Technical challenges and disagreements among University Park property and business owners are slowing plans in the works for Snider Plaza.

Planned changes to parking time limits are stalled at the City Council level as city staff and a software vendor work on reprogramming a new automated enforcement system.

And the Planning and Zoning Commission this week decided to delay a final vote on a zoning overhaul for the shopping center, after hearing objections from several property owners about new limits on building heights.

For members of a committee that recommended the changes, the issues – when solved – will be part of a unified plan for the center.

"What we have to continue doing is ... deciding what's good for the plaza as a whole and what's good for the city as a whole," said Max Fuqua, whose Plaza Health Foods has been there since the 1940s. "For the first time [since] my family has been here, we have a great plan."

The proposals have been years in the making. Changes to height limits were discussed in 2003.

Redevelopment plans for the Chase Bank building at the south end of the plaza have come and gone. And in 2007, the council discussed and partially adopted a land use and redevelopment plan presented by consultant Townscape.

The council also appointed a task force of residents, property owners and business owners, led by council member Jerry Grable.

Parking became a sticking point, so the city hired parking consultant Carl Walker Inc. Both consultants' recommendations were used to form the proposals now being considered.

Most of the zoning changes relate to aesthetics, such as landscaping, window design and building materials.

Possibly most contentious is reducing the maximum height from four stories to three, though the maximum floor area allowed would remain unchanged. Landowners, however, assert that they could not build as much space in three stories as they could in four.

"I disagree ... that development rights aren't affected," property owner Bob Teeter said Tuesday.

But, as with many Snider Plaza regulations, another core issue is parking.

The commission on Tuesday recommended approval of a citywide increase in the number of parking spaces required for hair and nail salons, as well as a change to how restaurants' required parking is calculated.

New businesses would have to provide one space per 100 square feet, up from one per 300 square feet in Snider Plaza, no matter the type of business. Elsewhere in the city, requirements are one space per 200 feet for salons and one per three seats for restaurants.

The council will have final say on that proposal, as well as a change to parking times allowed in Snider Plaza.

Some business owners, including Fuqua, support the timing change while others oppose it. It would change most parking in and near the plaza to one-hour parking, leaving just the medians at the current two-hour limit.

"The two-hour parking works just fine," said Hal Cook, who owns the Learning Express toy store. "I want [customers] to spend money in the whole plaza. I want them to spend time here and go to more than one store."

The reduction in two-hour spaces won't keep people from spending time shopping, Fuqua said. Reducing some of the spaces to one-hour simply makes the best use of a very limited resource.

"Most of the businesses are oriented to destination shopping," Fuqua said. But "an hour isn't going to necessarily just be a quick stop."

Before the council will ultimately decide on timing, however, the city's new enforcement tool must be adjusted. A new vehicle that uses cameras and GPS to determine whether a car has overstayed its time limit can't distinguish whether a car is on its left or right side – the difference between a one- and two-hour limit under the proposal.

"We're working with the vendor right now," Police Chief Gary Adams said. "They think we can get it worked out."