91视频

The Portland City Council on Wednesday passed three amendments to the recommended draft of the Housing Regulatory Relief Project.

The project is an effort by the city to provide regulatory relief for building projects, especially those that include housing, by temporarily suspending or mitigating development and process standards.

The intent of the proposal is to lower the cost of developing housing in Portland and facilitate production. The proposal addresses 15 zoning code requirements. Many of the changes would expire Jan. 1, 2029. Bicycle parking, eco-roofs, design review, ground-floor active uses are among the requirements that would be affected.

鈥淚n addition to the amendments we鈥檙e proposing are a couple of directives that are in the ordinance,鈥� Bureau of Planning and Sustainability city planner Phil Nameny said.

These directives are tailored to assist permits or land use reviews for projects struggling to enter the construction phase. One proposed ordinance directive would allow projects in the pipeline to use new code provisions for nonconforming upgrade waivers, bicycle parking reduction and standards, loading space reduction, ground-floor requirement waivers, and Central City Master Plan amendments.

Another proposed ordinance directive would extend land use approvals granted between March 8, 2017, and March 1, 2020, to March 1, 2025. Permits for these land use approvals would need to be issued by March 1, 2025.

The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability proposed a draft of the proposal in September. The Portland Planning Commission discussed the draft four times before recommending that the City Council approve it. Proposed amendments to the draft were presented to the council last week before Wednesday鈥檚 vote.

Three amendments proposed by City Commissioner Carmen Rubio were passed by the council. One aligns the regulations with recent state law changes, removes out-of-date language, and changes some regulations to align with Title 30 inclusionary housing processes; a technical amendment clarifies application of the ground-floor window requirement in the Central City plan district; and another amendment further reduces design review procedures temporarily for affordable housing projects.

The design review amendment would give projects normally subject to a Type III review two additional options. First, for any projects with housing, the applicant would be able to choose a Type II review in conjunction with a design advice request (DAR). Second, for projects that meet the current thresholds for an affordable housing project, the applicant would be able to choose either a Type II review or a Type Ix review. The affordable housing projects would not need to go through a DAR prior to submission.

For all housing projects that are normally subject to a Type II review, an applicant could choose to be subject to a Type Ix review.

In all these cases, an applicant could still choose to go through the current review processes and/or apply for a DAR or pre-application conference on a voluntary basis.

City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez proposed four amendments; one was withdrawn and the other three failed to pass. One proposal would have reinstated city staff鈥檚 original proposal to temporarily suspend the bird-safe glazing requirement in the River overlay zone and Central City plan district when a proposal includes residential use. Another would have replaced the Planning Commission鈥檚 eco-roof recommendation with staff鈥檚 original proposal to temporarily suspend the eco-roof requirement. A third proposal would have temporarily suspended the 35-day deadline to post the neighborhood contact sign and send notification to required organizations when a proposal includes residential use.

The council is interested in looking at incentives to promote environmentally friendly development. The group discussed possibly holding a work session to explore ideas.

The council is set to vote on the recommended draft of the Housing Regulatory Relief Project, with amendments, on Jan. 24. Following adoption, the code changes would take effect March 1.