strategy: Expand the state low income housing tax credit in Tier 3,4, and 5 areas from 25% to 75% of the federal credit, with mandated income targeting for these relatively high-growth, high cost areas. Strategy: Expand funding to increase the capacity of non-profit affordable housing developers. Strategy: Direct state agencies that fund housing to develop and employ funding criteria that favor housing proposals that provide for a mix of affordable housing, both rental and homeownership, avoid over-concentrating affordable housing developments, and create new opportunities near employment centers, transportation and services, and in neighborhoods where few opportunities exist.
Mayor Lucy Allen Commission Members: Jim Abbott Work Group Participants: Eric Braun Advisors: Bill McNeil, Director, Division of Community Assistance, NC DOC |
