Compromise Doesn’t Mean Giving Up on Your City’s Vision

Development of any kind can be very tricky. Generally, by the time the general public is made aware of a new investment in their community, the developer has invested a year into the project. By the time the project reaches a planning commission or city council, municipal staff have been involved for several months shepherding the project through the process. There are a lot of moving parts and compromises that have been made before the community at large has the opportunity to see the latest proposed development. By this point in the process, there are really only two results: approval so the project can move to construction, or denial and the project goes away.

This is a broken process that creates an adversarial environment. A lot of energy is wasted on all sides through failed public engagement and overly complicated regulations, only to yield a development that nobody really likes or that anyone involved can call a success. Our current development practices are highly inefficient.

However, for city staff who understand the process, there is an opportunity to be more assertive in your community vision. The key is to intervene early, with reasonable requests, at a point when the developer’s plans are still malleable. I learned this while working for the Martin County Community Redevelopment Agency in Martin County, Florida, while working on some pretty tough sites. The most memorable was the development of the Indiantown McDonald’s and Dollar General on the main street through the community.

Indiantown is like so many rural communities across the country that have seen the boom and bust of industry. As industry left, the promise of housing emerged with the approval of many new subdivisions, only to be hit with the subprime market crash of 2008, which effectively put all new housing plans on a 10-year freeze. The community had not seen a new commercial development in over 20 years, and residents were struggling with double-digit unemployment. Indiantown was willing to do anything to attract new investment. This sets the stage so you can understand that any development would be received as a blessing in this community, with immense pressure to roll out the red carpet for McDonald’s and Dollar General. 

It does not take too much of an imagination to envision the form and layout of a drive-thru restaurant and dollar store on a main street. These are not buildings we generally look to for charm or character. Nonetheless, in Indiantown, the long-term community vision called for development consistent with a village center that could mature over time.

The initial concept presented by the developer deviated in important ways from this long-term vision. The initial plan restricted cross access, which would prevent the opportunity for future street and alley connections. The buildings were pushed back from the street, inconsistent with the traditional buildings and character of a village center. Of course, the architecture was the standard placeless model used in 99% of the new construction across the country. As the first new development, this would set the stage for all future development in Indiantown.

There are many steps in the development process, and each step provides an opportunity to advocate for a better or more productive end result. There is not a code, master plan, or public process, that will result in a perfect development. But the complexity of our development process too often results in multiple, brain-numbing submissions where the project violently swings from worse to worser. My role as an urban designer is to try to foster a process where each submittal is an iterative improvement on the previous. Ideally, as in this example, the second submission should not only address all of the municipal requirements, it should also address all of the developer’s needs.  

First, we must recognize that the initial sketch is just that, initial. The development plan failed to meet the minimum development standards for Indiantown. That’s not a huge problem at this stage: the developer intentionally submitted a concept as a starting point for a discussion. At this critical point in the process, the municipality has an opportunity to provide direction for a path forward that would meet all of the development standards. As an urban designer, this is my cue to pull out the tracing paper and my markers. Following this meeting, the developer will be making significant investment in engineering and architectural drawings, so there will not be another opportunity for the municipality to advocate a more productive design.

These first meetings are an opportunity to listen and to ask a lot of questions. The development team was frank and identified two key elements of the plan that had to be incorporated for the project to proceed: there had to be a drive-thru, and the architecture for the McDonald’s had to be one of the preselected corporate plans. The rest of the site could be modified to address any development standards. Indiantown’s only request was for this project to incorporate recommendations from the Indiantown Sustainable Transportation Network Plan.

The functions and site requirements needed to support a drive-thru can actually be met through an interconnected street network. In this particular case, the drive-thru would not have direct access to the street, and needed a route for cars to navigate across the site. This opened the door to discuss designing the front parking area into a parallel frontage street, which increased the interconnectivity for both people and cars. A rear service way was also constructed, providing access across the property to meet the demands of today, and a 60-foot right-of-way was reserved for a future street connection to meet the demands of the future. These changes may seem minor, but they are an important form of future-proofing. They established the extension of the town’s street grid and transformed a parking lot into a street.  

This first meeting was the chance to begin a productive conversation that ultimately led to an approved project. This built trust between the developer and the county. This unofficial partnership of sorts would result in the developer having a successful project (aka make money) and Indiantown would get the first commercial development in over 20 years, which also included almost 100 new jobs. A win-win.

This trust paid off a few weeks later when Dollar General proceeded through their building permits. Martin County and the Indiantown CRA both had adopted architectural design standards. These standards are pretty general requirements that are simply a checklist of a half dozen building elements. They ensure, for example, that a windowless box, wrapped in corrugated steel, and painted black, could not be constructed in Martin County. These standards were overlooked by the Dollar General architectural team and the standard Dollar General steel building would not meet these standards. This oversight by the architect threatened to risk the entire development. The development team trusted the town to ask for help to navigate the regulations. 

Indiantown's historic Seminole Inn.

I took this as an opportunity to explain through a sketch as opposed to a technical memo. Taking inspiration from Indiantown's historic Seminole Inn (shown above), I did a quick sketch and emailed it off to the developer with a google street view of the inn. I have to admit, I thought this would be a big ask for a dollar store, and expected a stripped-down cartoon of my sketch. A week later, I was pleasantly surprised with a building permit that exceeded expectations. My classicist friends and architectural purists may be far more critical than I, but from where I stand, the win is a building that contributes to the historic character of Indiantown. 

I share this example as a success, because it is possible to achieve a dramatic shift when you understand the process. It is important for the public agency tasked with approving new development to get in early and often on these projects, rather than just issuing a “yes” or “no” verdict at the end. This approach built trust and a very informal partnership. I know that the developer achieved their success with these two businesses. Indiantown also achieved success with the first new commercial development in 20 years that resulted in over 100 new jobs, a 375% increase in property value, and helped to spur additional development on this street.

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