Champaign council directs staff to draft rules to allow ‘missing middle’ housing and end parking minimums

Champaign — The Champaign City Council on June 24 directed city staff to prepare a zoning text amendment that would allow “missing middle” housing in all residential zoning districts and to remove citywide minimum parking requirements, after a study-session presentation by city planners.

Senior Planner Eric Van Buskirk and Zoning Administrator Kat Trotter presented the package, which staff said would permit small-scale multiunit housing types — duplexes, fourplexes, sixplexes, cottage courts and similar buildings with two to eight units — in more neighborhoods and would eliminate minimum on-site vehicle parking requirements for new development. Van Buskirk said the proposals are intended to be “gradual and small scale and widely distributed across the community.”

The council gave council-direction votes during the study session: members picked a sliding-scale floor-area-ratio (FAR) approach over a strict “build-in-the-box” model; asked staff to work with building safety and fire to explore limited local building-code changes for small multifamily buildings (including evaluating use of the International Residential Code and single-stair configurations for very small buildings); asked staff to create an administrative planned-development review process for cottage courts; directed staff to study faith-based properties as possible sites for missing-middle housing; and directed staff to prepare a draft text amendment for plan commission and council consideration that would incorporate those choices.

Why it matters

Staff estimated that about 83% of the city’s properties currently zoned single-family (more than 11,000 parcels) would be eligible to build at least a duplex under the proposed…