City commissioners on Tuesday approved a plan to give the Montana State University Innovation Campus relaxations from building height maximums and parking requirements.
The two relaxations were part of a planned development zone application the innovation campus submitted to the city. The planned development zone, or PDZ, is a new process that allows developers to work with the city to essentially create their own underlying zoning for a project in exchange for public benefits.
The innovation campus is the first application in the city to go through the PDZ process.
The innovation campus proposed they would reduce their buildings’ water and energy use by 25% in exchange for an increase in the allowable building height from 75 to 90 feet, depending on roof pitch, to 120 to 135 feet depending on the roof, relaxations from minimum parking requirements and allowances to put signs on individual buildings, rather than for the property as a whole.
The developers also proposed changing the underlying zoning from business park to B-2, community business district.
The 40-acre property is between West College and Garfield streets to the west of South 23rd Avenue and Research Drive. The campus is home to one complete building, a research lab on the southeast corner, and two are under construction — one fronting onto West College Street and another on the property’s southwest corner.
The campus is a separate entity from MSU, but is set up to support the research going on at the university and to be the public face of it, Executive Director Mark Sharpe said during Tuesday’s meeting.
“Our purpose is, professors and other researchers who have an idea, a kernel of an idea that they think they could turn into great company well, we’re going to have the Industry Building sitting right there, which has 80,000 square feet of space available for those who want to start a business and work with our university,” Sharpe said.
The build out of the entire campus could take up to two decades, Sharpe said.
The PDZ intent was to allow the campus to develop as a unified project, rather than just on a per-building basis. Rob Church, with A&E Architects, said without the changes, it would develop looking more like a traditional office park rather than a dense campus.
If they follow the requirements the first three buildings had to, Church said that would be the outcome.
“As a result of the (business park) zoning, largely the development pattern that we’ve seen on the site is fairly low rise, these are all one or two-story buildings and they all have quite a good deal of parking,” Church said.
The PDZ means they don’t have any minimum parking requirements for future buildings, but Church said the three existing buildings and on-street spots give them almost 600 parking spaces total, and they always have the option to include more parking as they see fit.
City commissioners unanimously approved the project.
“I think this is a place where density is appropriate,” Commissioner Douglas Fischer said. “I kind of agree that it would be a shame to put an office park there.”
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