 Welcome, everyone. We will be starting in the next few minutes if you would like to place your name and information or introduce yourself and where you're from. In the chat, please do now and we will review a couple of quick tips here in the next few minutes, okay? Welcome, everyone. I know a few of you are just kind of trickling in, but we'll kind of get ready on some housekeeping rules here in the next two minutes and then we'll start exactly at 11.15. Hey, Miss Amy. So, welcome, everyone. I know a few more will be joining us, but I want to go ahead and introduce myself again if you haven't met me. My name is Brenda Pinner. I'm one of the Community Engagement Liaison, so thank you for joining us on the Fort Worth Urban Village Development Program. This workshop will be given by Mr. Eric Flatterger with Planning and Data Analytics Department. And so I just want to let you know, like, please, there is a chat box on the top right. That is where you're at right now. Feel free to write anything, give feedback, say, hey, anything like that. Introduce yourselves. I see Catherine is popping in. Hey, Fran, how are you doing? You all right? Good, good, good. I know. Well, okay, so you have like the best person helping you host. So Brenda's got this and you know you don't have to stress at all. It's going to be great. Just wanted to come and say thank you. And I know what a hassle it was to get all this together for us, but it's going to be great. And also wanted to tell you that for the first session, we had over 400 people online in different workshops. So second session is going to be even more. I am sure. So it's going to be great. Good luck. I'm going to pop off and then kind of come in and out as an attendee so you won't see my face anymore, but I am kind of watching to see to see how you guys are doing. So good luck, Eric. It's going to be good. Thanks Catherine. Happy to have you. You're very welcome. Okay, y'all do good. Hey, Mr. George. It's good to see you and Bonnie Bray. I've been looking at houses secretly at Bonnie Bray area as well. So glad that y'all are here. So as I was saying, you are on the chat function. If you look at your top right right now, if you feel free to introduce yourself, do anything there. There is a question tab right below that. It looks like a person with a square behind it. Feel free to ask your questions on there so that we get to them and we're able to answer all of those. Sometimes we might miss them in the chat. So be sure to use that if you do have questions. There are no polls for the third tab. So you don't have to worry about that. And then you can also see the little three people on the fourth tab. It's just people who are here. So feel free to talk with each other, send messages on the inbox at the very, very top. You can inbox anybody you wish. So you're good to go. And if Mr. Eric has anything that he wants to share as far as files, that's the very last tab. It looks like papers stacked up. So please use those to your advantage. We're going to give one more minute. And hey, Michelle, City of Little Rock. If y'all need anything, please let us know. Eric, I will hand this over. Please give everyone just one more minute, okay? So this workshop today is Fort Worth's Urban Village Development Program. Thank you everyone for joining us. Your presenter is Mr. Eric Flatterger. Eric, thank you so much for being with us today. I don't know if someone volunteered or you just volunteered. I'm kidding. But thank you so much for the workshop. And if you'll just introduce yourself, introduce your workshop and take it away. All right. Thank you, Brenda. Yes, my name is Eric Flatterger. I'm Comprehensive Planning Manager for the City of Fort Worth. My team is responsible for the Comprehensive Plan of the City, which we update on a regular basis, as well as Translator Development Planning, Urban Village Planning, some of that implementation work that goes along with those as well, and a variety of area plans of the things. We have our fingers on a lot of pies, but I'm going to share with you a little bit of information today about Fort Worth's Urban Village Development Program. So here we go. Okay. So some of you are likely familiar with the explosive growth that's occurred in Fort Worth. It's occurred in really all the major cities in Texas. This chart just showing where we're at now, and this was actually the 2019 census figure, the 909,000. We're expected to reach a million well before 2030 at the rate we're growing. And we're going to be over 1.4 million by 2045 based on our MPO's projections. So it's a rapidly growing city. We're actually the 13th largest city in the United States right now. We've been growing as a rapid clip. If we're not the top city, large city in terms of growth rate, we're usually tied for first or second. Have been for really almost two decades at this point. But that growth has not been even. It's not been necessarily what we would consider the best planned. Texas is very much a property rights state. We don't have some of the rules that are available from the state level in places like Oregon, places like Washington. I saw a Washington attendee is on the line. And so we don't have some of those growth management tools. We certainly don't have urban growth boundaries and don't have the ability to really control the rate of growth with robust tools. Consequently, we're second in growth, but we're 18th in density of the top city. So out of 20, we're almost at the very bottom. So that is not a predicament that is unique to us or unique to Texas. Really, that's the way we've grown in the last 50 years. So this sort of looks like just from the decade of 2000 and 2010, the colors indicate rapidly growing areas in the dark brown and less so as the colors get light. And then that great color is actually population loss. So during the first decade of 2000s, the city of Fort Worth central city area, and that's within that red circle there, actually for the most part was losing population. So expansion out into the far flung suburbs and you know, much less so inside the inner city areas. So that blob that you see city of Fort Worth is huge. We have 350 square miles within the city limits. We have another 300 square miles on the periphery of the city limits, which is called our extraterritorial jurisdiction. So enormous growth going on. So this is a more updated picture. So this is from 2010 to 2045, the growth projections and you can see the center of the city is now showing up with that darker growth color. And part of that is the planning that's taken place in the city of Fort Worth. Urban Village Development Program is a component of that. And there are other planning efforts that have taken place, but really the city of Fort Worth has made a concerted effort to promote growth within the downtown area, within the near downtown areas associated with urban villages, growth centers, other planning tools that we have at our disposal. So yes, we're still expanding hours, we're still growing in some of the far flung areas, but we really turn the corner and have gotten a great deal more growth going on very close to downtown the city center area. So that explosive growth that I just described has got some real significant impacts and you all I think are probably quite aware of these. Besides the fact that everybody has to have a car in the family that's a driving age in order to get anywhere if you're in those far flung suburban areas, there are a lot of other impacts, pollution, greater risk of traffic fatalities because you simply got lots more people on the road in a hurry to get somewhere because it takes them 20, 25, 30 minutes or more to get where they're going. Lower rates of walking, that leads to chronic illnesses, obesity, and actually social isolation which we've all been practicing not for our own benefits this year. So those are the kinds of things that really happen to a city and happen to the city's population when you do have that explosive hour growth and particularly if you're leaving the center city behind. So as I said, my team is responsible for the comprehensive plan. Our comprehensive plan really does focus to a great deal on incentivizing, encouraging, promoting growth to happen in the central city areas. And to the extent that we can continue that and encourage that more, that really has a lot of benefits to the city but the conference plan is full of policies that really are focused on that central city development, central city revitalization. So the comprehensive plan, many of you know this, if you work for a city, it's a general guide for making decisions about growth and development in the city, starts with a broad vision of what that future looks like, describes policies, programs, projects that help to realize that vision. This is just a table of contents. I've used this slide for healthy planning, healthy development related presentations in the past and that's what that blue color is indicating. And the slide that I just showed you about the chronic health impact, our conference plan does a great deal to try to focus on improving health of the residents. The green boxes are outlining areas that actually include specific language related to the urban village development program itself. So there's policy language and descriptive language in a number of different chapters, land use housing, economic development of course, urban design of course, but also public health and capital improvements and other areas. So specific to health, a lot of folks have seen a slide very similar to this. We spent a lot of money in the United States on medical care and really it amounts to about 10% of the actual health of people. Lifestyle environment have a much greater impact on how healthy people are. And what you'll learn here as we move forward is that the urban village development program actually sort of targets that aspect of life as well. And looks at these individual areas. These are specific issues related to growth, commercial development, multi-family transportation. And what we've done through the last 20 years has really changed the direction from this disperse development pattern to really focusing on multiple growth centers. Instead of single use commercial corridors, focusing on mixed-use villages, targeted mixed-use multi-family, multi-modal transportation rather than the highway emphasis that we certainly were known for before that. So one of the other reasons that it's important to focus on central city areas, focus on creating opportunities for different housing choices in areas that are close to jobs, close to retail and so forth, is the question of where do people really want to live. If you ask folks, you'll get some interesting answers. And of course, the National Association for Realtors has done a good job of surveying people across the country for years. So this is a fairly recent survey and I like the way that they presented this. What this really is showing is that if you give the people the option of where to live, virtually half of them will choose to live in a walkable urban kind of environment, whether that is within a in the suburbs or whether it's actually close to downtown. They're really looking for that mix of uses, mix of residential types, the opportunity to walk to a variety of stores or shops or jobs, parks and green spaces and so forth. So if you let people choose, they'll look for that mixed use walkable kind of environment, whether it's in the city center or it's in the suburban areas. So you can see on this chart, the suburban residential only amounts for 12%. So lots of people were asked and basically one in 10 of them or so said, yes, I want to live in suburbia where I have to drive to get anywhere. Now, unfortunately, this is a picture of Fort Worth, but it's very similar in other rapidly growing areas. This is not the kind of housing that we've actually provided over the last 50 years or so. The mixed use zoning is shown in the orange. It's a pretty small percent, about 8%. So most of the housing that we have in the city for Worth is auto oriented suburbs. So that's not lining up with the market demand particularly well, as you just saw in that last slide. What people want is they're really looking for mixed use walkable development, at least 50% of them if you give them that opportunity. So mixed use development is combination of different but compatible uses, can be within a single building or district or site. It's very focused on pedestrian safety, pedestrian comfort, contains elements of live work play, maximizes space usage. So it's more efficient from a land use standpoint, as well as from an infrastructure standpoint. Amenities, architectural expression, so it's not a dull place, mitigates traffic and infrastructure costs associated with sprawl. So these are some really significant advantages. So the slides, the images you see, typical commercial district is on the far left and really what you see there is very large parking lots in front of stores. Next to it is the mixed use commercial district where that type of environment can be improved with the introduction of housing and essentially a denser environment that provides more walkability and of course the next step beyond that image is a more significant retrofit of suburban commercial area that takes advantage of buildings that it can but removes buildings that really are not relevant anymore. The two images on the right are sort of office focused again with the introduction of housing that creates a much more pedestrian friendly environment. So what might these areas look like? I showed you just a couple of images already but I'm going to show you some more. So this is really a walkable mixed use area. It's a sketch. This is actually associated with the form-based code district at one of our new, actually hasn't opened yet, new commuter rail station locations. But you can see what it's providing is providing a mix of uses. It's very walkable. It's very attractive and comfortable, very safe, focusing on the pedestrians and the cyclists rather than on moving cars quickly, which is what of course we've been building for 50-60 years. This is another image. This is more sort of a residential type area. So these types of units are front-end green space that's shared as community resource and the vehicle access does exist but it's in the back via alleys. But again, sort of focusing on that pedestrian experience. The porches are right on the sidewalks. There's no large setbacks. In this case the green space is actually shared. So we built quite a bit of this in Fort Worth already. This I'm going to show you some images here. This is the Magnolia urban village. It happens to be a form-based code district. Not all of our urban villages are based on form-based codes but they use mixed-use zoning to bring them about. But you can see the images here. Again, it's more dense. It's not unpleasantly dense. They're in fact very cool places to be. They do have a lot of pedestrian amenities associated. You can see the pedestrian street lights, the white sidewalks and so forth in this image. It's another example. This is West 7th Urban Village. And here we've got our urban residential district, zoning district and mixed-use districts. We have two of them, ME1 and 2, based on density. But you can see, again, it's a different form than certainly you're accustomed to seeing in the suburbs. Doesn't mean it can't be done in the suburbs but it typically takes some focused effort. So this is the near south side, just south of downtown, also known as the medical district. Again, part of that same form-based code district. This is about a thousand acres in total. Hospitals have other commercial associated with it but really has gone from a completely rundown area with a lot of vacant land, vacant lots, burned out buildings and so forth, to what you see here. This is the kind of development that's coming in very rapidly. Edwards Ranch is an example of a suburban version of an urban village. It is a newly developed area but you can see really the concepts are the same. It's very pedestrian focused. It's mixed uses, somewhat denser than the typical suburban environment. This is a very popular place. The property values are fairly high in this area, in part because of where it's located. Pinnacle Bank. This is adjacent to the downtown. You can certainly see the Omni Hotel in the background there. This is sort of at the northern edge of the south main urban village. So it's associated with an urban village. It's also associated with Transylvania Development. There's a passenger rail station very close to this site within walking distance. Museum Place in the West 7th Urban Village. Again, this is the mixed use zoning. Just another example. You can see that's a very appealing place to be. I mentioned south main urban village near the TOD. This is just some of the recent development that's occurred there. We've also rebuilt the street. Spent about eight and a half million total and installed a lot of pedestrian amenities in that area. I mentioned that there is significant demand. So who's driving that? This is giving you some of that information. The yellow highlighted area. These are folks in their ages that say their ideal neighborhood is mixed use. It runs pretty consistent. So younger folks, over 50%, over 60%, really prefer to live in that kind of an environment. The circles that you see provide some information that's pretty relevant as well. The one on the far right, 90% of people prefer living within Easy Walk to places in their community. The other 90% are there. People prefer neighborhoods closer to open spaces, trails, and recreation. And then the one that's 55% there, these are folks that are willing to forego a standard suburban home and yard if they could live within walking distance of schools, stores, and restaurants. And then the one on the far left, the favorite walkable neighborhood with a mix of houses, stores, and businesses at 60%. So again, that's pretty significant demand that is not being met. So more information on the folks that are driving that demand. So empty nesters, and y'all are familiar with this, it's a growing group in terms of the percentage in the city and in the country. Folks in that in the empty nester boomer group are living longer. They're more active. They don't want to live in a traditional retirement community, but they know they aren't going to drive forever. And they don't want to be dependent on people for their everyday transportation. So many of these folks are moving into areas that provide, instead of large suburban homes, provide convenient access to a variety of different uses and in a variety of different housing choices. So millennials is another key group. These folks are 25% of the population at this point, technologically savvy, they're very mobile. And, you know, my son, his friends are certainly in that group. They really think about where they want to live, and then they worry about a job, which is totally unique. We used, you know, for a long time, you live near your job and you, you know, you hope to get a job. And once you've got the job, you pretty much stayed there unless they transferred you or you had some other reason to leave. It's a totally different world now. And these folks, millennials are willing to accept less individual space in favor of more flexible solutions, mixed use neighborhoods, and so forth. So, and here's another just purely demographic component. This is from the urban land institutes. That middle row that you see houses without children are growing. And 1960, about half. And then by 2025, which is just a few years away, 72% of the households won't have kids. So if you don't have kids, you may not need the yard. And you may not, you know, care in terms of the school district quality. Now, there obviously will be a lot of families who do and who will. And there will be families that transition through different housing choices over time. And, you know, that's, that's something that as planners is really important for us to provide those opportunities. So, again, just on a little bit on the millennials, they prefer walking, we talked about that. They prefer living in attached housing within walking distances, shops and restaurants. And they really support public transportation. It helps them live the kind of life that they're interested in. So this, so this brings us back to kind of why urban villages and what these places are and what they look like. So City of Fort Worth has an urban village development program. These are the kind of places we're trying to create with it. When you think about new development, you've in, you know, particularly commercial oriented areas, you really have a couple of choices. One is your standard audio or auto oriented low intensity single use commercial quarter. And if this was a live group, I'd ask everybody to raise their hands and tell me, you know, if they knew this particular street, because everybody's seen it. And this is another version. So pedestrian oriented, higher intensity mixed use district. So a lot, you know, of the same components that I just showed you in terms of the streetscape, in terms of the moderate density, in terms of the walkability and safety for pedestrians, orientation toward the street, really a place that's kind of fun to be. This street just, by the way, is actually just a graphically modified image of the one you just saw. So it's basically this or this. That's the choices that we have. So development options, we've been building single use districts for a long time. Um, mixed use neighborhoods are quite different. And, and, you know, our, what is being demanded in certainly among folks that are looking for housing. So large setbacks is typical of suburbia. Street line with storefronts is more of an urban environment. So an urban village is an urbanized place with a mix of uses jobs, public spaces, transportation connections, pedestrian activity in a sense of place. So why are these locations important? A lot of reasons one is it's meeting that demand. So I just showed you this slide, but I just wanted to remind you that, that there is a large component of demand for housing that is not being meant that basically is stuck with what's been built, what's being built. We've got, you know, a financing system that still is very, very good at churning out single family, low density subdivisions and, and suburban sprawl. And, and we've been doing that since World War II. It's, it's a very efficient way for people to make money who are in those industries. Mixed use development is not quite as efficient, a little bit more challenging, but the demand is there. Also, the commercial strip that I just showed you really is facing a lot of challenges has been for, for a while now, if you've been paying attention to that. This is a quote that I like from Urban Land Institute, the future belongs to town centers, main streets and mixed use development. And that's really kind of been accelerated by COVID as well. So another reason is just simply from a standpoint of what is the cost of building these places, it's, it's completely different. So conventional standard suburban development where everything separated and you've got, you know, linear cul-de-sacs and windy roads and they're not connected to anything. That kind of development is expensive. And from the standpoint of sort of on a per unit, so per household basis, it's significantly more expensive than a more urban environment where you've got more households and they're paying, you know, that costs less per household. So a third less for up front infrastructure saves about 10% on ongoing delivery of city services generates 10 times more tax revenue per acre. And I'll show you that in a moment then conventional suburban development. So this is an example. So this, this is actually places in Fort Worth, the big box super center on the left occupies 25 acres. Yeah, it generates property tax, sales tax and so forth. But on a per acre perspective, the city's portion of property taxes for this development is $5,000 an acre, which isn't very much. And you can see a lot of that space is wasted on a half used parking lot. Higher intensity mixed use area, this is part of the West 7th Urban Village on the right. It's smaller. It's more intense in terms of its uses, it's more efficient. There's lots more going on and more to do. So it's fun. The city's tax revenue per acre there is over $117,000. So $5,000 versus $117,000. That's a huge difference. So another, another view this is suburban multifamily on the left and urban multifamily on the right. Same story. It's significantly more benefit from the standpoint of cost of services as well as tax revenue generation. Just individual housing on the left is one of our standard single family subdivisions that's been built not too long ago. That's kind of what they look like. And they look like that pretty much everywhere in the country when they're newly built. The per acre tax revenue generated from that is about $13,000 a year on the left or on the right. It's that same urban multifamily project that's generating $63,000. So $63,000 versus $13,000 per acre. So based on sort of all those benefits, all the demand, all the reasons that this is important, the city started its program in about 2000, really looking at commercial quarters in the city that had been just flat run down. You know, a lot of retail just flew out to the newest areas of the suburbs outside of this loop road that you see. This is Loop 820. Inside the loop is the area that we refer to typically as the central city. And then outside are newer suburban areas. Lots of run down commercial quarters in the city back in 2000. So we selected locations, typically major intersections in these areas, and created these urban village. So they were established by city council. There are 16 of them, actually 17 to one that you see that's just a blue dot on the far right is our newest. And that is the Lake Arlington urban village. But they all were identified essentially by the community and put forth by the community. And there were others that weren't selected that were put forward by the community. And they went through a process that looked at what the opportunities are, what the infrastructure is, what would this make sense as a mixed use walkable place. So these are the ones that did pass. So we promote the development of urban villages, really three main ways. So mixed use zoning, I've talked a lot about mixed use zoning for this code, urban residential zoning. We apply mixed use zoning, which really focuses on higher density pedestrian area development. And we apply those essentially in all of the urban villages. In fact, we won't move on to the other things until we get that in place. Because if we start offering the economic incentives that we start putting in additional capital improvements, and the mixed use zoning isn't there, then essentially we've spent a lot of money just dressing up a suburban location, which is nice to do. And we certainly like to have the resources to do that all over the place. But we can't. So we have to prioritize and we have to try to make the places that respond to the demand for housing that's out there and for the walkable places. And so that's why we limit our resources to a smaller number. So we also apply economic incentives to make, and really the goal is to sort of balance the playing field between the cost of developing in urban infield areas versus the cost of suburban locations. If you're out in the greenfield, it's pretty inexpensive comparatively to build a new street, build new stuff. There's nothing underground that you have to worry about hitting that you didn't know you were there that was there. And we have had that experience some in some locations and that could add cost to those projects. So the capital improvements, and I'll show you some images related to these each of these things, but the capital improvements are are really key. They're also pretty expensive. But they really change they transform the physical environment in conjunction with the other two components of the program. So first mixed use zoning. Mixed use zoning has two components in the city of Fort Worth. MU1 is low intensity, MU2 is high intensity. They're basically the same thing, but they're, you know, the MU2 is just a more dense environment. So that is one type of zoning we use. I mentioned four base codes. We use a lot of those in the city of Fort Worth. And they're typically in areas that are either designated urban villages or they're designated mixed use growth centers or or trans-oriented development areas. So here's a map to showing again, this is the central city area, which is large is a lot bigger than most cities. But you know, this area is showing you in pink the mixed use one and mixed use two zoning locations. The gray are designated mixed use growth centers. The black outline with crosshatch are urban villages. So these are the urban village areas. They're not large. Most of them are are actually fairly small and very walkable as they are. A lot of those areas, particularly in the gray in the area south of downtown, the center there, you can see the street pattern of downtown. Immediately to the south of it is the south main urban village and sort of adjacent to that is the Magnolia urban village. And those are the ones that are covered by a four base code. And we have, as I said, other four base codes in the city for other similar areas. So regarding the financial incentives, the typical means is the neighborhood empowerment zone. And it's basically a state authorized tool that we use that is used for distressed areas provides the opportunity for incentives to promote affordable housing economic development and expanded public services. Specific incentives that we can use in these neighborhood empowerment zone areas include tax and fee incentives. So we've got a waiver of fees development fees can be pretty expensive. If you're doing particularly a large project, those fees can be waived by the city for projects that are taking place in urban villages. We have tax abatement opportunities as well, which is very helpful. We do get in to some grants and loans, particularly as they relate to economic development. And that can create a, you know, take project that doesn't pencil out and and help it pencil out. So public improvements, there's a variety of them that can go in and I'll show you one or more common ones in a moment. So we like sidewalks sidewalks are not new. So this is this is an old photo as you might be able to tell. This is actually Pompeii in Italy. So, you know, circa 50 AD or something like that. So we've been building sidewalks all long time. And we've kind of gotten away from it in places after World War Two. Kind of another another fun slide. If you are a pedestrian and your street is designed primarily for motor vehicles to move traffic as efficiently as possible, which has been the standard since World War Two. This is what you see. And I think everybody can kind of get that. It's not a comfortable place. It's clearly not designed for your benefit. Plus getting places since World War Two has gotten a lot more difficult, take a lot longer if you're on foot. So I'm not using a particular slide that I like to use related to this, but on that slide you got on the left a picture of the Brady Bunch on the right a picture of Homer Simpson and his family and and basically the statistics just are indicating that there's been a dramatic drop in kids walking to school. And part of it is because on the left, walking to school was easier, was safe. On the right, walking to school is longer, more difficult, takes you out onto arterials, which are unfriendly and unsafe for kids walking to school. So we kind of built this environment to not be helpful from a health or from a safety standpoint for pedestrians. So these are kind of the elements, standard elements of a pedestrian friendly urban street. On street parking is key street trees. Those two items alone, that vertical element in the the on street parking provide a barrier between moving traffic and pedestrians, which makes the the street itself a essentially a public space that people like. So and you know and you'll see you'll see the tables and chairs out there and a lot of things are going on now related to turning parking into pedestrian furnished areas. So if you're familiar with that program, that's been pretty successful in a lot of places. So this just gives you a visual of what those kind of things look like and I'll give you photos coming up. Streetscape improvements and that's kind of the term that we use instead of landscape. This is streetscape are crucial in these kinds of areas. They make a big impact. They provide lighting upgrades for pedestrian safety at night. They make an area obviously more attractive as you can see from these images. They make parcels more attractive for developers and enhance economic viability which is key to the urban village program because it's also a revitalization program. It obviously increases safety and obviously it has well maybe not so obviously it provides opportunities to implement access management which is a safety measure not just for pedestrians but also for vehicles. So you're not seeing figures that you should be seeing but you're seeing the totals which is okay. From a variety of sources we have a mass or about 50 million dollars and the number is actually a little larger now than it was when this slide was produced and from a variety of different sources. We have used a lot of city funds obviously but a lot of federal grants a lot of regional grants. We have worked with partners so development partners. We worked with tax increment financing districts to create the funds available. I mean cities put in bond funds and so forth as well but significant contributions from a variety of partners to make the money available to do this. I mentioned tax increment financing districts or TIFs for short. They are very useful. A tool basically takes sort of freezes the the tax value of an area within its boundary at a specific point in time and then and then from there until however long the TIF is functional for whether it's 10 20 years or more that increment the change in value drives additional property tax revenue that tax revenue that increment it's called goes into a special fund that is then used specifically for improvements inside the TIF boundary. So TIF has to have a board it has to have a specific plan that's adopted by council but as you can see the yellow boundaries overlaying this the black color. The black color is a variety of tax increment financing districts that the city of Fort Worth has and the yellow is urban villages that that obviously there's a becomes a funding mechanism available if you have both the urban village and the TIF in the same location. So just some examples of these pedestrian streetscape projects that we have already completed in urban villages. I like to quote here pedestrians not only generate direct sales they create a magnetism that makes a place more inviting which in turn yields more sales. So from a business standpoint the urban village program is is very well supported by the business community. Some examples of what these things look like again really focused on creating a walkable environment a place that draws people. So that's the goal not just to make a safe place it's to make a place that people recognize you'd say I yeah I went and had dinner to South Main Urban Village and people across the region will know what you're talking about and and where you went and they probably went to the same restaurant that's the kind of sort of dynamism that we're after here. So in terms of results just a few slides to share here. So this slide used to say what can happen in five years and I changed it it's been a few more years but really a lot of what I'm going to show you occurred in within a five year and certainly within a time a 10 year time frame. So this is our West 7th urban village that you're looking at. So this is what it looked like before the redevelopment started and I'm just I'll show you a different portion of it in a moment but sort of get this solidified in your brain this is something that everybody's seen things that look like this. This is what it looks like now. So the essentially the photograph has taken it almost precisely the same place looking in the same direction but you can see there's a big difference between that and this and you're probably more likely to be walking in this environment and certainly a lot of people are living in this environment. Here's another example this is Oleander Street in the near Southside. This is a part of that form based code that I was talking about. So this is what it used to look like not very inviting. This is what it looks like now same place. So big difference a lot of rundown stuff a lot of vacant lots. So this is a place that people go to. So this photo has taken just a block or two from Magnolia Avenue which is part of our Magnolia Urban Village as is this street itself and I'll show you that in a moment. This is Crockett Street so this is the core of the West 7th Urban Village before and this is it now. So big difference for and after. So this is Magnolia Village this this street Magnolia Avenue actually won a Great Streets Award from the American Planning Association and it often looks like that it's been a little bit less during the you know the the peak of COVID but this is the kind of environment that we're aiming for it's very vibrant a lot of economic activity a lot of very successful businesses this particular street is also known as our rest drop row. There are lots of great independent eateries and drinking establishments as well as some really cool boutique shops and things like that and there's a lot of new residential development that's occurring in the area it just happens to be immediately adjacent to one of the largest historic districts. They used to be very rundown and and not at all a place people wanted to go to and now it's just it's fabulous and and it's a place that you know so much renovation has taken place it's something you want to see. Okay so benefits of successful urban villages stimulates reinvestment in targeted areas enhances property values and tax revenues it decreases crime in central city areas directs redirects some of the growth to the central city enhances sustainability rebuilds community cohesion and pride and improves overall community livability. That's what I have for you thank you so much for your time and attention really love talking about our urban village development program and love seeing how it's really changed for worth in pretty significant ways. So Brenda if you want to help out with the questions and we can move on to that. Yeah if you'll close your presentation for me please. I will do that and one of the first questions that came through is what is form-based code? Okay good question so form-based code is a type of zoning and and you're probably familiar with zoning sort of in general you know something is zoned for residential or it's own for commercial or it's own for industrial and there are a variety of different types within each of those kinds of categories and there are other categories as well so zoning typical zoning is also referred to as Euclidean zoning due to a Supreme Court case affecting Euclid and basically a location in Ohio where they said yes it's a good thing Supreme Court said yes we we think cities should be able to separate uses they should be able to say where places go rather than not so if you're familiar with Houston Houston does not have zoning so it's a little bit more of a mishmash in terms of where things are located but standard Euclidean zoning has also done some disservice to communities in that we have in fact made it pretty impossible to walk from say a house to a store or to your workplace or to a school or library all that stuff's got to happen by cars and part of that is a result of standard Euclidean zoning so form-based codes throw that out the window so standard zoning said is focused on uses folks on residential or commercial well you can't have them together we can't have that form-based code is form-based so it's focused on the physical built environment and for the most part doesn't care what uses are there what it does care about is is the buildings and how building how close to the street the buildings are typically form-based codes put the buildings very close to the street put the parking behind try to create a place where the pedestrian is king and cars are there but cars are not in the middle of things and and sort of the major focal point so form-based codes have a lot to say about design they have a lot to say about building heights and how the building addresses the street and transparency of windows on the ground floor and types of architectural features a variety of different things that together create the in the in development community and in the neighborhood create the expectation the certainty that as the old occurs it's going to follow the rules and it's going to contribute to a place becoming more and more and more walkable and pedestrian friendly and just a cool place to be so that's the difference between form-based codes and and standard zoning for miss codes also make much greater use of graphics to convey their message some so this one's going to be a two-part question or I'm going to make it a two-part question how do we take part in the conference intensive plan particularly how can neighborhood associations have a seat at the table where they can provide in okay so that sounds like a forward with resident but if not it might be a similar situation in in your city so the conference plan is is intended to be the city-wide growth and development plan a component of that that's important is public engagement and and and to be honest we following the last economic crash that we had we lost a lot of staff so we used to do we used to go out to the neighborhood associations every year we used to actually send emails and say hey you got a meeting where we can come and talk about the conference of plan so we're starting to work towards that again as we as we are able to build up our staff resources to do that but if there's a specific neighborhood group that's on this call and in Fort Worth that's interested in the conference plan please contact me and we'll see if we can set something up to come out and talk to you great and then is there any development done for low-income development for low-income housing so so so there's a variety of terms affordable housing low-income housing attainable housing and the the urban village development program provides support for those we have projects where through low-income housing tax credits and other means the city has been able to support development of affordable housing either as a component of a larger project and we've done a lot of that or as a standalone project we've done some of that but not quite as much we find that particularly in a place like an urban village it's often helpful to have affordable units be a component of a market rate project and to try to do it in more and more market rate projects in that area so that you're not only allowing the development community to feel incentivized to build affordable units but you're also creating opportunity districts where where there are more there are more jobs there are more things to do there are more you know resources a variety of sorts in a location where the folks that are in those affordable units are immersed in opportunity where they certainly wouldn't be in sort of the standard approach to affordable housing where you find a place where the neighbors don't squawk too much and there's some vacant land and then you put them in that location and unfortunately very often those locations have also been in low income areas which kind of is contrary to sort of the modern understanding of how to how to you know get people out of poverty you don't surround them by more poverty you give them opportunities and and access and where are you getting or where are they getting the information on stats being used so it depends on what stats you're referring to so I shared a lot of information about the market and a lot of that comes from the the the real estate community so the Builders Association Urban Land Institute there's a professor at I think he's still at University of Utah that has done a lot of really great research work on on on sort of the real estate market and and particularly on the kinds of developments that are are now becoming more popular and certainly the market is demanding so those statistics come from those kinds of sources so basically research organizations are you are these urban villages using sustainable that's that's a good question so so obviously in in Texas we have a lot of electricity that's produced by wind and and some by solar as well a lot by natural gas so just the standard development is certainly taking advantage of those growing you know resources we don't have a lot of you know we don't have wind turbines on buildings at this point although we've had discussions about allowing and encouraging sort of many the you know the newer forms the mini wind turbines to be allowable in these kinds of environments I think that one of the things you see is just that the compactness the walkability the mix of uses that development type those structures tend to be much more energy efficient than low density suburban sprawl so what is the city doing to reduce traffic congestion with all the developments so another good question so the city of Fort Worth is is working hard to promote better public transportation one of the tenants of urban village development program is is that public transit be a component be integrated and help to connect those different places um so um so you know that that is something that we're trying to move forward with you know and and incentivize and invest in and in areas where we have both urban villages and transit development opportunities where we've got passenger rail stations that helps to mold the development that takes place in those locations so there is some traffic congestion and West Seventh has gotten gotten a name for that um if you own a business there that traffic congestion is dollars in your pocket assuming they stop at your shop one of the things that some of these areas used to be is a place you drove through fast and you put a lot of cars through fast and that was all they really were I mean there were some businesses and and some residents so forth but now they are places in and of themselves their own destinations and people are drawn to it so this yes that brings cars um yes we have parking garages and other ways to deal with that but that's not necessarily a bad thing if you if you want no traffic that's what suburbs are all about so that this we're not building suburbs we're building walkable places central of higher property tax for the city except next use so um so that the kinds of development forms I just showed you yield a higher property tax per acre there's just no question about it the problem is that any kind of development costs money to build the city then has to maintain all the infrastructure and perpetuity if you have a very low density environment the tax that's generated from that area that's being served doesn't necessarily cover it and what we found in some of the some of the work that we've done in terms of the analysis of different development forms is that is like like I showed you if you have an area that's full of low density neighborhoods and low density uh commercial and so forth um it may not be covering the actual cost of the infrastructure and the maintenance over time so the areas that are more like what I just showed you that we're trying to build those areas often are necessary to subsidize low density sprawl I don't know if that answered the question so as the city sprawls are we presetting up these mixed use centers and zones via zoning to prevent us having to go back 20 years later and revitalize that's a great question um yes we are I showed you one example of Edwards Ranch which is which is still a suburban area it's an older suburban area so it is within lube 20 but we have modified our future land use plan which is part of the comprehensive plan so it's looking out 20 years looking at that where the city's likely to be growing and what kind of land uses we would like to see out there we have modified a number of different locations and changed them so that the land use plan is for mixed use um higher density walkable communities I've heard a little bit of this on how residents have evolved with planning urban urban villages but how do urban villages reflect the saint the sense of place culture of the city's demographics so that's an interesting question so you caught some of the words I used in the description so sense of places is really important um it's part of what creates a destination um you want people to recognize it as an as a distinct place that has a character that they like that they want to be there um and and ideally what we're trying to achieve is is is modifications within those areas that also reflect the character of the community so we you know it's it's much more authentic and much more of an experienced people are seeking out if if the the new development if the you know the street improvements and so forth all really reflect the character of the area so it's not you know we're not trying to change the character if there's no character there and there's just empty land then that that can be something different but uh otherwise we wanted the goals to integrate the neighborhood that surrounds the urban villages with the urban villages themselves we require as a city for new development to follow more of a block rather than a suburban suburban winding road developments and maybe walled-in communities that y'all stay out I like that question um I don't know the answer it asked it but that's a good one um so yeah so you're you're getting at at essentially the one of the one of the constraints that the city of Orworth has in any city in Texas is that growth management is not robust it's not intended to be robust and if it gets robust folks are going to go to the state legislature and the legislators are going to remove that so so we have tried I mean the city of Orworth has has has tried to encourage you know growth management that's focused on infrastructure so basically if the infrastructure is not there then you can't build there without the infrastructure um we we tried to push that that's used in in other cities Florida is a good example of that um but it just it went nowhere so um so we're in some ways the development process is really focused on individual property owners what they want to do and so forth so uh zoning and and some of the other tools we have can address that to some degree but not quite as much as we like subdivision ordinance is part of that control um our master thoroughfare plan has been updated fairly recently and we've switched it completely from basically talking about our materials to talking about street types and giving graphic pictures of what those different types of streets should be should contain and so forth so um so we're working towards that but um we we certainly have lots of room to grow is the homeless population being considered in these urban village developments and do the these villages accommodate the homeless in a similar so um so yes and it depends upon the urban village and that's on the location um we have uh we have one uh urban village that is the urban village itself is snap you know is centered on uh the homeless district in forward so the the location of all the homeless services it's really been concentrated in what's called the near east side urban village and that's been the case for decades um and and so what that the urban village plan is still in place the urban village tools are still in place we you know we improve the streets in that area and and really the goal in that particular instance was to improve the safety of the homeless population that's there so that's a circumstance where we've got a lot of homeless folks in that community um you know we want the urban village to be successful in that location to be successful it has to successfully accommodate the homeless population as well we have another urban village the six points urban village where we actually have a permanent supportive housing project that's that's you know snap dab in the middle of that urban village um and uh permanent supportive housing is really a tool that the city for worth and other places are are trying to use in order to provide wraparound services so you're providing services to the homeless homeless population ideally in places that are not where they currently are so places again gets at that opportunity uh environment so the six points urban village is an example of an opportunity environment it's well served by transit it's got some jobs got a lot of new development taking place there a lot of new housing um and and we you know as a city we would like to distribute um the homeless population into opportunity zone area or opportunities rich areas um through the permanent supportive housing approach um it's it hasn't been as successful as we would like there's a lot of pushback from some of the neighborhoods when something is proposed but that's that's where we are we're continue to work on that um where are these projects of low income areas are these urban is actually walkable for residents any of these projects are in the form of gentrification does data show the shopping and visiting the restaurants area does data show those shopping and visiting the restaurants area resident so i think here we have a mixed bag um so uh the we have uh 17 urban villages we have a number of them that are in you know they're in different places in the central city um areas that are sort of to the west or the southwest for planners there's a term called favored quarter and in most cities especially large cities uh in the country there is a there's something that that occurs so uh you also often have a conglomeration of high income people that sort of you know want to be in the same location as the other income people um and you end up developing a favored quarter where that's where the expensive housing is that's where a lot of the resources go others the city are not favored and do not get you know have lower income housing and so forth um and and that's true it virtually in any american city that you go visit um so we have some very successful urban villages they tend to be in in the southwest west or southwest part of the city um now these are areas that were totally run down and bypassed completely and and were in bad shape but because they were still between where you know some of those better off communities are and where downtown is um they came back you know quickly the market was very much there to support that in southeast fort worth which is a more of a lower income area much more diverse those urban villages have not been quick quick to come back um and and that's you know we're working on a variety of different ways to to assist with that there is some some beneficial change that's occurring you know we certainly put in a few streetscape projects in those areas and so forth but um the urban village program can't by itself create market demand for development and create and you know sort of force developers to go build there but it can make it more attractive and that's really what we're trying to do so i'd say six points is an area that that got pretty run down um but that is now coming back in a big way uh i think that it's a mix of of folks there certainly the new construction is probably uh less diverse than the existing housing in that area but i think there's still um you know there's still a pretty good mix of folks in that area so it's a mixed bag they're not all successful but from the you know from the standpoint of of um you know of creating places that people people want to go to and that and that satisfy uh housing demand um you know we think that slowly but we think that those those other areas will begin to change and come back we have about four more minutes i'm going to try to get to a couple more of these um and i'll make sure that if they didn't get answered we'll send them to you so that you can send the answer directly to them if needed okay okay um how does the Hughes house compare with the development being built in the other in other areas of the city okay i'm not sure that quite got that say that again how does the Hughes house compare with the development being built in the other area of the city okay um i'm not sure if i heard you correctly you said Hughes house and i'm not sure what Hughes house is uh so maybe someone can jump in and explain pastor more if you can type it in or lose your hand unless he's referring to permanent supportive housing which could be i'll go ahead and go to the next one while he types that in if he does if mixed use is what people want why does city zoning commission keep the proving massive outlying housing development so a good question um and and that sort of gets back to the the fact that texas is texas texas is not oregon it's not florida it's not washington it's not net you know it's not nashville the places that that really have have stepped up and just said we need to manage this growth better um texas really doesn't allow those tools to be quite as successful or or at all uh as other places so what that means is that is that you know we're still in a situation where they're you know the industry that develops um low density suburban sprawl is is you know they're they're they're there and they're doing what um what they know how to do and what the what the finance really the financial system is established to help them do um and it's profitable and they you know they can keep their business running all that so you can't fault them for doing it um it's the easiest thing to do mixed use is not as easy to do uh can be more expensive and more challenging so um so you got folks that are you know they're responding to the need for housing and they're providing the housing that they that has been successful you know for decades and that they know they can sell and that they know people can get mortgages for and they don't have to condoize their development in order to do it so it's easier right now for them to do that um and and they can sell the houses so they do it and pastor more is just waiting to get in um so i'll ask one more question because i do have to be at the finalist um information and do that is there anything being done to encourage to encourage and open up opportunity for small developers rather than only large developers that tend to come from outside so that is a that's another great question you guys are a very smart bunch um yes there is uh we would we would we'd love to see small scale development um it is if you look back at sort of the history of the growth of cities cities for you know thousands of years grew in small development small incremental fashions and successfully and it was focused on individuals meeting their needs and the needs of the community and and it was a very walkable place because of that um so we'd love to see that kind of development we do have uh you know locations where uh folks are coming in and buying up you know old warehouse small business you know small buildings and completely redoing them as you know ground floor retail with uh apartments above and so forth south main urban village has quite a bit of that um and it really has taken historic built environment fabric and revitalized it and made it a place that's cool and then people people want to go to um so there's there's both you know that we have small scale we have large scale uh we'd love to get more small scale one more minute pastor more okay I'm sorry okay Brenda thank you so much I'm sorry that my my question didn't come across clear the Hughes house is the name of the development that's being built by Fort Worth housing in the uh Amanda Rosdale area oh right okay so and so when you were talking and showing urban villages the concept that's been presented for that project has been on the style of an urban village but it didn't you didn't show it as the the developments that you were uh featuring so I was just wondering how does that compare my camera is set up where I'm at the stat I'm I'm a preacher so it's set up for Sundays and not for me sitting at my computer so you don't see me uh well happy to have you here with us a very good question uh the certainly the the development that's proposed there uh and then is beginning to move forward really is is creating an urban village it's not designated as an urban village by city council at least not yet it could be um and and for those that don't know anything about this area this is this is the site of what's called the Cabell Place um housing facility it is in fact the old style public housing uh that public housing is going to be demolished and removed and replaced by by something that's very similar to the photos that I just showed you kind of you know multi-story walkable mix of uses mix of different housing choices it's going to really transform the neighborhood and that's its intention it's it's got choice neighborhoods funding from HUD and that's really the goal so it's not a designated urban village which is why you didn't see any of those images in there and right now of course the images are just sketches they're great sketches but um we haven't seen the development begin to come out of the ground it will and it will be starting up pretty quickly and and make some dramatic change in the area so good point it doesn't have to be an urban village to have this kind of development and to address the demand for that kind of housing and the demand for walkability thank you thank you thank you so much and thank you pastor more for being able to explain everything um we are going to close this out because we do have to go to our next one so thank you everyone for joining us Eric thank you so much for um presenting and um doing everything if we didn't get to answer your questions I'll be sure to um make sure that Eric has those and send them directly to you to to answer this I think there was three or four more that we didn't get to so thank you so much just remember that we you will be able to see this presentation starting Sunday or Monday so just give it time to kind of recollect itself and you'll have that available until August um if you'll go up there to back to lobby on the top left you should be good to go and we'll see y'all um either at the finalist or in another workshop thank you thanks Eric thank you everyone