County Council Ponders Pedestrian Retail Overlay Zone

By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com

Los Alamos County Council voted Tuesday night to approve a motion for the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) to review a proposed ordinance that will change Chapter 16 of the County Code.

The change includes a pedestrian retail overlay zone in which offices would no longer be permitted to occupy ground level spaces.

According to agenda documents: “…the downtown district is limited to pedestrian-oriented ground floor mixed use retail sales, entertainment, restaurants, including food and beverage, and personal and medical services with upper floor residential and professional offices”. 

The motion passed 5-2 with Councilors David Izraelevitz and Sara Scott opposing the ordinance, which was introduced by Councilor Sean Williams.

Williams estimates it will take about six weeks for P&Z to review the ordinance and return its recommendations to council. He emphasized that if P&Z recommends approving the ordinance and council agrees, “this is only establishing the zone; it does not apply the zone anywhere”.

“The point of this item is to ensure that ground floor units within the downtown areas are actually devoted to customer facing businesses …,” Williams said.

Work is underway on revising Chapter 16 of the County Code as well as developing master plans for the White Rock and Los Alamos downtown areas. Los Alamos County contracted with the firm  Dekker/Perich/Sabatini in Albuquerque to lead the effort.

Introducing this ordinance fits right into that work, Williams said, adding that in terms of the Chapter 16 revision, if council wants to have a pedestrian retail overlay zone be a part of the code, then the ordinance should be adopted and preserved in the revised chapter.

“In terms of the reason to introduce the zoning change … the point of zoning is to allow a region of the town to have uses within it that are what the public wants,” Williams said. “As it currently stands the downtown contains a lot of offices and I don’t think that is what the public wants. Because of that, to me, a rezoning is called for; it is justified.”

Not everyone agreed.

Councilor Sara Scott said she is fully in favor of looking at all options for revitalizing the downtown; however, she said she was hesitant to take formal action on the ordinance because there just isn’t enough information available.

“I was surprised about the lack of engagement and lack of awareness not just with some business owners, and property owners, but also folks actually working on trying to tackle some of these actions,” Scott said.

She further pointed out that other than “broad brush remarks”, no specific data or information had been presented regarding potential positive impacts, timeframes for when improvements might be seen, nor is there any mention of risks or unintended consequences associated with adopting this ordinance.

Also, the idea of banning first-floor office space is already being explored through the ongoing master planning and Chapter 16 development code update process. And this process is built on broad community engagement and input from citizens, business owners, and economic development organizations, Scott said.

Councilor Izraelevitz said he too agrees this is an idea worth exploring, but disagreed that “we are highlighting this as the idea that is going to bypass the process that we have identified for everything else … I’m not saying this is not the right thing to do … let’s have the economic analysis, let’s see what kind of retail footprint we can accommodate …”

The council also should be cautious about directing the market because the market can start working against it, Izraelevitz said.

Others on council felt the proposed ordinance was worth pursuing.

“I think it is worth at least exploring,” Vice Chair James Robinson said. “This begins close to a seven-week public engagement process, which for a bold decision like this is longer than the last bold decision we were asked to take.”

Robinson also pointed out that there are numerous issues that local businesses face: small population, not being located on a main arterial road are among those issues. There are businesses thriving but there are challenges, he added. 

One of those challenges is having retail businesses located on the second floor of commercial spaces while other businesses are in prime, walkable spots, he said. Robinson emphasized that it is not being suggested that businesses in prime spots be kicked out but maybe reoriented. Walkability needs to be increased, too, he said.

Councilor Denise Derkacs also supported the ordinance; she said this only kicks off a discussion; nothing has been formally decided. Furthermore, she noted that the discussion for a pedestrian retail overlay zone can still be incorporated into the Chapter 16 revision process.

“I think these concerns can be raised and addressed in future public hearings …. This would just begin the process to evaluate whether the County should proceed with this and give both members of the public and members of the business community ample opportunity to provide input both to P&Z and to council,” Derkacs said.

A public debate on this issue would be welcomed, Councilor David Reagor said.

“I think there are plenty of chances for people to have input,” he said. “That’s what we’re here for – to put proposals out there … I want to hear the whole thing laid out.”

Council Chair Randall Ryti said he appreciated the process that would be followed for this ordinance.

Public opinion voiced during the council meeting was a mixed bag on the issue.

“I have all kinds of problems with this …,” Metzger’s Do It Best General Manager David Jolly said.

He said he feels this ordinance paints landlords as villains.

“We scapegoated … the landlords are the bad guys,” Jolly said. “This makes it real easy; we’re going to get the landlords … the consequences all fall on the landlord. I believe the answer is much more complicated than that. I think if we were in a community that had people lined up to open stores and had limited amount of space, something like this might be appropriate, but I don’t see any evidence that is the case in Los Alamos. I think a lot of our problems with retail are that people can’t pencil out a successful retail business in a community this size … the problem is something other than what we are looking at in this ordinance.”

Landlords should feel like bad guys because they are the bad guys, resident Aaron Walker said.

“Why don’t we have people lining up to start businesses here? Because rents are too high and building maintenance is not being done and landlords are ignoring their buildings, that’s why we don’t have businesses lining up … of course landlords are upset because this means they are not going to be able to sit around and wait for lab rates,” Walker said.

What makes a downtown vibrant is people, whether they live or work there, said Los Alamos Commerce Development Corporation Executive Director Patrick Sullivan.

He added there isn’t enough information to determine if this proposed zone would be a benefit or not; however, it isn’t true that offices hamper downtown areas.

“I will push back … that offices are not an important part of a vibrant downtown,” Sullivan said. “I can say with certainly that is not a commonly accepted statement within the economic development industry anywhere in the United States.”

Additionally, Sullivan said high rents is not the main factor in prohibiting businesses in Los Alamos, the County’s population is the number one reason.

“By far, it is number one … The best way we can help our local business is to increase the customer base and that is to increase the amount of people in our community and that is to focus on housing specifically in the downtown,” he said.

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