41st & Harvard rezoning on TMAPC agenda

The last time someone tried to rezone the southeast corner of 41st & Harvard, for a Wal-Mart neighborhood market and gas station, the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission approved the application by a slim margin, and the Tulsa City Council turned it down by an 8-1 vote, with only David Patrick voting in favor. Patrick lost a Democratic primary election to Roscoe Turner shortly thereafter.

Now Patrick is back on the Council and developers' attorney Charles Norman is back with a new application for developing that corner, where there are two houses and a vacant field used as a Christmas tree lot each winter. It is a two-fold application -- a request to rezone some multifamily residential (RM-2) and light office (OL) areas to commercial (CS) and a Planned Unit Development, which rearranges the permitted uses for a larger area, currently zoned CS at the corner, surrounded by OL, RM-2, and RS-1 (very low density residential). It's on the August 20, 2008, TMAPC agenda.

A PUD allows mixing and rearranging different kinds of zoning, but you have to work with the zoning that exists. That's the reason for seeking the rezoning as well as the PUD; the developers need more CS-zoned area to accommodate their commercial buildings. Currently only about 1/16th of the land is zoned CS. The development is described as mixed use, but it seems to be entirely commercial.

Nearly half the land in the PUD is zoned RS-1. How will they use the RS-1 land that they rearrange? They'll use it for parking and landscaping. In Tulsa, a PUD allows a developer to take a small piece of commercially-zoned land and turn it into a much larger commercial development.

The INCOG staff's analysis acknowledges that this proposed development is NOT in accord with the Comprehensive Plan, which designates part of the area for medium-intensity residential and part for low-intensity residential.

The new development involves four smaller buildings, rather than one big store. The PUD application says that only the building closest to 41st and Harvard will be an all-night operation -- a drug store. The three buildings nearer the surrounding property will have to be closed between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

I have not heard whether the neighborhood groups which opposed the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market will also oppose this development.