The Overland Park City Council has approved new standards that will limit the height of new apartment buildings in certain areas.
The council voted Monday to change development standards for multifamily housing, which would streamline construction in some ways while imposing new restrictions in others. The changes are one step in a broader process in Overland Park to update standards and accommodate the city’s plans for future multifamily housing.
City staff recommended the updates for several reasons, including to reflect the current state of construction projects and proposals coming to the city; align with existing city practice; addition to existing neighborhoods; and respond to community input, according to information presented at the meeting.
The new rules include a five-story height limit for new apartment buildings in some areas and limits on how close apartments can be placed to lower-density neighborhoods.
The council narrowly approved the new rules on a 7-5 vote, with Mayor Curt Skoog casting the necessary seventh vote.
The move follows an intense debate in Johnson County’s suburban communities in recent years over how much housing should be built and how dense it should be – as the cost of housing becomes increasingly unaffordable and residents want to preserve the existing character of their neighborhoods.
“There is a cost to this relentless drive to make us a city from a suburban community,” Councilman Jeff Cox. “And density is the only thing – that’s the only boundary – between the city and a suburban community. And in my opinion, I’m here to protect what we have and the people who live here now and voted for me, not the people who might one day want to live here in another apartment.
But other council members feared the changes could create unnecessary barriers to development in a community in need of new housing, including in areas where they said denser housing would be appropriate.
“We should not be putting up roadblocks to adding housing in our community,” Council President Logan Heley said of the height limit. “We must do everything we can to promote housing. This feels like adding a roadblock to housing.”
What are the new rules?
Officials noted that as the city continues its work to accommodate more multifamily housing, staff is drawing up plans for special standards in the College Boulevard area, where there are large parking lots that could be ripe for redevelopment.
Buildings on properties zoned for R-6 use, or high-rise apartments, will be limited to five stories, plus an attic. The new rules eliminate a four-story minimum height requirement, meaning developers can build a three-story building on R-6 properties without needing an exception from the city. The old four-story minimum meant developers needed an exception.
Zoning for townhouses, garden apartments, and high-rise apartments are not allowed in parts of the city designated as suburban neighborhoods and lower-density rural areas.
The changes also require that apartments near single-family homes be perpendicular to existing neighborhoods, not parallel, and have a lower height of 35 feet.
But the changes also increase the maximum building length from 60 meters to 150 metres, with design standards for longer buildings that would discourage straight and repetitive exteriors, such as walls set further back.
And there is greater flexibility for heavy-duty materials used for building exteriors and designing entrances to developments, which previously required a connection to a main road.
The city will also have a range of pre-approved designs for proposed duplexes.
The new rules don’t completely close the door on apartment buildings taller than five stories in Overland Park: there could be larger developments in mixed-use real estate zones, where buildings would likely include more amenities and services in addition to the higher density, such as Carson Street Towers in the Corbin Park area.
