Lincoln City Council mulls plans to build a neighborhood center, affordable housing

They’d expressed similar concerns to the Lincoln-Lancaster County Planning Commission, which nonetheless approved a special permit necessary for FiftyOne Commons, a project that’s known as a community unit plan.

The neighbors appealed the Planning Commission’s decision to the council, which will vote on the special permit, and a change to the ordinance dealing with neighborhood centers at its July 24 meeting.

Family Service, a nonprofit that has been operating in Lincoln for more than a century and provides youth, housing and family support services, would run the neighborhood center, work with Community Crops to oversee the community gardens and lease the 10 affordable row-style duplexes and triplexes.

The housing will be affordable units aimed at families and will accept Section 8 housing.

The neighborhood center would also be available for community meetings, neighborhood association events and offer training space for Family Service, and could be used by other nonprofits, said Dennis Hoffman, Family Service executive director.

There will be surface parking on the lot for the community center patrons and apartment residents. The apartment residents can use the green space and community gardens also would be available for neighborhood residents.

Neighbors worry about the project increasing existing flooding problems in the area, increased traffic and parking concerns.

The land is in the floodplain and is one of the first projects in the city’s core neighborhoods that will need to comply with controversial new floodplain regulations passed in March.

Those regulations will mean the duplexes and triplexes will need to be raised an extra foot — so 2 feet instead of 1 — above the base floodplain elevation. Given the floodplain levels in that area, the duplexes and triplexes will have to be raised a total of 5 to 6 feet.

Neighbors who testified Monday said they worried about the height of the duplexes and triplexes, and whether it could create traffic hazards for drivers.

Robert Schlamann, who lives across from where the duplexes and triplexes will be built, said the height of the buildings, especially with the extra rise to comply with floodplain regulations, will mean he won’t get sunlight until late morning.

“These 35-foot-tall buildings are not going to look good from our bedroom window,” he said.

Tim Gergen, the design firm working with Family Service, acknowledged the regulations present challenges but said the development meets requirements so that it doesn’t create a traffic hazard.

“It’s an unfortunate part of it, but as a development in an infill property with these new floodplain regulations that existing homes don’t have to abide by, this is what we’re left with and what we have to do,” he said. “So that’s what we’re abiding by.”

Schlamann said a manhole cover by his home overflows regularly, and he worried the project would exacerbate the problem.

But city officials say the storm sewers in the area have the capacity to handle additional runoff because the project accounts for any additional runoff it will create by adding a detention pond on the lot. The pond will briefly hold water and divert it through an underground pipe to a 52nd Street stormwater sewer, which is larger than the one on 51st Street.

On Monday, residents pointed out existing ordinances — including those dealing with child care — they believe the project violates, though city officials said the neighborhood center doesn’t qualify as a child care facility and the community unit plan gave the project more flexibility.

The city also wants to change an ordinance dealing with neighborhood support services — needed for this project but that city officials would like to apply to such situations citywide.

The changes would remove the requirements that such neighborhood support services be located near a park, school or church and in an existing building.

City planners told the Planning Commission that similar issues have arisen with other social service agencies that want to be a part of the neighborhoods they serve but have found those requirements create unnecessary barriers. The requests for neighborhood support services would still need Planning Commission approval.

Hoffman said the FiftyOne Commons project will find a better use for a lot that has prompted complaints by neighbors and has been on the city’s list of neglected properties. As part of the project, he said, an abandoned house will be torn down.

“Family Service, I feel, is taking a bold move to take a chance on a tough property and taking on floodplain regulations to make a nice neighborhood for 10 families and a support center others can take advantage of.”