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Council reviews proposed land-use chart changes: live-music setbacks, hotels, vape-shop rules and warehouse uses
Summary
City staff proposed multiple changes to the land-use chart and use definitions, including consolidating event facilities with live music, setting a 100-foot residential setback for live music in the downtown plan, allowing hotels by right in the mixed-use downtown district, and treating vape/CBD retail as a special use permit.
City planning staff reviewed a set of proposed land-use chart changes and use-definition clarifications at the Oct. 27 City Council workshop, asking for direction on where certain activities should require special use permits versus being allowed by right.
Highlights from staff's recommendations
- Live music and event facilities: Staff proposed combining event facilities with live music/entertainment uses and implementing a 100-foot setback from residential uses in the downtown master plan area. The recommendation would keep live music permissible in several commercial zones (C1, C3, BP and mixed-use downtown) with distance limitations and other conditions.
- Hotels in the MUDT (mixed-use downtown) district: The advisory committee recommended allowing hotels by right in the downtown mixed-use district without caps on unit counts. Staff said previously separate hotel subcategories would be streamlined into a single hotel use and permitted in the downtown district.
- Multifamily detached and MF-1: Staff proposed that certain multifamily-detached products (multiple single-family homes on one lot) would only be allowed by special use permit unless the property used the RM district standards and was platted as individual lots.
- Vape shops and CBD: Staff recommended creating a specific use category for vape/CBD retail and requiring those operations to obtain a special use permit, citing other municipalities' examples (Leander) that impose distance requirements from residences, schools and churches. Staff said the draft definition would need further work.
- Warehouse/distribution in BP and light industrial: Steering committee members asked to permit limited warehouse distribution by right in the city's light industrial district rather than requiring a special use permit in a business park district; staff said the recommendation was to allow smaller-scale warehouse/distribution that lacks large-dock activity in appropriate light industrial areas.
Other use clarifications: staff also proposed defining tattoo and permanent-makeup uses separately (several recent SUPs were for permanent makeup rather than tattoo shops), keeping fuel-sale SUP requirements but drafting clearer criteria (the steering committee suggested limits such as no more than two stations at a single intersection), and allowing medical/dental offices in neighborhood commercial zoning.
"There's been a recommendation to allow hotel by right not to have a number of unit caps," Sophia told council as she reviewed the draft land-use chart changes. She also told the council the vape-shop definition under study could include CBD depending on the final draft.
Next steps
Staff will refine definitions, map the downtown master plan setback for live-music venues, and draft the vape/CBD definition to bring back for review. They also emphasized the advisory and steering committees had split recommendations on where to require SUPs versus allowing uses by right, and staff will return with refined draft language for council consideration.
