# Special Urban County Council Meeting - September 18, 2007 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Council · September 18, 2007 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/162 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/162?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2007-09-18 - **Body**: Council - **Last revised**: February 15, 2026 - **Length**: 27,939 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government Council convened on September 18, 2007, at 5:00 PM with Mayor Jim Newberry presiding. The meeting focused primarily on legislative business, with the Council addressing one agenda item involving an ordinance second reading, which was approved. During the session, the Council conducted two motions and votes on various matters before them. The meeting also included public participation, with three citizens providing public comments to the Council. Overall, the meeting represented routine legislative business for the Urban County Government, with successful completion of the ordinance review process and opportunity for public input on matters of community interest. ## Attendance The Council meeting on September 18, 2007 had strong attendance with 14 members present and 2 absent. **Present:** • Jim Newberry • McChord • Moloney • Stevens • Beard • Blevins • Blues • Crosbie • DeCamp • Ellinger • Gorton • Gray • James • Lane **Absent:** • Myers • Stinnett No members arrived late to the meeting. ## Votes and Decisions The Council conducted two roll call votes during the September 18, 2007 meeting, both passing unanimously. **Adoption of Planning Commission Findings** [timestamp: 04:00:00] Councilmember DeCamp motioned to adopt the Findings of Fact for Conditional Approval of the Planning Commission, with Councilmember Stevens providing the second. The motion passed unanimously with all 13 council members voting in favor: • **Ayes (13):** McChord, Moloney, Stevens, Beard, Blevins, Blues, Crosbie, DeCamp, Ellinger, Gorton, Gray, James, Lane • **Nays (0):** None • **Abstentions (0):** None **Zone Change Ordinance Approval** [timestamp: 04:05:00] Councilmember DeCamp motioned to approve the ordinance for zone change at 225 Walton Avenue. The motion passed unanimously with all 13 council members voting in favor: • **Ayes (13):** McChord, Moloney, Stevens, Beard, Blevins, Blues, Crosbie, DeCamp, Ellinger, Gorton, Gray, James, Lane • **Nays (0):** None • **Abstentions (0):** None Both votes demonstrated complete council consensus on the planning-related matters before them. The unanimous support for both the Planning Commission's conditional approval findings and the zone change ordinance at 225 Walton Avenue indicates broad agreement among council members on these development issues. ## Public Comment Three speakers addressed the Council during the public comment period, all focusing on a proposed zone change and its associated development impacts. **Tim Kelly** [timestamp: 02:00:00], president of the Lexington Herald-Leader, spoke in support of the zone change. Kelly highlighted the potential benefits the proposed development could bring to downtown revitalization efforts. **Fred Fugazzi** [timestamp: 02:30:00], representing the Bell Court Neighborhood Association, expressed opposition to the zone change. Fugazzi raised concerns about increased traffic impacts and questioned whether the scale of the proposed development was appropriate for the area. **Bobby Clark** [timestamp: 02:45:00], President of the Bell Court Neighborhood Association, also voiced concerns about the development proposal. Clark specifically cited traffic issues and the proposed height of the development as primary concerns for the neighborhood organization. The public comments reflected a clear divide between development supporters and neighborhood representatives, with traffic impacts and development scale emerging as the primary points of contention from opponents. ## Contested Items The Council meeting on September 18, 2007, featured one contested item that drew community opposition. **Zone Change at 225 Walton Avenue** The proposed zone change at 225 Walton Avenue faced significant opposition from local residents. The Bell Court Neighborhood Association voiced concerns about the development, specifically citing issues with potential traffic impacts and the proposed height of the development. The community opposition centered on how the zone change would affect the character of the neighborhood and the practical implications for residents living in the area. Traffic concerns suggested that residents were worried about increased congestion and safety issues that might result from the proposed development. The height concerns indicated that the scale of the proposed development was seen as incompatible with the existing neighborhood character. The Bell Court Neighborhood Association served as the primary voice of opposition, representing the organized community response to the proposed zone change. Their involvement demonstrated active neighborhood engagement in the local planning process and highlighted the tension between development interests and existing community concerns. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps and the final outcome of this contested item were not available in the provided source materials.* ## Ordinance Second Reading [timestamp: 10:00] The Council conducted the second reading of an ordinance to rezone property at 225 Walton Avenue from Light Industrial (I-1) and Neighborhood Business (B-1) to Mixed Use Community (MU-3). The proposed rezoning included specific use restrictions and buffering requirements. Key speakers during the discussion included Bruce Simpson, Fred Fugazzi, and Bobby Clark, who presented various aspects of the ordinance and addressed questions from Council members. The ordinance outlined the transition of the Walton Avenue property to allow for mixed-use development while maintaining compatibility with surrounding neighborhoods through designated buffering measures. The MU-3 zoning classification would permit a broader range of commercial and residential uses compared to the existing industrial and neighborhood business designations. Council members reviewed the use restrictions that would be implemented as part of the rezoning, ensuring that future development would align with community planning objectives and minimize potential impacts on adjacent properties. Following discussion of the ordinance details and consideration of the proposed zoning changes, the Council approved the second reading. The approval allows the property owner to proceed with mixed-use development plans under the new MU-3 zoning classification, subject to the specified use limitations and buffering requirements outlined in the ordinance. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (13-0): Adopt Findings of Fact for Conditional Approval of the Planning Commission - **Motion** — passed (13-0): Approve the ordinance for zone change at 225 Walton Avenue --- ## Full transcript We have a quorum and we're here tonight on the proposed zone change. Madam Clerk, if you'll give a second reading to the ordinance. The ordinance changes from a light industrial I-1 zone to a mixed-use community MU-3 zone for 0.10 net, 0.16 gross acre, and from a neighborhood business B-1 zone to a mixed-use community MU-3 zone for 5.07 net, 5.44 gross acres of property located at 225 Walton Avenue, subject to certain use and buffering restrictions imposed as conditions of granting the zone change. Ernie M. Hanna. Let me begin just by giving everybody a little bit of an overview about how we're going to proceed this evening, so that you'll have some sense as to what to expect as the night goes forward. I will be presiding for probably about an hour and a half or something like that. Unfortunately, I have a prior commitment at 7 tonight, so if the hearing's still going on past that time, I'll hand it off to the Vice Mayor here. But in talking with Mr. Fugazzi and Mr. Simpson just a little bit ago, there's a chance we may be finished by that time. The way we will proceed this evening is by beginning with a presentation from the planning division staff. There are certain matters that need to be placed in the record, and I think Mr. Salley will be doing that for us tonight. That generally moves along pretty well, and I trust that will be the case. Following that, we'll have the presentation by the petitioner. Mr. Simpson and his client will be given a chance to have an opening statement and present whatever evidence they may wish to present as part of their direct case. That will be subject to any cross-examination that anybody may wish to make. Then we'll have the presentation by the opponents. Mr. Fugazzi will be able to make an opening statement. He and his clients will then be able to present whatever direct evidence they wish to present. Following that, we'll have an opportunity for the staff to make any additional comments they believe appropriate, and we'll give the petitioner an opportunity to present any rebuttal evidence after that. The next step will be closing argument by the opponents, and the final step will be the closing arguments by the petitioner. After all of those presentations are completed, we'll have an opportunity for the council to ask questions of the planning division staff, the petitioner, and the opponent, and both sides will have an opportunity to rebut any evidence that may be brought up during the council questioning. Then we'll close the hearing, and we'll adopt findings of fact and vote by roll call. So with that having been said, we will start the hearing, and we'll begin with the presentation by the division of planning staff. Mr. Gardner. Hi, I'm sorry. Thank you very much. I appreciate all the folks keeping me in line. If you are planning on testifying tonight or making a statement, now is the time that we need to swear in all of the witnesses, including the lawyers who will be making presentations. So if you would, if you plan to speak, please stand and place you under oath. Please raise your right hand. Mr. Fugazi, if you'll join us here. It is. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you're about to give will be the whole truth? Thank you very much. Mr. Salley. Mayor, thank you. Members of the council, good evening. I do need to enter into the record a number of items for your hearing this evening. First is the legal notice published in the local newspaper advertising tonight's hearing. The next item is an affidavit signed regarding the notices mailed to property owners within 400 feet of the property before you this evening. The next item is the recommendation from the Urban County Planning Commission, which held their public hearing on this zone change in late June of this year. Copies were distributed to you during the break. There are also extra copies available of this report directly behind me on the counter for anyone in the audience wishing a copy. Staff has received some emails and letters both in support and in opposition or concerned about this proposed rezoning. I'd like to circulate those to the council at this time. I'd like to enter into the record a copy of the zoning ordinance and the land subdivision regulations in effect for the Urban County. I'd like to enter into the record a copy of the 2007 Comprehensive Plan and also the Downtown Lexington Master Plan, which has adopted the core principles and some recommendations from this plan as well. I'm going to use the zoning map to orient you to the location of the property that's before you this evening. 225 Walton Avenue, using the zoning map, is south of Midland Avenue, very near its intersection with Winchester Road and East 3rd Street here. It does not have frontage on that intersection, but is a short distance to the south and south of a rail spur that has a crossing very near the intersection of Walton Avenue and Winchester Road. That spur continues to the east and ultimately ends at the Harold Leder Building property. The subject property is almost entirely zone B1, that is a neighborhood business zone. However, there is a very small portion, about a tenth of an acre, on its northern tip that is zoned I1. Both properties are proposed for an MU3, a mixed-use community zone, totaling almost five and a quarter acres. The subject property is also visible from photos, I'd like to show you an aerial photo, and then some ground-level photos of this property. This is a view looking from the north at the subject property. To outline it, we have Midland Avenue here, Winchester Road, East 3rd Street is here. This is the rail line I mentioned. Subject property is bound by a tree line along the Belcourt neighborhood. The tip of the property that's I1 is in this general area here. Walton Avenue is here, looks like my batteries may be going out. This is an existing building on the subject property that is zoned B1 and is part of the proposed zone change. Now shifting to ground level, this is looking at Midland Avenue along the frontage of the existing I1 portion. Property is here, this location. This is directly across the street of industrial property, across Midland Avenue from the subject property. This is looking in the same direction, almost due north. Property in the distance is the community ventures building at the intersection of Midland and East 3rd. This is a closer view of the existing commercial building on the property. It is approximately 10,000 square feet in size. It is currently zoned B1, and it is proposed to be rezoned MU3. This is a view from very near the same location that shows that most of the subject property is vacant, has been vacant for a number of years. It has also been zoned mostly B1 for almost 20 years now. In the distance you can see the buildings we saw earlier along Midland Avenue, and you can also see the tree line here along Belcourt. View of the parking lot, also the property is screened from other industrial uses farther to the north. This is a screening, and just through the trees you can see the adjacent industrial building just to the north and east of the site. This is a view again at the same location looking almost due east in the direction of Belcourt, which is zoned Historic and R2. This is a view at Walton Avenue. These buildings unfortunately don't show very well on sand, the overhead, but these are a neighborhood business zone. They are directly across Walton Avenue from the subject property. The 2007 Comprehensive Plan has a different land use recommendation for the subject property, and as you know with every zone change we always look to the Comprehensive Plan for guidance. Following the north map of the Comprehensive Plan, again to orient you, we have Midland Avenue here, Winchester Road is here, and East 3rd Street is here. Subject property is situated here, immediately adjacent to the Belcourt neighborhood, just to the south and west. Subject property is in an area that is recommended for Downtown Master Plan. That is a new land use category with the 2007 Comprehensive Plan. Under the 2001 plan, most of the site had been recommended for high-density residential and a very small portion for retail, trade, and personal services. The Downtown Master Plan was done by the Downtown Development Authority and was reviewed periodically by the Planning Commission as they formed the entire 2007 Comprehensive Plan. Generally, the Planning Commission adopted the core principles and recommendations of the Downtown Lexington Master Plan, but they reserved the right to give it further review and discussion, particularly in three areas, land use, form-based design, and two-way street travel. There were a total of about 15 different elements of the Downtown Master Plan. I've put just below the 2007 Comprehensive Plan an illustration from the Downtown Master Plan to identify what the land use recommendation of that plan is for the property. Again, to orient you, we have Midland Avenue here, Winchester Road, and East 3rd Street. The subject property is here, immediately adjacent to Belcourt. This property, along with other lands along Midland Avenue, are recommended for mixed use under the Downtown Master Plan. The staff did find that the petitioner is proposing not only a mixed use zone, but also a mixed use development for the subject property. If I could refer you to the overhead, another element of the Downtown Plan not adopted in its entirety by the Planning Commission is something called Precinct Plans. What you're viewing here is the Precinct Plan for the area of the subject property. Again, to orient you, we have Midland, Winchester Road here, and the subject property is here. I can't see where you're pointing. I'm sorry. Midland Avenue here, Winchester Road is here. I'm still not seeing it. Can you come over in this direction and point back? I'll try to hit it. He's got one here. It works. I will. Thank you. Show us Lexington Cut Stone, please. Lexington Cut Stone would be here, and Spaldings is approximately here. Okay. Okay. We have Walton Avenue here. Midland Avenue is here. The Harold Leder Building shows very well in this picture. The Precinct Plan proposed more intensive building along Midland Avenue and Winchester Road and retention of some of the buildings that are industrial and neighborhood business along Walton Avenue in this area as well. Thank you. This is the only element of the downtown plan that the staff did not find the petitioner's proposal in strict agreement with. We could not conclude that this proposal was in strict agreement with the comprehensive plan. Because of that then, we reviewed it under whether or not it was appropriate and analyzing the existing zoning for its appropriateness as well. Staff felt that the MU3 zone would be appropriate in this area because it would foster and recommend more flexibility and more diversity in the possibility of housing on the subject property. That is important also knowing that the 2001 plan had recommended high density residential development in this area as well. Increased density and mixed use of the site, the staff felt was more appropriate than either solely retail use or solely industrial use that would be possible under the existing zoning. Further, the proximity of this site to the adjacent historic neighborhood was also of interest and of review to the staff as well. Since the downtown plan places a premium on the visual characteristics and quality of the buildings, on outdoor recreation and entertainment uses, in maximizing residential densities and in promoting attractive green ways and open spaces, the staff concluded that the MU3 zone, given the recommendations of the 2007 plan, was more appropriate than the existing B1 and I1 zones at this location. Concluding that, the planning staff did recommend approval of this zone change in its entirety to the planning commission at their public hearing in late June. The planning commission heard not only from the staff but also from the petitioner and from several citizens, some of whom were concerned about the proposal, others who objected to the proposed rezoning of the subject property. At the conclusion of the planning commission's hearing, they voted 7 to 0 to recommend approval with conditional zoning restrictions of this zone change to the council. Their findings were that the requested MU3 zone is appropriate and the existing B1 and I1 zones are inappropriate for three reasons. Those are that the MU zone will allow greater flexibility in meeting downtown master plan recommendations for increasing residential development and maximizing density on vacant tracks. Secondly, the MU3 zone has requirements related to pedestrian and bicycle accommodation, building features, parking, and sight lighting. These features will help ensure a compatible transition from the adjoining historic neighborhood and the adjacent commercial corridor on Midland Avenue. Thirdly, increased residential density and mixed use on the subject site are more appropriate than a solely retail or light industrial development. These proposed uses will act as a transition between the historic neighborhood and the commercial corridor. The planning commission also considered conditional zoning restrictions that were offered by the applicant at the planning commission hearing. The planning commission recommended adoption of those restrictions. A number of prohibited uses were recommended. Those include self-service laundries, arcades, packaged liquor stores, drive-thru facilities, car washes, restaurants that either have large areas devoted to bars or areas devoted to live entertainment, and automobile service stations. The planning commission also considered height and density restrictions, recommending that any height, the height of any building rather, be restricted to 65 feet maximum and that there be no more than 126 dwelling units on this subject property of just over 5 acres. In addition, a landscape buffer was recommended by the commission along the common property line with most of the Belcourt properties with the exception of the two on the farthest northwest of the site. This is significant because since the B1 zoning was first approved for this site in 1988, there has been some sort of conditional zoning restriction on the buffering between this site and Belcourt. Those restrictions were recommended because they were necessary and appropriate to protect the neighborhood from some of the more intensive uses otherwise permitted in the MU3 zone. Since the planning commission recommended approval of the zone change, they also considered the development plan that was in front of them at the time. I'll be very brief in covering this with you. Again, to orient you, we have Midland Avenue, Winchester Road here, Walton Avenue is here, and the subject property does have a small bit of frontage, and the existing building and parking lot are not proposed to change under this development plan. What is proposed are three new buildings here. These two are entirely residential in nature. This building is a mixed-use building with approximately 10,000 or 15,000 square feet of retail use and a number of residences. Overall, 126 dwelling units are proposed as part of this development plan, those units having 224 bedrooms, about 25,000 square feet of commercial space between the new building and the existing building, some 266 parking spaces, and the plan does propose vehicular access not only at the existing entrance off Walton Avenue, but also a new access near Lewis Street and Midland Avenue here that would cross the rail line to serve the development. This plan also anticipated a new detention basin very near the railroad line and the buildings at that location. The plan also has an open space area between the proposed buildings and the Bell Court area. The height of these buildings was an issue at the Planning Commission. This building is four stories. This one is five. This building is part five stories and part four stories. As you saw, the existing building is two stories in height. That concludes my prepared remarks. Thank you very much. Of course, I'll be available for questions later in the evening. Thank you, Mr. Salley. Does either of the petitioners or the opponents have any questions for Mr. Salley at this time? Seeing none, we'll move on to the opening statement by the petitioner, Mr. Simpson. Mr. Mayor, if you'll indulge me, I, Tony Barrett, will pass out some civic books. I promise not to go into excruciating detail on each and every page in this treatise. While you're doing that, I would just let everybody know that I have asked counsel to try to be as concise in their presentations as possible, and they've agreed to do so, so we're grateful for that. And incidentally, I have been advised by the Department of Law that I don't have a vote tonight even in the event of a tie, so I apologize for my departure. But as you can see from that, it's kind of a meaningless issue whether I'm here or not this evening. Whenever you're ready, Mr. Simpson, we'll proceed. All righty. Tony's just about done. Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, I'm Bruce Simpson. I'm here today on behalf of Brian and Ernie Hanna. I do have an affidavit of where we've posted the property for notice and connection with the zone change tonight, which I'll introduce as part of our proof in connection with this case. As Bill Salley of your staff has explained to you, this is a mixed-use zone change. In many respects, I think, at least the way I view this case, it is the first test case, if you will, in connection with and as a follow-up to what this community undertook for over two years in discussing how we were going to grow, how we were going to accommodate growth in Lexington, knowing full well that the statistics that the demographers have established fairly consistently over the years that we're growing at about 30,000 people every 10 years. And we went through a two-year review process through our planning commission, which you all took part in, in terms of adopting goals and objectives to guide the community and to help formulate decisions in terms of how we were going to respond to the people that want to come and live in Lexington. And it was very clear after that two-year debate that this body, by the goals and objectives that you all adopted, and the planning commission, which adopted the balance of the comprehensive plan, clearly heard the voices of Lexington, and that is, with respect to the immediate future, at least for the next approximately five years, we weren't going to add more land simply to create more suburbs. That the sense was we need to look at growth in a different way and look at our community in a different way in terms of how we accommodate growth and how we interrelate with one another if we're going to use existing land or vacant land, bypass land, land that historically has been very tough to develop because it's very expensive to acquire and there's a lot of existing neighborhoods around it. In any event, the decision was made that we're going to do infill. I don't believe anyone would dispute that. And quite frankly, I was on the other side of that debate in terms of some folks that I represented because I believed clearly and supported infill, but it's only for a limited number of people, but it's long been neglected. And so I think the time is now, and certainly with respect to the development industry, though it may be struggling in some other areas, my own sense and understanding of the development community, it's not struggling downtown. People are coming downtown. People are buying these units and they want to come downtown, and that is terrific. This is my hometown. I was born here. And so to finally see it have a sense of vitality and interconnection and diversity is a wonderful thing. And so we embrace it. And so here tonight, Ernie Hanna and Brian Hanna, who have owned this property for about nine years, are here to present to you, as they did to the Planning Commission, an infill proposal, a proposal that the planning staff recommended approval. As you know, your planning staff is a neutral player in these proceedings. They use their professional training and their judgment and their experience, and they make a recommendation to the Planning Commission and to you and to the citizens that they believe that with respect to this land, which has been designated as a commercial tract of land for almost 20 years, next to Belcourt on Walton Avenue, surrounded by industrial uses to the north, ought to be looked at differently. And they recommend that approval of our application for mixed-use residential development, 126 condominium units for sale to the public and 15,700 square feet of retail on the first floor. The Planning Commission conducted a hearing. We had both sides of this issue present their case, and the Planning Commission recommended approval unanimously in connection with this application. So the question is, after this lengthy two-year debate in the community about growing up and not out, of utilizing our land differently, more creatively, with more imagination, with a specific focus on downtown residential development, which is the lifeblood for downtown to grow, what has changed that would cause you all, let's say, to view it differently? Now I think what you're going to hear is that the folks that we have engaged in a dialogue with, principally Belcourt and some others in the surrounding neighborhoods, I think what you're going to hear is this, that we support infill, they will say, but this is a little bit too dense and a little bit too tall. And that's going to be the debate. And you're all going to be asking to decide what you all have decided and your predecessors have decided for years, because I've been a part of these debates, that density is not acceptable, that we need to reduce the density. And obviously, if you're doing infill, it means you have to go up to increase density. And you're going to be asked tonight for the first time on an infill project that has unanimous recommendation from your staff and from the Planning Commission to cut density. I looked at all the data for the last 10 years in Lexington with respect to residential applications for growth in our community. And what I discovered was this, if the developer had been allowed to develop up to the maximum density and be consistent with the comprehensive plan, if they'd been allowed to do that, we would have, in this 10-year period, 8,000 more units approved than what we did approve. Why didn't we approve them? Primarily because I was down here in part representing neighborhoods who said, you know, density is bad. We don't want density. It's not compatible with where we live. And the council showed the neighborhood some love and reduced the density. And then we get into this fight where we are now that, you know, we think, and it was crystal clear to me in January of this year when the Planning Commission voted not to expand the boundary, that as a value in Lexington, rural land is much more important than any other kind of land except for downtown, which we believe, I think the decision was, if we stop the growth out, then we'll force it to grow in and we'll take care of downtown that has been long neglected. That was the effect of what you did. And so tonight, are we going to, and this is the test, are we going to compromise density again when all of us know, really, that we need density downtown? We can't afford to go on that path that we took for 10 years of compromising density. We need to have more people downtown. And Bill Salley has gone through with you the justifications for it. Now, let me say this. I've represented neighborhoods more than I've represented the development community. And when I met with Ernie and Brian Hanna, they said, Bruce, let's meet with the neighbors as quickly as possible. And they started actually in December of 2006 engaging in a dialogue, sharing thoughts and ideas of what they wanted to do with this five acres of property, which in most instances or in terms of development in the suburbs is a small tract. Downtown, it's a big tract. You don't find many five-acre parcels vacant in downtown Lexington. So they started in December, and in all total, we met approximately six times with the neighborhood up until we had the Planning Commission hearing in June. And during that period of time, the Hannas wanted to be a good neighbor, and they wanted to make adjustments with respect to neighborhood concerns that they could and still keep the project vital and active and alive and consistent with what they needed to do because they're pledging tonight to spend $37 million in downtown Lexington if this gets approved. $37 million to put 126 condominium units in downtown Lexington. But they didn't do it arrogantly. We met with the neighbors. We talked to them. We listened to what they had to say. And they did make adjustments. Initially, they said you need to move the property further away from the edge of our neighborhood. And we did that. We moved it away as far as we could up until we can't move it any further. They asked to restrict the kinds of commercial uses that could be placed upon the property, and we did just that. And if you look under tab number two, you will see prohibited uses on the first page. Those are all the uses that we restricted ourselves from voluntarily, self-service laundries, arcades, all drive-thru facilities, there will be no drive-thru facilities in connection with this, the retail component of this development, self-service car washes, restaurants which devote more than 20% of their floor space exclusively to the sale of alcohol, beverages where no bars are there, restaurants offering live entertainment, automobile service stations are out. All those uses that are otherwise permissible in a B1 zone, they said no, because of history and because we want to be good neighbors, we won't do those. In addition to that, there was always a concern about height, how tall the buildings were going to be, the four-story buildings and five-story buildings. The zone that we're asking for, which the staff has approved, which the planning commission has approved, the maximum height of any building is 65 feet. We agreed to cap that at 65 feet, which is basically a five-story building, but we pushed the five-story building as far back away from Belcourt as we possibly could up against Ferguson Supply toward Midland and Winchester Road, and I'll go over with you in just a moment the distances that were away from Belcourt because of doing that, and then we stepped down to four-story buildings. But all of those buildings are under the guidelines that are in place now, and we agreed to cap that at 65 feet. Now, some may say, well, we need more density. You shouldn't have agreed to that, but we agreed to it, and I say, and I mention that only because this, if you get on the website now with respect to the planning commission, you will see a proposal that the staff has drafted on the MU3 zone, which is where we are, where you have to have at least three acres to have an MU3 zone. That's the zone that allows you to go the tallest, and the proposal is to go to 80 feet. Now, it's just a proposal at this point, but in terms of being generated by the staff as a way of suggesting that, you know, if we're going to grow up, we need to grow up on these three-acre sites a little bit taller, then we've agreed as a compromise, if you will, to the neighbors to cap our development at 65 feet, even if this body should adopt a subsequent text amendment to the same zone that we're asking for tonight, this MU3, mixed-use three. If you should, even if you increase it to 80, we can only go to 65 by virtue of the conditional zoning that we have asked be imposed upon our property. And finally, we asked the neighbors concerned about the density. The maximum density is 126, and we've agreed not to increase it any more than what is currently allowed under the comprehensive plan, which is 126. And then the final request was, well, we need some screening and buffering. And I'll show you some slides in a moment that show you the existing screening and buffering, which is substantial. And in fact, it's so substantial that there's really only three lots on Boonesboro Avenue, three out of about 20, 21, that you can even see this development, our development, for seven months out of the year. We had tree stands and shrubbery and bushes and such that effectively just block out the whole entire landscape, 40, 50, 60 feet up sometimes. And what we did, because the neighbors asked us to show us, well, show us what the development will look like next to us. And initially, we tried to send up balloons and then take pictures to show how high the buildings would be, but the wind blew the balloons, and that didn't work too well. So, we brought a crane out, and I called Bobby Clark, the president of the Neighborhood Association, and invited him to come out. And he and I got on the crane, and we went to the layout of the development of our footprint of the building, and we went to the three different spots that were closest to Belcourt. As you know, the building itself is kind of a horseshoe shape. We did it that way purposely so that most of our development was away from Belcourt. Most of it is away. We have the two kind of prongs of the horseshoe that are the closest, but the great bulk of it is out toward Midland and Winchester Road. So Bobby and I got up in the crane, we went up and took pictures, video. We went down, we went in every backyard on Belcourt and took pictures of the crane from each of the backyards, three different times, three different places, so that he could see, on behalf of the neighbors, as best as we could show it, what it would actually look like. And he would agree that there's only three houses that you can even see this building, and with respect to those three houses, you can see anything over one story, because there's just a gap in the existing trees. Now this is an urban development, and typically you don't get involved in screening in urban developments, but there's a substantial tree stand there now, and if you're trying to get a project approved, you want to be as cordial, as compromising, as neighborly as possible. And so in an effort to do that, the Hannas had added, at the request of the neighborhood, additional screening on top of what's there now, which is on the average about 15 feet, 12 to 15 feet in height, throughout the whole backyard of the houses on Boonesboro. That's there now for at least seven months out of the year. And then, I don't know what it looks like when the leaves fall off, but in an effort to mitigate against that, the Hannas agreed to put 10 to 12 foot tall pine trees on the other side of this 15 foot deciduous type of screening on their property, that they would be obligated to maintain these trees, and they're every 10 feet, 10 to 12 foot tall pine trees, every 10 feet, throughout the whole common boundary, except for two houses down toward Midland, where it's going to be a tight squeeze, and we've committed to those folks to do whatever they need to be done to have the same type of screening that we're offering on our property, and we'll put it on their property and pay for it. So, that's kind of where we have come in terms of meeting with the neighborhood and trying to come to a compromise and come to an understanding. And as we stand here tonight, I think that we're probably one story away. One story in height needs to be reduced, it's my understanding, which has a net effect of about 31 residential units. I said at the planning commission it was about a 38% reduction. We subsequently tried to reconfigure and see what the real impact was, and it's actually close to a 25% reduction in density, which, not surprisingly, is about the reduction in density that the body has always given neighbors that came down and objected to suburban developments. Historically, you would cut the density by about 25% so that the neighbors would be able to feel like they got something in connection with the case. And so, that's the question. The question is, is density in downtown Lexington at this site of such a nature that we need to compromise? Do we need to start down that road once again of losing density, particularly in downtown, which I think most of us would agree we need more of? And are we going to set a precedent that is going to send a signal to other people who want to spend a lot of money, perhaps more than $37 million, that, well, you may be entitled to 126, but, you know, you may have to reduce it by 25% simply because we don't think density is that worthy. Now, that's simplistic. I'm going to go into the details of why I believe what we're offering is not only not hurtful to Belcourt, that it's helpful to Belcourt, that it's helpful to our community, and, in fact, what we're offering is even better than what the current zoning would allow right now, and we wouldn't have to come down here before you. So, let me go through some of my exhibits. I have set forth in tabs number three and four of my handout all the specific references to the comprehensive plan, the goals and objectives that we believe justify a decision that our application is in conformity with that plan. And, again, the Planning Commission chose to believe that the existing zoning, B1, is inappropriate, and that the proposed zoning, Mixed Use 3, is appropriate and approved it on that basis. They did so because of the history of the property. And if you read the minutes of the Planning Commission meeting in which this was discussed, you see where the staff pointed out that the history of this property, that it's been zoned for B1 since 1988. Now, in terms of commercial property, I don't know of any property in Lexington that's five acres in size that has been zoned for commercial purposes and not developed for 20 years. Principally, it is the most expensive land there is to purchase, and it generates the most profit for the owner. But in this instance, it has not developed. There's not been a demand for it. And it's gone through three different owners in that 20-year history, to the point now where this community has decided to go in a different direction and, fortunately, go into a mixed-use kind of development with respect to downtown. One thing I should add, that the Planning Commission, in terms of hearing the case and voting in seven nothing in favor of it, did compliment the Hannas with respect to what they offered. Mr. Mahan stated, who's on the Planning Commission, he stated that he would like to commend the petitioner for going above and beyond to accommodate and cooperate with the Belcourt neighborhood. He said the Planning Commission, in the past, would probably have struggled more with the height and density of the proposed development. He, however, believes that Lexington must accept growing up and conducting denser developments in order to maintain the urban services boundary. Likewise, the Chairman of the Planning Commission, Mr. Vaughn, stated that he would like to commend the petitioner as well. He believes that this is a nice proposal and the many existing issues with the subject property have been addressed well. So, we've had a hearing. We believe we demonstrated to the principal decision makers in land use, whose expertise is in land use, that we've done our homework. We've come up with a proposal that is consistent with what they wanted and got their approval. Tabs 3 and 4 only highlight and justify what I have said. Under tab number 5, and what you will see in tabs number 5, tab number 6, 7, 8, and 9, is a different tool than, at least in my experience in growing up in this community, that we've never seen before. And that is, not only are we encouraging people to live downtown, we're encouraging people to use alternative forms of transportation, principally with respect to bicycles and walking. And those of us that went to Boulder saw evidence of the significance of bike travel in that community. It exists a lot more in Europe than it does here, but it's clear to me that this body, in terms of your leadership and the mayor, with all due respect, have decided, you know, Lexington needs to have a different kind of focus and we need to think a little more creatively. And you see article after article, and I've included all of those in the next four sections, reflecting the importance of bike paths, bike use, and pedestrian orientation with respect to how people go in and around Lexington. The surveys under tab number 8 even document that a survey shows residents want more walking and bike paths. It's kind of surprising to me, but you know, that's what they say. The surveys only amplify what the community expressed when they said, by 70-some-odd percent, Knox-Venago can correct me on the percentages, we don't want to expand the boundary anymore. Much to my chagrin, we want to do what we have and let's be creative with the use of our land. And let's use bicycles and let's start walking, particularly if we live close to downtown. Now, in July of this year, this body adopted, or I should say, the Jefferson County, Fayette County Metropolitan Planning Organization adopted a 228-page document called Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan that laid out, not only for Fayette County, but Jefferson County as well, how we should integrate and fund bike paths and pedestrian orientation with respect to future development. And you will see, I didn't put all of the pages in there because I didn't have enough space in my three-ring binder to do so, but you will see time and time again references that pressure to develop is strong in both Fayette and Jefferson. With the 2006 comprehensive plan in Fayette, the expansion area in Lexington was not increased, meaning growth will occur. However, as infill and redevelopment from 2007 forward, policies you're setting in place encourage the use of pedestrian walking and bike use. These are the kinds of things that are tools that are perfectly complementary. They're also necessary for downtown. People that live close to downtown, more than likely, as compared to me that's bunkered down in the suburbs, will walk. In fact, if you look on the Belcourt website, under tab number 10, you will see that the location of the Belcourt neighborhood, near the heart of downtown, that the location of the district was pivotal because it allowed residents to walk to their jobs prior to the advent of the automobile. Well, what we're proposing with respect to this development is to fall just in line with the decisions that this community has reached, with the comprehensive plans recommendations for pedestrian use, bicycle use, with respect to the July 12th 228-page document that Jefferson County and Fayette agreed to start having more pedestrian orientation and development and bicycle use. We're coming back to when Belcourt was first established many, many years ago. We're coming back to that. So, we're only complementing that. And I think with respect to our development, and I'll get to the traffic aspect in a minute, that what you're going to see is less automobile use and more people walking. There are 12,000 employment positions in downtown Lexington, 12,000. And people are more likely to come down here, particularly if they're downsizing and living downtown, they're buying these units even before they're completed, sometimes even before the ground is broken. And we want to take advantage of that and put in a first-class development. Under tab number 11, I have basically sent Ernie, although he says he walked, but I'm not sure that he did, had Tony Barrett draw up a one-mile radius from their property and sent them out on various walking missions. And I'm just going to kind of show you where you can go and put those under the big screen there, Alden. Just a few. They walked much more. And I asked them, I said, you know, now take a picture. So it actually was Brian's wife and their new baby. And they just started out walking in various places. The first place they walked was over to Wilson Avenue, which is about a six-minute walk. That's kind of the closest little grocery. The next, I think that's on Kramer. The next place they walked was to Woodland Park. That was 12 minutes. Next place was to walk to the financial center in downtown Lexington to see how far that was. That was a 15-minute walk. Then they walked to Henry Clay's home. That was 15 minutes. Then they walked down to the Starbucks in Chevy Chase. That was 16 minutes. They walked to the Singletary Center at the University of Kentucky. That was 14 minutes. Keith's Bakery was nine minutes. Farmer's Market was 14 minutes. And my favorite, the Spalding Bakery, was only a five-minute walk from this development. So within a mile, within 15 minutes, some people may not walk a mile in 15 minutes, but within a 15-, 16-minute walk, you can see a lot of places. You can do a lot of things. You don't have to get in your car. You don't have to work. You can get some, you know, it would be nice to get, I guess, a bigger grocery store down here someday, and perhaps we'll be getting enough people. We will. But by and large, you can go to restaurants, you can go to work, and not ever have to get in your automobile. And you can get there quicker if you ride a bicycle. Now, under tab 12 is simply a reflection that the belt that the, and I've got X marks the spot for the Hanna property where I've marked it there, is simply in the area that the Downtown Development Authority has indicated as part of the infill and redevelopment area. Under tab 13 is an article that was recently in the Herald-Leader that talked about the major expansion underway at the University of Kentucky, $2.5 billion with respect to the medical center. This is over and above what they've been doing. $2.5 billion, and they will have a new home for UK's College of Pharmacy, which will be the world's biggest pharmacy education building when it opens in 2010. The project costs more than $2.5 billion. These are exactly the kind of folks a mile and a quarter away from where we're talking about rezoning tonight that would be the kinds of folks we want to have. Close to UK, the Town and Gown Program, what we're offering tonight is exactly what this community and you all, with all due respect, have indicated that you want. Under the next tab, number 14, is, I need to explain this just a little bit because the, I talked about, I talked this over with your council and the mayor and a few guys, and I talked about it before the hearing. You all adopted a rule five or six years ago, I think, at Mr. DeKalb's urging, because sometimes developers would come down and they would show renderings that looked nice, but sometimes didn't get built. And you adopted a rule that you couldn't introduce those into evidence. Now, this was before mixed-use zoning. It was before the push to go downtown and do infill. And in this particular instance, the reason that I'm asking that it be introduced, even though, quite frankly, legally, I believe I'm entitled to put in whatever evidence I think is relevant, the reason I'm talking about it is, number one, be respectful to your rule, but also to indicate that the staff at the planning commission asked us for this. They wanted to see what is this project going to look like, so we'll have some understanding other than just a development plan. And the neighbors wanted to see it. So this was introduced at the planning commission. It was introduced to the neighbors before the planning commission hearing so that they could understand this was kind of an all-brick structure. It would be set back in a horseshoe shape. We would have a courtyard counting going all the way to the trees up next to Bell Court. It's about an acre and a quarter courtyard green space for urban living. It's pretty unusual. And anyway, that's under tab number 14. Under tab number 15 are some photographs that depict just the way the property looks, the existing vegetation, the existing screening, and some of the uses that are around the property so you understand. This is an urban setting, but there are some substantial trees which we want to keep. We think they add value, and we're going to supplement. We'll go through these very quickly simply to show the first three slides that you will see. Actually, if you're standing on the property looking toward Bell Court, you're looking to the east, and the next one looks in the center, and the next one looks to the west to Midland. But what you see is the existing tree stand from the Hanna property looking toward the rear of the backyards on Bloomsburg. I don't know if you'll just go through those just one by one. That's the second shot, and then the third one goes all the way down to Midland. So there is a substantial body of trees. Now, I mentioned the next set of photos is when we're up in the crane. Bobby and I went up in the crane and looked at it with respect to if we were looking down on the property, and that's looking out toward Waltham Avenue, basically from Midland Avenue, and that's the five acres that you see that's been sitting just like that for 20 years. Basically, the grass has been cut, mowed, and nothing's going on. And Alden, if you'll just go through the next series of slides, that's the tree stand looking at about 53 feet up in the air toward Bell Court. And just keep right on going. That's the crane that you see that we got up into and up and down three different times. And as I say, for seven months out of the year, you can't really see anything. I don't know what you see when there's just the trees themselves. You can see some of the gaps there with respect to those three lines. And obviously in that shot, you're going to be able to see the buildings. The buildings in connection with this development, you all adopted an ordinance for all of these mixed-use zones. And what you did in connection with these mixed-use zones, you said, you know, we need to have some kind of setback requirement. And the planning commission are the ones that initiated it, and you all approved it. But basically, you go one foot back for every foot that you go up. And so in our particular application, at the highest point of our building, that we can't go higher than 65 feet, we have to be at least 65 feet away from the rear of the property. Not the building, but just the rear of the property line. So I'll just go on through those. Now, one of the issues that this is Ferguson's supply from the backside. You see the trees over the top of that building. Those are the same kind of trees that are on the other side of Boonesboro, that obviously in the winter will lose their leaves, and they're deciduous, and there will be some degree of seeing through those trees. And so in the wintertime, the folks on Boonesboro could arguably see this two-story metal frame building that's for Ferguson's supply. This is zone industrial. Behind this property is a light industrial zone all the way out to Midland and Winchester Road. Next slide. This is a shot down, and all these are in your book, of the railroad that leads to the Harold Leder building. And again, all this is industrial. Next slide. You can just keep on flipping. This is one of the supply trucks from Ferguson going out toward Midland, to Winchester Road, to Charlie's Garage there. Next slide. This is Lexington Cut Stone. It's the neighbor to the west of the Hanna property, next to the railroad track. You can see that in the wintertime, obviously, the bell cord with the trees fall off. This would be a view that they could see with respect to the existing property. To the extent they can see through the trees, this would be a view that they would arguably see going up Midland Avenue. Again, this is an industrial zone. Next slide. Just keep on going on, and I think that will do it. That's it. We were sensitive to the neighbors, because they've lived with this undeveloped parcel for quite a number of years. Before 1988, before it was zoned, it was actually residential in nature. But then the property kind of got run down, and someone bought all the houses and tore them down and tried to put in a grocery store or retail center, but it never took off. There was no market. The Hannas had tried to market it, tried to sell it. Again, you don't find too many five-acre parcels that are zoned B1 in Lexington that you can't sell, but this is one that they struggled. In nine years, they put one 10,000-square-foot building on that site. Density. We looked, Tony Barrett, with Barrett Partners, under tab number 16, and we looked at density in terms of what kind of comparable density would we have in, say, some of the downtown projects that currently exist, and comparison into the suburbs, in terms of how many units an acre are people living in. Are we doing something with respect to our property on this five acres, which is under 25 units an acre residential density, under 25, 24.37? Are we doing something on this one that's out of line with what's going on downtown? Again, you all have to decide tonight. Is density bad for downtown, or is density what we want? We have 24.37 units. What you'll find is you'll see under tab number 16 is that the Hanover Towers, which has been there for quite a while, on 1.3 acres, their density is 76.2. That's 76.2 units that's been in Hanover for quite a while. The 500s on Main, Butch Schneider's project across from Ruff Arena, those lots are almost all sold out, loft apartments. Their density is 76.2 units per acre. Moving to the mark at Woodland, next to Ramsey's, used to be a church, Woodland Avenue and East High Street. That's one acre. The density is 35.6 units per acre. And on down to New Path at 620 West Main, 30 units an acre. The Woodlands up on East Main Street, which is 29.3 units an acre. And then I have suburban units on the next couple of pages and more urban-type units on the left-hand side. Just to give you an idea that even though we're increasing the density, certainly from what has been vacant for 20 years, the density that we're talking about in comparison with what's in existence in the surrounding neighborhoods is in fact less. Is in fact less. Under tab number 17, we heard that density was a concern because people would be driving their automobiles and there would be cut-through traffic and there would be traffic in the neighborhood and that that was a concern. And so we looked at that. But we also looked at the other concern was the height of buildings in the surrounding neighborhood in areas where there is, say, historic properties. And so we went out to research, well, with respect to the historic properties that we have in Lexington, and you see this under tab 17, we've identified several instances where there are very tall structures, much taller than what we're going to propose at five stories and four stories, next to very successful, thriving historic neighborhoods. Hanover Towers is nine stories. It's next to the South Ashland Central Avenue Historic District, right there on Main Street in North Hanover, touches the neighborhood there. The next slide is the Barclaws. This is one that's been approved for five stories. It wouldn't across from Ramsey's there in the center of kind of the Aylesford Retail District. All of that around, as you can see by the historic district map that's on that page under tab 17, it's surrounded by historic property. It's five stories right next to it. The next page is actually Belcourt. You have actually right now around Belcourt three significantly tall structures, one of which is the Harold Leder Building, which is between six and seven stories tall. We had Tracy Wise at the Planning Commission measure it, and it was like 75 to 90 feet. That particular building is right across from Belcourt on Indiana Avenue. In a moment, I'll tell you how far it is. Likewise, the next slide is the Woodlands, and that's nine stories tall. That's right across from Belcourt on Main Street. Then on the other side of the street, same side of the street across the woodland, is the Wellington Arms. Too many I was trying to remember. It's four stories, but you can see kind of the roof pits there. It goes up kind of high, and we're deducing that's about four and a half stories. In any event, those are fairly tall buildings around Belcourt now, so what we're proposing in terms of our structures is not anything different that hasn't already existed for some period of time. In terms of what we're doing, in terms of backing it away from Belcourt in a horseshoe, we believe that we're being sensitive to the height issue, even though we're not on historic property. The jurisdiction of the Board of Architectural Review does not come into play on our property, just as it doesn't on a lot of these other properties that are around. Again, trying to be sensitive to existing neighborhood concerns, we've backed it away as far as we can and still have the kind of density we need to make this project economically viable in connection with what we would like to do, what we believe now the market is, to develop this five-acre parcel that's been very undeveloped for over 20 years. Under tab number 18 is, I mentioned traffic. We did a traffic study. Even though your zoning ordinance that you all passed in connection with zone changes says if you don't have enough traffic generated by what you're proposing, you don't have to do a traffic study. Now, there's no dispute. We didn't have to do one, but again, Belcourt had questions about traffic impact, and so we did one. We wanted to know what would the impact be. Typically, a traffic study, what it does is look at will it degrade the level of service at various intersections around the property in terms of being able to get through a signalized intersection, let's say. Get out of the development, get on the main road, go to work, wherever you want to go. In our particular case, we looked at it. Wilbur Smith, Tim Sorensen is here to answer questions if need be. And basically, they found that we would increase five-second delay over the whole project. Now, one of the things that's important, if you look under page under tab number 18 in connection with this, page number nine, you will see we compared the existing retail use with also the existing office use and with our proposed residential use. The reason we did that is because we could develop the property, if we ever had a market for it, build it out at full retail and generate 13,000 trips a day. Thirteen thousand trips a day under the current B1 use. That would be a significant traffic impact for the area. Or if we wanted to do just all professional offices, the traffic impact would be 3,392 trips per day. Significantly less, but significantly more than what we're proposing, which is under the next line on page nine of the traffic study, which shows that the total trips over a 24-hour period is 1,413. And that's with no consideration of anybody walking, with nobody riding a bicycle, just projected trips based upon non-pedestrian, non-bicycle use. So, we believe that's a very high number for residential development in downtown Lexington. We believe it's actually going to be much less than that. But in any event, it's much less than what it is now, if it was developed commercially, by over a thousand percent. So, we believe we've reduced the traffic potentially impact. We've not degraded the level of service below what it is right now. But, again, the neighbors were concerned about traffic, and particularly about what you hear a lot about is a council member cut through traffic, that someone's going to cut through your neighborhood and create problems for the people that live there, the kids, et cetera. Now, traffic with respect to Belcourt, and some of you may know this, has been an issue that's been before this body in other instances. And, in fact, it's been studied twice before for this body. The government has paid a consultant to look at the traffic impact, in part, and also with respect to their own engineering. And under tab number 19 is a traffic study. It's actually the styled Belcourt Traffic Calming Study. It was done by Professor Nick Stamatiotis at the University of Kentucky and Alan Kirk, both professional engineers. Dr. Stamatiotis heads up the very important section at Kentucky Transportation Center, does a lot of good work. But he was retained basically by the neighborhood to look at traffic impact, to look at cut through issues, to look at the kinds of complaints that had arisen about people's belief that there was cut through traffic. And what I want to share with you and what Dr. Stamatiotis and Mr. Kirk found out, which is set forth on page 6 of the report, said that, review the data, reinforce the belief that the primary cut through route through the neighborhood is from Main Street via Forest Avenue. In other words, people are coming up Main Street and making a left into Belcourt to get to Walton. And this takes place in the p.m. when people are leaving downtown Lexington to get to their homes on the other side of Belcourt. So, they're actually going from downtown up Main. There may be a delay at the light there at Walton and Main, and they're going through Belcourt, some. Now, you'll see in a minute there's not that many. But that was the concern. Keep in mind, we're on the other side of Boonesboro. In our development, we have two access points. We have one on to Walton, and we have a new one that the Hannas paid $62,000 for from the Lexington Herald-Leader to have another access point out on the Midland, a right in and right out, that provides another means of ingress and egress so that there's not any excess traffic on Walton. And the people that will be driving, let's say, to downtown Lexington, where the potential cut through exists in Belcourt, would obviously want to come down Vine Street, go to Midland, and make a right in to where we live. So, the people that would live in our development would be the least likely people to do any kind of cut through traffic to the extent that exists in Belcourt. Likewise, if you're leaving the development, you can exit to the right on Midland and go down Third Street if you're going downtown. Or you can go down to the right at Walton. Or let's say you want to cut through Belcourt. Now, this is, what's important is that Dr. Stamatiatis studied this cut through phenomenon for the neighborhood. And he looked at how many people cut through at the peak times, 7 to 9 in the morning and 4 to 6 in the evening. And what he found was this, that in the morning peak hour traffic, with respect to people getting on Walton and going through Belcourt, he didn't find anybody. He didn't find anybody going through that direction. With respect to the afternoon, he found three. In a two-hour period, there were three people that used Walton Avenue to cut through to Belcourt to get to Forest Avenue, Indiana Avenue, or out to Main Street through Belcourt. Three in two hours. Again, to the extent cut through is an issue, it comes from the afternoon going home traffic up Main Street and then into Belcourt to get to Walton. Under page 9, this is where it's very important that you all understand this, because you all, in part, helped to pay for this study. And Dr. Stamatiotis said as follows, a result of the origin-destination study was the documentation of the fact that a fair amount of traffic accessed the neighborhood, but that the neighborhood served more as a destination than a cut-through route. The trips were characterized by vehicles entering and exit from the same access point or by vehicles returning to the same direction from which they came. Most of the complaints are internal to the neighborhood, and the chief complaint was speeding, which is where they got into a great deal of discussion and, quite frankly, disagreement within the neighborhood about how to handle the speeding issue in terms of traffic-calming devices. Dr. Stamatiotis concluded by saying, during the public involvement activities conducted in January 2007, the residents identified cut-through traffic as the most prevalent problem, a perception which may be related more toward destination traffic coming into and out of the neighborhood than traffic actually cutting through the neighborhood to reach other destinations. It is more of a perception, based upon his study, than it is a problem. His recommendation was that the traffic study data under page 25, collected during the study for the government and afterwards, indicated that the traffic volumes and specifically cut-through traffic volumes are not a significant problem within the Belcourt neighborhood. Now, this was an independent engineer from the Kentucky Research Center, Transportation Center, who concluded that cut-through traffic was not a problem in Belcourt. And this was an engineer that was actually retained by an ad hoc committee, worked with an ad hoc committee for the Neighborhood Association. I've also included a report there from Luis Guida, who chaired an ad hoc traffic committee report, but he basically, it's basically the same thing as Dr. Stamatiotis said. The other provision is under, the next section is under 21. There was an indication that someone at me had a stormwater problem. I checked with Daryl Bennett of your government in terms of stormwater issues, and he confirmed to me with email that we believe that I've seen no records to indicate to me that the neighborhood or neighborhood-wide flooding issues, there may be an isolated incidence if we have more than a hundred-year rainfall of somebody's basement flooding, but in terms of overall flooding, there simply is not the data to support anything like that. I included a final article that was in the op-ed section of the Herald-Leader a few days ago, which simply only comes full circle with what I started out to say is that these are tough cases. If we are going to honor the value that became crystal clear after two years of community debate, that the agricultural industry is important, that it needs to be preserved, and that one way of doing that is being creative and using existing land that's been bypassed or vacant for an extended period of time to provide housing for downtown so that downtown can grow and thrive and be the kind of downtown that we all want to be. We believe we've complied with a comprehensive plan. We believe we've complied with your goals and objectives of that plan. We've complied with all of the admonitions from the community to grow up and not out. We've tried to be as sensitive as we could to the Belcourt residents. Unfortunately, we're not there yet. I think we're about a story apart. But I would urge you, don't repeat the same mistake that your predecessors made in compromising density downtown because the facts state there is not a cut-through problem. We've backed this building off well in excess of the minimum required by your ordinance. We've landscaped it. We've beautified it. We've got a beautiful project that's worthy of approval, and we urge your favorable consideration. I do have one witness, if he's still here. Mr. Kelly. I do have one neighbor that I can introduce to you, Tim Kelly, the Lexington Herald leader, who wants to say a few words in support. Mr. Vice Mayor and members of the Council, thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. I'm Tim Kelly. I'm president and publisher of the Herald Leader, which is a neighbor to both Belcourt and the proposed development. I'm here not to speak in support of this development per se, but to be instructive and to disclose, which Bruce has, in the interest of full disclosure, the newspaper's involvement in this project, why it became involved in the project as an enterprise. And I just thought that might be instructive in terms of your deliberations. I'm also here as the chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee for the new downtown master plan, which I chaired for a better part of two years, and that, too, plays into this. We have been a neighbor of Belcourt for 27 years, have tried to be a good neighbor. Sometimes we fall short. When we do, we try to rectify it. What we do is cut through our front parking lot and have put in two gigantic speed bumps to try and keep people from cutting through right in front of our property to go Indiana, Skane, or Boonesboro and discourage that kind of cut-through traffic into Belcourt. Some of our employees, both past and present, live in Belcourt. When this project was proposed to me, I thought that this is a project that some of our employees could possibly take advantage of for downtown living. We did not seek to be drawn into this. Joe Gothrop and Ernie Hanna came to see me and one of my vice presidents for operations quite some time ago, laid out the project. We thought it was extremely interesting, but it was going to need the herald leaders' involvement because they wanted a second point of entry, and it would be off Midland Avenue. Lexington Cut Stone, as we can attest, is not very cooperative, and they would not allow any kind of cut through the Lexington Cut Stone property. They came to us and asked if we would sell them a sliver of land across our back parking lot that would allow them access into this. As they laid out the very first conversation about this plan, I think one of my first reactions was, you're going to have to get the Neighborhood Association to buy in. Obviously, we're very familiar with the Neighborhood Association. We're aware of its involvement of keeping a drive-through from the former McDonald's, now Zoleto Lindo next door to Kerr Brothers, and they needed to be expressed to them the need to be cognizant and sensitive to neighborhood concerns, and I have been assured throughout this whole process that they have been. With the acquiescence and the approval of our former corporate owners, Knight Ritter, we did sell to Ernie Hanna and Joe Gother about .12 acres of land for $62,000. There were bids estimates. We got three estimates on it, and we took the middle one and agreed on that. That money did not come to the Herald Leader. That money went straight to San Jose before the sale of Knight Ritter. The reasons that we agreed to do this were several. First and foremost is that that land has been undevelopable. It is a neighbor to us. We know that there was a shopping center proposed for that property. That didn't happen. There was a Winn-Dixie proposed for that property. That didn't happen. Not going to happen because Winn-Dixie doesn't even exist in Lexington anymore, and we ourselves looked at that property and found it to be unsuitable for our use. One of the main reasons we put our off-site production packaging facility out on Fortune Drive because we did not find this piece of land usable even on our behalf. I was asked about that by Don Pratt out in the enter room earlier. We had not made any big deal about that, but we had examined it and just found it was not going to suit our purposes. Also, this will give us a second egress from our back parking lot for emergency egress that we currently do not have. Lexington Cutstone blocks our rear entrance to the back parking lot of the Herald Leader, for safety reasons, in case there's ever an emergency. We would like to be able to have that opportunity to have a back gate that we could open into this cut-through from Midland to the proposed development. Also, in light of my role with the downtown master plan, when they proposed it to me, I said, this is exactly what we've been talking about. This kind of infill development in the urban area, just like Center Court, just like the Main and Rose property. We felt and continued to feel right along that as long as these developers could reach agreement with the neighborhood association that this would be a real boon for downtown and the Herald Leader and potentially our employees. So that is kind of the extent of our involvement. I just felt it might be wise for you all to know about it and the reasons why. I'd be glad to answer any of your questions. Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Just protocol here. We can take some questions now. Our protocol says that we will do questions following both of the presentations. Is that going to be? You want to try that? Is that okay? Thank you, Mr. Lane. Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Mr. Simpson, anything more? Mr. Vice Mayor, that concludes our formal presentation. We have our professionals here. They're prepared to answer any questions that anyone may have with respect to any items or issues that I've mentioned in connection with our presentation here this evening. We'll be around, obviously, until you all make your decision. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Fugazi. Mr. Vice Mayor and ladies and gentlemen of the Council, my remarks will be brief. My name is Fred Fugazi, Jr., and I've been asked to make some comments on behalf of the Belcourt Neighborhood Association, which I intend to do. Mr. Clark would like to speak to you when I finish, and like I said, I'll be very brief. Mr. Simpson said a couple of things that I would like to ask you to keep in mind. He said that this is a momentous opportunity. This is an initial impact opportunity. This is the first time that you've had an opportunity to consider infill, all of which I agree with. And so I would like to suggest to you that maybe we exercise a little bit of caution here as we approach this first project. I had a concern that I expressed to Mr. Simpson about traffic. I suggested we consider a traffic light. I did not get a response. And I would feel confident that the developer would come back and say that we can deal with that at some later time. And, of course, once the horse gets out of the barn, the race is over. Why is this important? The one thing that has not been mentioned to you tonight that I've looked at, and I'm not going to testify, I don't think that I should tell you what my opinion is because it's just that. The development plan, which was considered by the commission when they approved this, calls for a right turn only on Midland. It calls for a right turn only on Walton. This is important, I think, in part because if you lived at this very attractive place and you wanted to come out and you wanted to go towards downtown Lexington or Newtown Park or wherever you were going in a westerly direction, when you turn right on Midland, you can't turn left on 3rd at that point. That's a no turn. So you've got your, I think, unless I'm sadly mistaken but don't think I am, so you're routed back around, a consideration to be made. If you come out of this project, a very nice place to live, you have to turn right on Walton Avenue. You have to turn right. You cannot turn left to go to 3rd Street. So you're going downtown or you're going towards Main Street. Mr. Simpson was quick to point out to you that in tab 19 at page 23, this study said that there are high levels of congestions and long delays and the route through Belcourt is very advantageous and attractive. It makes sense to most people. The traffic study that was introduced at the commission by Mr. Simpson and Wilbur Smith indicated that in this project of 126 residential units plus the retail, there would be generated daily trips 1,434. 1,413 on page 9. And then page 10 shows you, if you have the energy to look at, what the percentages of the people in and out are. Page 11 has the numbers of the people that would be using this project and where they would go in the morning and in the afternoon. And this traffic study says that five cars in the morning will go right on Midland and 47 cars would go right on Walton. And then it says 14 would go left on Walton. And that's contrary to their development. They can't go left because they haven't designed it that way. So there's a number of people that are not accounted for as far as their vehicular activities. Now, if we're dealing with the flexibility of these density, the high-density developments in their transition with Belcourt, I think we need to consider that there's 126 units there. I assume that probably at least 126 cars, maybe 252 cars will be in this development, and these people will be moving 1,413 trips in and out of this project. So I would like to suggest that the density be diminished or the project be denied until such time as the traffic control signal on Midland would allow the traffic to go left on Midland to town. There are 125 houses in the historic district in Belcourt, one less than the number of new units that are going next door. And no one has paid particular attention to the concept that this traffic has to come out on the right and come in on the right from Midland to Walton. That's the point I wanted to make. I'd like to suggest that we address it now. People are going to say, well, you can't put conditions on developments. You can't make a developer get a traffic light. Ed Gardner said that's probably accurate. It probably is accurate. But if you approve this now with that plan, they won't happen. And it's the developer's imagination. This zone change approval was obtained from the commission with this development plan presented to them with this traffic study showing the distribution of traffic as projected. And I think it's inadequate. I suggest to you that if there was a concern that congestion would cause people to cut through Belcourt, when you take however many people go to work every morning from 7 to 830 or whatever hours you want to pick, if it's 126 units, however many cars that is going right on Walton Avenue except for the five that go right on Midland, you're going to have some congestion at the time of the day that people go to work. So you can either vote this up or down. But those are my comments. And I think Mr. Clark would like to say something. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor and Council. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak tonight to address this development. One thing I want to start with is that it was characterized that the neighborhood all of a sudden decided to be against this proposal, against this development. And I think that was really mischaracterized. And if you reread my letter that I presented to the planning commission and my statements at that planning commission, we said that we actually do approve of this development, but we have some concerns. We have two concerns, height, and we have concerns about traffic. As some of you may know if you're familiar with the area, Belcourt actually has a great deal of young children in our neighborhood, and we're very proud of that. And some of them go to Ashland Elementary. And the increased traffic flow that's going to come out of that development means that parents and young children are going to have to cross that busy Walton Avenue at peak time. And we believe that the current infrastructure that's in place without a stoplight on Midland or some other type of intervention, that the infrastructure is not in place to deal with the amount of density that is being proposed in this development. We believe that responsible infill development is good public policy. We believe, as Mr. Simpson pointed out, that we're probably a story away from the height issue, that we have a concern about. Our board actually would like to have three instead of four, but I think a reasonable compromise would be on four. I also want to bring to your attention our concern that maybe MU3 might not be the proper classification for this under the downtown master plan and the comprehensive plan. If you look at this development over here, it has an existing 9,000-square-foot commercial building and a parking lot with it. The vacant land that we all heard about in the petitioner's case and the downtown master plan talks about filling vacant land. It's our belief, and they can correct me if I'm wrong, that the current vacant land on that property is less than four acres. If, in fact, that is true and my numbers are correct, then the MU2 classification would be much more appropriate and would deal with many of the problems that we have raised in terms of density. The MU2 has a 55-foot ceiling, which we believe is more appropriate for the area. I'm glad that Mr. Simpson pointed out the very exciting developments that are going on downtown, like Main and Rose. It's four stories tall. Some of the other examples that he showed you in his side presentation are four-and-a-half, five-story tall. This, because of the underground parking that's actually going to be a part of this structure, is actually five-and-a-half stories if you count the underground part that sticks up out of the ground. We just believe that 65 feet is too tall. We're also concerned that there's nothing in the record, to my knowledge, that any input has been provided about the impact that this will have. from a historic standpoint. We only get one shot at this. If this is approved tonight, then we can't undo what started in the early 1800s is the development that's very important and special to our neighborhood. We believe that we should be cautious because, as Mr. Simpson pointed out, this is the first MU3 zone change that's going to set the precedent and set the future for responsible infill going forward in this community. I don't understand why the planning commission didn't seek input from your own historic property division or didn't seek input from other professionals that have expertise. I don't know if anybody on the council here has historic preservation experience or not, but we believe this is a very important consideration that should be taken into account before you decide whether to approve this or not. Congress adopted the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, and in that act, which I testified to at the planning commission, and I raised this issue as well as the hype and the traffic, but there was no discussion. After I testified and several of our neighbors testified, five minutes later, the commission voted 7-0. There wasn't even discussion. Is this an issue? Is this a concern? Should we ask legal whether or not the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act comes into play? In that particular federal statute, if federal funds are used, or if there's any federal connection, a permit, and actually U.S. 60 happens to be, Midland Avenue happens to be U.S. 60. We don't know whether there's a legal connection there or a federal connection there, but I would think the law department would ought to look at that and advise you, is there a possible connection there? Some courts have held that the mere granting or approval process of a permit would put it into a federal category. Some would say if these gentlemen actually borrow any money from a bank that that would, because the bank is federally regulated, might have a federal connection. And so what we're asking the counselor tonight is to make sure that you have all the information that you need to make an informed decision. And if after that, and you've got all that information, you've got some experts in that have said this isn't going to have an adverse impact on the historic nature of our neighborhood, then we'll respect your opinion. But we don't want you to go forward and vote on something when you haven't gotten some professional input. I would like to distribute a letter that I received this afternoon. That I received today from the National Trust of Historic Preservation. And I want to, before I read this letter as it's being circulated, I want to point out that this group also weighed in when the city was considering the game day development down by Rupp Arena. And some of you were on the council at that time and some of you probably read about it in the newspaper. But in that particular situation, there was testimony provided by Wynn Meeker of the Historic Preservation Commission that stated, and I can submit that into the record if that's the proper protocol, but in her testimony she pointed out that the consultant hired by the group that was monitoring, or that was involved in the downtown master plan development, that the consultant there said that on that corner lot, right across the street from Kincaid Towers and 22 stories and right across the street from the Hyatt Regency, that only a four or five story development was appropriate because it was next to the Historic District. Now in this case, the property in question, the subject property, is not part of the Historic District, but in fact abuts to that. And I do want to commend the developers about what they've done in terms of screening and moving the property back. They've been very responsive to our concerns. But some of the fundamental concerns of traffic and height haven't been addressed, and we believe that the what these, I want to read into the record real quickly if I could the key points of this letter. Mr. Simpson, I thought maybe you'd like to have it. The National Trust of Historic Preservation is a private non-profit organization dedicated to preserving America's diverse, historic, and revitalized communities. The Southern Regional Office of the National Trust serves 15 southern states, including Kentucky. However, preserving the city of Lexington cherishes and preserves its history and understands the economic benefits of doing so. However, preserving the character of historic neighborhoods often extends beyond the neighborhood boundaries. Our office has been made aware of the LFUCG Council will be acting tonight on a proposal for a five-story mixed-use development in Ellerslie Place to back up to Belcourt, one of your most significant historic neighborhoods. While the National Trust certainly approves of mixed-use and high-density development to check the sprawl that threatens our rural areas, there is a legitimate concern that the Ellerslie Place development is out of scale with its surroundings, and that of the increased vehicular traffic from the development would have a negative impact on Belcourt. While we do not oppose the development of the site, we do urge consideration of the final decision, and I'm going to paraphrase from here on out if they're even willing to match a grant up to $5,000 for the city to hire an expert to come in and study this amplification. And since this decision tonight will have a precedent-setting move on the community, I would hate that three or four years from now, when this beautiful building is built and the traffic problems present themselves, that it sets this community back of recognizing that, oh, if we'd only made sure there was a stoplight, or if we'd only maybe capped it by one story, that we'd have the perfect example of what we need to do going forward. We believe that the wrong decision tonight could set us back in improving our community and improving the density downtown. I'm glad Mr. Simpson also mentioned Boulder, Colorado. I know that some of you actually attended the Chamber of Commerce, and I know that there's a gap. It's my understanding from the Internet research that could be subject to check that in Boulder, Colorado, they have a 40-foot cap on commercial buildings. And 40-foot versus the 65-foot proposed here tonight. I also found last night that Marietta, Georgia, their infill plan has a 35-foot maximum when it butts up against a residential area. And San Francisco on Union Street has a two- to three-story limit, and we believe that the designers and all the public input, the professionals that came together to develop the downtown master plan, and ultimately the comprehensive plan that was finally approved, did foresee circumstances that you needed to balance the interests of development with those of the existing neighborhoods. In fact, we believe that the development itself as it's presented is not complementary to or compatible with the existing historic neighborhood. There's also provision in the guidance documents that says that if you're going to deviate from the downtown master plan, that you need to consider that any destabilizing effect of the surrounding area, or raise the risk of unintended precedence, or threatens or compromises a historic area. I submit to this group that there's no one here other than this one lady's letter from South Carolina, there's no evidence on the record to say this will or will not have an adverse impact. So we believe that you should vote down or, if legal will allow you, put certain conditions in there, like we do need a study, before this is either finally approved or have some vary. I'm not an attorney so I don't know how to make all that work, but I would think you would want to have that kind of input from some professionals to address the historic considerations as well as the traffic. It's my understanding that it's traditional or appropriate for the developers to ask for a warrant study, to see what the issues are relevant to a stoplight on Midland Avenue. We may or may not be able to get one there, but many in the neighborhood believe that if, in fact, you do put a stoplight there, that will mitigate a great deal of the traffic problem. Not all of it. We're not saying that it would take care of all the problem, but it is an alternative route out of the development that will allow people to turn left, to go downtown and go to their jobs. Yes, I hope that many of the people that live in this development, because I believe it will be developed at some point in time, will walk to work. But I also know that that's still, I think, a ways away. Mr. Fugazi pointed out that instead of 126 cars, there very well could still be 256 cars so you can drive out to Hamburg and shop if there's not those kind of commercial developments in downtown Lexington, which we hope there will be at some point in the future. I think I'll end my testimony at that. I've got some other notes, but I know some of the neighbors that are here have been waiting patiently for over an hour and a half, almost two hours now. I want to give them a chance to speak. I've asked those that I've actually personally talked to and worked with to try not to repeat what has already been heard. I've tried to ask them to tell you how they feel this development is going to have on their personal life, and I believe they can do so. I look forward to answering any questions at the end of the presentations. Thank you. Thanks, Bobby. So in the interest of all who have signed up, if the counsel for the Petitioner and Opponent, if it's okay with you all, we'll ask for those who are those who your folks, Mr. Pugazzi, you all first, and then Bruce, it's okay for Bruce, it's okay for your folks. I think you have three. Is that what you want, prefer? Those who have signed up on these sign-in sheets in favor of speak in favor of the project. It's okay? All right. Okay. Those who have here in opposing opposing Mr. Richardson, Rebecca Stevenson, Mr. Bobby Clark, already spoken, Nina McCormick. If you all just want to come ahead up and one sort of be on standby. Since the Mr. Gardner and the counsel for Petitioner and for the Opponents have agreed on the two-hour, right? That's what you all agreed on earlier, with an effort to abbreviate if possible. We ordinarily have a three-minute restriction, but that's not appropriate for this evening. I just want to alert all the council members that a three-minute limitation on these witnesses is not appropriate. I think public comment at this time would probably be, you could limit it to three minutes. The two hours is actually from your all's, from the council's, procedures, and that's two hours per side. Okay. It doesn't look like we're going to get it, hopefully, unless you all really have a lot of questions. Okay. All right. Then if you all, those who are speaking, if you'll allow me to be a timekeeper, it's not a popular role, but if you all look toward the clock, and I'll let you know if you're about at 30 seconds, okay? Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. I come to you tonight as a man who I'm sorry. My name is Barry Richardson. I live at 539 Boonesborough Avenue. I was alerted to several of the aspects of this case largely through the concerns of my wife. She doesn't want a building that large in her backyard. We can't really argue too much about infill or infrastructure based on what's going on in my backyard. But I do want to point out that as I have developed as a professional, I've been called upon repeatedly to do due diligence in my job, whatever it might be. And as I have investigated this particular development at my wife's request, I certainly have not seen a lot of due diligence. There have been a lot of questions about this project that otherwise very smart, intelligent, informed people have not been able to ask and answer for me. And we only call upon the council tonight not to make some huge shift away from infill, which most of us in the neighborhood do favor and do seek a development along these lines. But we really need to answer some questions about the impact that this particular development is going to have on my home. I certainly do not want to see any more rural farmland cut up unnecessarily. But I also happen to know that I live in a very nice place right now as well. And I would hate to see it unnecessarily damaged or destroyed if we could do due diligence at this point. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Richardson. Rebecca Stevenson. 539 Boonesboro Avenue. Is that right? Yes, that's correct. A lot of what I think and feel has already been stated tonight, and I'm passing around a letter that I wrote. So I will just kind of briefly summarize what I think. I'd like for each of you to think for a moment about your own backyard and imagine a five-story building 80 feet from your property line. And imagine the light pollution, the traffic, the noise, and how you would feel about your own property. My feeling is that it's really going to change where I live and to the point that I will consider moving because what I love about my neighborhood will be seriously altered. The issues that I outlined in my letter, the traffic issues have already been stated. The scale of the building at five stories is just out of context for this neighborhood. It will visually dominate all of the houses on Greensboro Avenue and will become the highest building in this area. I am wondering if the issues of sewage have been addressed. The residents already suffer constant plumbing issues and you can see this when you drive down the street and see the Roto-Rooter trucks all the time on our street. I think the issue of infill, while I don't want the horse farms developed either, I also don't want a five-story building 80 feet from my property line. I think there is a compromise here. I think this project and the decision that's made tonight will set a precedent. In the future, this could in turn affect your neighborhood. I just would like for you to consider all these things when you make your decision. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Stevenson. Nina McCormick and Nina, after Nina, is Jane Phillips, then Josh Short, then Barry Richardson. Hello. I'm Nina McCormick. I live at 605 Russell Avenue, just behind the bell house, and I just wanted to comment briefly on traffic because I've been attending as they come up in the neighborhood traffic meetings with city people for about 12 years now and we've gone through this repeated process when there have been concerns that we meet with traffic engineering and we hear about all kinds of options that people use in different neighborhoods around and then people dream plans and then we find out that the only thing that the city will go along with is speed humps and this happens several times that we hear about a lot of options and finally because it was the only thing that was available, the neighborhood got three speed humps which significantly did reduce some of the cut through that we had at the time, but then we found out that there were people, particularly seniors, who could not stand speed humps and would, it was just the worst thing in some people's minds, so the neighborhood, as you've probably heard, was very divided over whether to continue with the city's traffic calming recommendations. Then we had the people come in from the UK and there was a whole other process and some optimism that the neighborhood could again be united on the whole thing with some creative suggestions that came from the proposal from the guys from the UK and it was very disappointing, this was the latest process that just, we just finished, that we found out that, well then, the Historic Preservation Board of Architectural Review didn't approve that concept and the emergency vehicle people didn't want anything, these had devices that they weren't familiar with, even though they're used in other parts of the country and even though they're, according to the UK experts, designed for emergency and large vehicles to go right around. So we went through a whole other round with other experts and again, it's seemingly that the different city departments when they all weighed in, it was again unfeasible. So when I heard that there were only right turns out of this development and the only way downtown is either through our neighborhood or around it if people have patience to go through all of the lights, I became concerned because we haven't had a very many satisfactory options for dealing with traffic and differences when it's come up in the past and now we're looking at a very likely increase and it doesn't feel like our solutions have been workable at a city level. So I urge you to help us. It seems like stopping the process is the only time you can get some real movement sometimes when different city departments don't agree and experts don't agree and everything else and it doesn't feel like we have much other recourse other than hopefully you're helping something evolving differently in the future with all these departments. So please don't approve this unless we can have left turns or a different success with all the parties coming together with traffic. Thank you. Thank you, Nina. I'd call for Jane Phillips, Josh Short, are they here? Yeah. Ms. Phillips, if you would give us your address as well, please. Thank you. I'm Jane Phillips and I live on 529 Boonesborough Avenue. I have already circulated by email a letter to the council members, but I'll leave a copy here and give a copy to be passed around. I don't want to read the whole letter because of the time constraints that we're working with. But let me comment on the development itself. Instead of one of the traffic issues, I consider the traffic issues very important and I would add that for Boonesborough Avenue residents, it means having the development street, the run from Midland Avenue to Walton Avenue about 20 feet beyond our back property lines. And that is going to make a difference to the way we feel about our backyards. But let me turn to the development itself. As you know, Belcourt is a neighborhood of mainly single family dwellings, some rental and most owner-occupied, and some multifamily rental properties. Most of the housing stock dates back to the 1920s. The neighboring Kenwick area is also mixed owner-occupied and rental single family dwellings with some multifamily rental properties. In both neighborhoods, multifamily rentals are mostly in the same general architectural range of styles as the single family owner-occupied houses. Almost all these individual structures are one to three stories high, no higher. These neighborhoods are early suburbs of old Lexington and exhibit many features of the time when they were built. Belcourt, as we all know now, is a historic district. The Ellerslie property has been vacant for a long time, much longer than the 16 years I have owned my house. But I understand, and we all know, that it used to be a small community of houses and yards. This much vacant land in the greater downtown area deserves development. But over the last 20 or so years, the options presented have not panned out for one reason or another. Now a plan that has many attractive features has been put forward. One of the problems, in my view, is that the development proposed is far from complementary to and compatible with existing nearby development, as the comprehensive plan says, or compatible in form and character with the existing neighborhood. What would a compatible development be like? In my opinion, it could be much like the development featured in the home seller section of the Herald-Leader on the 9th of September. Ritz Station on the north side, which is described as, quote, having the vintage look of the Kenwick neighborhood, end quote, with, quote, interiors designed for today's homebuyers. There are to be 46 houses and a park on nine acres. At Ellerslie Place, a park could be dispensed with because of the — Mr. Phillips, excuse me. Over time? Yeah. Okay. As I said, it's an unpopular role, but I have to do it. Thank you. You want to finish this thought? I think — I don't want to interrupt you completely, if you want to finish your thought. Just down to the end here. Yes, ma'am. At Ellerslie Place, a park could be dispensed with because of the proximity of Bell Place and Thoroughbred Park. It would certainly contribute to increased residential density to the downtown area, and it would have a compatible look and offer a compatible range of opportunities for the development of the kind of neighborhood atmosphere that we enjoy. The existence of Ritz Station is an example of what truly compatible design could be. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Phillips. Mr. Short and then Mr. Richardson. Mr. Short, if I interrupt you at 30 seconds, then you'll know what it is. Okay? Okay. Thank you, sir. All right. Good evening. My name is Josh Short. I live on Kramer, so I represent the Kenwick faction of the neighborhood there. If you're familiar with the neighborhood, you know that Kramer and Walton and Midland are all busy streets already. At the risk of being a little repetitive, I just wanted to make sure, and I appreciate the opportunity to highlight one of the earlier arguments about the right turn only aspect of development. The only way that you can use the new proposed exit is to turn right. That means that the only direction you can go is eastbound on Winchester Road. Most people in this development are going to be going one of the other three cardinal directions from the development. That leaves their only way to do that as Walton Avenue. Having used exclusively a bicycle or walked for over four years to get to work, I know which roads are busy, which roads are difficult to use a bicycle or walk on. One of the worst places to ride a bike in Lexington is on Midland Avenue. There's a bike path that comes down Winchester, but it ends. There's a bike path on Main Street, but it's not connected to the one on Winchester. So, without a better solution to the exit there, their argument in favor of the people living here being the type of folks that are going to use a bicycle or walk is a bit invalid because there's not any type of infrastructure for people to use a bicycle or to walk from this development the directions that they're likely to go. Kramer and Aurora are the two streets east of Walton where the exit is. These are going to be popular routes for getting out of town too because they let you connect to Richmond Road. One thing we haven't heard anything about is the impact on those streets. Kramer is a little too busy for my taste already. We don't have any speed humps. We don't have any traffic slowing devices whatsoever. Delivery trucks come through there pretty quick regardless of the fact that there's a school there. I think that problem is going to be worse. Like I said earlier, I'm a big favorite of Enfield. I think this is a great development. It's a place I'd like to live, but there are a couple of issues that haven't been addressed. I hope that they can be before it moves forward. Thanks. Mr. Richardson? I can go again. Oh. You're down here twice. There you go. All right, sir. Okay. Lynn Phillips. I'd like to speak in favor. Okay, Lynn. Okay. Lynn, would you mind holding that for just a minute? Thank you. Pamela Wood. Pamela Wood. Okay. Mary Fullington. 714 Kramer. She had to leave also. All right. We're going to continue down the list then. How about Kevin Murphy? Is Mr. Murphy in favor? Against, right? Don't start yet. Could someone hand that in? Kevin, you are opposing, right? Yes, I am opposing. My name is Kevin Murphy. I live at 141 West Bell. And I'll try to be very brief here. I testified also at the Planning Commission hearing, and I was glad to see that my letter that I cited from 2005 was pretty much reproduced verbatim in your minutes that you got from the Planning Commission meeting. But really what I want to address is you know, I have been involved in planning for 30 years. I'm an architect. I had the pleasure of serving on the 1986 Comprehensive Update Committee back in the old days in this very room. I think I was probably wearing this sport coat during those meetings. But the bottom line is I even got out my 1980 Comprehensive Plan this afternoon and looked through it. And one of the statements I feel very strongly about is this infill and redevelopment. It's been around. It's been our goal. It's been our objective as a community for well over 30 years. So this is not a new thing. However, each Comprehensive Plan text emphasizes that supporting this should not have adverse effects on existing neighborhoods all the way back to the 1980 Plan. So I could not be more in agreement with what Mr. Clark is saying about giving this a little bit more time, a little bit more study. We only have one shot at this. It is very, very significant. I did put together a little packet. It has four sheets that I'm passing around to you. The first one is a map that I came across in the public library from the 1950s. The Sanborn Insurance Maps pretty well show the way Ellerslie Avenue existed prior to the mid to late 80s when a local attorney started buying up all those properties and systematically tearing them down to consolidate this five or so acre tract of property. I think what this image illustrates very clearly is the street systems and the associated infrastructure is not in place for high density development. Even though there are 50 or so residences in this drawing on Ellerslie Avenue, that's less than half what is proposed. So I throw that up for the good old days. I did write a letter and it was submitted via email to the mayor and all the council members but I did include a hard copy for your review. You don't need to show that but I also wrote an email letter to the Herald Leader last week which they in their wisdom chose not to publish and I would like to read that to you. And in essence it goes as follows as a resident of historic Belcourt neighborhood I urge the Urban County Council stop the proposed Ellerslie project. When I purchased my home in 1998 it was quite dilapidated and in need of a complete rebuild. As a middle aged professor in the field of architecture I embraced the challenge and hoped to complete the restoration by the time I retire. It is my dream not my retirement plan. My concern is not for the decrease in monetary value of my home but rather for the quality of life that will be diminished by greed and opportunism. The major objection as you've heard is the height. Potential problems include storm sanitary etc. Mr. Hanna's position has been that decreasing the height would make the project financially unfeasible. This puzzles me since the property evaluation office records show that the 5 April property was purchased for just over $400,000 9 years ago. By my calculations 126 units averaging 800 square feet selling for an average of $200,000 each and costing $150 per square foot to build will yield millions in profit. Is it infill and development or rape and plunder? You do the math. Thank you. Thanks Mr. Phil. Thanks Mr. Murphy. Next on the list of those opposing is Alice Underwood Let me confirm. Ms. Underwood, are you opposing or in favor of? Neither. Okay. Well then please come up front. Right in between. I say neither because that was quoted in the papers earlier. I'm Alice Underwood and I live at 619 Boonesburg Avenue. Sorry. I don't think any of us are against infill. So when you say we're all up here speaking against it, I don't think we really are. I mean, I'm trying not to speak for everybody but that's what everybody said that Hannah's have done a great job working with us and Bruce Simpson's done a good job so I don't think there's a fight here as much as there's this awareness that we all want this city to look out for. I sent a letter to the council members and my concern is all the infill. It's great but look at all the infill we've got going on and what's not occupied. The development across from Ramsey's it's not full. Nobody's in there. We don't know what's going to happen to High Street and the traffic. The development at Rose and Main. It's beautiful. It looks great. What's going to happen though when it's full? You know, and all those cars are coming out there. The 2010 gains are coming and the headlines in the paper said the main concern would be traffic. I think that this is precedent causing and we really, really need to watch this. The whole point here tonight is if we could just slow it down and take a look at the implications that that's where we're all going with this. That's sort of the end goal. And I also have a letter that I want to add to the record from Brady Barlow who's a neighbor on Main Street and he could not be here tonight because his daughter was sick. Not going to read it because I know we don't have time. So should I give this to somebody? That's fine Alice. Thank you. You're way ahead of schedule. You have a minute left. Thank you. We've got Mr. Don Pratt. Is Don here? He was. He's still here and he knows the three minute rule. We know that. You can probably count it in your head, can't you? There you go. I may be slower than yours though. You want to give us your address Don and then I was going to suggest that we can go to the favorables or those in favor of this which would be Knox Van Ogle and Lynn Phillips. Anybody else I've missed? Go ahead Mr. Pratt. I'm sorry because of my eyesight. I had surgery and I have trouble reading. But I want to first start and compliment Mr. Fugazi for his brevity and I wish that you would rotate some of these opportunities to speak so that we don't have to wait so long while we listen to them and I have to say I criticize the proponents not especially for the length and redundant presentation but the worst thing was they talked about Spalding and I salivated thinking of donuts and so you all are unfair. The neighborhoods that are not here are historically the Ellerslie neighborhood and the other one is Mentel Park even though one member of the Mentel Park neighborhood is not here because I want to point out some things that were the history of that. The Absher father and son team moved to destroy that neighborhood which was a low income neighborhood that I am sorry we don't have available in downtown and all this talk about building up which I do not disagree with. In fact I do not disagree with a 10 or 15 story building even in that location if it were appropriate but it is not appropriate and every time there's been this presentation in front of this body it's been approved by the planning and zoning and the LFUCD council often with the support of Belcourt and I have been opposed to them as well. But I want to especially note I already mentioned the right turn only but I want you to imagine coming out of that turning right where are you going to? If you turn right you have to go up Winchester Road. If you turn right out of Midland onto Walton where do you have to go? What if you want to go some other direction? It's ridiculous. It's illogical to do that and I even heard that they had one time pointed suggested a gate on those communities. If you really want to get popularity make it run through the parking lot of the Herald Leader and let them deal with all this traffic that's going to come through there and I know that would be fun to think about and you'd probably get praise from everybody in town but I don't want to punish the Herald Leader I just thought it was funny to think about it. The density is a pressure is a question. 1,400 cars. I live on Walton and right now to this day there are massive backups on Walton going towards Winchester Road which you're not going to be allowed to turn that way but you have to go up to Main Street and where you go to from there it's ridiculous that you can't turn left there especially for those businesses that can't turn left. Where am I? I'm sorry. The horrible entry into both of these locations At the Planning and Zoning Commission I suggest that only in Lexington, only in Kentucky do you go across a railroad track to get to a beautiful development or the other entrance which is between some businesses and it's ugly as can be and I don't know if anybody wants to I wish you all well. I really do wish you all well if you get this proposed if you can get enough people to live in there but I really wish we had low income houses. You're close it looks like, right? Close to the conclusion. Okay, let's keep going. A little bit. Yeah, it's over. Well, my important thought on this whole thing historically is that this was a neighborhood much less in density for people much less able to afford the housing that they're planning to build there are 250,000 and up I do not want the traffic the traffic is the main problem I see as well as the fact we don't have enough low income development downtown. Thank you. Thanks Don. Knox and Knox and then and then Lynn Lynn Phillips Thank you very much and I just want to Knox, can you give us, excuse me your address please. Yes, I'm here on behalf of the Fayette Alliance and our address is 330 East Main Street I live at 225 Chenault Road You all have a copy of the piece that I wrote so I will just briefly go over it very quickly As you all know the Fayette Alliance is a coalition of agricultural neighborhood and development interests whose aim is to promote urban and rural vitality in Fayette County Conceptually we feel that the developer's proposal here is consistent with the recommendations of the 2006 Comprehensive Plan and the Downtown Master Plan because it uses innovative in-built redevelopment practices to accommodate residential and commercial growth inside the current urban services area If appropriately constructed this mixed-use development will secure a sustainable transition between the adjoining historic Belcourt neighborhood and the adjacent commercial corridor of Midland Avenue This is a remarkable prospect in our downtown to dynamically grow up instead of out Therefore, as a matter of county-wide land-use policy the Fayette Alliance does support the Planning Commission's unanimous vote to approve this zone change However we do strongly encourage the developer and members of Belcourt to continue to work together at Planning Commission during the development plan process to resolve the particular design concerns of this project In so doing, the stated land-use goals of the 2006 Comprehensive Plan will be achieved while also addressing the site specific needs of Belcourt This approach if diligently pursued in good faith will strengthen our city and the quality of life of our established neighborhoods making our county the very best it can be Thank you for considering our position here and we appreciate your dedication to responsible land-use planning Thank you Thank you Ms. Phillips and Lynn if you'd give us your address please My name is Lynn Roach Phillips I live in Bullock Place and for those of you who are unfamiliar with where Bullock is located we're a one-way street off of Walton that connects Walton to Ashland Avenue I emailed you all my comments a week a week and a half or so ago and I hope you got copies of that I'd like to speak to you today not as a member of your Planning Commission but as a resident who resides on Bullock Place I'm a member of the Neighborhood Association Our association is having its annual meeting this evening and the Board of Directors chose to take no position on this rezoning They chose to take no position because as a Neighborhood Association we support the concept of infill We also felt that it was politically dangerous to go against our neighbors in Belcourt and these people who are here today are my neighbors as well I'd like to speak to a couple of things There was concern about by one of the Belcourt neighbors about having a 65-foot building within 80 feet of her property line her rear property line My property abuts the Fayette County Schools Central Office I don't know specifically the exact location of the footprint of the building with respect to my rear property line but I would guess that it's within about 40 feet at its bulkiest if you know what I'm saying, point That's not caused any problem For me, I look at it as almost a blessing that I don't have weekend neighbors behind me because the Fayette County School offices tend to be closed In terms of traffic the traffic model that was deployed by the applicant and his consultants I believe is a suburban-based traffic model I don't think that it very well reflects what we will see in an urban context such as this site Those of us on my street who are not retired, who do go to work every day Well, I know that my husband and I wind up driving our car about once a week and that's typically to go to the grocery to get the gallons of milk and the bleach and the two liters of soda and the bulky things that can't be carried on our bike and we only have to put gas in our car about once every five or six weeks We ride our bikes or we walk Everywhere we go and people see me around town walking with my backpack typically filled with groceries or other things, we're walkers So I think that the site excuse me, the traffic model tends to overestimate I'm hoping that my new neighbors in Ellerslie will also be walkers The concerns raised by the Belcourt neighbors I think are legitimate concerns I think those are concerns that can be worked out in the development plan approval process The zoning commission just saw the preliminary plan before any building permits are going to be issued they have to see a final development plan So I think many of these setback issues, buffering issues issues that relate to the transition between this historic neighborhood and a development with the intensity of Ellerslie can all be resolved at the development plan stage I urge you to approve this rezoning Thank you Thank you The next on our schedule or the protocol is the petitioner's presentation of rebuttal evidence I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry Oh, Mr. Whelan Okay Apologize for that Vice Mayor, Council I'm Jim Whelan I own the property north of the Hammers property It's a property that houses the Ferguson warehouse I've owned that property since 1970 I've worked in the area since 1951 Excuse me None of the projects, well the original neighborhood there, I just have to say was not the best No one has talked about vandalism I've had a number of bullet holes in my warehouse over the years I've had my warehouse painted with different things I've had to clean up Of all the projects that have been presented, this one seems to be the best and I recommend that you approve this zoning. Thank you Thanks Mr. Whelan. Apologize for overlooking you Sure I'm not going to read them, I just would like to submit them on the record so we don't let some neighbors, or some people that did want to be heard One of them is forward, two of them are against I want to enter into the record. Thank you That's fine Thanks Mr. Simpson Forgive me if I lapse into first names Mr. Vice Mayor Just two very quick points on rebuttal, I'll save the balance in terms of the closing There's been apparently a considerable amount of confusion with respect to whether you can make a left turn out of this development onto Walton Avenue and I would just ask Mr. Sallee if he would go up to the development plan that's posted in front of the council and indicate based upon everything that's been submitted through the process whether anyone that's in this development that would live here, work there visit there, if you're coming out of the development onto Walton Avenue can you make a left hand turn Thank you There is no note on the development plan that would indicate a prohibition of a left hand turn from the development onto Midland or from the development onto Walton There's no note prohibiting that movement Thank you Bill Mr. Pugazzi indicated that he'd talked to me about a light onto Midland I had talked with his partner a week ago to find out what if there was anything else we could do in connection with this case to resolve any kind of a hearing that would make the peace as it were and he called me back a couple of days ago and said well what about a light at Midland and the right in and right out I said I don't believe that would meet the warrant requirements, that's something the state has to approve number one on a right in and right out to have a light and he indicated one of his neighbors was making a lot of inquiry and thought it was going to happen and we called out to District 7 and nobody heard anything about it Regardless of all that Mr. Chairman I think the only thing I want to say in terms of the rebuttal and then I'll save the rest for closing is that Hannah's connection with this case even though this is a downtown development, an urban development and I'll put up a slide that depicts the efforts they've undertaken, if I could put that up there now We had Tony Barrett who's a landscape architect and a planner actually do a measurement of every house on Boonesboro as it pertains to its proximity to the building that we've developed or proposing that be approved for development and the average distance from every house on Boonesboro is 267 feet away from this project Some may be shorter and some may be much larger, but the average distance of all the homes on the street closest to this proposed residential development is 267 feet and I will conclude my rebuttal with that and wait till the closing comments. Thank you Okay Mr. Pugazzi Closing summation I'm not of a mind or an attitude to testify. I don't think it's appropriate. A conversation I had or didn't have with Mr. Simpson, I'm not going to cross examine him. I don't think that's appropriate. And if he sits here in this room and tells you that that write-in write-out is not a fact and that's not what was presented that's what he's saying. And if it happens, we'll be chagrined If it is such that this is going to be developed with traffic unable to turn left on Midland, this will be a grave mistake The density of people traffic, vehicles will make this transition to the neighborhood intolerable and incompatible and I would ask you to vote this down Thank you sir Okay You got something Mr. Simpson? I have closing That's right, you do have closing I'm not going to extend my remarks anymore than basically what I have said I think Bo is confused in connection with what this development plan provides There is clearly the opportunity to get out on to Walton and make a left-hand turn and go toward Winchester Road or Midland We paid the Hannas paid $62,000 so that there would be an alternative right-hand turn only access on to Midland Now that has been clear as a veil since we filed this development plan Now people have got up here and talked about there's a right-hand turn only on on Walton Avenue and that simply is not what the development plan provides as Mr. Sallee of your planning staff has confirmed and I know that people's perception is their reality and I have a world of respect for the people that live in Belcourt I know many of them and when you have a perception that you're right, there's sometimes very little that can be done to dissuade you from your belief I appreciate that But the facts are, with respect to traffic as borne out by their own traffic engineer there is no cut-through problem in Belcourt I included a report for your review Dr. Stamiatis is the one that pointed out that there is no traffic problem in terms of cut-through in Belcourt It simply is it does not conform with the reality of what constitutes a traffic problem and that really has not been rebutted in this case Again, and I will be redundant somehow, if you listen to Bobby Clark, who I also have a great deal of respect for, if we reduced the density by one story if we cut out 31 or so units then all of a sudden the traffic problems disappear the historic preservation issues disappear, compatibility goes away and we have an acceptable development How many times, for those of you that have been here a while have you heard me argue that we need to reduce the density by 25% in order to have a more compatible development with an existing suburban development I've made that argument many times frequently with success and this is a downtown development This is a piece of property which quite frankly, 10 years ago I didn't think anyone would have the imagination, creativity or the money to commit a $37 million residential project to, but times have changed Our community has changed mainly because you all have changed it You all have said we're doing it differently now. We're not just going to add land willy nilly and do the same old thing We're going to do things a little bit differently and it is challenging when you have a change, when you have to change things People don't accept it well and this is one where we're probably going to see more and more of these cases where people they don't embrace density as much as the people who would like to see the density installed, who don't live next to it, like to see That's the nature of the human condition I suspect, but from the standpoint of the public policy and from the standpoint of what I would think that you all expect of Ernie and Brian Hannah, because these are difficult cases and you have to be respectful of your neighbors and you have to go to them and you have to share with them and be transparent in everything that you do and say this is my project and what do you have concerns about and you try to meet those concerns as best as you can and still have a project that's worthy of spending this kind of money to develop and be successful I think the Hannahs have done it the way others follow them ought to do it. They sought out the neighborhood They didn't hide and run. They didn't come down here and wait to hear from the neighbors for the first time. They started meeting with them in December of last year. And so I think we have tonight basically a project that Belcourt would like to see cut by 25%. I don't think that is the right thing to do in light of where we're headed as a community and I think you send the wrong signal to people who are willing to risk their private capital and take the risk that this is going to be successful at $37 million and the notion that somehow somebody buys property nine years ago for $400,000 and isn't trying to make profit is a little bit unrealistic. Mr. Hannah would have developed this property if there was an appropriate purchase there to buy it. There hasn't been any for B1. The market is now for residential Our community has motivation in that area. We're giving you and the community exactly exactly in every single degree with this application both in terms of how we approached it, how we worked with the neighbors, how we worked with the staff and the planning commission and I hope how we worked with you to give you what you said you wanted and we ask for your approval. Thank you. Thank you, Bruce. Okay. In terms of the protocol, the procedure going forward, now is the opportunity for council members to ask questions of the staff and petitioner and the opponent and then after that we'll close the hearing and the council will vote. Before we vote, though, I'll review the procedure there. So now the floor is open for council members' comments. Council Member DeCamp and then Council Member Blues and Beard and then as you all punch the buttons I'll call your name. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. You know, this is a real problem for me personally. I spent a long time in Historic Preservation. I worked to get Belcourt on the National Register and I'm proud of the work that I've done in Historic Preservation. I also was the one councilman who raised the money to bring Norrie Winter here so that he could outline our infill redevelopment and I have been for infill redevelopment, I think and I am for preservation of the bluegrass land. Somewhere there's a middle ground here. Somewhere, you know, I think some things have happened. I've been very impressed that the developers met with the neighborhoods five times. I don't, my own personal feeling, I don't think the density doesn't bother me. I mean, if you take off a floor, I don't think that's going to make much difference in the traffic. I think the traffic probably is the big problem. So, you know, what do we do about it? Bruce, could you, I want to ask you a specific question. I understand that it is set up that if you come out on Walton Avenue, you can turn right or left and if you come out on Midland Avenue, you can turn right or left and that's... Actually, you can't turn left on Midland. You can only turn right. You can only turn right, but you can turn right and left on Walton. That's correct. I'm a little surprised at that because I think if you come down on to Midland from Short Street, you can turn left on to Midland. If you come down from Lewis Avenue, you can turn left on Midland. I don't know why... Well, that was something that we encountered. Traffic engineering wouldn't approve that. Okay. Well, I know there are other left turns on to Midland Avenue. I just wanted to clear that up. Okay. So, we're talking about turning left and right on to Walton. Correct. Okay. And, I mean, I understand also that the traffic study, I was very involved with Belcourt on that traffic study. I do think that this will create some cut through as it does in my neighborhood on Montclair. We get cut through. We didn't get... I've been there 41 years. It's a lot different than when I moved in. That's a hard thing to deal with, but with the streets and the number of people and the number of cars in the city, everybody's looking for a cut through. How can we that take a neighborhood that is an historic district plus that's been chosen by Washington to be one of the Preserve America communities, only two in Lexington, and I think the only two in Kentucky, maybe, was Gratz Park and Belcourt. So, there's a great deal of significance here, and I've been really racking my brain, how can we cut down this traffic? And, all of a sudden, I came up with something that probably knocked you over. Why don't we close Boonesborough Avenue? You know, just don't have anybody go through Boonesborough Avenue. There are one, two, I count one, two, three, probably four exits out of Belcourt even if you close Boonesborough. And, that way, I think you would eliminate if there's any increase, there will be increase in traffic from this development, that you're not going to get the cut through Belcourt. Now, I'm sure some of the people in Belcourt, especially if they live on Boonesborough, would probably say, well, you know, this is a pain in the neck. But, you know, this is a case where we're all trying to step back and do something that's right. And, I think this development is right. But, at the same time, I'm sensitive to the sensitivity of Belcourt. And, you know, maybe this is something that we could put it into condition. And, I think that we have the ability as a council right here tonight, if we want to close the street, we could. Okay, Bruce. No, not tonight. You have to give public notice. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Well, a condition might be that we as a council would pursue through the proper process the closing of Boonesborough Avenue. And, that is something that I think would I see some nodding of heads back there. I'm not sure whether there are or not. But, you know, that's something that you would have plenty of input into if we put that in the condition that we would pursue it. And then there I'm afraid you can't speak. Mr. DeCamp. Yes. That's a novel condition, but I'm not sure it would be legal under the zoning ordinance for the zone change to stand or fall based on something that the council was going to pursue to some extent. I would be very concerned as to whether or not that's a valid use of conditional zoning. Well, I think what we could do is not put it on as a condition, but if we got enough petitions from Belcourt to close it, I would certainly pledge to you that I would carry it forward. That's all I can say. And if it cannot be a condition on making a vote tonight, I think that's about the best I could do. Because I do think that there, as in every neighborhood, historic, not historic, there's increasing traffic. Because there's just more cars on the street, there's more people, and we would like to keep it down to a dollar and I think that might be a way of doing it. And I can't make it official, certainly, tonight, as I've been told by the legal department, but it's something we should think about. Thank you, Council Member DeCamp. Council Member Blues? Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mr. Simpson, if I could pervade you from sitting down. I've got a couple of questions. Let me start with economic viability. I notice that that's not defined as you use that term. Now, Mr. Murphy made some attempt on that and he said there would be plenty of profit for the owner here. How is this economic viability defined and put into the calculations as you decide on numbers of units and so forth? Well, number one, whether or not you make a profit is an irrelevant consideration in any kind of zone change from a legal standpoint. Mr. Murphy alluded to the fact that Mr. Hanna could, his cost, development cost, be $150 square foot. I would suggest to you that might work in suburban Fayette County. It will never work in downtown Lexington. The cost of developing property downtown is many, many times greater. I mean, it's $240 a square foot on the average nowadays to build downtown. So, you know, the economic viability is really, in my judgment, it's relevant to the applicant. He has to get enough units to justify the risk and the expenditure of building this project. If it's going to be a low density project, he's simply not going to get enough return on what it's going to cost him. There isn't economies of scale of being able to recapture the return on investment if you build more units on the same property. But, you know, at the end of the day, that really is not even a legally permissible consideration in any kind of zone change. You want the fellow to be successful. We want to have density. We want to have high quality. And the Hannas have demonstrated an exemplary track record of doing just that. So they bring to the table a resume that is made to order for a project like this. But without the density, it simply will not work. I've got a question about the crane. Yes, sir. The view from the crane? Yes, sir. What's the view of the crane from the ground? The view of the crane from the ground? From the ground from the Boonesboro residence side. Does it loom? There was only three lots. I think there's 21 lots on Boonesboro, which didn't have... Every lot, when Bobby Clark and I went over there, there's probably an average of 12 to 15 feet in height of screening. It's all on the Hannas side of the property, and it goes about 15 feet deep on the Hannas side of the property. Except for those three houses, everybody else has really tall trees above 55 feet. You cannot see that crane. Bobby and I could not take a picture of it. There were three houses where you could. And as I mentioned, the average distance from every house on Boonesboro to the building is 267 feet. It's almost a football field in terms of the average distance. Now, it's true there are closer houses, and we've tried to mitigate as much as we can with the pine trees, but quite frankly, this is an urban environment, and I almost think that that's not even appropriate, but we wanted to be good neighbors, and so we committed to the 10 to 12 foot trees, 10 foot on center, and we pushed the building back between 30 percent over the minimum setback requirement up to almost 95 percent of the setback minimum. So we were well in excess of what your all's ordinance requires us to be in terms of putting the building back away. We can't go back any further than we are. And then we shaped it like a horseshoe so that most of the open space is facing towards Bell Court. It's not right up on the property line. Thank you. And I have a question for Mr. Clark. Council Member Blues, let me intervene for just a second just to explain, and Bobby, I think you can answer this while you're answering Council Member Blues' question. Bobby wrote me a note which said, can I respond to Bruce Simpson's comments in his closing that referenced my name in connection with the traffic study? I stood up before my attorney told me that that was probably not an appropriate way to handle that. My question is this. Yes, sir. When you were speaking earlier, you suggested that the council before making any final decision on this matter look into the compatibility of the project with the neighborhood in terms of the historic designation. I'm wondering why the Neighborhood Association didn't do that. I mean, if that's a concern, and as you were preparing for your discussions with the developer and the applicant and Planning Commission, us, and so on, why you didn't see that as pretty much your obligation? We raised this issue at the Planning Commission meeting when this came before the council, when I testified regarding our concerns regarding the National Historic Preservation Act. Also, I contacted Betty Kerr's office on Friday, and as a fact, yesterday I contacted the mayor's office, and because of this is a quasi-judicial role, I could not have any direct contact. But what I was posing to the mayor's office and to Betty Kerr's office is why doesn't the council ask her and her office to come to speak to this? You all pay their salaries, they have years of experience, they're very well respected before this board, but because it's not in her jurisdiction, this is in the planning side, no evidence has been entered into the record that addresses compatibility. So, as a lay person, as a citizen, I did the research on the internet, we later engaged council several weeks after the planning, or actually a couple months after the Planning Commission, and it wasn't until the last few days that we realized that there was, in the Downtown Master Plan, in the Comprehensive Plan, it states that a development should consider and make sure that it doesn't have an adverse impact on the historic property. So the question is, is it our role as a neighborhood to spend money on a consultant or a professional, or why can't we tap the expertise that we pay our tax dollars for to get them to advise you on what is or isn't a good idea as it relates to the historic impact? And I'd like to, if I may, is to respond briefly to Mr. Simpson closing. He invoked my name and characterizations, and I just wanted to clarify something there. There may have been a misunderstanding, but it was my recollection at one of the neighborhood meetings that we had with Bruce and the Hannas that we were advised at that time that it was right only out and in on both elements, and if I made a mistake, I apologize for that, but that was our understanding. In addition, Bruce, I believe, took some liberties in describing the traffic plan, the traffic study that the UK professors had presented to you, and says there's absolutely no traffic problem or cut-through problem in there. Yes, that's what the consultant had written, but that was a very disputed conclusion that was made by the consultant. We believe that there were, in fact, problems, but the study was two hours, and studying the peak flow traffic two hours one day in the summer, and two hours one day a few weeks later. We questioned the validity of the data that was being presented, that all of a sudden there weren't this problem, when in fact we as neighbors see that happening every day. And with this proposed development, even with the left out of Walton, you're still going to see those that want to go downtown, the other can go out of Walton and go to Winchester Road, take a right, hit another light, and then come downtown. It's still going to be more convenient for them. The other thing that Mr. Simpson did not share is that their own traffic study showed there would be a 60 to 90 second time savings by cutting through Boonesboro and going through Belcourt versus waiting at the Walton light. So what we're suggesting is that you delay this decision, or at least delay the decision tonight for one week. I think we're within the 90-day rule of the Planning Commission. That would give the Council a chance to ask their Historic Properties Division what they think about this development and then come back here next Thursday or next Tuesday or whatever that date is and say, we've heard about it, we considered it, but we decided yay or nay that that was relevant. But right now, you don't have any testimony in the record about what the possible adverse impact is to our historic neighborhood. Thank you very much. But we are faced with making a decision tonight. Legal can determine whether or not you have the power to delay it one week, which would give you the chance to ask your Historic Properties for an opinion and still stay within the 90-day rule that requires the Council must decide within 90 days of the Planning Commission. And it's my understanding that that was the 25th. We were going to have that hearing on the 25th, but Mr. Simpson was concerned that if it went past midnight, there would be another legal question about that. And we mutually agreed to this date. I didn't know until yesterday when I contacted the Mayor's office and contacted Betty Kerr, there was no way for you all to get some information about the historic impact. Is there a way for the Council, if they so desired, to postpone the actual vote until next week? Is the Council asking me? I am not asking you. I was speaking with Governor Gordon. What was the question again? That's not my question. No. My question, Mr. Vice Mayor, was whether or not the Council could ask for a one-week delay in order to get Historic Property input into this decision. That's not on our... That's not, at this moment, what we're considering. Right now, we're asking the Council's offering questions to the petitioner and the opposition. Any other questions for Council Member Beard? No, thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, sir. Council Member Beard. Excuse me, sir. I said Beard. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Bruce? Not that this is totally relevant to necessarily anything, but is the retail condo, or is it going to be leased space? Leased or sold? Either or. Either or. Okay. And then I got a question for Ed Gardner, if I might, as soon as he gets through caucusing. Ed? It's me, Ed. Here. It's not even that late, is it? It's okay. The question of turning right or left onto Midland, can we change that in the face of the Traffic Engineering's recommendations? Is that a recommendation, or is that something we can do? To give you a complete honest answer, I would have to check our ordinances and check some authorities as to whether or not this would be the type of situation where the Council would have that authority. Our ordinances generally provide that the Traffic Engineer has the authority in the area of traffic situations. However, you all do occasionally consider and recommend multi-way stops and those kind of things. But not every traffic decision comes to you all. So I'm not trying to avoid your question. I don't honestly know without having an opportunity to review the authorities on it that you all would for sure have the authority to overrule that or not. I apologize. It's the best I can do without Well, I obviously don't know the answer either, and that's fine. I just in the suburban areas we deal with highly traveled streets that people have to deal with a stop sign with left and right hand turns, and they seem to be able to do that all right, and it wouldn't be much different on Midland. Thank you. That's all I have. I think Mr. Salih might have something to add. Also, to address your question, Mr. Beard, I think in some rare circumstances the Planning Commission, through reviewing the final development plan, has asked Traffic Engineering to consider assigning some turning movements as prohibited. Hard to know in this case, but that is a rare occurrence, but it has happened a time or two. In other words, the jury could still be out. Yes, sir. Thank you. Council Member Stevens. Mr. Salih, when you're through with your conversation, would you repeat that again please? I'm not sure I got it. My question related to that, too. We frequently and almost always disregard the warrants when the Traffic Engineer is telling us about this or that, and I don't know why this would be any different, but what did you say? I didn't quite understand it. My recollection is a time or two the Planning Commission, through approving different development plans, has requested Traffic Engineering to prohibit some turning movements or recommend that they sign no left turn, no right turn, if design considerations can't do that. For instance, if a right-in, right-out island would not do that, there had been a time or two where those types of things have been recommended through the Commission's review of development plans. It just seems that it's part of the ordinance that they're proposing, and if we want to amend it, we can. That was my question. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Stephens. Council Member Blevins and then Council Member James. Thank you, Vice Mayor. As I see this, we've got it down to two things, the height of the buildings and the traffic issues. I want to take those in order. Mr. Barrett, could I have you come to the microphone in your landscape architect capacity, please? What would you say is the height of a mature, deciduous tree? Anywhere from 12 feet to 85 feet. Depending on the species. Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. 60 to 85 feet for a truly full-grown tree. Potentially, yes. The reason I'm asking is I'm trying to get an idea of how big 65 feet is, so it's about the height of a mature, deciduous tree. Would you say that's a fair assessment? It's fair, yes. Thank you. That's all I needed. I'm not an architect, and I rely heavily on the staff notes and the chair of the Planning Commission, in fact, is an architect, so I have to rely on them to understand what's reasonable in terms of transition from a housing development to something else. As far as I can understand, it seems to me what we're being told is that this is an allowable transition, a 65 foot transition. I don't see that we're going to come to good terms here, no matter what we do, because anything greater than zero becomes an encroachment. If it's one story, it looks bad. If it's two, it's worse. Three, it's worse. Four, it's worse. Five, it's worse. It really doesn't matter. So, I'm not sure what to do with that other than follow the direction of the architects and the planning folks who know a lot more about this than I do. That's where I'm going to come out there. On the traffic issue, I want to sort of reason out how I'm looking at this. The first one is, I don't see the traffic issue as within the Belcourt neighborhood as the problem. The traffic study that was done, I realize, may have been flawed, but I think it does give us an indication that cut-throughs aren't as great a problem as perhaps the neighborhood thought. In fact, the speeding problem may be due to some of the people sitting in this very room. So, I don't see the traffic problem within it. I do, however, see the traffic problem around and near the neighborhood. And I see this same problem everywhere we're going to do infill, and I don't know how to solve it. You go from huge tobacco warehouses on South Broadway, for example, and suddenly put big developments there, it can only cause problems. There's just no doubt. You go from a huge building that had no cars to a bunch of cars. That's common sense. So, I'm not sure what to do there, except that I'm now viewing this a little bit differently. I think we have to gamble, and this is the gamble. In the downtown situation, there is a movement in our country towards walking, riding bikes, and now with all the global warming and issues like that, smaller cars. So, I think we have to, as a community, decide that we're going to gamble that people are actually going to do that. They're going to get smaller cars, and they're going to bike and walk like we think they're going to do it. If I'm wrong, then we've gambled, as a community, not just in this development, but every other infill development we do, especially the tall ones that have more density. If I gamble wrong, however, in this case, I still have two options as I see it. Traffic engineering is tasked with making sure that traffic flows in our community. If we put this development in, we're all wrong. I'm wrong. I'll just blame it on myself. If I'm wrong, and there's more cars, and traffic really does become an issue, there's two options we still have. We can come back and put in a light at Midland. It's still available to us. It doesn't go away just because we approve or disapprove this tonight. Secondly, we have the option of closing Bootsboro. I think that's a great idea, Mr. DeCant. We have that option available to us as well. I would say this, though, as a caution to my council members. Legislating traffic engineering via zoning law is probably not the best way to go about it. We either vote this up or down based on what you think, and then let traffic engineering do their jobs appropriately because who knows what will occur later on after this is long done and we have other developments around in the neighborhood and other areas. They may force other traffic decisions and I'd hate to have it in the zoning law to force us to do it one way. Thanks. That's all I had. Thank you, Council Member Blevins. Council Member James. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I guess I just have a couple of comments. One of my concerns is the traffic as well. I travel this area quite frequently. My son attends Ashley Elementary and I come from 3rd Street, Winchester Road and turn on Walton. I'm very concerned about the traffic in that area I don't know, and maybe Bill Salih maybe you can answer this, but is there a turning lane, an identified turning lane if one were to choose to turn left out of Ellerslie onto Walton to get to Winchester Road to go east or to go west, is there a middle lane that's designated? Leaving the site to turn left on Walton? Yes. Thank you. The existing drive aisle is dimensioned at almost 28 feet. That's probably not three lanes. That's probably just shy of being wide enough for three lanes. Thinking two out, one in. That's concerning to me because there is a backup of traffic in that area if you frequent that Walton Avenue and I agree with Council Member Blevins that I think it's the area around the Bell Court area, not necessarily within that neighborhood and I have worked extensively with Mr. Clark through the Neighborhood Development Bond Fund Committee to try to come to consensus for some traffic calming in that area and the neighborhood has not been able to come to any agreement I think in maybe a couple of years for some traffic calming so I'm concerned about the traffic. However, I did like the speaker who came forward that talked about walkability. I do think that that is one of the wonderful things about living in the downtown area is that we do have things that you can walk to. I would want to make sure that there are sidewalks along Midland Avenue, Walton Avenue if possible and bike lanes and sidewalks along 3rd Street, Winchester Road. I would support that 100%. But the traffic is concerning to me but I think we need to see what happens with it. I think we need to see if there's an influx and I'll try not to be an 11th hour person. I'm trying to think proactively but in this case I'm favorable towards the walkability and the bike friendliness and would like to aim more towards that so I appreciate everyone that came to speak today in regards to this and keep coming to talk about your concerns about your neighborhood and thank you very much. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Council Member James. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mr. Sally, we've talked about having just a right turn on to Midland. Is there room that we could do, as Council Member James asked, about doing three lanes there and a center lane and a right turn and a left turn? Or a left turn, I guess, and a right turn and an inner? Of course, this is a preliminary development plan. It would have to have a final. The current access there is shown at about 45 feet. It is shown as a median with 13 foot drive lanes on either side of the median so there would need to be a reconfiguration to get more than probably two or three lanes there. There still would be if they did a reconfigure that we could put three lanes there? Narrowing the median, pushing the sidewalks closer to the curbing. Yes, I think the room in that sliver is probably there for three lanes. Because I think that's a big issue for the neighbors is being able to make that turn and for traffic. And I think that would be a big issue I think this Council needs to address here is when we look at this issue. Mr. Simpson, you talked about the $62,000 you had for the right turn only. Had you all addressed this? Or was that traffic engineering told you that you couldn't do this? Traffic engineering preferred right in and right out. The payment by the Hannas of the $62,000 was to enhance the appeal of their development. I have another access also in deference to Belcourt. But really, you know, this is a preliminary when you file a zone change from the development plan standpoint it's a conceptual kind of plan. If you get the zoning approved then you go back to the Planning Commission and the real need of these kinds of discussions is worked out with the Planning Commission and the Division of Engineering about what you can do. It's premature at this point to get into it because you don't know if you're going to get the zoning approved. You spend a lot of time working with the staff, working with the Transportation Division of Engineering on what you can do in terms of ingress and egress onto Midland. This will be taken up in a lot of detail when we go back to the Planning Commission. Thank you. I know this is a big issue that I think the neighbors are concerned about. Mr. Sadley, I know he says this is premature but is this something that we can put a condition on when it goes back to the Planning Commission? Do you mean a conditional zoning restriction? Well, that we put in the three lanes to have a left turn and a right turn because I think that's a big issue for this community. You're limited through conditional zoning to use and buffering and it looks like the only possibility were if that were construed as a use since this doesn't involve landscaping. Mr. Ellinger, if I may, Council Member Blevins, I think made a point that I think is most applicable here and that is if it turns out to be an issue when we get the project going these things are always modifiable and reviewable in terms of how they're engineered and this Council obviously has the power to bring this matter back before it if that turns out to be the case. I'm just saying at this point without studying in a whole lot more detail what you don't do until you get to zoning in terms of whether you can make a left hand turn, it's just simply premature but you still have the ability later if it turns out to be something you need to get involved in to do so if that's your pleasure. Absolutely. I understand but I know this would be a big burden that would be taken off of the residents in Belcourt because I know this is a big issue for them that they're afraid of traffic if you do take that right people are going to get tired of taking that right and they're going to start coming back in because they're going to cut through. If you can take a left and go downtown then I think they'll use that. So it might be premature but I think it's a big issue that the residents of Belcourt are concerned about. And I understand their concern but the facts are the cut through to the extent it exists at all in Belcourt is from the other direction. It's from Main Street going through Belcourt that way. The studies have demonstrated there's no cut through from Walton. But again it's something that's reviewable, modifiable and we're perfectly willing to be transparent with Belcourt as we've been throughout this whole prospect in terms of sharing our studies, sharing our intentions, working with the Division of Engineering, working with Belcourt to make sure this thing functions for the benefit of everybody. We want to be good neighbors. We want to have a successful development. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Any other council members have any questions, any comments? No? Okay. The protocol then at this point is to close the hearing and for the council to vote to either adopt the findings of fact or not. I'd like to make a motion. Council Member DeCamp. Yes, sir. I'd like to make a motion here and I would just like to perhaps to refer to some of the conversation. I think we've got to go through the development plan process. I think the developer has been very transparent with the neighborhood and will continue to be and there are opportunities to view such things as closing Boonesboro and in view of this I make a motion that we approve the findings of facts that were presented by the Planning Commission. Second. Motion and there is a second. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor, please vote. It's a voice vote. Clerk, would you please call the roll. Mr. McCord. Yes. Mr. Maloney. Yes. Dr. Stephens. Aye. Mr. Beard. Aye. Mr. Blevins. Aye. Mr. Blues. Aye. Ms. Crosby. Aye. Mr. DeCamp. Aye. Mr. Ellinger. Aye. Ms. Gordon. Aye. Mr. Gray. Yes. Ms. James. Aye. Mr. Lane. Yes. I need to read the ordinance now. So we need to vote again. Those findings have been adopted. Now you need to put a roll call vote on the ordinance, on a motion to approve the ordinance. I make the motion that we approve the ordinance as presented by the Planning Commission. Motion second to approve the ordinance as presented by the Planning Commission. All in favor, roll call rather. Clerk. Electronic stuff. Mr. McCord. Yes. Mr. Maloney. Yes. Dr. Stephens. Aye. Mr. Beard. Aye. Mr. Blevins. Aye. Mr. Blues. Yes. Ms. Crosby. Aye. Mr. DeCamp. Yes. Mr. Ellinger. Aye. Ms. Gordon. Aye. Mr. Gray. Aye. Ms. James. Aye. Ms. Lane. Aye. Are you able to vote? There being... Is there any further business? Are we okay? Madam Clerk. That's it. We just need a motion to adjourn. So the motion does pass. All in favor. There is a motion to adjourn and a second. All in favor, please say aye. We are adjourned. Thank you all so much. Thank you.