City Hall continues to steamline development process; National Guard needed an appeal to City Council from Planning Commission for its project

CEDAR RAPIDS - City Hall has spent no little effort in recent years trying to streamline its development process so developers can spend less time between idea and actual construction.

The effort means some planning decisions now are made by city staff without the need to go to the City Planning Commission and some are made by the commission without a need to go to the City Council.

This week, the City Council will vote to continue down that path. The council will be asked to allow the City Planning Commission to make final decisions on major preliminary plats and to allow the city staff to approve minor preliminary plats. Unhappy neighbors and/or developers can appeal decisions to the City Council, Vern Zakostelecky, development planner for the city, reports.

Zakostelecky notes that more crucial development decisions - those involving changing the city's future land use map or changing a parcel's zoning - continue to go to the City Council for a final say.

The latest proposed change could reduce the timeline on a development from two to four weeks and save staff time and council time, Zakostelecky says.

He notes that a 2008 change, which gave the commission final say on preliminary site development plans, has prompted only one appeal to the City Council.

That occurred, Zakostelecky says, in late April when the council, on a 7-2 vote, overturned a commission vote on the federal government's development plan along the north side of Wright Brothers Boulevard for a new $40-million-plus Army National Guard complex.