Residents of a south Springfield neighborhood spoke out against an amended rezoning ordinance at Monday night’s City Council meeting.
Developers of a multi-story apartment complex requested the just over 7 1/2-acre site at 3302 S. Maryland be rezoned from Planned Development No. 13, 3rd Amendment, and R-SF, Single-Family Residential District, to Planned Development No. 395.
The amended bill reflected changes made by the developer to try to address neighbors’ concerns. Those changes included a stepped 3-story/4-story configuration (three stories along Maryland and four stories along Walnut Lawn); fewer overall units; and an additional entrance along Walnut Lawn.
Chris Brown, who lives near the proposed development, said he appreciated the amended version, but he felt it didn’t do enough to address the concerns that have been raised.
"I do not believe it goes far enough in mitigating the impact of this multi-story building and the residents it will bring to the neighborhood, the traffic that it will bring," he said.
One of the developers Nathan Reynolds thanked neighbors for working through the process with him. He told council that his team had "approached this in the spirit of cooperation from the beginning." He said he believed it was a strong project that puts an unutilized site into "productive use."
Neighbor Arlene Chriswell said she knows that having to balance what's best for the city with neighbors' concerns isn't easy. But she told council members "if you vote to support the building of this apartment complex at the proposed location, even as amended, you'll be failing. You'll be failing our neighborhood."
Councilman Bruce Adib-Yazdi said before the vote that he had decided to support it. He said he felt like the project met the three things he ran on:
"My campaign when I ran included strategic growth, strong neighborhoods and citizen engagement," he said. "The reality is you can't pick one of those. It's all three. All three have to happen at the same time. We need strategic growth in our city. We need neighborhoods that are strong, and we need citizen engagement. And I believe that this project has achieved all three of those things."
Councilman Brandon Jenson said he agreed with Adib-Yazdi but that he still had some concerns and he wouldn’t be supporting the rezoning. He challenged the city’s design professionals and development community to be more creative than just building "multi-story box buildings surrounded by parking."
Council ultimately approved the rezoning to allow the apartment building project to move forward by a vote of 7 to 2 with councilmembers Jenson and Craig Hosmer voting no. A protest petition was found to be sufficient, so a super majority (six votes) were required for passage.
