Foothills Overlay - Draft January 2000

City of Scottsdale Cover Letter

To: Residents, Property Owners and Local Interests of the Desert Foothills Area

From: Gary Neiss, Comprehensive Planning, Planner

Date: January 7, 2000

On July 13, 1999, City Council unanimously approved the Desert Foothills Character Area and Implementation Plans. At that time, Council directed staff to formulate a zoning district overlay to assist in the preservation of the Rural Desert character of the area.

Over the last several months, Comprehensive planning staff has been meeting with the Desert Foothills community and local interests to develop an overlay that achieves this goal. This outreach process included:

• Two community workshops opened to all local interests, residents and property owners.
• A working group composed of local stakeholders which represented varying perspectives (e.g. new residents and old residents, people who own horses to people who did not own horses).
• Meetings with the Arizona Horseman's Association and the Desert Foothills Property Owner's Association.
•  Numerous meetings with interested organizations, stakeholders and residents.

Through this dialogue, staff began to develop an overlay that balanced the diverging perspectives. These perspectives ranged from the desire to preserve private property rights to the desire to preserve the character of the area by developing very rigid development standards.

The Foothills Overlay (F-O) seeks to achieve a balance by creating flexible development standards based upon the size of the parcel. These development standards focus on physically blending all new structures/buildings into the sensitive desert environment and rural neighborhoods by establishing development standards for building heights, setbacks, massing and light reflective values. In addition, standards are outlined for wall heights and suitable percentages of enclosures to maintain the sense of openness within the area.

Over the next month, residents, property owners, local interests, Planning Commission and City Council will all have the opportunity to submit comments on the F-O to Comprehensive Planning. Later this winter, the draft will be revised based upon these collective comments and forwarded to Planning Commission and City Council for their consideration.

Attached is the legal document - the draft statute title Foothills Overlay Technical Guide and an interpretive guide which graphically explains many of the development standards within the Technical Guide, this draft interpretive guide is titled Foothills Overlay User's Guide.

Questions and concerns may be forwarded to Comprehensive Planning (480) 312-7705.