City Council unanimously votes against rezoning for multi-family residential units on Columbus Road

QUINCY — The Quincy City Council voted Monday night against the rezoning of a nearly 18-acre piece of land northeast of Rooney Elementary School on Columbus Road for a proposed multi-phase, multi-family residential development. 

The vote was unanimous among the 12 aldermen who were present. There is a vacancy on the council following Mike Farha’s (R-4) resignation earlier this month, and Mike Rein (R-5) was absent for the third consecutive week.

The property, near 4900 Columbus Road and owned by Patricia E. McNay, is currently zoned as rural/agricultural (RU1) and single-family residential (R1A). Council approval would have created an ordinance which aldermen would have later voted on to rezone the property as multi-family residential (R3) to allow Steve Metherd, the principal and founder of St. Louis-based Metherd Properties LLC, to build a 270-unit apartment complex.

Alderwoman Kelly Mays (R-3) was the first to signal support for blocking the development.

“We found that they’re going against the future (Land Use Plan) for that section, for one, and then for two, a lot of the neighbors didn’t know about it,” Mays said. “There’s strong public opposition.”

Director of Planning and Development Jason Parrott said that the Land Use Plan that Mays was referring to, approved in 2013, is more like a roadmap and is not necessarily binding. 

“What I can tell you is that every single staff review for the planning commission — whether it’s a zoning change, special permit — includes language that specifically says, ‘This is what the Neighborhood Land Use Plan states,’” Parrott explained. “While it is a guide, it is a guide. There have been many instances where whatever that plan states has gone against (the Land Use Agreement), but each commission review does state what the Land Use Plan is for that.”

The Land Use Plan “improves the factual basis for making land use decisions recommended by the Plan Commission and Zoning Board of Appeals and adopted by the City Council. However, implementation of the plan relies upon regulatory mechanisms such as zoning, special permits and other measures as applied to specific properties,” as mentioned in the document.

The vote came after an aggressive lobbying campaign spearheaded by residents of the area, with Rachel Doerhoff and Brooke Peters taking the lead. They cited a variety of concerns about traffic and the potential for the development to eventually become Section 8 housing.

Mayor Mike Troup acknowledged residents’ concerns for increased traffic, especially with the already-approved construction of a separate 100-unit complex nearby.

“When you look at three units of 90, so you get to 270 more units, they’re like, ‘Whoa.’ It could be overkill for that area,” he said after the meeting. 

He said he’s spoken with residents of the area about possibilities for working with the county to widen the stretch of Columbus Road between 48th and 54th Streets. 

“Another issue for out there was the water pressure,” he said. “We have plans to continue to monitor the city water. Today it’s OK, but when you build more units, it could be an issue.”

He said another water tower is needed for the east side of town, but he wasn’t sure if it would be possible in the next year. An additional water tower has become more of a priority for the city, though, following the Sept. 12 water main break that resulted in early school closures and a days-long boil order.

Troup’s comments marked a swift turnaround from ones he made less than a month ago after winning the Republican primary against challenger Dan Brink, when he said the complex “would be just beautiful” and would “put a dent into what we need for apartments for working-class people.”

In a Facebook post made the night before the council meeting on March 16 by the page Quincy Residents Against Columbus Road Apartments, the admin of the page stated that “the mayor says this issue should be settled at tomorrow’s council meeting!!”

A few hours before the meeting, Doerhoff commented: “(Troup) told me personally that it will be put to rest this evening.”

Doerhoff and Peters championed against the proposed development at a neighborhood meeting last week that was supposed to provide an opportunity for the roughly 300 residents in attendance to learn about the development and ask city officials about their concerns. 

Doerhoff instead viewed it as an opportunity for Metherd and the city to give a sales pitch. 

Despite grabbing the microphone out of Troup’s hand herself to prevent Metherd from sharing information about the development at a meeting that was held for the sole purpose of sharing information about the development, Doerhoff suggested that Metherd and the city were preventing the sharing of information about the development.

She’d asked Troup why the development “was going to go through.” As he was answering her question, she interrupted him to remind the room that “there is an election coming up” — even though the majority of residents in the room likely live outside of city limits and thus, are unable to vote in next month’s municipal election. (Troup said the property for the development would have been annexed to the city because it would utilize city water.)

After last week’s meeting, Metherd told Muddy River News that he wasn’t offended by the pushback and that he appreciated the city’s passion. Cities change, though, and the proposed development was simply a response to the changing needs of the community.

The Comprehensive Housing Needs Assessment study conducted by the Great River Economic Development Foundation (GREDF) and published in 2023 found that Quincy was severely lacking in available housing units across the board, including market rate and affordable rate rental units. 

The development would have offered market rate housing with units ranging from $700 to $1,000 per month. The GREDF study concluded the city will need between 265 to 325 new market rate units by 2033.

In the United Way’s most recent Community Needs Assessment, fair market rent for a 2-bedroom apartment in Adams County was listed as $875, up from $776 in 2021. If allocating no more than 30 percent of income to housing costs, a household must make at least $35,000 annually to afford market rate rent. (According to the most recent census data, the median household income in Quincy is $56,372.)

The study said current lack of supply has raised costs across the board, which has “pushed rents to higher levels than what the properties should be asking.”

“Even if a family in the area can afford the current rent, that does not necessarily mean the quality of the products in the market justify said amounts,” the study notes.

Before the neighborhood meeting on March 5, a post made by the admin of the same page — who is not explicitly named but lists an email address belonging to Peters — stated that they had “called around” to unspecified apartment complexes and had found “50+” vacancies. It also said that an apartment complex that utilizes low-income housing tax credits was on a waitlist.

“Tell me again these will not be subsidized apartments with a straight face,” the post read.

Many low-income and affordable rate multi-family housing complexes are indeed full and on waitlists, and applications have closed or are on years-long waitlists for public housing in the city. The GREDF study said an additional 200 to 275 affordable rate rental units are needed by 2033.

Upon calling multiple market rate apartment complexes, however — such as Ridgebrook Apartments, which stated it had zero vacancies and had been at or near full occupancy for the last four years — Muddy River News could not confirm that there is an abundance of market rate vacancies in Quincy.

(With 2-bedroom units listed as low as $600 and 1-bedroom units listed as high as $1,650, several of the 41 apartments listed as available on Apartments.com are either too lowly priced or too expensive to be considered market rate.)

Only three out of 371 market rate rental units were vacant at the time of the GREDF study — a vacancy rate of less than one percent. 

When asked if his development would offer low-income housing, Metherd said no.

“One hundred percent I’m telling you, we are not putting in low-income housing. We’re not putting in vouchers or Section 8 housing. These will be market rate, meaning for everyone in this room can live there,” Metherd said at last week’s meeting.

Parrott said after Monday’s city council meeting that he wasn’t sure if Metherd was considering other pieces of land in Quincy for his development.

“I can’t speak for him. He had really pinpointed this property, so whether he would look to somewhere else for it, it’s too early to say,” Parrott said. 

Troup said he and Parrott are keeping in touch with Metherd.

“(Metherd) likes Quincy. We want to talk to him about other locations… so we can work with him to build those types of units here,” Troup said.