The Flagstaff City Council has approved a second development agreement amendment that may move the decade-plus planned Mill Town project at 1801 S. Milton Road toward construction.
The updated agreement extends developer Vintage Partners’ entitlements on the parcel for two more years and will let the company submit a new mixed-use residential and commercial development site plan. The new plan will not have to comply with Flagstaff’s High-Occupancy Housing code.
Mill Town was first planned in 2013 as part of a complex, multi-site/multi-project agreement between Vintage, the City of Flagstaff and the Arizona Department of Transportation.
Vintage’s original Mill Town plan was submitted in 2017 and consisted of a 1,200-bed student housing development with a height of 90 feet, ground floor commercial and a rooftop bar.
After encountering significant opposition, the developer offered to eliminate the ground floor commercial and bar, reduce the height, agree not to rent on a per-bed basis and to dedicate several dozen units for below-market-rate rents for a minimum of 10 years. That development agreement was approved in 2018 with entitlements that were good for a five-year term.
The agreement was amended in 2021 to extend the entitlements.
Late last year, Vintage produced a new plan for the site and reduced the unit count to 262, with a total of 668 bedrooms, and lowered the height from five stories to four. Vintage now plans to partner with Toll Brothers to build the project.
Because the plan was significantly changed, amendments were needed for the site’s rezoning and the development agreement, since both were conditional upon the original plan. This put the plan into conflict with the City’s High-Occupancy Housing Specific Plan, which was added to the City Code in 2021.
City staff determined neither the original nor the updated plan would comply with the HOH Plan, which requires at least 20% of all bedrooms in an HOH development to be in studio or one-bedroom configurations. Vintage’s plan had 66 bedrooms in studios and 406 in either four- or five-bedroom units.
Groups opposed to large student housing developments pushed for the HOH Plan adoption, and critics have opposed Vintage’s insistence on using the pre-HOH zoning. They have also complained that the one-to-one bedroom-to-bathroom ratio of most units shows the plan still maintains a significant student housing focus.
Vintage has said opponents are exaggerating the proposal’s deviations and has accused them of spreading disinformation and acting in bad faith.
Project representatives from the law firm of Gammage and Burnham pointed out there is no land-use category in Flagstaff’s code for student housing, while acknowledging there would probably be student interest, given the site’s proximity to Northern Arizona University.
With Council’s approval of the new amendment, Vintage must now file a new site plan and rezoning request. The site plan is expected in August or September, with rezoning to follow. (Source)
