FAQ

What is the Roseville Commercial Corridors Project? Why is it needed?

The City invested significant time and resources in the downtown, historic old town, and other core areas of the City, which was facilitated by the City’s Downtown Specific Plan. These areas have benefited from the resulting revitalized streetscapes, civic improvements, and new businesses. City Council identified extending this investment of time and resources to other commercial corridors as a Council priority. Nearby the Downtown Specific Plan area are three of Roseville’s older commercial corridors: Atlantic Street, Douglas Boulevard and Harding Boulevard, and Douglas Boulevard and Sunrise Avenue. The Commercial Corridors Project will reimagine these corridors, establishing a vision for the future and appropriate development standards, regulatory incentives, and design standards.

Has the City conducted previous studies or planning efforts for these three corridors?

The City has reviewed each of the three commercial corridor areas to identify their existing land uses, zoning designations, and open spaces to determine potential opportunities and challenges. The Commercial Corridors Project is the City’s first formal land use planning effort focused specifically on these three corridors.

What types of developments are planned for the three corridors?

Approval of the Specific Plans does not approve development of any property. The Specific Plan is designed to facilitate and provide design guidelines for:

Commercial reinvestment – The plan will include process streamlining to encourage a property owner to update, repairs, or improve an existing building or site, by repainting, adding landscaping, replacing windows, or making other cosmetic improvements.
Commercial redevelopment – The plan will include design guidelines for when a property owner expands a building, constructs a new building, or replaces an existing building.
Multifamily development – The plan will allow multifamily residential as a permitted use of commercial property and will include process streamlining and design guidelines for multifamily development. The plans will also include supporting infrastructure studies to ensure there is sufficient capacity for up to 850 multifamily residential units, allocated to each Plan Area as follows: up to 50 units in the Atlantic Street corridor, up to 200 units in the Douglas-Harding corridor, and up to 600 units in the Douglas-Sunrise corridor.

Future development projects, including housing projects, will need to go through a future process to ensure that it meets the standards of the Specific Plans before it can go forward. The Specific Plans are just the first step.

How long will the Roseville Commercial Corridors Plan take to create?

This planning effort launched in May 2021 and will continue through 2022.

How do I get involved and learn more?

Public outreach and participation are key components of the Commercial Corridors Plan effort, and the City needs to hear from you! Stay up to date and learn about upcoming outreach opportunities at the Get Involved page.

How will my property be affected?

Since this may be the question uppermost in people’s minds, we want to answer this question first. The changes we are proposing facilitate appropriate use of the land; they do not add barriers or restrictions that will negatively impact property owners. We will be conducting outreach to property owners throughout the process of developing this project. The changes shown on the preliminary draft maps (see below) are not final, and are subject to change based on feedback from the community. If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions please contact the City by e-mail at [email protected]. We will be happy to hear from you.

What is a Specific Plan?

A Specific Plan is a planning document that establishes key goals for an area. Several of the key items addressed include:

Vision and Goals: This section answers key questions like what outcome is the plan trying to achieve and what does a successful plan look like?
Land Use: This section creates a land use plan that explains what kinds of uses are allowed and where they are allowed.
Design Guidelines: This section establishes design standards and streetscape plans that are tailored to the area. This is where we can set up standards and other guidelines that really help us to realize the vision of the plan. If someone is going to develop a site the plan will have established things like: should the building be more forward to the street? How deep or wide should the landscaping on the frontage be?
Implementation: This section establishes the processes for approval of projects. It also sets up incentives, like a faster process if they meet a certain design checklist, and other similar regulations.

What is a Land Use Plan?

The land use plan is a color-coded map with land use designations (e.g. Community Commercial) along with supporting text to describe the types of uses that are allowed in the mapped areas. The land use plan for the entire City is the General Plan, but this plan is very broad. The General Plan establishes citywide goals and policies and establishes land use designations over every property in the City. A Specific Plan provides an opportunity to create a more tailored vision and goals for a specific geographic area in the City. The land use map of the General Plan is amended whenever a new Specific Plan is adopted, to ensure there are no conflicts between the new Specific Plan and the General Plan land use maps.

The foundational purpose of a land use plan is to make sure incompatible uses (e.g. industrial uses and residential uses) are not next to each other, and that an area includes a healthy balance of uses to ensure a thriving and livable community. When land uses are perfectly balanced people can meet their needs for housing, jobs, services, transportation, and recreation without having to leave their community. This is easier to do when preparing a new land use plan for an undeveloped area, because you have the opportunity to create a plan from scratch. However, these corridors are already fully developed and the land use map is existing. In this case, as we envision a land use plan we are considering the following types of questions:

In our outreach to the community we heard members of the community say they’d like to see more shops, entertainment, restaurant, services, jobs, and housing options. We also heard people telling us they’d like to see more investment in existing buildings and spaces, to make the area more vibrant.

How is a Land Use Plan related to Zoning?

The land use plan of either the General Plan or a Specific Plan describes the broad categories of land use permitted in a given geographic area. The supporting text describes the types of uses ordinarily associated with the land use designation. For example, the General Plan describes the primary uses of the Community Commercial land use designation as follows: “Retail stores and businesses selling a full range of goods and services, including auto sales and repair, and commercial child care facilities.”

The Zoning Ordinance implements the land use plan. Each land use designation is associated with multiple implementing zone districts, which provide significantly more detail about allowed uses. The implementing zone districts of the Community Commercial land use designation are Neighborhood Commercial, Community Commercial, General Commercial, Highway Commercial, and Commercial Mixed Use. The Zoning Ordinance includes a permitted use table establishing the specific types of businesses permitted within each zone district. This is an important tool to ensure use compatibility and a healthy balance of uses. For example, the Neighborhood Commercial (NC) zone district allows uses such as a hair salon or neighborhood market, but does not allow uses like auto repair. The NC zone district is typically applied to small sites surrounded by residential neighborhoods, to ensure neighborhood-serving uses are within walking distance.

When we are talking about developing the land use plan for this project, we will be discussing the land use designation, the zone district, and the permitted use tables.

What do the City’s land use and zoning designations (e.g. LDR) mean?

The definitions of the City’s land use designations are within the City’s General Plan Land Use Element (Table II-3 on page II-14 and II-4 on page II-15). A summary of the land use designations and their definitions most relevant to the Commercial Corridors project is below, and a link to the General Plan Land Use Element is here.

Low Density Residential (LDR) – Residential at densities of up to 6.9 units per acre, with average lot sizes of 6,000 to 7,500 square feet.
Medium Density Residential (MDR) – Residential at densities of 7.0 to 12.9 units per acre.
High Density Residential (HDR) – Residential at densities of 13 units per acre or greater.
Neighborhood Commercial (NC) – Provides for basic commercial, retail, and services for the convenience of surrounding neighborhoods in walking distance.
Community Commercial (CC) – Provides a broad range of goods and services to a wide service area that expands well beyond walking distance.
Business Professional (BP) – Provides for offices and uses supportive of offices.

The definitions of the City’s zoning designations are within the City’s Zoning Ordinance (Title 19 of the City’s Municipal Code) and include permitted use tables, specifying the exact uses permitted in each zone district. The use type definitions and permitted use tables are within Municipal Code Chapter 19.10 through 19.18, organized by type of use (Chapter 19.10 is residential uses, etc). To find the use definition for each type of use (residential, commercial, etc), go to the main table of contents here, click on the use type of interest, and then select the “Purpose” section. To find the use tables for each type of use, go to the main table of contents here, click on the use type of interest, and then select the “Permitted Use Types” section. A brief description of the zone districts most relevant to the Commercial Corridors Project is below.

R1 – Single-Family Residential – Attached or detached single-family.
RS – Small Lot Residential – Attached or detached single-family on smaller lots.
R2 – Two-Family Residential – Two single-family homes, including duplexes.
R3 – Multifamily – A range of high density and multiple-family housing, including apartments, condos, townhomes, and similar.
BP – Business Professional – Office uses and uses related to and supportive of office uses.
NC – Neighborhood Commercial – Applied to properties in close proximity to residential areas, providing convenient retail and personal services.
CC – Community Commercial – Serves the principal shopping needs of the entire community.
GC – General Commercial – Commercial uses of a service or more heavy commercial character serving the entire community.
OS – Open Space – Public and private lands which are environmentally sensitive.
PR – Park and Recreation – Public or private recreation facilities.
P/QP – Public/Quasi-Public – Applies to land intended for education, religious assembly, governmental offices, municipal functions, and other publicly-owned facilities.
PD – Planned Development – A special purpose district established by Ordinance.