Tag:Comprehensive Plan
Best Laid Plans… Culver Addition
The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men… No matter how carefully a project is planned, something may still go wrong with it. The saying is adapted from a line in “To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.”
We were involved with finding a site for Culver Garden Court. It was challenging and we were pleased when Wade McGee stepped up to work with us. Those discussions began around 2010 with Culver Garden Court being completed in 2012. The picture to the right is from the “As-Built” survey of the Culver Garden Court property, dated 2-13-12.
One of the things included in the negotiation was a provision for ongoing and future access to the remainder of Mr. McGee’s property. The quality of PDFs 12 years ago wasn’t what it is now, so this may be a little hard to see. Squint and imagine… I’ll fill in the gaps.
From North to South, Culver Garden Court is across from Tampa Street, an improved alley and Batabano Street. Since we were carving out a new lot and creating a 2 lot subdivision, we set the north property line of Culver Garden Court in line with the centerline of Tampa Street. Then we provided a 50′ wide ingress/egress easement along the north property line. There were extensive discussions with the Plan Commission and Town Council about this. Even though this put the drive of Culver Garden Court off center from Tampa Street, it would be low traffic and not an issues. It was more important to give Mr. McGee the ability to line up with Tampa Street with any future development. The ingress/egress easement would effectively allow Right-of-Way for a future street extension. Until that time, we extended the Culver Garden Court drive to the west property line for Mr. McGee to use for property access.
Given the above, I was a bit surprised to see the plans for The Dunes showing “West Tampa Street” adjacent to the Culver Garden Court Drive. This seems to be the WORST of both worlds. Now we’ll have a misaligned Street right next to a driveway. On those odd occasions where someone is sitting at the West Tampa Street stop sign and someone is sitting waiting to come out of Culver Garden Court… who has the right of way? If they’re turning, they won’t be able to see the signal when it’s on the opposite side of the car. So many issues…
I am not looped in on these things. All I’ve seen is what’s presented in public meetings. The plan to the right is not the current plan, but the most recent plan I saw, presented at the Town Council meeting on August 22nd, still shows the misalignment of Tampa Street.
Culver Comprehensive Plan
As I’ve stated here before, I don’t particularly have any issues with this project; Towns are either growing or dying, so better to grow. But it is a bit frustrating when the planning of the past is ignored. I don’t fault the developer of The Dunes for this. This is clearly a Town of Culver issue. The extension of Tampa Street needs to be re-evaluated and correct alignment should be pursued. And as stated here, a fix for the South Main Street/Davis Street intersection should be considered. It’s particularly frustrating to be serving on the current comprehensive plan steering committee and see the previous comprehensive plan ignored. (Ignored may be a strong word, since as previously stated, I’m not looped in, but it seems that way.)
Plans are just plans. Plans can and often have to change. That doesn’t mean the time and effort put into past plans should be disregarded without proper consideration.
Comprehensive Plan Vision
I am currently serving on committees in Plymouth and Culver working on new Comprehensive Plans (or Com Plans). These documents are governed by State statute, but leave some flexibility to the communities. Sometimes the term “dream” is used with these documents, as in, “What would be your dream use for this area.” or “Dream Big!”. That leans much more towards fantasy for my liking. My preferred term is “Vision”. The heart of the Comp Plan are the land use maps… the “plan” part of the Comp Plan. It’s a visual tool detailing what the community would like to see and where that is.
There are several stumbling blocks for most people in this process. The first is that Comp Plans usually have a life of 5-10 years. (Plymouth’s last Comp Plan was completed in 2013 and Culver’s was completed in 2014.) People can become fixated on that short time horizon. While the Comp Plan should be revisited and updated every 5-10 years, the plan should be for 25-50 years, as theoretically the community continues on in perpetuity. This makes the 5-10 year update more of a tweak, removing things from the previous to-do list that have been completed and to adjust the overall plan for new trends that have developed. The Vision should be longer.
The second hang-up is a struggle to look past what’s there now and who owns that property. Most people look at a parcel of land and say, “I know that landowner and they would never go for that.” But… this is where they need to be thinking farther into the future than the 5-10 year life of the Comp Plan. The municipality will be here 25, 50 & 100 years from now. Will that landowner? Will that building still be viable? Will that street be there? The Vision should be longer.
The third major hang-up is separating the Comp Plan from the Zoning Ordinance. The Comp Plan lays out what the community would like to see. The Zoning Ordinance lays out what is allowed. There can and should be a difference. This is where a zoning hierarchy would be useful. In a discussion in a Culver meeting last week, we discussed the current Comp Plan’s direction for Main Street between Washington Street and Lake Shore Drive to be future Commercial. We discussed extending that to Lake Shore Drive between Main Street and State Street. This brought up discussion of the recent rezoning of a house on Main Street from Commercial to Residential. (Rezoning of 303 North Main Street discussed here.) The rezoning of 415 Lake Shore Drive was discussed as well. I look at these differently. While I have no problem with the reversion of 303 back to a home, there should have been a way to make that accommodation under the commercial zoning, leaving the long term vision in place. I would say the same accommodation should have been made for 415. While the new construction at 415 will theoretically be there longer, the townhouses planned are denser development and a reasonable intermediate step between single family residential and commercial. The strict district designations need to be softened to allow more mixed development. Furthermore, townhouses mixed in with commercial spaces are a reasonable long term plan in a walkable community.
For my Lurkers, this is not the first time I’ve pushed the Vision idea. I really thought Culver missed the boat not redoing their Comp Plan in 2020 and calling it 20/20 Vision. The whole pesky pandemic thing kind of got in the way, not to mention the Town Manager at that time had Stellar Fatigue and despite the Stellar Communities SAP accomplishing much of what was in the 2014 Comp Plan, he didn’t want to create new goals that he would be charged with achieving. Ha!
As with most of these things, there will be more to come. I’m pleased with Culver and Plymouth putting forth the effort and while I was hesitant about them at first, I’m pleased with MACOG‘s administration of the planning. (Thanks Donny!) Everybody work on their Vision. Do your best to envision what’s over the horizon, not just what can be seen today.
Thoughts on Zoning Hierarchy
So, in the past few months, the Culver Plan Commission has rezoned several properties in what they would have considered spot zoning in the past. Two of these were on the main commercial corridors of Main Street and Lake Shore Drive. The first was at 303 North Main Street. This as the former Easterday Dental Office. The Plan Commission rezoned the property from C-2 to R-1 allowing the former residence turned dental office addition returned to residence to receive a permit for remodeling. The second was at 114 Lake Shore Drive. This was a older house used as a triplex. The Plan Commission rezoned the property from R-1 to R-2 allowing the current use to be legal. (They also rezoned 217 South Ohio Street and 810 South Main Street from R-1 to R-2.) I don’t particularly have an issue with any of these uses, but I think they could have been handled better.
The property on North Main Street is probably the most problematic to me. The Main Street corridor from the current Main Street business district north to Lake Shore Drive has been designated “Commercial” in the last two Comprehensive Plans. This has been followed up with a zoning district designation of C-2 in the Culver Zoning Ordinance. This has allowed the existing homes to remain, “grandfathered” in their current use; thus allowing the house at 303 North Main Street to be used as a dentist office, the house at 307 North Main Street to be used as a residence & art gallery, the house at 313 North Main Street to be used as a beauty parlor with second floor apartments, and the house at 212 North Main Street to be used as a law office with second floor apartment. This also allowed the expansion of Good-To-Go into the adjacent lot to the north without issue a few years ago.
In the case of 307 North Main Street, there was no issue when the owners of the art gallery sold the property and the new owners returned the use to residential only. The problem occurred with 303 North Main Street when the new owners wanted to use the property as a home (allowed), but also wanted to remodel. Remodeling required a building permit and residential use is not allowed in a C-2 district. The solution proposed by the then Building Commissioner and accepted by the Plan Commission was to rezone the property as R-1. When it was brought up that this violated the direction of the Comp Plan, the Comp Plan’s recommendations for this area were questioned. I felt the rezoning was a mistake and that considering rezoning that corridor would just compound that mistake. For one quick example, the Rezoning of 303 North Main Street to R-1 placed a buffer restriction that will be imposed if anything is done with 307 North Main Street: “Any property line abutting said residential district shall be required to be effectively screened in one of the following ways, or a combination thereof: buffering by a dense strip of natural plantings or by a solid of opaque fence.” – Culver Zoning Ordinance, Chapter 3, page 32. This buffer requirement doesn’t exist between commercial properties.
I have paraphrased something Jim Dicke II told me several times in this blog: “Communities are growing or dying. The Status quo cannot remain.” I think this is salient because I know of only two commercial properties that are currently for sale, i.e. 107 & 109 South Main Street and I would not say they are priced to sell. If we want Culver to grow and grow in a controlled manner, we need to provide areas for this to happen. It makes sense to expand our commercial corridor and move towards tying the two commercial districts together. The first step is the corridor from downtown Main Street to Lake Shore Drive.
Within the Culver Zoning Ordinance there is some existing hierarchy of uses. While not a 100% applicable rule, for the most part The I-2 district acceptable uses are allowed in the more restrictive I-1 district. The C-2 district acceptable uses are allowed in the more restrictive C-1 district. The R-1 district uses are allowed in the R-2 district. I think this would be worth considering across zoning districts as well. If this were the case, it would not have been necessary to rezone 303 North Main Street since the residential, R-1, use would have been a lesser use than the C-2 District allows. My rational is that this would have allowed the existing house to continue to be used and remodeled without losing the Town’s long-term goal of expanding the commercial corridor. It would have also kept it abundantly obvious to the land owners that the goal is commercial and not leave them thinking that their future neighbors will automatically be residential. That said, when a cross use is made, it would be easy enough to require any of the more restrictive requirements to be followed, whether it’s the lower use or the higher use, i.e. if a property owner wants to put a house in a C-1 district, this would be allowed, but the R-1 setbacks, impervious surface requirements, etc. of the R-1 district would apply as the more restrictive land use. This idea would require further examination and consideration, but it might be a good first step into some of the more mixed uses being considered in the upcoming Comprehensive Plan.
Personally, I would not only keep this corridor commercial, but would expand the Main Street Commercial Corridor on down to Davis Street and expand the Lake Shore Drive Commercial Corridor west to Main Street. On the south end, there is already commercial property at the corner of Main & Davis. There is already commercial property on both sides of the street on all corners of the Main and Lake Shore Drive intersection. Linking these together makes planning sense. It opens the opportunity for more mixed use little shops and businesses such as the former art gallery at 307 North Main Street and the law office at 212 North Main Street. This would promote more foot traffic between the two commercial areas of town. I am not sure I would find fault in making this C-1 while we’re at it…
Sometimes the desire to be helpful overcomes the mission of long term planning and the vision that involves. It was helpful to the new owners of 303 North Main Street to rezone the property, but there were other options. Sending them to the BZA for a “Variance of Use” would have made more sense. Rezoning is the more radical choice.
This also applies to the other three rezonings that were completed, changing R-1 zoned properties to R-2. This is undoubtedly spot zoning creating a future problem where a problem didn’t exist. All of these properties were grandfathered in their current non-conforming use, but now they are allowed to remodel, upgrade or even tear down and build something that solidifies the use, that doesn’t fit the long range plan, for the foreseeable future. While these property owners believe this “fixed” their problem, in reality, all of these properties would require variance for any changes they want to make as they don’t meet the R-2 requirements either!
Before this escalates from commentary to rant, I’ll leave it at here. It will be interesting to bring these things up as the Comprehensive Plan proceeds.
Extraterritorial Boundaries
I’m currently sitting on committees forming new comprehensive plans for Plymouth and Culver. I’ve been pushing Culver to do a new Comp Plan since 2020. (See post here) Wouldn’t ‘2020 Vision for Culver’ been a good name!?! But I think they had some Stellar fatigue followed by pandemic malaise…
This will be the third time I’ve done this for Culver and the second time for Plymouth. MACOG has started offering this as a (paid) service and is leading these meetings for both communities. Ratio Architects did the previous one for Plymouth and an earlier one for Culver. The last one for Culver was completed by Houseal Lavigne.
What have I learned from these experiences? You’re buying a template. They all have strived to “personalize” the product, but lined up on a table without the credits, it would be pretty easy to group them by consultant. The format would give it a way.
But to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie in Alice’s Restaurant… But that’s not what I came to tell you about. I came to talk about… Extraterritorial Boundaries.
If you follow that link, you’ll see that the Indiana legislators are constantly messing with the definition and powers granted to municipalities for their extraterritorial jurisdiction. The core premise is that municipalities are allowed to extend their zoning boundaries to cover areas of potential future municipal expansion. This is done with the consent of the County. It has generally been a 2 mile zone. The distance is increased when there is a lake involved, i.e. in the case of Culver, the south end of Lake Maxinkuckee is more than 2 miles from town, but is included in Culver’s Zoning Jurisdiction. This is not annexation. It doesn’t change tax rates. It doesn’t include water, sewer or road extensions. It just brings those areas under the municipality’s land planning jurisdiction and provides some control over how it is developed. In most cases, any development of significance would need municipal connections and most other developments will feel minimum impact. It’s a good way for the municipality to keep track of what’s happening around them and how it will affect them.
The pink area shows the current extended authority. The loop outside that shows the approximate limits if the Two Mile area was granted.
I have pushed several times for Culver to expand their Extraterritorial Jurisdiction to the limits allowed by the State. This is just good planning practice. I have an extended post about it from February 14, 2013 here. The drawing to the right is from that post. It shows where Culver’s Extraterritorial jurisdiction should have been then. That was before the annexation of The Paddocks PUD on the west side of town, the Beste annexation on the west and north side of town and the upcoming annexation on the south side of the Masonic Cemetery. All of those would extend the potential jurisdiction to the south, west and north. (The main effect would be on the north side since in the drawing we’re already running into to edge of county boundaries and the chances of Starke or Pulaski counties granting Culver jurisdiction are slim.)
The other change from the map above is that the current boundary became much more jagged after that. Sometime around 8 years ago, Culver chose to partner with the County on permitting, using their system. Unfortunately their system is quite crude and couldn’t handle parcels that had split zoning. This ended up in some negotiations which moved split parcels in and out of Culver’s jurisdiction based on the percentage that was in Culver’s jurisdiction at the time. At that time I argued strenuously that all the partial parcels should be brought under Culver’s jurisdiction since they were all fully within the allowable extraterritorial jurisdiction, but the Marshall County Plan Director and Marshall County Building Inspector pushed back on this, not wanting to give up County control. This was a huge missed opportunity, but it’s water under the bridge now.
I have been told that Plymouth’s Extraterritorial Boundary does take in all of the allowed jurisdiction. Looking at the drawing to the right, this is mostly correct, but not 100%. This is most obviously an issue in the industrial area on the NW side of Plymouth.
The Comprehensive Planning process will not change this, but I would suggest that the new Comp Plans include strong recommendations to expand the boundaries. That is a first step. This is not so much a power grab. It’s not about control. It’s more about knowledge and PLANNING. Both communities should look at Bremen and their struggles, where they’ve allowed their industrial area to become landlocked. This is an easy, local example of why planning outside the immediate boundaries of the community are important.
Currently, there are new things going on which should be part of this extraterritorial planning. One of these, which is of huge significance, is the County’s pursuit of expanded sewer districts. In Culver, it is likely that the town would be asked to take in sewer for Burr Oak and Hibbard. The push for inclusion of lakes means it is likely that Plymouth may be asked to take in all of the chain of lakes all the way to Lake Latonka. If these areas start to become municipal “customers”, then their future development becomes the concern of those municipalities. Look at the trend towards bigger and bigger houses around Lake Maxinkuckee and Pretty Lake. Sewer access will make this likely with the other lakes as well Many of them have lots that are currently unbuildable, but with sewer, that will change.
There is also a concern with allocation of resources. The County is struggling to hire and struggling to provide coverage. In the Culver area, a potential solution for both entities would be to expand Culver’s zoning jurisdiction to the County lines to the south and west of Culver. This would eliminate the small fringe area of county zoning around Culver and it would help Culver with planning control.
While Burr Oak and Hibbard aren’t exactly booming communities, sewer access could change this. Again, bringing this under Culver’s zoning control would help the town anticipate and plan for any growth. Sewer access could well spawn growth in Burr Oak. As mentioned in my article, the proximity to major electric service from the Burr Oak substation and access to an significant railroad line could be the catalyst for growth if sewer were available.
I don’t see much in the way of downside to this expansion. I know some in the AG area don’t want this oversight, but in reality, the municipal zoning has been changed so that the AG designation for the municipalities reasonably mimics the AG designation in the County. The municipal plan commissions have a county appointed member so there is representation. This is not to say that the municipalities don’t occasionally over step, as they did with the WECS rules, but even with those, the county eventually came pretty much in line with the same rules.
I will continue to advocate for expanding the Extraterritorial Jurisdiction of Plymouth and Culver as I serve on these committees. I think this is appropriate and necessary planning. It should be positive for all involved.
Culver Plan Commission September MIA?
October 3, 2023
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Culver, Rants
Community, Complete Streets, Comprehensive Plan, Culver, government, Plan Commission, Planned Unit Development, Planning, Rants, The Dunes, Volunteering
Just a mini rant… I was a bit upset to find out that the September Plan Commission meeting was cancelled because there wasn’t anything on the agenda. (Per the Building Commissioner) I know it’s a mostly thankless job and that the pay is poor. ($0: They’re volunteers) I was still disappointed that the commission didn’t take the opportunity to catch up on some of the things that they don’t have time for because their meetings are usually busy. Here’s a short list off the top of my head:
That’s my short list… With a little thought, I’m sure I could double it, but there are hours and hours that could be spent related to the five thing above.
I give volunteers a lot of respect. I’m not going to come down hard on them for taking a breather. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t important things to do.
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