The Sedona City Council voted on Tuesday, May 28, to approve a development agreement with MS Development Partners, of Ohio, for the construction of the proposed Villas on Shelby 30-unit apartment complex that will exempt the developer from two Land Development Code requirements and discussed granting the developer an additional $45,000 in public funds to provide covered parking as part of the project.

Housing Manager Shannon Boone said to council that as developer Matt Shoemacher’s proposal did not meet all of the LDC’s requirements, a development agreement with the city would be required to enable the project to proceed.

The council agreed to grant Shoemacher’s request for exemptions from LDC sections 2.2.1, allowing him to include an unrelieved building plane of approximately 1,800 square feet — greater than the code limit of 400 square feet — and a building height of up to 40 feet; and 2.2.2, allowing the entire building length of more than 150 feet to reach the maximum height of 40 feet rather than being limited to 16 feet along at least 25% of its length.

“The development agreement for Sunset Lofts had two of these same allowances. The massing is what’s different here,” City Attorney Kurt Christianson said.

“If this is primarily a visual thing we have to decide on … is there a reason this is on tonight’s agenda?” Councilman Pete Furman asked.

The Villas on Shelby proposal has not yet been reviewed by the Planning and Zoning Commission.

“We don’t have the benefit of their take on this,” Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella said.

“We’re looking for approval of the development agreement so the developer can move forward,” Boone said. “My understanding is from [Planning Manager] Cari [Meyer] that P&Z needs the development agreement in place in order to consider the design with the exceptions that the development agreement allows.”

“Otherwise staff would have to recommend that it doesn’t pass development review because it doesn’t meet the code requirements,” Christianson said.

Councilwoman Jessica Williamson asked if Boone believed the developer had done everything possible to make the Villas “an actual low-income project” and whether it would be possible “to actually have something start that isn’t destroyed by our bureaucracy? Is that something that could happen?”

“I believe they have,” Boone said, adding that she thought the best approach would be to give the developer the requested exemptions because they are “so close to groundbreaking.”

With regard to a groundbreaking timeline, Boone later told council that “it might actually be August before we can take it to P&Z … we got behind.”

Mayor Scott Jablow suggested that the developer use styrofoam to texture the unrelieved building plane and Councilman Brian Fultz countered with a proposal for a mural in that space.

“That’s a great idea,” Jablow said. “There’s a great mural on the side of Whole Foods — ”

“ — That looks terrible,” Kinsella finished.

“I don’t necessarily think putting more styrofoam into the environment is a way to solve anything,” Williamson said.

While agreeing to approve Shoemacher’s first two requests for LDC exemption, the council denied his third request for an exemption from the requirement to provide half a covered parking space per unit for multifamily housing and requested numbers on the cost difference involved in installing covered parking. With 30 units, the Villas on Shelby would require 15 covered parking spaces.

“Three or four thousand dollars a space?” Shoemacher said. “I don’t know … I mean, it’s not a lot.”

“You’re asking for an exception to that, but yet you can’t quantify that dollar-wise for us?” Kinsella said. “That puts us in a very difficult position to actually even consider the request.”

“Three thousand a space,” Shoemacher said.

“This is an equity question for me,” Kinsella said, explaining that she felt residents would be “stigmatized” without access to covered parking.

“We shouldn’t be treating people differently,” Vice Mayor Holli Ploog said. “I just want to say that I was doing a lot of errands today, and I went home, parked my car outside because I was going to be leaving in an hour … I got back into my car, and it was less than an hour, and it was 84 degrees out. My car was 97 degrees. I rest my case.”

“If we were to pay for that covered parking, would it hold things up?” Ploog asked Shoemacher. “Can you be doing that design while you’re moving forward?”

“We can add that quickly. That wouldn’t hold anything up,” Shoemacher said.

Furman, Jablow, Kinsella and Councilman Brian Fultz all expressed support for giving Shoemacher an additional $45,000 in place of the requested exemption to ensure the project would have covered parking.

“I just want to say this is why the budget gets bigger and bigger and bigger,” Williamson said. “Can’t we ever just exercise our political will and our right to just approve something? … I just want us to approve this damn thing so it can move forward … I don’t care what we have to do to get this dumb thing moving forward.”

Council subsequently approved the first two exemptions unanimously and denied the third.

If later approved, the additional $45,000 in city funds — in addition to the project’s $2.25 million city loan — would be within the discretionary spending authority of the city manager.