 I'm going to encourage everyone to take a seat if we could. Pick a spot for the moment that lets you see the screen up front because we're going to start with a little bit of a show this morning. So go ahead and just pick a spot and sit down and we'll start with a little presentation this morning and get you all oriented to what we know about Barry Street so that you can help us with what you know about Barry Street. Just some simple logistical things. If you're dying for a cup of coffee, the coffee shop sort of in the courtyard around the way is open. If you go towards the football stadium off to the right hand side as you're going through that courtyard as a coffee shop, at the end of the hall here are restrooms if you need them and we have a morning's worth of activity for you so I'm going to put you to work. I am grateful it's not pouring rain right now and I'm glad it was gray enough to get you to come out this morning so thank you very much for being here. This morning we're going to work on a little exercise because there is a City of Fort Worth project here that is going to consider new zoning for the area. So we're going to talk a little bit about the project. I'm going to talk a little bit about this kind of new zoning. We're going to talk about the charrette exercise that you'll be engaged in and then we're going to talk a little bit about some initial analysis. I don't know if you had a chance to kind of walk around and see these maps that were on the wall. They're also in a packet on your table so that you can use them and talk from them during the course of the morning as the discussion goes on and I'll show them to you in the show and point out some things that I think are of interest in each of them. So the goals of this project, overall this project got started because the T was expecting Tex rails new station at Klebern and Berry and that had implications. That meant that new development was likely to come in response to that new transit and of course that was two years ago when we initially negotiated this contract and we've been in limbo for a bit since and during the time that we've been in limbo the T has discovered that really the first phase of the T project for the Tex rail is running from downtown to the airport. We're two stops south of that. So we're not getting our rail station in that first phase. It is coming. It's inevitable that it will come and there will be a station at Klebern. I'll show you the station location that's been selected when we get there. But one of the early things was to make sure that development in this corridor is ready for that transit when it comes. That we have transit ready development. That we have better resiliency for these neighborhoods and by resiliency in this case we're thinking especially of the ability to bounce back after a big storm and specifically the stormwater and flooding issues that exist in the area. And then another of the project goals is to get the zoning tuned up to implement the community's plan. After the urban village plan was prepared there was really no implementing zoning prepared for that plan. And so it's been time for a number of years to get the zoning tuned up in the area. So there are a number of project partners working with us on this. NCT cog is the funding entity part of their sustainable development projects. They're working with the city of Fort Worth as the principal client. The T is involved, TCU as a major player in this area is involved, and of course the Berry Street initiative who really early on was pushing for changes in this corridor and is sort of key to making sure we head off in the right direction. So we have a project boundary that looks like this red line. And you don't have to understand it exactly. It's on the maps in front of you and we can talk about it some more during the course of the day. But that project boundary is basically about a block on either side of Berry with a piece coming down Klebern so that we can deal with the zigzag stuff that's there because Klebern comes through at an angle instead of coming through straight. So they've asked us to look at that piece as well. But mostly it's about Berry Street from the university all the way over just a little bit past Sixth Avenue right before you go under the viaduct there under the other rail line. So there is also a parallel project and we've asked them to join us here today and so during the course of the day take a few minutes and come up front here and have a look at what's on this front table because the entire watershed here which is being called the Zoo Creek watershed. So a larger area is also being studied. The stormwater challenges of this area are created by something more than just Berry Street and those need to be dealt with on a larger basis. So there's a parallel project working on that. So let me introduce the project team. So my name is Lee Einzweiler. I work with Code Studio out of Austin, Texas. I have two people from my office here today, Colin Scarf and Megan Scornia. Our firm is mostly works on zoning across the country. We've successfully completed zoning codes for places like Denver, Raleigh, Memphis. We're working on Los Angeles's code right now. We just finished one for Cincinnati. So zoning is kind of our thing. But we love to plan and zone at the same time which is a little bit of what we're doing here. We've brought with us then a team that includes this stormwater team. From half associates we have Ben Pilant and Terry is here, Francois de Cope is here. Anybody else from half? No? Good. From the DeChaiso group who is doing our transportation and parking, we have Tom Simerly in the back corner of the room here. Civic economics, Daniel Houston is here. And did I see Don? Don is here from Birkenbaum Landscape Architecture. And in addition, then our public outreach is being handled by Open Channels Group and Janaba is here in the back. She has reached out. Hopefully you saw something digitally or you saw a sign somewhere or something else. Those are the kinds of things that we are trying to do to make sure that we can get some people here. So what are we working on in this project? Well, we have some key steps. We had initial analysis, some of that is completed and you'll see the results of that today. We have the charrette for public input right now. Following the charrette we'll be working on this development plan which is the foundational document for doing the new zoning and finally the form-based code itself. So at least two more key times you'll see us when we bring the plan back to the community and then later when we bring the zoning back to the community. So what is this whole form-based code thing? Well for a long time zoning has been a whole lot about use. We cared a lot whether you were the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, right? And we carefully sliced and diced the city to say butchers and bakers over here but not candlestick makers but candlestick makers can be over here but not butchers or bakers. And in doing that we missed out on a lot of the fundamentals about the character of the places that we wanted to live in. And form-based codes are really a call for change, a call for a new approach to thinking about zoning focused much more on the form of development, a much more long-term vision of things and not quite so much on use, doesn't mean use is not part of the package. So the zoning structure usually is use and density, some management issues and some form issues. And unfortunately conventional zoning what we've been doing for a long time is kind of weighted like this, heavily towards use and density as the most important controls and failing to deal very effectively with form. Whereas form-based zoning really gets at form and takes a lighter touch on use. And so how do we illustrate that? Well usually planners use red on zoning maps for things that are commercial. So this is red on a zoning map and so is this. And if we actually care about which one of those we want then we can't be use-based and we can't be totally focused on density and intensity. There's some other things about the difference between that picture and that picture that matter about that commercial development. And that's what we're here to talk a little bit about. So some of the basics, the placement of the building. Where the building is far away from the street we waste infrastructure in building these kinds of streetscapes up front that are parallel to the sidewalk the shopper is actually on back in front of the store. We get the parking location wrong. If you're a retail person or you're a user of retail where do you want to park? Right out front. And so when we set up parking location right out front however in certain settings we run over little Susie on her trike as she's trying to ride her trike around the block. So the parking location really does matter. The same form without the parking in front makes a big did a difference. So height is one of the other challenging things. When we measure height only in feet we get Paris. We get Washington D.C. We get South Lake Texas some of you might recognize. Everything the same height whereas when we measure height in stories and feet we often get a more varied answer to our street fronts. So how you do these things how you regulate makes a difference to what you end up with. Now in height of course the biggest problem is whether you think the change is too extreme. If you've driven around your own streets here that's local. Windows and doors seems like we shouldn't have to tell people to put windows and doors on buildings right but actually we do have to tell people to put windows and doors on buildings. Use is now sometimes as much as anything about what goes in the ground floor and how might that be different from what goes in the upper stories. So is there residential or offices above retail that might be an important distinction here. And finally public realm kinds of questions. This is a street in Alexandria Virginia that probably carries at least two times and maybe more than two times the volume of Berry Street. And yet the pedestrian feels safe crossing at the mid block which would not likely happen on Berry Street unless you're a daredevil. So the point is that a modern code if you want this end result on the right hand side not suggesting this is what we want for Berry Street but if you know what you want you can code for it and that's the idea here. So what is today? Today is really an opportunity to involve the public in the design of what we want and in this case we'll be confirming a lot of the past work that the public has done. So you've got the station area plan and some other plans in front of you the urban village plan just want to make sure that stuff is still real. Want to make sure that you understand the zoning that's in place now and the height that it might allow and make sure you're comfortable with that. We're basically going to be here through Wednesday and on Wednesday night right here we'll do a final presentation of where we think these things are headed. So you get a chance to come back and see us fairly quickly. This is our week. It includes this morning's session. For those of you who are interested one of the nation's best experts in pedestrianism Dan Burden is going to lead a little walk this afternoon. It's part of a parallel project called Blue Zones. I don't know if any of you have been involved in that but the Blue Zones project is bringing Dan Burden and I encourage you to take advantage of it. Be a relatively short walk one mile total I think is what they're thinking a half mile out and a half mile back. It's going to meet at University of United Methodist Church at 1.30. A lot of us from the Charette team are going to go just to see Dan in action. In addition our design studio will be here on the third floor in the ACAF room and you're welcome to come back during the week and see what's going on. We'll be presenting that back to people in a casual fashion in a pinup that you can just drop in anytime on Monday night that open house and we'll be doing our final presentation then on Wednesday. But there are two other opportunities. If you are narrowly interested in what's going on with the economy in this specific area you can come at Monday at lunch. If you're narrowly interested in what's going on with stormwater you can come on Tuesday at lunch and we'll do a separate little lunch and learn session. It's brown bag bring your own grab a sandwich across the way whatever and come join us. Anyone is welcome. So what is this process like that we're engaged in this week? Well I'm going to show you some of the pieces and give you a little sense of it. We study the area. One of the things we're already battling about is how wide are these streets? What's the stormwater problem? Can we reduce the stormwater problem by reducing the size of the streets? Is there any way we can get at some of those fundamentals that really would make a difference here? Asheville, North Carolina while we were studying the project area. This is the neighborhood design workshop. We run them on Saturday morning because we find we typically get the best turnout. It's delightful to have you here today. We're going to design with you today at the tables and at the end of this session we're going to present back. When we present back you'll hear what's happened at some of the other tables so you'll also get the opportunity to sort of see what others might have been talking about. There's Dan's walking tour. Dan is the huge mustached man. He's hard to miss after you've met him the first time and especially if you're a fan of Fragile Rock. We run an open design studio that you're welcome to come join us in during the course of the week. And we will be running a series of technical meetings where we have the representatives of various city departments and other entities coming to see us formally and talk to us about the ideas and make sure that we road test them. The drop-in open house is something you can swing by on Monday and on Wednesday we'll be doing a presentation of the work in progress that we've gotten to by then. So let me show you just a little bit of our initial analysis. So one of the things is how many of you actually live within the boundary, within the red line on my project area? Anybody? Ooh, a couple of good. Oh, and one in the back. Awesome. But how many of you live on this area map? Does everybody else at least live on the map? We have a couple of outsiders, I know. But for us, it's important to kind of get a sense of what's going on in the place. So we made this map to just kind of say, the medical district is a huge influence. It's up here. This is the shopping over here, et cetera. So if you think that there are more things that we should know about the general area, feel free to mark those on your map as we go through the course of the day. There's an aerial photo included there. If you guys need to look at sort of what's on the ground today, that's in your packet. One of the things that we always look at is the block pattern. And around here, the block pattern is really good, except when it's not. And when is it not? Can't get through the high school site. Got to go around it. And for the most part, can't get through the university site. Key places, admittedly, we can get around. It's a small university, and so it kind of works. But there are some very large blocks of land with no streets in them. The building footprints, one of the fascinating things when you just look at the buildings is you can definitely see where the residential neighborhoods are and where the commercial activity is. And you get a pretty good sense of the place when you just look at the buildings themselves. You can see the industrial components up along the train track. You can see the schools. You can see the grand mark shows up like that wonderful figure eight now, and the university. Existing land use is included in your packet in case you're sort of curious about what's going on there. The extent of the flooding in the area. Now, this is a composite image that we have made. The stormwater folks have a more accurate image up front. But in general, the lightest color is the extent of 100-year storms inundation. So it might be only an inch deep, but it's actually water on the ground. The darkest one, though, is the inundation you get from the two-year storm. And the fact of the matter is the two-year storm inundation is almost as extensive as the 100-year storm, which tells you that you're flooding a lot in very minor storms. Our understanding is that the pipe system here holds about an inch and a quarter of rainwater showing up in an hour, for example, fills the pipes. So when you hear about a storm that had three inches in an hour, it's going to flood. And those are the places that will flood. Major transportation. The T station here is shown just south of Berry at Cleburne. You can see that there. And of course, you all know what the major street network looks like. We have included some existing parking counts. We literally went and counted the parking lots. And we did not count the garages, but the garages are included there. You can see them marked with a big G. The bus routes and their stops, the bicycle system. One of the fascinating things is that a decision was made at a certain point in time that university north-south is an acceptable route for bikers to ride on. But Berry east-west is not. And so the bike route system set up by the city shows alternate routes other than Berry as the key bicycle routes. The neighborhoods, this is as much for us as anything. You guys spout off these names very easily because you're bought in and you know and live here. But this is to help us understand the neighborhoods. I guess one intriguing thing is, of course, there is a huge hole here between Blue Bonnet Place neighborhood in Rosemont that is a neighborhood that doesn't have a name and is underrepresented. School attendance zones would be fascinating to match this up with home value. It is a significant impact in this area. Renters versus owner occupy. This is a fascinating map which tells us the things here are actually more normal than one might expect near a university. Part of that is because so many students live on campus and actually they're pushing, of course, to get more students on campus. The year in which the homes were built, to us, this is fascinating to see the patterns and then be able to go look at the housing in those areas based on the years that they were built. The existing zoning in the areas included in the packet. And more importantly, the height allowed by the existing zoning. So this darkest blue along the Berry corridor is 60 feet of height, which is allowed by the zoning today. And in fact, the university's ownership to the north of Berry is actually in a planned development which might allow more height. The grand mark, for example, I believe exceeds the 60-foot height limit. But for the most part, the corridor to the west of Cleaveron is that 60-foot height. And then as you move further east on Cleaveron, it moves down to 45 feet. The neighborhoods are mostly at 35 feet with some along university, especially there at 32 feet. Future land use, which really is a question of some plans that have been done recently. So these are some existing plans, the so-called Goodman Plan, the Urban Village Plan, and the Station Area Plan. There are some little excerpts on your tables that you can have a look at if you'd like. But basically, the most important in our minds is the Urban Village Plan, which claims to be a consensus plan. Here's the drawing for it. It's made up of these various building blocks, which are explained on the pages before. So one of the questions today has to be, do we believe the Urban Village Plan? Is that really what we want to achieve in this area? And make sure that we're all on the same track. The Station Area was originally thought through as a fairly significant transit oriented development, in which the station and a big mixed use development would take place in the triangular piece right there south of Berry. On the other hand, I'd like to share sort of the most recent plan by the T. Because the station is not coming yet, they have bought substantial land and cleared the houses. You can see it down there. It's really the open space that's there. It's about a half of a block between Wayside and Frazier. But it reaches all the way over the little triangle to get to the track area. And it would allow for a bus transfer station as an interim use of that site. The principal reason for this is because it's very hard to get from the Cleburne bus routes to the Berry bus routes. It's a dangerous intersection to be crossing. And if they could actually bring the buses for both of those routes through this transfer station, it would give them a great opportunity to transfer in a more safe way. So that's what's shown here in the little drawing is the buses queued up for the transfer facility and then some parking that would be associated with the station area. So what we'd like to do now is put you to work. And that work is going to be facilitated by someone from our group. What I would like to do is see if we can somewhat consolidate the tables. So it looks to me like we have about five tables worth of folks. So let's try and use these five in the front of the room. And those of you who are in the back of the room, just come join up any table you'd like and come sit up here. On the facilitator sheet, there are times set out there. And they're going to kind of manage our time for the next while and help you work on thinking about the future of Berry Street. So thank you very much. And let's go to work. Last flood, it only lasted about 30 minutes. And it kind of went right in between here. And we helped them through our building sink, because we had. Though the adjacent property is not here. Because you could just walk them down and then get a. A bunch of things pinned up on the wall, as we did earlier. And you're welcome to come see sort of where we're at. And tell us whether you think some kind of course correction is needed, whether we're headed the right direction or not. And then as I suggested on Wednesday, we'll be back here to do a more formal presentation of that material as far as we've gotten during the course of the week that we're here. So I encourage you to get people involved in those ways. In addition, the design studio, which will be here in the ACA room, is open. We have technical meeting schedule. We have other things scheduled. But people can stop by the design studio, who didn't get a chance to come by here Saturday morning. So if there's someone you think has a strong opinion, especially about a narrow issue that they just want to point out to us and help us understand, it'd be great to have them simply drop by the studio. The basic working hours are, if you consider it, a little bit like the business day. We'll be here beyond that. But it would be nice if we had some working time without visitors. So we are hoping that people will simply drop by pretty much during the working day. We're showing the design studio open until 7 PM each of the evenings. So that's one element. You can follow along the project on the city's website. And that's the best way to link away to something else. Katie, who's been here, and Artie, who's been here. Are they both here somewhere? There's Katie and Artie. Are the city's representatives? You're also welcome to reach out to the city planning staff and talk to them about this. I want to remind you of just a couple of things. Some of you came in a little later. And maybe you didn't take a moment and sign in, which is fine. But if you'd sign in on your way out, that would be great. Also, you have full page comment sheets if you really feel like writing us a message. And then you have a little idea sheet there. We'd love to get both of those back. You can drop them off at the sign-in table as you leave as well. And finally, those of you who want to take the walking tour, it's meeting up at the University of United Methodist Church right there at Barry and Forest Park. And that will be at 1.30 while the weather is not great. It could have been raining or 95 degrees. So I think it might be a good afternoon for a little walk. So with that, I'm done with the formal portion of the show. And now I'd like to have those of you who've been designated to introduce your big ideas from the tables come up and join me over here. So who is going to represent table number four? Come on up. So three big ideas, if that's what you've got for us. I'm Alicia. And I'm Linda Joe. The three big ideas we talked about was an accessible park that was walkable. One issue that we have in where I live and around here is the sidewalk issue. So making something 36 inches wide for wheelchairs to access and then be able to enjoy a park. Also, our second idea was really talked about hiring an architect while preserving the site and the culture of the neighborhoods and everything, not constricting innovative design solutions and sustainability. Our third idea was reducing the hardscape. We've got the areas closer to TCU that have been redeveloped. But then as it goes farther east, it kind of breaks down. So you get the parking lots as your streetscape, moving the parking to the rear, and more landscape. Yes, and so going back to the sidewalk issue, making sure the sidewalks continue downberry street, all accessible. And we know that multi-use facilities are a part of the design. Having those include some three-bedroom housing for small families. We don't feel there's really a market for that. We talked about the height. Right now there's a five-story building on the street and if that's max, maybe that's OK, but having a variety down to one in two stories. And then just being material conscious as far as what we're putting on here and making sure it looks like it fits in. Did you want to talk about here? And we were interested in there's, as you go down the downberry street, some of the buildings are old and very dilapidated and they're empty. And I'm actually part of an organization who would like to tear some of those buildings and rebuild prettier buildings and repurpose them for use to help coordinate with agencies around TCU and TCU and the medical district and everything. And just make it more beautiful by getting rid of old buildings and putting up prettier buildings. I appreciate that. And who's on table one? I think, by the way, that's the first tag team report back I've ever had, so that was good. Table one? Oh, thank you for volunteering. I did not volunteer. I was selected. I'm sorry. Yeah, how are you all doing? My name's Todd. Actually, I'm the associate vice chancellor for facilities here at the university. So I have a little bit of pro-keel perspective on this, except for the fact that we all agree that vibrant community is important to all of us. So we had three. Actually, we ended up putting four issues on there, so sorry, you got to listen to an extra one. One we talked about was flexibility as we developed this. When we were looking at the corridor along Barrie, recognizing right now that the current plans call for many facilities that look and feel like the Grand Mark, the six plus story, very large on the curb, as a university, recognizing we are a prominent property owner through this is the opportunity for that town-gown relationship that could embrace the university rather than kind of hide it behind a bunch of very tall retail apartment buildings. So some flexibility that would allow some development here that would feel more along the lines of the institutional field of the university. Up and down university boulevard and such. Walkability was very important, not only from this particular stretch of Barrie, but throughout the communities around here so that there would be some interconnectivity, some of the opportunity to walk on the street, but as well as opportunities to get to the streets. Many of the neighborhoods and places don't have easy sidewalk access and such. And along with that, the physical piece of that is also the safety and security. So that then you start talking about lighting, you talk about the uses of the spaces and just a vibrancy that would make it safer for people to work. Again, the three is kind of the same as we talked a little bit of the flexibility to embrace the university. The university has a, we are growing in national prominence. We think we have something to provide to the community and it might not be retail and apartments. And then I think really what one of the most important things that we talked about was a fourth was transition. Whether it be between retail and the university, whether it be between the university and the neighbors, whether it be between retail and the neighbors, is that we will tend to focus on specifically what's on the street, but what's really gonna be important is how you capture each and every one of these requirements and then transition them from one to another. Whether it be a walkable space that transitions to a retail space that transitions to a neighbor, that transitions to a park, that transitions to a university, that that's really where the fine tuning is gonna have to go to image facilities on the road is one thing, but to actually work them so they transition between uses, I think is gonna be the big challenge for all of us. Thank you, Todd. So how about table three next? Who's representing table three? That's you guys. Come on up. Okay, my name is, okay. Okay, thank you, Keith. My name's George Appleby, 2909 Bemberg Boulevard here in the TCU area. And we came up with several ideas to help make this transition, but mostly Jim and I, one of my neighbors have come up with some negative responses. We'd like to see the city address before they even do anything else. And that's the issue of crime, code compliance and too much traffic in our neighborhood, which I think would help the area, a lot of potential. We'd like to see more traffic choke off in this area and maybe some parking over by the TCU area centrally located for Berry Street. Good friend Faith over there said she would like to see less efforts of blocking traffic off to her street on Sandage off of Berry. You want me to say that? And her husband Jim fixes traffic tickets if you need a traffic ticket fix. Okay, Keith tried to squeeze us on a decision on a transition area from the single family homes to the big buildings on Berry Street. And the only thing we could come up with is maybe townhouses and Jim and I both, we're not speaking for the whole neighborhood. We're just speaking, that's our opinion. We'd like to see either townhouses or single family homes and then maybe a park-like atmosphere between them. Let's see, a little bit more green landscaping and more single family building in the area. Instead of buying a home and turned down building a foreplex, how about a single family home, okay? And that's basically what we came up with. That's good, thank you very much. Let's give him a hand. And our final table number two, oh, do we miss one? We're very disturbed because we didn't really come up with these all enthusiastic ideas. But you definitely need the, I'm gonna say next sentence, but when you do that, it's all typically what the building looks like. You don't look like that in the middle of the minute. People who have true concerns. So, Keith is sorry, he's sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you very much I'm sure that we didn't get that so you did? Sure. This problem is going down before you change the selling on this. We need the October by the way. It's nice to destroy something like this. You have problems for so many planning with three hours ahead of you your position, There is easy to do to resolve before you go forward with anything. And that's to show you that we will please protect this period and instill form for it in all campuses. Okay, I'm Martha Jones. I live at 3136 Wabash Avenue, and we spent a lot of time talking about what doesn't work before we came up with what would. And I was at that zoning hearing too, and I feel like that has to be incorporated as well into our ideas because if the neighborhoods disappear, then I think it will really deter what could happen here. We came up with three general ideas. The first one was to preserve the adjacent neighborhoods so that density occurs within the Berry Street corridor. We didn't talk about transitions, but that's kind of an underlying thing, a part of that. The second idea is we came up with the form-based code that should honor the Urban Village Plan, providing walkable, dense, diverse, or diversity with a mix of uses, both commercial and residential. And then the third idea is to retain affordable housing east of Cleveland Road and encourage affordable housing west of Cleveland Road. Thanks very much. So I think it's kind of fascinating. There is a little similarity to what some of the conversations have been. There's certainly a lot of food for thought for our team and the designers. I will very clearly state I can't fix code enforcement. I can't fix some of those kinds of things, but it doesn't mean those issues aren't going to be reflected in the material we pass back to the city. So those ideas have been heard. They're going to be part of the way that we report back on these issues. We look forward to seeing some of you again. We hope during the course of the week we'd like to see you Monday night drop in and see where we're getting at. And Wednesday for the final presentation, if that's all you can spare, that would be great. So thank you all for coming out today. And we hope to see you again. Thanks very much.