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Developer says Forest Park infrastructure is complete but zoning and market constraints delay vertical work
Summary
A developer update outlined $1.3 million in completed underground work and a planned $60 million investment in Forest Park including a Wyndham Garden hotel. The board and developer disagreed about zoning and density requirements; staff proposed technical follow-up and a meeting with the mayor and city manager.
A developer who addressed the board said the first phase of the Forest Park project — retaining wall, raising grade to meet stormwater requirements and roughly $1.3 million in underground utilities — is complete, but vertical construction is paused pending market conditions and refinancing.
The presenter said two model homes are near exterior completion and that builders will use early home sales to inform moving forward with the rest of an eight‑home plan. He said his firm has invested about $2 million in the project so far and described a broader plan that includes a hotel next to the plaza and a mixed‑use project on an adjacent parcel, which he said would amount to roughly $60 million in investment.
A dispute arose in the meeting record over whether the primary obstacles were technical (emergency vehicle turn radii, parking-deck design) or zoning policy changes in the downtown overlay. City staff said earlier discussions referenced emergency-access standards and design constraints; the developer said zoning changes and conflicting code provisions — including first-floor height and maximum building height — are the impediments and that density reductions proposed by planning staff (for example, cutting hotel room counts and apartment units) make the economics unworkable. The developer noted a signed franchise agreement with Wyndham for a hotel and said franchise commitments create contractual pressure to proceed.
Staff and the developer agreed to pursue further technical review and an executive‑level meeting among the development‑authority chair, the mayor and the city manager to explore options and common ground before returning to a public meeting.
Because the transcript contains both "Mr. Burrow" and references later to "Mr. Bernard" and a separate use of the name "Trevor" in the record, the meeting record is inconsistent on how the developer is labeled. The article uses the name recorded when the speaker first addressed the board and otherwise refers to the presenter as "the developer."
