11-09-1998 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Commercial Park Fee - Administrative Procedures November 4, 1998 Page 4 C. "Highest Use" basis. Rather than waiting to define the final use of a site, a "highest use" employee count could be established at the time of subdivision, based on the zoning standards for the site; i.e. determine the biggest building that could be built meeting all code standards, determine its probable employee count vith no reductions, and base the park fee on this number. The rationale for this is that the site likely will reach this employee count at some future time, even if not proposed initially for a high-employee use. The downside here is that the determination of "highest use" will be a somewhat rigorous exercise for staff to complete as compared to other methods, and could be subject to dispute. A less rigorous combination of alternatives B and C would be to simply define a "highest use" number of employees per acre for conunercial/industrial uses, which would then provide us an employee count to use for determining Dwelling Unit Equivalents. The greatest employee counts per acre are likely to be generated by office uses. Example:A 25,000 s.f. 2-story office building would require approximately 125 parking stalls and could fit on a 2-acre site while leaving 30-35% green space and meeting setback and yard requirements. This site would have an ultimate capacity of perhaps 100-110 employees, or roughly 50 employees per acre. Staff Recommendati on It might be appropriate to simply base the employee count on the "worst case" scenario for a site based on its highest potential use, knowing that its use could change at any future time without further subdivision nor opportunity to collect a greater park fee later. However, defining the "highest use" scenario for each site would be rigorous and could be subject to dispute. It would be much less rigorous to simply declare that commercial/industrial property should pay a park fee based on SO employees per acre (i.e. 5 dwelling unit equivalents per acre), using the 8% rule and maximum/minimum guidelines as in the examples on page 2. Council could consider appeals where the property owner can show that the site could not reasonably accommodate 50 employees per acre. COUNCIL ACTION REQUESTED Advise staff whether a standard employee count of 50 employees per acre should be established for administration of the commercial/industrial park fee ordinance. If so, direct staff to prepare a resolution for adoption.