14-10-108 DEVELOPMENT CHARACTERISTICS

1. Uses may be mixed within a building or within an overall development, or both. However, the City encourages mixing uses within a building as much as possible. Furthermore, the subdividing of land for stand alone parcels is discouraged, and the City may deny the subdivision of land within the MXD zone if the Planning Commission or City Council determines that the subdivision is contrary to the purpose and intent of this Code. 2. Developments within an MXD zone shall exhibit urban characteristics such as: A. Wide sidewalks B. Street trees and street furniture C. Community gathering spaces D. Shared parking E. Integrated public transit (where available and/or anticipated) F. Diverse and distinctive design features 3. All developments shall provide at least fifteen (15) percent of the gross floor area or fifteen (15) percent of the gross site area, whichever is greater, as open space. Open space shall typically include the following elements: cultivated landscaping, plazas, parks, urban trails/sidewalks, wetlands/indigenous landscaping, and community recreation space. A maximum of fifty (50) percent of all open space may be hard surfaced. Streets, parking lots, driveways and private yards are not considered open space. 4. All lighting and signs shall be pedestrian scale, with a maximum sign height of twenty (20) feet. Lights or signs on building facades may be higher than the twenty (20) feet maximum. Sign standards shall be the same as for the Downtown (DN) zone, although for buildings larger than those normally allowed in the Downtown (DN) zone, the City may approve larger scale lighting and/or signs proportional to the size of the buildings approved. Projects ten (10) acres or larger with at least one hundred thousand (100,000) sq. ft. of non-residential uses may have one pole sign per frontage on an arterial street, evaluated using the standards for pole signs in the CH zone. The pole or structural support element of the sign may exceed the maximum pole width allowed if the structure itself incorporates specific site design elements, at the discretion of the approving body. 5. Parking requirements shall be determined per existing City standards for each use. However, parking requirements may be reduced if it can be shown that shared parking is a viable alternative. The City reserves the right to dictate the amount of parking and/or the location of parking spaces within a project to achieve the objectives of this Code. 6. Site plans shall clearly indicate the mixture of land uses within the project area and the percentage of the overall site that each use occupies. Furthermore, site plans shall indicate the amount of parking prorated to each use and shall illustrate how public transit, (where available and/or anticipated), is to be integrated into the site. 7. An additional site plan shall illustrate pedestrian movement throughout the project area, with trail hierarchies established based on levels of pedestrian use. The purpose of this plan is to demonstrate how effectively uses are mixed, and to determine the efficiency of the site layout. The plan shall provide convenient and attractive pedestrian connections through the mixing of land uses and quality design practices.