HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - Transfer Dev. Rights Expansion Subcommittee - 09/23/2013
Minutes for the TDR subcommittee
Monday, September 23, at 5:00PM at the SB municipal offices.
Present were Will Raap, Bill Gilbert, Larry Michaels, Roseanne Greco, Michael Simoneau, and Ray Belair
on behalf of the City to assist our discussion.
First, Tracey, I hope you are doing well and that we will hear and see you soon!
Our discussion took a bit of a journey. We initially discussed the status quo and agreed that TDR’s should
be retained in some form or program. It was indicated that there are approximately 1800 TDR units in
total but to date only a handful have actually been “traded”. There are approximately 100 that three
developments have the ability to use, but they haven’t been used yet. These facts provide a clear
indication that while conceived with the best of intentions, the present program hasn’t facilitated the
use of the TDR’s or achieved the desired long term outcomes yet.
Next, time was spent discussing ideas for accelerating the use of the TDR’s. There was consensus that
“broadening the market” for them outside the SEQ was desirable. Obvious targets for their use could be
City Center and the Kmart property if and when developed. We discussed how a TDR might be
“redefined”, from a building unit to perhaps a square footage figure. A size of 1,500SF has been
mentioned and might be worth exploring further. It was also mentioned that TDR’s might also be used
commercially. A square footage metric might be generically applied to commercial as well as residential
uses and would thus expand the marketplace further for the consumption of this commodity.
There was some discussion about the “value” of a TDR, but it was agreed that the market will ultimately
determine the value of the TDR’s.
While there is good logic to the ideas mentioned above, the committee struggled to define a strategy or
program for implementation. It is felt that the timeline for defining an approach, assumed to be by the
end of October and concurrent with the completion of the FBC process in City Center, is too ambitious.
The committee feels that TDR’s represent a great opportunity to help shape development in the City,
and that more thought needs to be given on developing a plan that would best facilitate their use. Will
Raap mentioned the Gund Institute at UVM as being a possible resource in assisting with this process.
Will will contact Gund and discuss if this issue is of interest for them to consider the investment of some
of their intellectual resources in. The committee felt that such an exercise might be applicable to other
Chittenden County communities who also feel development pressures and want to achieve viable smart
and sustainable growth strategies that could preserve open space and promote development closer to
the more urban cores.
The end consensus of the committee is it will take a while to study this to insure that we “get it right”.
So in the short term, it may make sense to maintain the status quo and commit ourselves to defining a
long term strategy. The current real estate marketplace is still soft for the type of development likely to
be proposed in the SEQ, so there is some time to redevelop the TDR program without putting the SEQ at
great risk. That being said, we shouldn’t linger, as a good TDR program could be a great tool to
encourage development where we would like to see it occur.
The committee has not established the time for its next meeting yet. We will do so soon after receiving
some input from Tracey and others.
Respectfully submitted, Michael Simoneau