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Council to look at minidorm dispute

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Members of the City Council must give serious thought to how they want Tucson's neighborhoods to evolve.

With the area's population growing and the amount of usable land diminishing, it will take a sensitive eye and a creative hand to blend the old with the new in a manner that enhances urban living.

We saw the beginning of this shift in urban design in recent months as city planning officials grappled with a controversial attempt to limit the creation of "mini-dorms" in neighborhoods near the University of Arizona.

The conflicts are a reflection of shifting demographics and changing economics. The noise and activity level in neighborhoods adjacent to the university inevitably changed as the student population grew to roughly 40,000.

The neighborhoods also changed because the university is a ripe market for retailers and for those who own rental property. Some property owners built additions and larger homes that ended up being, in essence, miniature dorms.

These places don't violate existing zoning regulations, but they change the character of older and once-tranquil neighborhoods where most homes were owner-occupied. More students crammed into mini-dorms meant more late-night parties, more noise, more cars competing for limited parking, and a qualitative change in the ambience of the area.

Absentee landlords raked in rent and were happy, while residents living in owner-occupied homes grew increasing unhappy.

The city's initial remedy was to create an amendment to the land-use code that would create an "overlay" zone. It essentially said that existing zoning for a neighborhood would remain unchanged, but within a portion of a neighborhood the residents could choose to establish different conditions governing, for example, architectural styles or the size of setbacks (the distances between the property line and a structure). In a way, the overlay zone would create a village within a village.

That change ran into problems because initially the process of creating the overlay zone, or Neighborhood Preservation Zone, NPZ, could be launched if only 25 percent of the property owners signed a petition requesting it.

The residents could not establish the NPZ with 25 percent, but that amount allowed them to begin the process that might lead to one. The City Council would have the final say. Under protest, that idea was rightfully abandoned. It gave too much power to too small a minority.

The 25 percent provision was subsequently expunged from the rewritten ordinance that went to the council on Tuesday. The new version says the process of creating an NPZ must start in the City Council. Residents who want the extra layer of protection for their area would approach their council member and that member could take the idea to the full council.

Wisely, the council postponed action on this proposal until later in the summer. Officials must be certain that the proposed overlay zone can withstand a legal challenge under Proposition 207, a law passed last year. That law requires governments to compensate landowners if a land- use rule is adopted that reduces property values.

Some property-rights activists believe the NPZ restricts what they can do with their property and, by extension, reduces its value. Whether the NPZ increases or diminishes property values is debatable, but the question will sooner or later trigger a lawsuit and be resolved in court.

City officials should be sure the new ordinance is crafted so that it doesn't end up costing taxpayers a fortune to defend.

They should also scrutinize the proposed NPZ in the context of other planning changes that will come before them toward the end of this year. One is a mixed-use zoning classification that addresses construction of high-rise buildings in residential areas, and the other applies to residential cluster projects, basically subdivisions on smaller parcels within the city. The rules are likely to address ways to break the monotony of tract housing, for example, and may require parklike spaces as part of the design.

The NPZ is one piece of a more complicated matrix and should not be adopted without considering how it dovetails with the other changes that will emerge in the future.