Receive an update on the status of the Design Traditions 1.5 Project

Receive an update on the status of the Design Traditions 1.5 Project and provide direction to staff. 

Executive Summary

In an effort to keep Council apprised on the progress of Design Traditions 1.5 (DT-1.5), staff is presenting an update on the current status of the project.  Most recently, in December of 2022, Council was presented a schedule that targeted adoption hearings in June of 2023.  Since then, the project schedule has extended, and adoption hearings are now more likely in late 2023 or possibly early 2024.  This report is intended to provide Council with recap of what has been accomplished to date, where the project currently sits, and an overview of the next steps to come.    

DT-1.5 Project Update

On March 1, 2022 meeting, City Council approved a professional services agreement with Winter & Company to begin the “Design Traditions 1.5” project (DT-1.5).  The moniker of “1.5” was meant to convey that the project’s scope of work was not a complete redo of the existing Design Guidelines, but rather a focused update and refresh of what already existed.  As part of their March 1^st action, Council also voted to establish a Steering Committee to work with staff and the consultant throughout the process, with each Councilmember appointing one community member to this Steering Committee.  On April 13, 2022, the Steering Committee held its first meeting to kick off their involvement in the project.  On August 29, 2022, the Steering Committee began holding their meetings in public and have continued to do so ever since.

On June 21^st and 22^nd, 2022, interactive workshops were hosted by City Staff and Nore Winter to engage community members through a series of exercises.  These workshops helped provide crucial early information from the community about what they wanted to see come out of the Design Traditions 1.5 project.  Following these workshops, and with information from an online survey, the public, Steering Committee, and early feedback from the Planning Commission and City Council, the Design Traditions 1.5 (DT-1.5) Strategy Paper was released in September, 2022 (Attachment 1).  The Paper was created by Nore Winter to summarize and provide a roadmap for the direction of updates to the City’s Design Guidelines based on the volume of input received.  The purpose of laying out this direction before drafting updated Design Guidelines was to ensure that the project team had accurately captured the expectations of the community and other stakeholders for the DT-1.5 Project.

On October 3^rd, 2022, the City and hosted another community workshop with two main goals:  1) complete a handful of exercises meant to further explore topics addressed at the June workshops, and; 2) Get community feedback on the Strategy Paper to make sure the project is on the right track and in line with what had been learned at the first workshops.   

Following the October 3^rd workshop, the DT-1.5 team presented the Strategy Paper to both the Planning Commission (October 12th) and City Council (November 1st) for feedback before beginning draft updates to the Design Guidelines. Overall, both bodies felt the Strategy Paper captured their initial input, and feedback they had heard from the community.

Over the following three months, Winter & Co., in coordination with City Staff, worked on draft updates to the Design Guidelines based on direction laid out in the Strategy Paper.  On February 9^th, 2023, the package of first draft updates was made available to the Steering Committee and general public for comments.  This package included a “Readers Guide” in addition to the Residential and Commercial Guidelines (Attachment 2).  The plan was, and still is, to get Steering Committee feedback on the draft, and then conduct another large scale public workshop at the Sunset Center to get feedback from the greater community.       

At their March 1^st and 3^rd meetings, the Steering Committee provided feedback on the draft guidelines and expressed concern that the draft had not accomplished one of the stated project goals to make the original Guidelines more user friendly and streamlined.  These concerns included the overall length, repeated guideline language in different sections, general document organization, and the amount of introductory information needing to be read before the specific numbered guidelines themselves.  To address this concern, the Steering Committee embarked on an effort to reorganize the February 9^th Guidelines under the six “Guiding Principles” which had been previously solidified and incorporated into the February 9^th draft.  During the following three months, over the span of eight (8) meetings, the Steering Committee, with input from community members and staff, has produced what is referred to as “brevity draft” versions of the core Residential and Commercial Design Guidelines.  The Residential version of these guideline version of this has been included as Attachment 3.  The Commercial version, which follows the same format, is almost completely done but was not able to be finalized prior to this Council update.  These brevity drafts take each of the numbered guidelines from the February 9^th draft, and organize them under one of the six guiding principles.  As part of this reorganization, some language from the February 9^th draft guidelines has also been modified in an effort to clarify and/or amplify intent. 

It is important to note that the Steering Committee has only had an opportunity to reorganize the core sections of the Design Guidelines, so these brevity drafts are not intended to be a final product or a completed Design Guideline document.  One of the next steps will be for the Steering Committee to discuss how to re-incorporate some of the supplemental information from the February 9^th draft with the brevity draft versions.  For example, sections from the February draft like how to use the Design Guidelines or the defining features of Carmel-by-the-Sea may be placed as an introduction before the reorganized “brevity draft” guidelines.  Alternatively, some things like the history of development in the City may be placed in an appendix of the reorganized Design Guidelines.  The Steering Committee plans to place these discussions on a very near future agenda.                             

Next Steps and Project Schedule

In December, 2022, staff presented a milestone schedule to Council.  A revised version of that schedule has been included as Attachment 4.  Currently, the project is still in the phase of reviewing the 1^st draft Design Guidelines with the Steering Committee and receiving feedback/revisions (“STEP 6”).  Some of the remaining major milestone steps for the DT-1.5 Project include:

• Complete Steering Committee review/reorganization of draft Design Guidelines
• Draft Zoning Code amendments
• Conduct a public workshop to get larger community input on draft Design Guidelines and Zoning Code amendments
• Bring draft Design Guidelines and Zoning Code amendments with community feedback to Planning Commission and City Council for direction
• Prepare revised draft Design Guidelines and Zoning Code
• Bring final draft Design Guidelines and Zoning Code to Planning Commission and City Council for consideration    

When initially presented to Council in early 2022, the DT-1.5 project was targeted for adoption hearings to take place in March/April of 2023.  Following the volume and quality of input received from initial public involvement, the schedule was extended with a goal of adoption hearings in June of 2023.  At that time, Noré Winter confirmed his availability to support the City’s efforts through June of 2023.  However, due to his other commitments and a pending retirement, Noré also stated that it is unlikely he would be able to work with the City past the middle of next year. 

Given the time and effort that has gone into this step of the project, adoption hearings in June are not possible anymore.  Considering the work that remains to be done, adoption hearings are more likely to take place at the end of 2023 or possibly even in early 2024.