True or False: Caven Can Sell Oak Lawn Lots For By-Right, 120-Foot Buildings

Caven Enterprises is seeking to sell their Cedar Springs lands, which contain a string of well-known LGBTQ+ bars, to developer Mike Ablon who intends to build a pair of high-rises while leaving the bars in place (read the first story here, and the follow-up here).

Caven has heavily spun the narrative that without this one deal, in this precise configuration, they will be forced to sell to another developer who would build a solid 10-12 story building (similar to Illume) and scrape the bars – and all without a zoning change.

Let’s examine that.

On February 12, 1997, city council approved PD-193, sub-district (19) seemingly instigated by Caven and covering their properties. The underlying zoning is GR (General Retail) which allows heights up to 120 feet – a far cry from the 260 sought by Ablon. But the sub-district Caven entered into (and now wants to rescind) significantly limits even the 120-feet.

The Ordinance And Development Plan

In the sub-district ordinance, it states that, “Development of Phase One [block bounded by Cedar Springs, Reagan, Throckmorton and Dickason] must be in compliance with the development/landscape plan for Phase One (Exhibit S-19B).”

What does Exhibit S-19B say?

An excerpt of Exhibit S-19B (above) lists lot coverage at 35 percent and maximum height at 36 feet. To my reading, the portion of Caven’s holdings containing Sue Ellen’s, JR’s, S4, and TMC, appear limited well below the 120 feet and 80 percent lot coverage of their underlying GR zoning – meaning that no by-right Illume-style apartment building can be built on subareas A-1 and A-2 (map below) without the same zoning change process Ablon and Caven must follow today.

But let’s ignore that for a moment. What does the rest of the sub-district 19 ordinance say? Essentially, 120-feet heights are possible, but unlikely.

Residential Proximity Slope

Just as today’s plan, the sub-district divides the parcels into four (shown above) – A-1, A-2 (the front and back parking lot of the JR’s and S4 block), and B-1, and B-2 (Skivvies building and rear parking lot).

Unusual within PD-193, given its age, sub-district 19 has a Residential Proximity Slope (RPS) controlling where it’s possible to build 120-foot height on the lots.

It says:

For the back B-2 “Skivvies” lot, it’s easy. For 150-feet from the Dickason lot line, no building is allowed above 36 feet in height (lightest blue on map). The remaining 275-foot deep, B-1 subarea fronting Cedar Springs Road could build to 120-foot heights (darker blue). This means that there could be no high-rise (or 75-foot parking garage) on the back of the “B” parcels, but the narrower Cedar Springs-facing portion could go to 120 feet.

On the A side, the back A-2 subarea stops 100-feet from the Dickason lot line. The RPS says that for every foot off the far edge of the Dickason right-of-way, a building can be a foot tall (1 foot away = 1 foot tall; 2 feet away = 2 feet tall, etc.). It begins at 26 feet because I suspect the lot line is 26 feet away from the Dickason starting point. This means that the back 100 feet of A-2 produces a wedge-shaped building envelope from 26 feet along Dickason to a max of 120 feet about 94 feet away from Dickason.

So while 120 feet is allowed by right on over half of the total acreage (bars or no bars) it is significantly less valuable to a developer than either a 12-story building or a pair of 260-foot high-rises.

One assumes the RPS placed on these lots by Caven was to prevent (Caven) from doing what they are seeking to do today.

But wait, there’s more …

Setbacks

Setbacks further limit the appeal of a by-right plan.

On Cedar Springs there is an eight-foot setback at ground level between Throckmorton and Reagan. Additionally, on Cedar Springs and Throckmorton, a 25-foot setback is required above 36 feet in height. In a by-right “Illume” scenario, that removes 25 feet on two borders of a building on what would likely be the residential floors, which might hamper design (especially for the already thin B-1 parcel and when adding the other infringements).

There are additional 10-foot setbacks required on Reagan and Dickason from the ground up. Ditto a 10-foot setback above 36 feet on the border with Woody’s Bar with a 10-foot setback from the ground up on the back section (subareas B-1 and B-2). The Cedar Springs-facing portion of the B-1 subarea is only 109 feet wide by 175 feet deep at its narrowest. Anything above 36 feet in height and the buildable width drops by 37.5 feet to 71.5 feet – this makes for a fairly thin, inefficient apartment layout (double-stack with a central corridor).

For comparison, the Ablon team needs to lift the 25-foot setbacks above 36 feet to 75 feet to accommodate their parking garage.

Floor Area, Height, And Lot Coverage

For floor area, the sub-district ordinance states:

“If no residential component, maximum permitted floor area for all uses combined is 200,000 square feet. An additional one square foot of floor area for each two square feet of residential floor area is permitted up to a maximum permitted floor area of 250,000 square feet for all uses combined on the Property.” [Emphasis mine]

The lots total 3.5385 acres, or about 154,137 square feet. At the 80 percent lot coverage allowed by GR zoning, this equates to a two-story building based on the 250,000-square-foot total buildable floor area allowed for multi-family.

Yes, you can center the height on a portion of the lot to get a taller building. But the tallest result for a not-quite-by-right 12-story, 120-foot building would produce a building with 21,000 square feet per floor or 14 percent lot coverage – quite a bit less than the 80 percent coverage allowed.

For comparison, the Ablon team wants to change floor area from a raw number to an FAR of 5:1. This nets buildings with a combined square footage of 770,685 square feet – more than triple the 250,000 square feet their ordinance allows.

Net-Net, No-No

Based on the above, I do not see truth in Caven’s statements that they could just sell to a developer who’d build an Illume-type project by-right (a sale that would also net them significantly less money from the land sale).

I interpret the subdistrict 19 ordinance and development plan to say they’re bound to restrict height to 36 feet and 35 percent lot coverage — period.

Even if that somehow doesn’t hold, there are severe limitations surrounding setbacks, residential proximity slope, and especially floor area that similarly make such a project impossible by-right.

Couple that with construction types, and while some portion of the parcels could theoretically reach 120 feet, the reality is that they’re more likely to be five stories of wood construction on top of three concrete parking levels – making such a project with these limitations even less viable – and nowhere near the money Caven wants.

It seems to me that whatever Caven wants to do, they need a substantial zoning variance to do it.