In the past eight years the population of Frisco, Texas, has grown from fewer than 34,000 to more than 102,000, making us one of the fastest-growing cities in America. This growth has created a range of challenges as our leaders have sought to reshape our community and infrastructure to meet escalating needs, while preserving the city’s beauty and character.

 

While you may not be familiar with Frisco, there’s a good chance that you or one of your associates is grappling with some of the same growth issues we are. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but some of our experiments and approaches might provide ideas for solutions that will work in your community. Here are just a few for your consideration.

 

In May 2001, Frisco became the first city in the U.S. to launch a mandatory Residential Green Building Program. The program began as an outgrowth of a larger effort to clarify the city’s building standards. One of our staff members formulated the idea of making Frisco homes more energy efficient by mandate. The idea became a proposal, which was unanimously approved by the City Council. The belief is that by making green building standards mandatory for all single-family residences we are saving energy and money in the short term and giving future generations a cleaner environment as well.

 

Frisco’s green standards for single-family residences include a minimum standard for energy efficiency based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR® designation, and homes must be inspected and rated individually by trained experts. Homes also have to meet certain thresholds for indoor air quality and water conservation. The builders even have to follow guidelines for how they dispose of construction waste.

 

We were very inclusive as we turned our green homes proposal into actionable building standards. We formed a task force of builders to ensure that the standards made sense on paper and in practice. One of the first things we did as a group was to perform “blower door and duct blaster tests” on existing new homes, a process that tells how well a home and ductwork are sealed. Sealing is a huge factor in keeping the heat outside in the summer and inside in the winter.

 

Before taking the ordinance to the City Council, we met with council members one-on-one to review the proposed draft, answer their questions and incorporate their suggestions. To strengthen the proposal, our office developed a relationship with Environmental Protection Agency officials who shared a wealth of information and ideas with us.

 

As a result, Frisco not only revamped its building codes, but it established an environmentally focused theme that would permeate all of our efforts to transform our development standards for the future.

 

It is important to note that these standards are for single-family homes. We have yet to apply these standards to commercial or multifamily buildings because we cannot create too much disparity between our ordinances and those of other cities without increasing the cost of development to the point that Frisco is unable to compete for new development.

 

Similarly, commercial tenants are more likely to ask about the green factors of a building — something unheard of a few years ago. Energy efficiency demands aside, these tenants are aware of a range of studies that show employees who work in green buildings are more productive, less likely to get sick and more likely to remain with the company. These benefits are coming into clearer focus just as developers are seeing the cost of “building green” getting closer to parity with traditional building approaches.

 

With a rapid influx of people, one challenge is creating a special community that not only attracts people but also encourages them to stay and be part of the city. For example, many suburbs in Texas and elsewhere have developed vast collections of “strip centers” or “strip malls.” These often include an anchor store, typically a supermarket or chain department store, with a number of smaller stores that serve a nearby community. The issue with these centers is they lose their luster after a decade or so. They become less attractive, rents decline and maintenance declines. The result is a negative image of the neighborhood, which in turn impacts property values.

 

Frisco has its share of these centers, but in recent years we have focused on increasing the number of mixed-used developments in the city. By combining commercial, retail, entertainment and residential elements in closer proximity, we are driving investment and a more sustainable model for urban growth.

 

A prime example of our focus on mixed-use development is our Frisco Square and Pizza Hut Park developments. Frisco Square offers commercial, residential, retail and public buildings, including the new Frisco City Hall/Library and the George A. Purefoy Municipal Center. Across the street from Frisco Square is Pizza Hut Park, a multi-purpose stadium that is home to the FC Dallas soccer team and a venue for outdoor concerts, high school football games and large community events. The 17 soccer fields built with the stadium are used for league play and to host the annual Dallas World Cup and other soccer tournaments. This stadium and soccer fields were made possible by a unique partnership among the Hunt Sports Group, which owns FC Dallas, the Frisco Independent School District, the City of Frisco and Collin County. The juxtaposition of the stadium with Frisco Square provides natural synergies, and already there has been an increase in tourism and growth in the lodging sector. It is a vibrant new city center that, due to its mixed-revenue sources, is positioned for long-term success.

 

In building Frisco Square and Pizza Hut Park, we were cognizant of the stress that huge numbers of vehicles would put on our roads. As such, we are exploring the use of rail service to allow visitors travel into the vicinity of Frisco Square for events without the need to drive in. We calculated that if 20,000 people attend an event at the Park, and if only 15 percent of them come by rail, that’s approximately 1,000 fewer cars using our roads that day.

 

In 1998, we created a downtown master plan to preserve the past and create standards for new development that would blend with older buildings. This was accomplished by creating new zoning districts that recognized the smaller lots; reducing the parking standards and providing for shared parking to encourage multiple uses; retaining the factors that encourage pedestrian activity; and protecting the residential component in the downtown. Since we have residents living in the downtown, we wanted to make sure that downtown zoning standards were not detrimental to residents. We also created a pattern book for both commercial and residential properties to preserve the early

20th Century architecture of the downtown.

 

We believe that, even as we move into the future with these outstanding developments and energy-efficient homes, we have to be equally as focused on helping existing neighborhoods make the journey and share in the prosperity we create. We can look at the first-ring suburbs of many urban areas to see they are in dire straits. These cities have aging homes, retail buildings and infrastructure. The results are declining property values and a lack of support for bond packages directed toward replacing old infrastructure. All of this makes it difficult for these communities to reinvent themselves for economic development.

 

These suburbs also are often marked by a monoculture of development that lacks a sense of place. This makes it hard for people to connect with the neighborhood, so they move out. In fact, most people start to look at these neighborhoods as short-term residences because they feel no sense of belonging. We are addressing the concept of place-making as we update our ordinances and focus on our older neighborhoods.

 

Working with our City Council, we have looked for ways to build commitment in our older neighborhoods. One of our efforts is to try to understand what’s happening in a particular neighborhood by analyzing a range of factors. Two years ago, we began tracking things like the number of rental properties, age of homes, number of fire/police responses and number and severity of public works issues. When viewed together, these factors tell us that a particular neighborhood may require special focus to create resident commitment and action to resolve issues. We schedule a meeting with the neighborhood and include representatives from other departments to discuss their questions, concerns and develop an action plan.

 

In some cases, we connect with citizen action groups to help them with a specific issue. For example, some groups might help to mow lawns of vacant properties to make them code compliant. We also meet with landlords of rental properties to gain their commitment in improving upkeep. We have coordinated with non-profits to assist homeowners with improvements they could not afford. In a similar vein, we have dialogues with homeowner associations and created a Congress of Neighborhoods to bring issues forward so we can deal with them proactively and comprehensively.

 

A key factor in improving the success of these communities is linking residential and commercial developments more seamlessly.

 

Our goal is to break down barriers, to make it easier for people to walk or bicycle in and around their neighborhoods, to access retail stores and natural resources, such as creeks. As future development occurs, we need to focus on place-making that creates value by celebrating our natural features and open spaces, which will directly impact property values.

 

Although we envision having enough water in the coming decades to meet population growth in Frisco and in the region as a whole, water management has become an important priority. One major problem is runoff. Due to the prevalence of impervious surfaces, precipitation takes only minutes to reach our creeks, causing erosion, transport of pollutants and sediment loading.

 

This run-off problem is complemented by massive amounts of irrigation both by businesses and homeowners. They use more water than necessary, and the situation is compounded when the irrigation is occurring during windy days — wasting water as it is blown away. To address this, we amended the landscape ordinance so evapotransportation (ET) controllers are required for new construction. These devices monitor soil moisture, wind speed and freezing temperature to help people irrigate when it’s necessary and when conditions will maximize water absorption into the ground. The Public Works Department, which we partnered with to amend the landscape ordinance, has created a public outreach program on water efficiency. Part of this program provides a free checkup on irrigation programming to boost efficiency and check for leaks. For older homes and businesses without the ET controller, Public Works provides information electronically about when watering is necessary.

 

The updated landscape ordinance also establishes three landscaping zones for commercial projects: Oasis, Rainwater Harvesting and Natural Landscape. We recognized from our task force that developers generally wanted lush landscaping at building entrances, so the Oasis zone was created. The other two zones use native landscaping, and after they are established the irrigation is turned off. These two zones also allow the rainwater to percolate. We were able to demonstrate two important facts to task force members. One was that more water was being used than necessary on traditional landscaping. The second was that the three-zone concept would reduce their water demands and thus their operational budgets.

 

In addition to dealing with water conservation, we have revised our ordinances to encourage developers to preserve attractive natural features and share access to water and open space. On one front, we’ve given builders incentives for factoring sustainability and attractiveness into lot designs. Normally, if there is a small hill or significant tree or other nice feature, builders are likely to bulldoze it away because of restrictions on lot sizes and the process for getting waivers to preserve that natural feature would stall the construction process. So what we’ve done is amend our ordinance to allow for smaller lot sizes that maintain the same density, either to preserve natural features or provide open space. This is accomplished during plan review without requiring additional steps in the development process.

 

In a similar way, we have taken steps to encourage a better approach to managing development near the various creeks that run through Frisco. Typically, developers want to build certain homes right near a body of water so the buyer will pay a premium for that proximity. However, urban development studies have found that when you open the creek to the neighborhood so everyone has access, this raises the value of more homes in the neighborhood. So 10 years ago we launched a major creek ordinance that requires these waterways to be opened up as an amenity to entire neighborhoods.

 

Frisco’s success is a direct result of our city leaders’ consistent commitment to a vision and to their openness to new ideas. As dramatic as the past few years have been in Frisco, we know the coming decade will challenge us even more. There will be waves of new residents, increasing demand for energy and water conservation and new pressures on our roads and other public infrastructure. We need to meet these demands while creating a community where, once people move here, they do not want to leave.