 Hello, I came here this evening not really expecting to talk. I was just going to be a spectator like the rest of you But I just wanted I'm Ann Zeta. I'm the city council representative for district nine, which this project is located in and I appreciate all the efforts of the people who participated over the last week and I wish I could have participated more fully I have a full-time job now. I think you all are aware of that. I Did want to mention Someone that we lost this week Sandra Dennehy who was very involved in the Berry Street initiative, which kicked off Urban villages across the entire city of Fort Worth And so we owe her a great deal of gratitude for the work that she has done over the years. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with cancer Not very long ago at all and passed away over the weekend There's going to be a service for her on Sunday morning at nine o'clock at the Tannock Gardens in the Fuller Garden and she I read last night at city council in her honor an article that she wrote after participating in the Berry Street initiative about citizens participation and A call to action basically at the end of her article about how if you care for the communities that you live in and the Schools that your children attend and the air that you breathe that there's that it should be second nature To get involved so I appreciate all of you for the involvement that you have given of your time to Make our city a great place to live and work and play and I will hand it over Good evening everyone My name is Lee Ein Swarler I work with a planning consulting firm out of Austin, Texas called code studio code studio is under contract here in the city of Fort Worth to do some work on the Berry and University area in furtherance of the original Urban Village plan and we're going to show you some of that work this evening This is what we call a work in progress presentation. You should Accept that These are the work that has occurred between Saturday morning when we consulted with the public and now Wednesday night So we've only had a few days to work through this But I've had a whole variety of technical experts at my back-and-call. We've had a lot of technical meetings and We think we've got a lot of it right, but it is not all set in stone and certainly none of it is done yet So with that modest grain of salt, let me present some ideas This evening's presentation is going to include a Recap of the charrette that we've been holding this week It's going to include a little bit of background about the project some information on the streetscape that we're proposing and some character areas that might eventually lead to being new zoning districts some block studies in Which we tested those character areas and finally a little bit about next steps So let me share a couple of things with you. There are some goals for this project That is to get this area ready for transit. Tex rail is coming to the Barry Cleaver and intersection and We ought to be developing in patterns that anticipate being a rail centered area at some point in time Neighborhood resiliency. Wow If you stopped and looked at the stormwater posters on the way in you know, we've got a significant stormwater problem Those of you with long memories will remember that there are times when Barry Street has three to five feet of water on top of it And the possibility of new zoning. These are all coming together To make this project happen So the partners in this project include a variety of people first and foremost North Central Texas Council of Governments in their sustainable development program Funded this project and they funded a grant to the city of Fort Worth and Other involved partners include the T TCU the Berry Street initiative has been involved But I have to give special thanks this week to TCU for providing us a home for the week We were here in the a cuff room for the majority of the time. We borrowed the clink scale room for much of the time We actually had an additional room for lunch and learns that we used and finally We got a chance to bike around the area with courtesy of the folks from B cycle So for a nominal fee B cycle basically gave us unlimited bike use this week And you'll see we took our bikes around the neighborhood to start as a great way to sort of get our feet on the ground and Learn about this place. So here is our project area and the reason this project area is drawn is for the most part We're dealing with the commercial zoning that sits along Berry Street But the project area is extended in a couple of directions to capture certain kinds of things We're coming a little bit down Cleburne Road because we're trying to capture that zigzag pattern along there and think about How development should occur there? We're coming down as far as the Kroger over here We follow the commercial zoning on University and we've really just included one block round that down to David on the bottom and Buoy on the top there So there is a parallel project going on called the Zoo Creek Flood mitigation study which is looking at the overall Stormwater watershed here and trying to figure out how we can dry the place up a little bit now The fact of the matter is it's very clear from previous studies That it would take an enormous amount of money to build a huge pipe through the area and just shoot all the water at the zoo That's one possible solution It's a very expensive one and of course the conveyance of water into the zoo property wouldn't make the zoo very happy So they are this time around looking at some more A greater variety of smaller scale solutions and you'll see some of those embedded in the show tonight But there is a parallel study get engaged as that comes forward That will be talking strictly about the stormwater policy for the area our charretteam that's here this evening includes my firm code studio which includes Collin scarf and Megan we're Megan Scornia In addition to our firm our lead designers from third coast design studio Keith Covington and Lee Jones Our stormwater partners from half associates Francoise here Terry's here Ben's here Our market analyst is back in Austin. He's given us his stuff and gone home Our landscape architects are still here from Steve Birkenbile and Don bounce where Don go. There's Don Our public outreach group is here as well. Janaba is here this evening helping us. Thank you Janaba and Finally, we have a transportation and parking expert in to Shazel group so We have a full team of people who have basically worked through since Friday afternoon to get here to Wednesday night As you'll see we met with a whole variety of people during the course of this week Some of you may have dropped in on the open design studio all of this work happened very transparently in Rooms right here where people could drop through and see what's going on and respond to our ideas as they were created There's our starting bike tour for you There's already from the city looking good these are super Vato and It was it was absolutely awesome to tour around on bikes I got to tell you the nice thing is that These bikes are a real leveler doesn't matter what your skill level is. They're a little wobbly so But it was a lot of fun On Saturday, we held our design workshop right here in this room. They pulled the seats back for us and We ran four big tables of people talking about this for those of you who were looking at the material up front Here's the four table drawings that were created during the course of that and from that came sorry, here's a Set of the issues that we asked them about We were asking about things that need to be preserved things that need to be changed things. You're not happy with in the neighborhood And Specifically some questions about the zoning in the area so that when we get to that We'll have a chance to think about changing the zoning The actual maps there And just some of the ideas that came out of it There were a lot of ideas about Westbury and and trying to Deal with the perception of crime there trying to get more eyes on the street of more activity Trying to encourage the students and the community to embrace the corridor The residential areas adjacent to it some challenging problems like sidewalk connections and the Student housing which has popped up in the area some of the over parking challenges. So we heard from a variety of people the same kinds of things in The afternoon on Saturday after the charrette. We were lucky enough that our council member talked the Really one of the nation's foremost experts on pedestrianism into stopping by so the Blue Zones project includes Dan burden That's the gentleman in the in the brown vest on the top with that fraggle rock look and Dan happens to be One of the absolute best at something called a walking audit and he walked people up and down the corridor and helped them understand What some of the opportunities were for this corridor on Saturday? We began our brainstorming and You can see some of the initial pieces that were worked on up here on the walls The more formal concept as those ideas sort of solidified over time We moved on from that brainstorming to running the open design studio Many people dropped in during the course of the week. That was a lot of fun We met a lot of interesting people who have Property in the area and concerns about the area The design studio included lunch and learn on Monday The lunch and learn was on economics and on Tuesday on stormwater both well attended both very interesting sessions We also had a series of stakeholder meetings with the technical stakeholders like the folks who control the roads the folks who deal with stormwater And the folks who deal with the zoning Series of initial concepts came out of that those concepts are on the wall here if anybody wants to look at those original Concepts as they were first drawn and annotated We've included a few of them in the show just to be a reminder So we worked up some initial concepts and on Monday night. There was a drop-in open house held right here We pinned most of that stuff up on the walls and we asked people. What do you think here's the initial concepts? Are we on the right track? Have we been listening and I think for the most part we did pretty well we had a significant number of comments on our character drawing and for those of you who might have seen the first version this version's a modified version and you'll see we were responsive to many of the questions about Could we Find some imagery that had better character that was closer to what people felt the concept was We spent the last couple of days trying to refine that work and in fact today We we they worked the team worked quite late last night. I'm allowed to sleep because all I do is talk So I get to go home. I can't draw a lick so they worked late last night in preparation and Today we actually were doing our production work We didn't have our room upstairs And so this space right here had all of those tables and everything else in it and the production team moved downstairs And thank heavens for computers because if we'd had to color it all we wouldn't have had enough time and not enough room So a little bit of background on the project area I guess it's important that we all stay grounded in market reality So our economists Basically came forward and Shared some information with the community the other day that show is up on the website if you want to have a look at that I've excerpted it here with Some of what I think are the key ideas The fact of the matter is that This area has what the the retail folks call leakage You have not only stonewater leakage, but you have retail leakage Leakage means the money that we expect you to be spending is Not being spent here because we can look at the revenues from the places that are here And they don't equal what you as a group by it based on your demographics ought to be spending That means you're going somewhere else and the money is leaking out of the neighborhood So there's a huge opportunity associated with leakage to simply bring that money back to the neighborhood It's not that there isn't enough money here altogether. It's that you're spending it in other places so some of the Ideas indicate maybe some opportunities to stop some of that leakage some of it is clearly going to leave We're not talking about building a Costco in the corridor, right? You know so those of you who need Costco or Sam's or whatever it happens to be are going to go somewhere else for that and continue to do That but can we capture some of the other things? Can we capture perhaps some more of the eating and drinking? Can we capture some of the other ideas that are? Missing out of the area so there are a hundred and ten individual businesses in the project area 37 them happen to be eating and drinking establishment six of those are freestanding fast food establishments There's 27 retail stores. There's five vacant retail stores, and there are 13 and there's a reason for those quotes Alternative financial Institutions in the quarter mostly in the eastern end of the quarter The challenge is if you actually looked behind the corporate veil of those 13 They are probably fairly consolidated There is a limit in Texas on how long a payday loan can be held by a certain entity and it is common practice to say Oh, you're however many days are up Let me introduce you to somebody else and to walk behind the curtain and come back out with a different hat on and Lend the money at your next business So it is possible quite possible that they're actually less than 13 business people here engaged in this market Of payday and title loan etc. But here's how it maps out and I'll apologize They will have better maps for these eventually these were done by our economist and as he admitted He is not the GIS expert. So there's at least one pin completely out of place, and you'll all see it there the retail is not down there on I Guess that's on Ben Brook So that pin is clearly supposed to be two blocks north somewhere But the retail is fairly well spread out along the corridor Eating and drinking is somewhat concentrated in a couple of areas It's the faster food kinds of things on the eastern end and the more sit-down kinds of things a little bit to the west The financial products range however between Bank of America on the one end to all of those alternative financial Opportunists on the eastern end of the corridor. So there's there's quite a variety of Things like that. There is one alternative Financial user right in the middle as well So that's kind of some of the the picture it all adds up to the fact that there are sort of three characters from the economist perspective of What's going on in this corridor and it's kind of function and we've called them for the moment college town Transitional and I've called it East West Berry. That's not what the economist called it if you saw the lunch and learn show I renamed it So let's just talk about those three areas a little bit. So college town If you built suitable spaces, you could attract Typical college retailers that are not here now those might be the gap or urban outfitters other kinds of preppy kinds of places fashionable independent stores The example he uses his coal. Well Which is probably a really good example from your neighboring community However, there are limited opportunities for that development, right? There are small parcels that are shallow on the south side of Berry the University owns much of the land on the north side of Berry. So the potential for growth is really somewhere else Either further east or to the side streets The transitional area the center area there has its own challenges Right now it has a number of drive-thru facilities It has two dueling drug stores, which our economists suggest has to shake out sometime soon This drug store on every corner model cannot survive The notion of a performing arts center for the university would clearly attract new visitors and the transit That's proposed along with some stormwater improvements would help jumpstart development, but that's all outside investment That's university investment the tea's investment or some other private invest investor working with the tea The stormwater improvements perhaps coming from the city So the opportunity for right now in much of the eastern end of the corridor is to outfunk Magnolia Right those of you who've been here a long time. Tell me. What was the first first first start of Magnolia being a cool place to be Anybody Okay, good example So we need the first example of that right Nominal investment in an existing building this one happens to be from another city here in Texas, but not in Alabama But nominal investment in a building happens to be attractive, you know serves great food, you know, perhaps serves great beer, whatever This is one of the opportunities for this corridor in the short term is is to bring in that community that brings a little life and vibrancy Anybody here to live in Ryan place? There's a few so how do we get people from Ryan place down to the Berry Street corridor? That's the fundamental question, right? We've got to grow Ryan place down to the south We've got to make that investment that's happened there bigger So East West Berry once you get east of Cleburne, it's even tougher There is today just about zero market over there There's not a lot of demand for a whole lot of things Why is that because the value of the housing stock and immediately surrounding area is very modest Very very modest. You have a pool of affordable housing there So that gives us in many people's minds opportunity Large parcels can probably be assembled But that redevelopment is going to take some substantial Interventions things like the rail coming stormwater mitigation happening perhaps some investment in neighborhood amenities Needs to be something that actually draws people to want to be there So nominal investment in the existing buildings is kind of the pattern that the economist sees For that portion of the corridor for now on the other hand for those of you who might be familiar with Austin where I'm from East 6th Street East 7th Street East Caesar Chavez, etc We're all rundown empty storefronts in ethnic neighborhoods The same way that this one is and now they are you know the hippest place in the city to be that won't last long But they'll move on to somewhere else But in the meantime those market forces are helping raise all the boats in that surrounding area So if I was to just talk about sort of what are the forces that are operating in this area that we have to think about as We're planning it Certainly, we're sitting in the middle of one TCU right significant investor in the neighborhood They are the ones who pay to maintain the streetscape that's here. They are a good civic partner for this community We have the T as a possible Significant investor in the future of this neighborhood in selecting this text rail station and setting us up We have the eastern portion of the corridor with this more casual approach to investment Of simply reinventing the existing buildings that are there, but all of that all of that gets a little smackdown There's our smackdown right there. That's the hundred year inundation boundary of That is the inundation boundary of a hundred year storm So that's not necessarily deep water, but it's some water and some of it is deep I'll show you a little bit later where the deep places are so this is a huge challenge in terms of redevelopment You can see why the western portion of the corridor is doing better than some of these other pieces They've got stormwater issues and they're going to continue to have stormwater issues and the stormwater Environment in terms of permitting with the city and all those kinds of things is just going to get tougher It's just going to get tougher So here's the stormwater those darker blues are the depth and actually At CVS there the depth is three to five feet of Water sitting over the road a significant problem The worst problem is that if I just look at my study area If I look at the face of Berry Street alone, I can't fix the problem Because it's all happening upstream meaning south of there on the map and it's all flowing through my study area a raging river Created upstream flowing through the study area, right? So part of the question of resolving the new zoning and the new thinking for this area is How to accommodate this kind of movement of water through the project area in it? Storm which provides an inch and a quarter of rain in an hour. The water stays in the pipe underground The minute we get a storm more intense than an inch and a quarter an hour The water flows over the ground throughout the project area So let's talk about how some of the improvements to this area might be a help first off the streetscape Now right now you have a great new streetscape on the western end of Berry Street But when this streetscape was designed it was not set up to be a stormwater streetscape these planting beds are raised you can see the water not going into them right there in the lower left So while they handle a little water that lands on them they are not intended to handle anything more than that But it's a pretty good streetscape. I've walked that street feels pretty good. It's you know, not half bad It's certainly an improvement over the sections that don't have any streetscape So what we really need to do is extend that streetscape and get it all the way to Cleburne the third phase Two phases have been built already the third phase is necessary so this is a simple schematic design of that third phase you're seeing the Parallel parking spaces the bump outs the curb extensions that help us get across the street the enhanced pattern within the the intersections to begin to give people a perception that the traffic should be slowed down and that would get us All the way to Cleburne with that streetscape be great if we could simply extend it But better yet if in doing that we could do a better job So we have shown also a piece east of Cleburne running all the way to about just past 6th street Where the road dives underneath the railroad track? There's two options shown here one option. We couldn't resist was a little reverse parking option We can actually keep the four lanes of traffic not all six that are there But we've choked it down to four lanes further on so we can choke it down here as well So the four lanes of traffic, right? In a model in which the center line is actually shifted to the north we fit in a median and We can get angled parking in Angled parking would be really helpful for the adjacent buildings because some of the problem with the reuse of those buildings is the perception That they don't have access to parking now They may not need significant access to parking, but parking out front is what every retailer wants parking spaces right out front Now unfortunately when we actually once we had designed this and figured it out It only gives you two extra parking spaces per block over a parallel parking model So it's not super productive It's not like it's giving us a ton of stuff and it's one-sided so in that sense it's biased so the lower drawing is an Example with the parallel parking spaces we lose two of the spaces that we'd included we get 12 spaces per block instead of 14 But probably it operates better But one of the key things that we're really talking about here Is that we're using a stormwater set of planters? and so what you'll see here is a redesign which has as an example the Sidewalk water running off You'll see the little curb there is set there But the level of the ground is below that and the curb is actually cut I'll show you some pictures in a minute of what this might look like the water goes in It sits in a filter bed if we only have a little bit It's contained there if we have a lot of it it goes on down through and it goes through the pipe That's in the little square underneath and it actually goes into the storm system Right same thing with the center lane two center lanes are going in and then the other two lanes the outside lane and the parking lane Going into the curbside rain gardens So a series of rain gardens that are actually helping us solve the problem right here within our streetscape What might that look like here's some ideas? Heaven knows what those might actually formally look like we're not designing anything in any rigorous way here But these are some examples of what that streetscape looks like fundamentally what you're talking about is cutting the Curb you'll see the little metal panel here in the top left corner or Down here you'll see the metal panels cutting back through each of those is a channel in which the water is flowing Back down into the filtration bed when that filtration bed is full of water. It ends up in the pipe down below So those are the kinds of ideas that could be included in the streetscape and in fact over time I would hope that we might be able to retrofit the existing streetscape to also help us do this job But certainly the first step is those future portions of the streetscape need to be stonewater enhanced So once we get the street going and have that right then what is the character of the private development in the area? So when we started thinking about that as many of you know, we started with these sort of softly bounded areas that are seen here When the urban designers look at this stuff when the planners talk about it We're kind of looking for areas with a consistent character either today or an anticipated consistent character in the future and Fundamentally the biggest game changer in this area is the new transit station and so First and foremost we're talking about what's going to happen Near that train station. We also have this other spot right here the other star there That's where the deepest water is along Berry Street So how could we be sensitive to the amount of conveyance that has to happen in that area to move water through? So it's not piled up over Berry Street so those are some of the ideas that we're working with and one of the things that we found during the course of this is That at least for the planning process We've extended our boundary you can see these circles the circle is a quarter mile or a five minute walk from the transit station the second circle is a ten minute walk a half mile and What we decided is that we really ought to come over and talk about how to resolve some of the issues on the east side of Cleburne so we've gone a little bit deeper into the neighborhood That's where that dotted line comes from is that it helps us Design some solutions that make sense on that eastern side as well So let's walk through some of these character areas And the first one we're showing is what we call West Berry shop front It includes the little piece along university that has which which and duches and all of that and it extends On university over to Lubbock So it includes the front of all of those parcels. It's the red piece that you see on that map What kind of character would that area have well, we think that it is a shop front area This is our core retail zone. That means the buildings need to be set up for retail use pulled up to the street Lots of glass on the ground floor Upper story can be office residential three to four stories maximum. That's all that fits on these sites You cannot build taller on these sites. They are too shallow So unless we were extending the zoning down to the south into the neighborhood this is the kind of heights that you might expect in the buildings and Frankly, we can barely squeeze in the three stories. The four goes on the deepest lots The next piece that we're showing we've called north berry for the moment. This is the area where private institutions I know there's a lawyer there. There's a liquor store there. There's some other Private uses there. There's gas station there today. There's as well a lot of university ownership And there'll be some institutional future in this area. So in some sense It's a combination of sort of civic entities the big institutional buildings as well as retail entities And so we're gonna see horizontal mixed use meaning adjacent to each other and we might see some vertical mixed use Institutional retail office residential on that side of berry. We would anticipate five to six stories It doesn't a but single-family residential It's the right place to put intensity that doesn't impact immediately on single-family neighborhoods there's a civic zone which includes the church and the high school and That's kind of a no-brainer. I think I don't think anyone would challenge us that yes That's civic and yes, we'd like to keep it civic. We'd like to have both a church in the high schools day The next piece is what we call to D mixed use So this is a zone that really kicks in when the train station comes right Activating it far in advance of the train station is tough The development community wants to see that investment in the train happen first. We all know the rail line is there It's not moving anywhere, but are we really really really getting the station or not? All those questions are out there and until the development community is really convinced That's happening. They're likely to be a bit reluctant to develop But we want the tools in place to develop and redevelop these sites in a way that Anticipates transit in the future that means slightly more intense development and again most of this does not sit up against single-family Neighborhoods that's part of the reason we're comfortable with that level of intensity So five to six stories in this area as well mixed-use shopfront apartments townhouses horizontal and vertically mixed-use retail office residential In this area right here, which is behind the TOD piece this is The station that sits right in that empty quadrant to the northeast of this yellow color We've called this TOD residential This is not necessarily a full-on commercial area because it's embedded back south of the station area But it is likely to intensify over time TOD's are places where we see three to four story intense development So we're showing here apartment townhouse live work mixed residential some limited retail and office You could see that perhaps in a large building like this. We could have a coffee shop in a corner We might have an office embedded on the ground floor, but not an entire mix-use shopfront throughout the area Three to four story maximum starting to taper off towards the neighborhood. So the TOD itself is at five to six We're now down to three to four. You'll see in a moment. We taper back down below that The West Bear sorry the East West Berry shopfronts again, this is a shopfront retail area We hope in the future much more neighborhood serving right much more associated with the development immediately north and south in this area really the focus is on reusing those existing buildings a Ground floor office and retail upper-story office and residential two to three stories maximum in this project area again Shallow parcels not a whole lot of opportunity for substantial height The Klebern shopfront. This is the challenging piece. You have a front door or a back door We're not quite certain you have the back facing Klebern But that's where the most of the traffic is but you can't have an entrance on that side the entrance is off The side street, but is that really the back it faces the neighborhood the traffic isn't really there So the signs out on the other side this stuff can't decide whether to be beast or foul that's really challenged and So some thinking about how those parcels might work better Mixed-use shopfronts. It's clearly retail ground floor retail in office upper-story office and residential again because of the size of the parcels two to three stories maximum This area is called transitional residential for a reason. So We have certainly heard an awful lot about the TCU overlay during the course of this week. Wow Canna worms so you're all working on that. I understand that the Citywide parking change which is an important part of solving the problem has gotten through the planning Commission Hopefully we'll get through the council soon at but there's another piece to follow on Which is the question of the number of people that can live who are unrelated that can live in a house together So in our experience in lots and lots of other communities While that may help one of the real challenges is actually the impact of that development It's the quality of development itself. It is where the parking is located. It is how the site is laid out What we have developed is an idea that says this is a market pressure in this area We are not going to meet the needs right now with the new dorm construction that's going on Once that is completed TCU will have 60% of its student body housed on campus What's that mean? That means 4,000 students are housed off campus and that's going to continue for a while until there's more on campus housing And even when there is all the on-campus housing in the world if there were 10,000 units on campus You would still see students off campus right because that's a matter of choice And some people would prefer to live in a neighborhood than in the dorm on campus So even were the university to reach their maximum building we need a place for some more intense kinds of housing So part of the challenge with the areas along the corridor are that they have the backs of commercial development Not only did they have the back. They have no alley or service. They back right up to the houses There is no separation in between the commercial development and the houses So this zone this zone is designed to solve a variety of problems all at once It solves it serves as a land use transition from the corridor itself stepping down to the single-family neighborhood It serves as a possible future place to put student housing or at least more intense housing products That are different from the single-family neighborhoods And so here we've shown some examples townhouse courtyard apartments small apartments mixed residential setting two to three stories maximum Okay, this is not some of the large buildings that have been built there already It's a variety of smaller kinds of buildings However, it relies on us making sure that these have green front yards We do that by making sure that we activate the rear alleys in those blocks We need to activate both the commercial alley as a tee across the block and the residential alley going north south and Provide the parking in the rear Making sure that we have the right amount of parking on site associated with the number of bedrooms in the unit Will help a whole lot and the new change to the standards will help with that In addition, there are a couple of other additional small pieces There are much more challenging Modest pieces down here in the southwest corner of the project area and one of them is sort of a neighborhood commercial area It includes the Kroger site, which is quite large scale and some smaller scale sites in that area We see a response in which there's a combination of things happening You might see three to four stories out towards Barry and two to three stories as you taper off towards the neighborhood So we've shown an image here on the left hand side of how that can play out This is actually a significant building as though it were out towards Barry and on university And then stepping down to the lower scale building And eventually clearly the university steps down to a model which is more townhouse in character So this is the start of that the end of that is sorry Another piece is back behind the Kroger. There's a series of residential buildings that actually face that development right and and That's a challenging place to be on that north end of Rogers Avenue, right? So right now what we're suggesting is that we take the Kinds of things that are allowed in that transitional residential area, but we actually give them a few more uses So there might be Individual single-family homes in there today, which could be limited retailer office in the future The idea being if you've got to look at that big commercial agglomeration that sits across the street We need more different variety of uses It's not going to be a quiet single-family neighborhood on that piece of Rogers Avenue Because of the intensity of development next door. Let's all admit it and let's put some uses in there That can have the right form and character less intense tapering off to the neighborhood but can contain some of the kinds of uses that would like to be there the final Piece of the puzzle is stepping that piece down into the single-family neighborhood. We've called this university residential by that We don't mean TCU. We mean university ev and new university drive Sorry, so this is really a set of townhouses which are reaching down that street towards Bluebonnet And Here really limiting them to two to three stories fully residential not allowing the commercial to creep on down the roadway So that's the final piece of the puzzle So those are the character areas and in order to understand those character areas It's really not fair for the planners just to get out their colors and you know Kind of look in an aerial photo and ride our bikes around the neighborhood and then color some stuff and all go home That's not fair We spend a lot of time talking to our economists We talked to our transportation guys and then we let loose the landscape architects and the architects the urban design team On these areas and they generate something called a block study. The block studies are here So here's the project area that we're going to show you Someone asked me earlier what short term and what's long term? short term is soon and long terms a while from now Let's put it this way long term relies in these images on us being real certain the trains coming Right these ideas are around the train station and you'll see some of them in a moment So right now here's the area. We have Klebern the train line flooding Massive parking lots single-family neighborhoods. That's really what's in this image today That's what I see as a planner when I look at this aerial photo So what's the first step that needs to be done? Well in order to make this area appealing to the development community We've got to in essence dry it up we've got to figure out a way to start tackling the stormwater problems here and Unfortunately tackling those stormwater problems. A lot of that has to happen upstream from here So there may be development act if there may be activity in improving the stormwater channelization and other kinds of things up Further up in the watershed, but there clearly needs to be some activity here the station area for those of you Who can see it the clear piece right there that sits up against Klebern? That has no houses on it is the future station area So what might it look like in the short term? Well everything that's a little black footprints in existing building and we're simply showing some examples of what might happen in The short term in the next five to ten years. What's coming? Maybe a few little projects. There might be a little housing project There might be some retail on the face of the school if we could get the school board to lease it to us Wouldn't it be great to provide some eating choices other than the fast food across the street to the students? Wouldn't it be great to have some activity near Klebern there? Some things other than what's there that start to set the form and character for the future And then we're showing the station area as having its initial investment Which is a transfer station which allows for the buses to come through the area allows for kiss-and-ride drop-off? And Eventually then will become the station area, but we're also showing some important elements here And that is we're showing the way the water moves through this project area Because it's going to move through this project area until we get into the upper portions of the watershed and Invest enough to actually dry these places up. So in the meantime We've got to deal with things like this soccer field the park that's shown here and the conveyance That you see through the area and what might that look like well here's some of the ideas This is a beautiful stone water facility that allows us to have a soccer field in an area that could really use an Open field an open opportunity like this now This lower example happens to be from here in the city of Fort Worth In fact, it's not terribly far away from here It's got conveyance on the left-hand side. It's really channelized and when that conveyance is full of water The water comes up and fills the soccer field it's a very simple simple simple system and in fact the image on the top which happens to be in Laurel, Mississippi Designed by the famous landscape designer Olmstead Is a perfect example of one of these from 1910 or 1920? It's not like this stuff is new ideas. This is not all Reliant on on scientific solutions. You need to pour the water somewhere. Here's a good spot pour some water in Right, that's the kind of model that we're looking at for this idea There's another idea here, which says you might actually have a dry area that ponds up it sits for much of the season as Something relatively dry But we're showing this little park is having that bridge for a reason because at a certain point in time It's going to be full of water in a big rainstorm two inches in an hour three inches in an hour That pond is going to fill up and that will allow us to slow some of the water down And if we slow some down then the pipes can carry a lot of the rest when the pipes have emptied themselves out We pour the pond back out into the pipes. It's a fairly again a fairly simple system of conveyance Here we're talking about moving the water around the building and here are some physical examples of what that might look like It can be a very elegant landscaped area, but you have to leave room for it You have to actually have space adjacent to the building where that water can move Otherwise it's going to come up against your building and if you built your building up It's going to bounce off and flood your neighbor, right? So your choices are flood yourself flood your neighbor or leave a little room for it, please so in the short term we would see a combination of those ideas coming together to try and actually Successfully slow down some of the water as it's moving through the area and do a more effective job of not flooding the zoo quite so badly So what happens in the long term? Well, when is the long term? Okay, 20 years 30 years. It's a long time away Don't think of these as anything more than ideas about how that future development might fit on the ground of what its Intensity might be we might get one project in 20 years We might get lucky and the train really spurs things and gas prices are through the roof and Transportation downtown is impossible and all of a sudden the train is very appealing and we might get all of it never quite know What might it look like well here is the station area now with a mixed-use development a shared parking garage mixed-use along the Main Street Mostly residential coming back down. We have actually shown a roundabout here at Benbrook that Solves the problem of the multiple streets coming in there at different angles, right? You'd really love Benbrook to be a nice square intersection, but it's never going to be right So we've actually run the train right through the roundabout and we can pour the remaining portion of the roundabout full of water It can be one of those places that can hold water instead of just being pavement which most of it is today We've also shown substantial Residential occurring on the other side of the street and as you can see when these larger scale buildings come along Cleveland they have a much better pattern of development you have much less of that small development with its butt-end towards the houses Immediately across the street It's something that re-thinks those block patterns and actually drops out some streets in favor of more consolidated blocks So you get more significant development in the trade-off for that Open space the detention pond the storm Water soccer field all of that is clearly that slightly more intense development that comes adjacent to it So it works hand-in-hand We can't get there without the kind of money generated by this kind of development So some of those ideas as they might come forward here in the upper right You see a roundabout that is actually got water in it You see a very urban setting here in the lower Image and in the upper image in which you actually have wet storm ponds in which we retain water for a Substantially longer period of time we use Something like the bubbler or fountain that's seen there to aerate the water and keep the water quality high This is an area which is not just conveying the water through the project area But it's actually holding on to water over that longer term So what does this? Idea of residential transition look like this is one of the biggest challenges So if we don't get this one right we're going to continue to have this strife Between commercial development and immediately adjacent single-family houses between the single-family neighborhoods and the student housing problem The you know sort of sense of cancer popping up throughout the neighborhoods and if we can resolve this We can get a great living area for people and a tolerable transition between the existing neighborhoods And so what we're showing here is that we can do this in a variety of ways and in a very piecemeal basis right there is a housing type they are shown with two attached units and Later on if you want to have a look at it They're shown here on this smaller image so after the show you can come up and have a look But two attached units together Basically a duplex unit that fits on what is today a single-family lot 55 wide lot So we're doubling the intensity right but it serves as a good buffer against the adjacent development If you have one more lot you might be able to do some more townhouses Or you might be able to build a courtyard development and if you get enough land You might actually be able to build a court like this which might run through the whole block That idea here and when you look at these housing types and the way that they meet the street The idea is that the ends of the buildings function a little bit more like a steady pattern of individual houses You're not seeing one long blank wall along there. You're not seeing University houses wall. You're not seeing loft views wall You're seeing something that seems like a pattern of original houses that might have been there And if we can make that change if we can make sure that the front yard remains green by Activating the alley and providing all of the parking off of the alley These are the kinds of things that they make this a much more tolerable neighbor than what we have today One final idea that we managed to just sneak into the show. Thank you Keith How to deal with the Kroger in its future incarnation? This is a very sensitive area, right? You know, it is immediately in the midst of some very high-quality housing It's immediately at the gateway to the university. It is in a key key location The Kroger is physically on the wrong spot on the site. That's a suburban Kroger in an urban setting Yes, the bank sits in front of it But doesn't help a whole lot what you have is a big parking lot and then the Kroger back in the back And some brilliant things were done at the time of the Kroger approval, right? The Loading was put on the street side Which I guess got it out of the neighborhood, but now when you drive down University, you see all the loading base It's not quite right The diverter that's back behind great idea. Keep the trucks out of the neighborhood, etc But is the diverter really working for all of us as the pattern of traffic there actually helpful or not? So there are some questions about how that site ought to redevelop in the longer run The intensity should be on the front of the block, right? Can we all agree the intensity goes up at Berry Street? So what we've shown here is the Kroger footprint With a liner set of buildings so a little set of shops that would actually face Berry the Kroger on the opposite side The Kroger's entrance is on that central street And there's actually a parking garage right across the way you park on the ground floor of the parking garage And you walk in just like it was a surface parking lot It happens to have additional levels of parking if you need them But those levels of parking serve four-story or three-story residential along the side tapering down to two-story and tapering down to the townhouse district that we proposed to the south So this idea has remembered to the west we are taking those houses and saying they can be a little more intense They could have the chiropractor in them. They might have the massage therapist in them They might have the accountant or the CPA the whoever over on the west hands to the west side of the site and the townhouses to the south Blending in more to the existing neighborhood than today In addition We would really really really like to see you streetscape all the way down to the circle the streetscape within the University the beautiful block of Magnificent trees and streetscaping where 250 feet of lawn open up inside the University Makes this world-class. That's a world-class physical space to stand in and Then go a couple of blocks south on the same street and it's not quite so world-class anymore So can't we extend some of that thinking and some of that beauty on down the street? This is just a cross-section of what we possibly could do in that street And I apologize we missed getting our other diagram and we'll slip it into the show before we post it so that you can see it But the idea is that we can get both a median and the existing lanes and a better street tree and a better Sidewalk in on this street. There is enough room for all of those things We believe running all the way down to the circle there is room enough around the circle to actually create a green planted lawn on the outside and We should go back and plant the same kind of lawn on the inside to have that Great feeling of trees all the way around that circle would be fabulous. So there's a real opportunity here this also happens to be one of the Early hippest places you've got right it's still kind of morphing a little bit But it is a model for sort of casually reusing existing buildings Trying to get them going trying to get the quality up And and change to happen in the neighborhood to match more successfully the kinds of businesses that serve the surrounding area So some great businesses in there now. I'm hoping that they thrive, but they could be supported by a better streetscape so one last idea that I want to leave with you and that is places like Austin have had immense success with these kinds of Actions that are simply tactical one-time quick easy Interventions it could be trailers and it could be food trucks. It could be pop-up retail It could be pop-up events. It could be movies in the park It can be all kinds of things But we need to start doing some of those not here on the university campus Which is already in pretty good physical urban shape We need to start doing some of these things in other locations. Could we get something going on the tease site? It's empty. It has no trees on it Could we get a blow-up movie theater screen and go down there and show a movie in the middle of the summer? Let's go do it right. Let's just do it on a Wednesday night in the middle of everything else Right so some of these kinds of tactical ideas reusing and rethinking the streets Thinking about how street furniture and small places can be wondrous things There's a great example of a neighborhood cleaning up an alley and one empty lot in Cincinnati and Every weekend a different micro brew company comes and serves beer It turns into a little beer garden and everybody comes down pays five dollars for a cup and wanders in and they all Hang around and have a beer those kinds of neighborhood interventions are very powerful They're very powerful because they lead people to think it might be worth making a bigger investment here And just to give you one example, you've got a torches nearby here, right? Where did torches start anybody know in a trailer in Austin and how many bricks and mortar stores are the up to by now They have seven trailers left in Austin plus their bricks and mortar stores plus there in other cities This is a model that can work right this incremental model in which I can start a business or run an event on the credit card in My back pocket not on a bank loan not on any is more sophisticated mechanisms, but simple easy interventions Our next steps Well, we're headed to documenting all of this work in something called the development plan a more formal Document that will actually be published and available to everyone will come back and present it when it's ready That document is about three months out and about three months after that assuming that document is well received We'll have a draft of the form-based code meaning new zoning for the area proposed We'll have a zoning map and we'll have districts that we think should apply in this area We'll have an internal staff review of that and then eventually public review of those drafts And it'll go through the formal adoption process through planning and zoning and on up to the council for adoption So that's where we're headed next. There's some imagery here from one of our other form-based codes I guess the key thing we want to say is that as visual as the rest of this project has been so far The form-based code will be equally visual. We're not catering to the attorneys We are catering to people who want to design great buildings in this project area So we're gonna give them visual information We're gonna back that up with what we need to to make the attorneys happy But to the extent possible the information is going to be produced visually so that all of us can understand it The left brain and the right brain, right? Finally you can follow this project on the city's website Fortworth, Texas dot gov at Westbury. They've got a Facebook page a Twitter feed for all of those of you who are social media literate and If you're really stuck you can reach out to the planners Artie and Katie are down here in the front row. They've been rock stars this week Katie drew some of the drawings she brought out her old landscape architecture tools and got to work with our team Which was awesome Artie has provided me with a immense amount of insight about the area He's been working here for eight years and and it really shows when you start talking about the area So with that I would like to encourage all of you to come down front have a little look at the drawings We're gonna set the designers up in various places here so that you can talk to them The original material is here if you're really looking for the new material This is the residential transition area and Over here are the character areas sort of the proto zoning and then here's the short term and long-term block study So if you want to come on down and have a look I'd be happy to talk to you about them Thanks very much for coming