Why is this a concern?
Since 2016, 520 units have been permitted in the City of Independence. To date, there are approximately 9.980 apartment units within the City of Independence. Within the past 24 months, the City has also approved the 280 unit Ansley Apartment project and the 240 Grace Subdivision while also considering the 38 unit apartment project proposed by Isosceles Properties in the Kentucky Hills Neighborhood. The City Council will also soon consider a 285 unit apartment project for the Falls at Crackerneck Creek.
The intent of allowing mixed use development was to meet the needs of an ever changing economic climate and to respond to the need for the creation of a mixture of new housing units. However, at this time it is still unknown how many of these units will be filled and what the actual impacts to the community will be. Although Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is being promoted throughout the Kansas City region, impacts created by this increased density remains to be fully understood. Independence recently adopted an award-winning Comprehensive Development Plan and is actively pursuing many of the initiatives indicated by the Plan. However, the City should ensure sustainable growth to avoid many of the issues that have plagued peer cities, including affordable housing, gentrification, and urban sprawl. In light of recent multifamily housing rezoning applications, many community members and members of the City Council have expressed concerns about the impact of apartments and about the City’s need for more definitive policies to regulate this type of new development. This action would temporarily pause this type of development to allow the City to study this pressing issue, discuss it in public meetings as a community, collect necessary data and information by appropriating funding for a consultant with expertise in planning and economic development to be able to identify potential policies that the Council is able to adopt to appropriately regulate future development.
The Plan:
During the moratorium, the City would contract professional consulting services possessing expertise in complex land use planning and development experience. Once a consulting firm has been identified, the moratorium analysis would be compiled as part of a public engagement process that includes community forums to solicit input on possible policy recommendations, strategies and tools. This would essentially be a component of the much discussed Housing Development Study, with a focus on new apartments. This study would need to be comprehensive and would have to include development and demographic trends, impacts on essential services, i.e. police and public safety, fire, schools, public works, parks & recreational facilities, emergency services, natural resources and possible loss thereof, neighborhood characteristics, and infrastructure. Although, the intent is not to discourage development, there is a need to take a pause to understand if the current permitted units will be filled and what impacts have and will occur as a result of their creation. Moreover, market conditions have deteriorated in the commercial sector, and the current Covid-19 pandemic has all but shut the economy down and placed it in an unexpected sudden recession worldwide. Once the public input and analysis are complete, staff would then draft recommendations for City Council’s consideration. The expected outcome would be better land use policies, tools and strategies to more effectively analyze and regulate not just new apartment development in the City of Independence, but all housing development.
In summary, this particular moment in time seems to be the right time to pause and take the necessary steps to obtain the information the City needs to move forward in a successful, well planned manner to achieve its housing goals in a sustainable fashion. Conducting a Multi-Family Housing Assessment as part of the housing strategy would provide an assessment on how many new multi-family units the City could absorb and will Independence evaluate the future market demand and support for new rental housing developments.
Approved as Amended