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Planning director wants to shrink or remove citywide first-floor commercial mandate
Summary
Fritz proposed ending a broad requirement that multifamily buildings include first-floor commercial uses citywide, suggesting the rule be confined to a small downtown triangle near the train station where commercial frontage is important.
Paul Fritz told the committee that forcing commercial on the first floor of many multifamily buildings "is really trying to force a market that isn't necessarily there." He proposed narrowing the citywide 1st-floor commercial frontage requirement to a small triangle area between 6th and 7th streets in front of the train station, where Fritz said 50% commercial frontage would still be reasonable.
Fritz showed images of vacant buildings (for example, near Fulton Street) that he said could be successfully reused as all-residential buildings if they were not forced to carry empty commercial space on the ground floor. He argued the change would let the market decide and provide flexibility for adaptive reuse where commercial demand is weak.
