# Planning Commission Zoning Public Hearing - October 28, 2010 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Commission · October 28, 2010 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/1709 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/1709?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2010-10-28 - **Body**: Commission - **Last revised**: June 18, 2026 - **Length**: 25,949 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 Urban County Planning Commission convened on October 28, 2010, at 1:32 p.m. in the Council Chamber on the 2nd Floor of the LFUCG Government Center, located at 200 East Main Street, Lexington, Kentucky, with Carolyn Richardson presiding. The meeting addressed five agenda items spanning zoning map amendments, development plans, a zone change, and a neighborhood design overlay. Of the five items considered, four were approved and one — the James Waller Zoning Map Amendment & Bobbie E. & Sylvia Waller Property Zoning Development Plan — was postponed. Over the course of the meeting, the Commission took 5 votes, heard 3 public comments, and considered no formal presentations. ## Attendance **Present:** Patrick Brewer, Mike Cravens, Mike Owens, Derek Paulsen, Carolyn Richardson, Lynn Roche-Phillips, and William Wilson. **Absent:** Eunice Beatty, Carla Blanton, Marie Copeland, and Ed Holmes. **Late:** Lynn Roche-Phillips arrived after the meeting had begun. ## Votes and Decisions The Commission took action on five items during the October 28, 2010 meeting. - **MAR 2010-9 – James Waller Zoning Map Amendment & Bobbie E. & Sylvia Waller Property Zoning Development Plan** [timestamp: 0:01]: The Commission voted to postpone this item. The motion was made by Mike Cravens and seconded by William Wilson. The voice vote passed 6–0, with Patrick Brewer, Mike Cravens, Mike Owens, Derek Paulsen, Carolyn Richardson, and William Wilson all voting in favor. - **DP 2010-54 – Chancellor Subdivision (The Springs) Development Plan** [timestamp: 0:53]: The Commission approved this development plan on a roll call vote. The motion was made by Mr. Owens and seconded by Mr. Wilson. Approval was granted subject to 19 conditions and a requirement for a traffic study for future parcels. - **MAR 2010-7 – LARE Properties, LLC Zone Change (R1C to P1)** [timestamp: 1:07]: The Commission approved the zone change for LARE Properties, LLC on a roll call vote. The motion was made by Patrick Brewer and seconded by Mike Cravens. Approval was conditioned on certification of the development plan within two weeks. - **ZDP 2010-47 – South Grove Subdivision, Lot 1** [timestamp: 1:07]: The Commission approved this subdivision plan on a roll call vote. The motion was made by Patrick Brewer and seconded by Mike Cravens. No conditions were attached to the approval. - **MAR 2010-10 – Montclair Neighborhood Design Character Overlay** [timestamp: 3:16]: The Commission approved the Montclair Neighborhood Design Character Overlay on a roll call vote. The motion was made by Ms. Phillips and seconded by Mr. Brewer. Approval was granted with staff alternative design standards. ## Public Comment Three members of the public addressed the Commission during the public comment period, all raising concerns related to a proposed Springs development and its potential impacts on the surrounding neighborhood. - **Dr. Patricia Dillon** [timestamp: 25:30] spoke in opposition to the Springs development, expressing concerns about increased traffic and noise that she feared would negatively affect the neighborhood's quality of life. - **Michael Galbraith** [timestamp: 30:30] voiced support for a petition to block access to Mitchell Avenue from the Springs development. Like Dr. Dillon, Mr. Galbraith cited traffic impacts on the neighborhood as a primary concern. - **Mary Margaret Heaton** [timestamp: 34:34] spoke to the preservation of Mitchell Avenue, sharing her family's long history in the neighborhood and urging the Commission to carefully consider the broader community impacts of the proposed development. All three speakers were unified in their concern about how the Springs development would affect the character and livability of the surrounding area, with traffic emerging as a central theme across multiple comments. ## Appointments The Commission took action on several reappointments to the Floodplain Appeals Committee during the meeting. The following individuals were reappointed to serve on the committee: - **Fred Eastridge** was reappointed to the Floodplain Appeals Committee. - **Bill Hodges** was reappointed to the Floodplain Appeals Committee. - **Doug Miner** was reappointed to the Floodplain Appeals Committee. All three reappointments were to the same body, the Floodplain Appeals Committee, indicating a continuity of membership on that committee. No new appointments or removals were recorded during this portion of the meeting. ## Contested Items - **Montclair Neighborhood Design Character Overlay:** Some residents raised concerns about the proposed design standards under this overlay, taking issue with what they described as overly restrictive requirements, particularly those relating to building materials and roof pitches. The opposition came from community members who participated in the discussion. The extracted record does not specify the names of individual speakers, the positions taken by commissioners in response, or the final outcome of this item as recorded in the meeting data. ## James Waller Zoning Map Amendment & Bobbie E. & Sylvia Waller Property Zoning De [timestamp: 01:01] The Commission took up Agenda Item 1, a petition for a zoning map amendment concerning properties on North Limestone. The proposal sought to rezone the parcels from Single Family Residential to Wholesale and Warehouse Business designation, along with an associated zoning development plan for the Bobbie E. & Sylvia Waller property. - **Key Speaker:** Bruce Simpson presented on this agenda item. - **Staff Recommendation:** Staff recommended **disapproval** of the requested zone map amendment. - **Outcome:** The item was **postponed**. The petition, brought in connection with the James Waller zoning map amendment and the Bobbie E. & Sylvia Waller property, represented a significant proposed change in land use classification for the affected North Limestone properties. The shift from Single Family Residential to Wholesale and Warehouse Business would have represented a substantial departure from the existing residential character of the zoning designation. Staff's recommendation of disapproval indicates concerns were identified with the proposal, though the item did not advance to a final vote at this meeting, as the Commission opted to postpone action. ## Chancellor Subdivision (The Springs) Development Plan [timestamp: 53:16] The Commission reviewed a development plan for the Chancellor Subdivision, also known as The Springs, under Agenda Item 2. The item was brought forward as an ordinance for Commission consideration. The development plan centered on a proposed pharmacy featuring a drive-through and associated parking spaces. Tony Barrett was the key speaker during this agenda item, presenting or addressing the details of the plan before the Commission. **Key issues discussed:** - The proposed pharmacy development, including its drive-through configuration - The number and layout of parking spaces associated with the facility - **Traffic and access concerns** were raised during the discussion, reflecting Commissioner interest in how the development would interact with surrounding roadways and entry/exit points for the site The specific nature of the traffic and access concerns — such as the volume of vehicles expected to use the drive-through, the adequacy of ingress and egress points, or potential impacts on adjacent streets — were noted as part of the deliberation. Following the discussion, the Commission voted to **approve** the development plan. ## LARE Properties, LLC Zone Change [timestamp: 1:07:11] The Commission considered Agenda Item 3, an ordinance request from LARE Properties, LLC for a zone change affecting properties on Harrodsburg Road. The proposed change would rezone the parcels from R1C (single-family residential) to P1 (professional office), with the intended use being a medical office building. Traci Wade was the key speaker on this item, presenting the case for the zone change to the Commission. The Commission approved the zone change request. ## South Grove Subdivision, Lot 1 [timestamp: 1:07:41] The Commission reviewed a preliminary development plan for South Grove Subdivision, Lot 1 as Agenda Item 4. Tom Martin was a key speaker during the discussion of this item. The presentation addressed two primary issues associated with the proposed development: floodplain considerations and access points for the subdivision. These topics formed the basis of the Commission's review of the preliminary development plan. The Commission ultimately approved the preliminary development plan for South Grove Subdivision, Lot 1. ## Montclair Neighborhood Design Character Overlay [timestamp: 3:16:36] The Commission took up Agenda Item 5, an ordinance concerning the Montclair Neighborhood Design Character Overlay. The item centered on the implementation of a neighborhood design overlay intended to preserve the character of the Montclair neighborhood. Stan Harvey was the key speaker on this item. The discussion focused on establishing the overlay as a tool to maintain the existing design character of the Montclair area. The Commission approved the ordinance. *Note: The available source material for this agenda item is limited. For a full account of the presentation details, specific concerns raised, and the complete debate, viewers are encouraged to consult the meeting video beginning at timestamp 3:16:36.* --- ## Decisions - **MAR 2010-9** — postponed (6-0): Postponement of James Waller Zoning Map Amendment & Bobbie E. & Sylvia Waller Property Zoning Development Plan - **DP 2010-54** — passed (0-0): Approval of Chancellor Subdivision (The Springs) Development Plan - **MAR 2010-7** — passed (0-0): Approval of LARE Properties, LLC zone change from R1C to P1 - **ZDP 2010-47** — passed (0-0): Approval of South Grove Subdivision, Lot 1 - **MAR 2010-10** — passed (0-0): Approval of Montclair Neighborhood Design Character Overlay --- ## Full transcript based upon some recently discovered detention and slash engineering issues and we're still working on those which we believe upon completion would be of benefit to the project if approved and uh... accordingly we would ask for a postponement. We did notify uh... the neighborhood president of our intention to do this. Thank you very much. Mr. Sally, what is the date for our November meeting? Madam Chair, due to the Thanksgiving holiday, your meeting in November for zoning items is on the 18th. It's the third Thursday in November. Are there any objections from anyone in the audience regarding postponement? If not, the Chair will entertain a motion. Madam Chairman, move for postponement of MAR 2010-9 till 18th of November. Do I hear a second? Motion's made and seconded. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. We will move on to the land of subdivision items, development plans. Is the staff ready? Madam Chair, we'll set up and be ready to begin in just a moment. Thank you. Madam Chairman, members of the Planning Commission, the first item on your agenda is on page one under development plans. It is DP 2010-54, Chancellor's Subdivision, also known as the Springs, as amended by the Chair. The plan that you see before you today is a final development plan and a preliminary development plan as well. The property in question, again, is the old Springs Motel location located out on Herdsburg Road and the Lane-Allen intersection. At this location, Mitchell Drive is behind the property here and leads to Clay's Mill. Again, Lane-Allen leading to Clay's Mill. Herdsburg, Lane-Allen, Turfland Mall is across the street in this area. The property is currently vacant. The plan that you see before you today proposes the development of a pharmacy at this location with a drive-thru. The building is 13,500 square feet. They're proposing 70 parking spaces associated with development. 33 is the number required. The access that they are proposing is a full access point at this location on the property. Again, this will be a full access point. It is currently an existing access on the property. It will allow left-turn movement because the median is open in this location. They are requesting a write-in and write-out only in this location. This, you can see, leads immediately into the parcel that is to be developed. They are also requesting a write-in, write-out on to Lane-Allen Road. Here, you can see an access point proposed for Mitchell Avenue as well. On the area of the preliminary development of the pharmacy, on the area of the preliminary development plan, this, again, preliminary. This is future proposed development. You can see they're proposing some various buildings and parking and proposing a future access point in this location to Mitchell as well. We met with the applicant prior to filing the plan and subsequently on several occasions after that to discuss various issues that existed on the plan. On your agenda, you will see that initially this plan was recommended for postponement by your subdivision committee. That was, in fact, the recommendation of the staff and the technical committee at that time. As I stated, subsequently we met with the applicant on several occasions and they submitted two revisions, the latest revision we received on October 22nd. And based on that revision, the staff is now recommending approval of this plan. They have met many of the conditions that we were concerned with. We have, of course, standard conditions on the plan, the urban county engineer, traffic engineer, building inspection, addressing an urban forester, department of environmental quality, bike and pedestrian planner, division of fire and waste management. Very, very typical sign-offs on a final development plan. There were several cleanup conditions. Excuse me, Tom. You're looking at a brown sheet. Is there a revised sheet? It's a brown sheet. I do not seem to have one. We distributed them prior to the meeting. Maybe I'll put it on the stack of stuff. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm sorry. We thought everyone had one prior to the meeting. I would draw your attention to item 12 on the handout where it says denote Kentucky Department of Transportation approval of the proposed access to Harrodsburg Road. That is a sign-off condition. Harrodsburg Road is controlled by the State of Kentucky. They will need to approve both this proposed full access and they will need to approve the right in and right out as well. Prior to certification of this plan, we will need to see that sign-off from them as well. We've asked them to show proposed and existing utility usements. This particular situation also leads to a condition that you see on your plan, which is in this area is the old property line. Here's the original piece of property that was zoned B3. This is the area that was subject to a development plan originally. This area, although zoned, was never subject to any development plan controls. This is the property line as it currently exists. They are proposing to extend the parcel to this shaded area that you can see. Again, the access points, all that is subject to the final development plan. They are going to have to file a consolidation plat to join these parcels together. They are also going to have to resolve, and you'll see that is a condition of approval, utility easement that runs through the building. They may do that by encroachment. They may do that with a minor plat, releasing the easement, but there is a process involved in releasing that easement and removing that conflict. This particular property line also brings us to a condition on your handout. When this area was redeveloped and rezoned as B3, it was to add suites for the existing motel. At that time, additional zoning restrictions were placed on the property. These have been enumerated on the plan. Our requirement is that they extend those restrictions over the rest of parcel A. Those restrictions address accessory uses, adult uses, signage, residential lighting, and neon signage as well. Those things are restricted off this property. When they extend this plan, we are placing the condition that those restrictions apply to the entire parcel. In addition to that, as I stated, B, C, and D, these three remaining parcels on the preliminary plan, we are also asking them to denote on this plan that those very same issues, lighting and signage, be addressed at the time that a final development plan should be submitted for these properties. We think that's appropriate in relationship to the residential properties that adjoin this property, both to the west and the south-southeast. In addition, staff has some concerns about parking along this access point. One reason you see a preliminary before you today in conjunction with this final is that they wanted this access point. Therefore, staff requested that they include the entire plan so we could see how this intended to function. This is, in effect, a service road, and it will be in staff's opinion function very similar to one. Normally, we discourage parking on a service road, but we would like to have a chance to evaluate that at the time of a final development plan for B so we can see whether or not the parking is a good idea or perhaps not a good idea for the way that this is intended to function. There were a couple other issues. I better return to the plan. I can illustrate these better. Again, we've talked about access, obviously, right in and right out. One concern on the initial plan was the right in and right out that was presented on the initial plan came straight through to Mitchell, and this gave us a lot of concern about the prospect of cut through on this property in order to avoid the intersection. Subsequently, they submitted a plan that changed this. You can see it now is offset. We think that is a big improvement, and that will help prevent as much cut through because of the calming effect that will have. However, we're concerned that may not be adequate, and we'd like for them to specify additional traffic calming in this area, and there are several solutions that would satisfy and work to help calm this movement this way. The other thing, a condition that this change helped was we were concerned about the function of the drive-through on the initial plan. We were concerned, again, with traffic coming straight through, traffic coming this way, traffic potentially trying to circulate. You had people that would be driving along and coming through the drive-through. We saw a lot of conflict, and we said, let's see if we can't make that better. We met with them, along with traffic engineering, the applicant, planning. We discussed these issues, and you see before you a much better circulation pattern so that this conflict, we believe, has been removed. These access issues, the access points, again, were of great concern to staff, to traffic. We had a lot of conversations with the applicant. I do have something I need to distribute. We received a petition from the Mitchell neighborhood residents, which you can pass among you. They have expressed a concern, which they're going to share with you today, about the access to Mitchell. They have included a diagram of what they would like to see, which is no access to Mitchell. You can see the plan that you see before you that planning is recommending for approval does include that access to Mitchell. We believe that that's appropriate in this case, both for the functioning of the street system and the internal functioning of the site. With that, if you have any questions, I'll be happy to try to answer them. Do any of the Commission members have questions for Mr. Martin? Mr. Krivets? Are any of those access points on Mitchell existing now? Yes, sir. They've been slightly moved in their location. The location here is existing, although it's been slightly moved. It's actually down here, closer to the residential area. This access point does not actually exist currently into the property. There has been historically a lot of parking and that sort of thing in this area. This point does exist, and again, this point does exist. Mr. Owens? You mentioned the service road. Specifically, you mentioned the parking, proposed parking on the service road. Yes, sir. If this goes forward, will that proposed parking be built or not at this time? It will not be. It is not a subject of the final development plan and cannot be constructed or permitted. They would need a final development plan to bring that parking forward, and you would have to review that parking. Again, staff at that time would like to review and see if that's appropriate. Okay. Just historically, there's a vacant lot on the opposite side of Mitchell. Do you have any information on that? There is. The Springs Motel entity, whoever that ownership is, has a lot across the street that is zoned R4. Thank you. Are there other questions from Commissioners? No. Thank you, Mr. Martin. Thank you. Commissioner? Good afternoon, Chair, members of the Planning Commission. I'm Tony Barrett here on behalf of Parkway Developers, the Springs Inn and Zaremba Group, the preferred developer of the CVS store. I'd like to thank staff for the meetings and the phone calls and the emails over the past month or six weeks that we've been trying to come to terms with how the layout of the CVS store would best suit. We have come a long way since our initial filing. We've made a lot of revisions to the plan. We're utilizing the existing entrances off of Harrisburg Road and modifying one of those from a full entrance, the one closest to Lane Allen Road, to a right-in, right-out to help mitigate some of the turning movements at that location. We've added a right-in, right-out on Lane Allen Road and have addressed some concerns that planning and traffic engineering had with regard to that and are probably improving that intersection with a median on Lane Allen Road. The Mitchell Avenue access points are stated. We've offset it from where we initially had it to further discourage cut-through traffic and to slow that movement down by not having a straight line from Harrisburg Road to Mitchell Avenue, which was our original proposal and desired proposal. And in hearing the staff's continued concern with that, we're agreeable to their condition 26, which makes reference to a traffic calming device on the CVS property at that 30-foot drive that parallels the drive-through lane to further slow down potential or discourage potential cut-through traffic. At this point, I'm envisioning a raised crosswalk. That would be kind of an up-and-over deal to do a couple of things. It slows the traffic down as they're coming through there, although I anticipate that to be a rather slow area because we've got, that's our division between our drive-through lane and our pass-through lanes as well. But that just accentuates that crossing of the pedestrian system internal to the Springs development. On Mitchell Avenue, we currently have three access points. We're proposing to reduce that to two. And further along Mitchell Avenue, there's over time of the development of the Springs property. Springs was built many, many years ago prior to probably a lot of review and oversight that we have today. And regulations with regards to parking relative to street configurations. And you have a situation where the parking lot kind of runs into the street in a lot of cases, and it's a little bit unsure as to where the parking lot begins, where the street ends, and vice versa. And you've got parking spaces that back out onto Mitchell Avenue, and we're cleaning all that up to provide eventually once the full property develops to curb and gutter the full extent of Mitchell Avenue on the property, providing sidewalks in that location. So we're doing quite a bit of improvement to the property as it fronts on Mitchell Avenue. But all in all, we appreciate the staff's continuing cooperation with us, and we're in agreement with the final document that has been presented today and would ask for your approval. If there's any questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them. Any of the Commission members have questions? Mr. Owens. Thanks, Tony. Thank you, Madam Chairperson. The traffic calming on your development, I can understand that. Have you looked at anything? I know Mitchell Avenue is not necessarily your responsibility itself, but have you looked at anything with the city, with the staff, with traffic engineering as far as traffic calming on Mitchell Avenue itself? Well, when we met with the neighbors months ago, that was a topic of discussion. I know the councilman for their district was looking into that as well, and I tried to reach traffic engineering office this morning, albeit a little late, but I did make an effort to hear if they had made any action to that regard. There are a lot of options for traffic calming in kind of the toolbox of planning for that. There's a full process that has been in place to initiate a traffic calming or street improvements that involves neighborhood meetings specific to that concern, a polling of the affected neighbors, and they have to have a certain percentage of the neighborhood or the affected neighborhood in agreement with doing that, and then it can be implemented with funding as presented. In my conversation with Councilman Martin, he identified that there was no question that there was a need for traffic calming and there was no funding at this point from the city to do that, although he felt if in fact the neighbor was in support of that through that process where it's determined that the required percent are in favor of some kind of traffic calming measure, he would do his best to input that into the budget that's submitted in January and would be available to him. In a conversation with one of the members or one of the neighbors, he had suggested a crosswalk across Mitchell Avenue at Lane Allen Road. I think that's a good, easy fix at that location and just kind of alerting that slow down. There's pedestrian traffic in the area, so I think that is an easy measure that could be done. Pretty much right away it probably ought to be there today. Again, a lot of the traffic issues on Mitchell are over and above the Springs cause. It was stated at our neighborhood meeting that by one of the neighbors that they always felt that the cut-through traffic on Mitchell Avenue was generated by the Springs, but their comment was we've noticed an increase in cut-through traffic now that the Springs has been demolished, and a lot of that I think is you can now see Mitchell Avenue from Harrisburg Road and you are visually aware that there's a road there and you can make that movement, whereas in the past maybe you didn't realize it or for whatever reason just that visual discouragement by having the blocking of your view by the Springs, and as CVS and the rest of the Springs property develops, maybe that will kind of return back to normal and that visual enhancement will be brought to an end and might actually reduce the numbers again. So, but it's a, it's a, obviously it's a known cut-through shortcut or whatever reason the people in the neighborhood are finding it with or without the CVS or even the Springs Motel in operation. So, but that's a long way around to answering your question or maybe not answering your question, but that's the best I can do. Are there other questions? Not? Thank you. Thank you. Are there those in the audience who would like to speak to this, if you could raise your hand? Okay. Are those, are there those who are for this petition that would like to speak at this time in favor of? Are there those who are opposed to this petition? Or in opposition to the petition? If you'd come up one at a time, you have three minutes. State your name and your address, please. Good afternoon. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the Planning Commission for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today. I'm Dr. Patricia Dillon. I've lived at 644 Mitchell Avenue for 14 years. I understand that you have just received our petition, and so I'll, I'd like to go over some of the points that are in it and why we feel so strongly about presenting a petition. We want two things. We want to protect our residential street from commercial service and customer traffic by eliminating access from the Springs property and Mitchell Avenue. We want to be shielded from view, noise, and light with fencing and enhanced landscaping that will maintain the residential character of our street. That petition is signed by 62 residents of the Mitchell Avenue neighborhood, and we ask for your support to grant our petition. Let me tell you a little bit about our neighborhood. Mitchell Avenue is a stable neighborhood comprised mostly of owner-occupied homes. There's not a lot of turnover. We have several people on the street who have lived there for over 50 years. Some of the residents have even grown up on Mitchell Avenue, and now they're raising their children there. We enjoy being part of a friendly community that includes retirees, young families, and single people, and we take pride in our homes and have invested our time, energy, and money to maintain and beautify those properties. I moved to Mitchell Avenue because it's the quality of life that I was looking for. But the current plans for redevelopment of the Springs property threaten to destroy the peace and stability of the Mitchell Avenue neighborhood. We're particularly concerned about 24-hour noise, pollution, and traffic disturbance from a combination of now four or more 24-hour commercial retail businesses bringing intensive automobile and delivery truck traffic and having minimal landscaping to protect the nature of our street. Heavy traffic congestion from the proposed office building. The two entrances onto Mitchell Avenue, the two access points, leave us wide open to cut through traffic from Harrisburg and Clays Mill Road. Right now, there is no cut through traffic from Harrisburg Road because they can't reach our street, but after this development goes in, they will be easily able to reach our street and use it as a way to avoid two lights. High traffic volume and high speed that goes along with it will lead to increased likelihood of accidents on our narrow residential street. And I fear for the safety of the children and the other residents on Mitchell Avenue, and also CVS's customers are at risk from cut through traffic as it tears across their parking lot. This will have a definite negative impact on the value of our property. How can we find a market for our homes now that the street, which was residential, becomes a service entrance to a commercial development? Our quality of life will obviously be negatively impacted as well as we find ourselves living from now on, on a noisy, dirty, dangerous street. One of the eight overriding themes identified in the 2007 Comprehensive Plan is, and I quote, preserving, protecting and maintaining existing residential neighborhoods in a manner that ensures stability and the highest quality of life for all residents. The Springs redevelopment as proposed will accomplish the exact opposite for the Mitchell Avenue neighborhood. So we ask for your support to grant our petition to eliminate access to Mitchell Avenue, eliminate access to Mitchell Avenue, and to require the protection of enhanced landscaping. Now I'd like to cede the floor to my neighbor, Mike Galbraith. Thank you. It's fine. No, that's fine. Madam Chair, members of the Planning Commission and the Division of Planning, I'd also like to thank you for this opportunity to address the Chancellor's Subdivision Springs Motel redevelopment plans on behalf of the residents of Mitchell Avenue, and I would like to ask those who are attending to please raise your hands. My name is Michael Galbraith. My wife and I have lived at 587 Mitchell Avenue since 1992. Mitchell Avenue is my family's neighborhood, and we support it by being members of the Rose Mill Neighborhood Association and the Southland Association. As a concerned and committed resident, I want to also ask for you to support the petition we have before you to block Mitchell Avenue from traffic access at the Springs redevelopment site and to install enhanced landscaping to screen the site. Our residents feel strongly that the effects of traffic access to our street from the auto-intensive uses and 370 parking spaces represented by the CVS development and other permitted businesses at the site will be extremely adverse due to the increased traffic. Heavily increased traffic volumes mean speeding, noise, pollution, light, and diminished property values and neighborhood quality of life for us from now on. Why are our objections so strong? We hear stories daily about thousands of other Americans in hundreds of cities across the U.S. who are attempting to take back their streets and neighborhoods from auto-oriented development and return safe standards to the residential areas where they live. It's happening outside this building in downtown Lexington where streetscaping and traffic controls are returning sociability and livability to the city's core. Given this evidence, I would like to ask you to put yourselves in the position of me and my neighbors. Would you expect it was fair to be inconvenienced by the effects of Springs-generated traffic so they can enjoy increased convenience of access? Would you think it was fair to bear traffic impacts when the site is already served by two arterial streets whose function it is to provide traffic access to adjacent commercial properties? Would you not think it was an imposition and an undue hardship to place expectations of traffic access from our residential street to a commercial property when, as Pat pointed out, the city's comprehensive plan states as a goal, preserving, protecting, and maintaining existing residential neighborhoods in a manner that ensures stability and the highest quality of life for all residents? To expect or obligate the residents of Mitchell Avenue to serve the function of traffic access to the commercial Springs site is an impact that is counter to the comprehensive plan theme and something we cannot accept. With your support of our petition, we will not have to. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Galbraith. Are there others who would like to speak? Would you please come forward? Good afternoon. My name is Mary Margaret Heaton. This is my mother, Margaret Heaton. My mother and father bought and built their house in 1949. I refer to her as one of the last of the original settlers. When they bought there, Mitchell Avenue was a dead end. And after World War II, part of the greatest generation, they wanted a quiet place where they could raise me, their child, in relative safety. And I have to tell you, I had the type of childhood that they make television sitcoms out of. And it was a wonderful place. And I'd like to see it stay that way for the kids that are growing up there now. But the problem is, is that without any consultation of any of the other neighbors at that time, a dead end street, Mitchell Avenue, was open to regular traffic. Throughout the years, we always assumed that the traffic that kept increasing year by year was because of a successful motel called the Springs Motel. And after the Springs was torn down, the traffic did not abate. It did increase. But we realized it was not the Springs traffic. It had just become a cut through. And I would like for the consideration of my mother, of myself, of all of our neighbors who bought into a lifestyle to, you know, either make it a dead end street again or consider the things that Pat and Mike were telling you. It's a great place. And I invite you to come over and visit it. Thank you, Ms. Eaton. Are there others who wish to speak? If not, then we'll have the rebuttal and closing statements at this time. Petitioner? Thank you. I just wanted to, with regards to the history of the sidewalks, I just wanted to highlight in that the Springs was built in 1948. It was a Lexington icon. I knew of the Springs as a young kid growing up in Louisville because my parents would come when they went to UK. And I've always heard that was one of the few places in Lexington I was familiar with, even in Louisville. But I probably don't have to tell you, but just to kind of bring it into perspective, the Springs was a lodge of how many rooms? 221 rooms, dining facilities, conventions, meetings, and it was a 24-hour operation. There was a bar and a lounge there. Mitchell Avenue was the service road for the Springs Motel. Fifteen trucks per week utilized Mitchell Avenue, and that was the full service road for the Springs. We've made a lot of revisions to the plan to try to accommodate as best we can. The Mitchell Avenue access is a critical point for the success of the Springs development, in particular the CVS development. And we would just like to request that it be approved as shown. And if there's any further questions, I'd be happy to try to address those. Other questions? Mr. Owens. Tony, the neighbors on Mitchell, they're asking as far as landscape buffering on Mitchell. Can you briefly explain, you know, we're seeing green on the map. Can you kind of describe what buffering is going to be there? Typical buffering for our zoning ordinance will require a tree every 40 feet around the perimeter of the vehicular use area where it adjoins the street, a tree every 40 feet and a continuous edge. Internal landscaping will be, with regards, we have 5 percent interior landscape area, which are the islands. And we have to provide a tree for, the number is failing me, for every 250 feet of required interior landscape area. I presented a drawing to the staff that depicted our, how we were going to meet that. And I'm not going to go into that. This does not reflect the perimeter landscaping. But it shows the trees 40 feet on center, but it does not show the hedge. There would be a hedge around the perimeter. The orientation is kind of turned on us a little bit. This is Harrisburg Road, Lane Allen Road and Mitchell Avenue. You want to turn it around? So Harrisburg Road, Lane Allen Road and Mitchell Avenue. But you can see where the islands are, where we're providing the interior landscaping as required and then our perimeter trees to accommodate that. And then there would be a hedge around there as well. Are there other questions? Thank you. Are there, this time we'll hear from the objectors of five minutes. Is there anyone that would like to speak in rebuttal? Yes, sir. Mr. Galbraith. Thank you again, Madam Chair. If it is the case that the Planning Commission has not decided what the next action is to grant access to Mitchell Avenue based on the historical record, but consider traffic calming or traffic mitigation, we have a compromise solution supported by our residents in a follow-up survey. This traffic calming supported by respondents to our survey by over three to one measure says to dead end Mitchell Avenue at the boundary between the Springs Motel and the residential areas. I'm sorry. As I just pointed out, it would be to the bottom where the highlighted green area is. It could extend across the street because the property on the other side of the street is also owned by the owner of the Springs development site. This would give their site full access from Mitchell Avenue, but it would protect us and our residential properties from the effects of the heavily increased traffic that will be generated by the traffic intensive uses at this site. I have the results of the survey right here. So this is a compromise solution that we would be willing to consider that we think is a win-win for everybody. Their site access is maintained from Mitchell Avenue, but we are protected from the effects of heavily increased traffic. If you have any questions, I would be glad to respond. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Staff? Madam Chairman, members of the Commission, one housekeeping item I would like to bring up to you on your handout for conditions where the staff is recommending approval. You can see of course we marked through those conditions that we felt had been satisfied. I wanted to make sure you understood there were 19 existing conditions and not 27. That's to help you in formulating any motion you may make. I would also like to add that the Planning Commission has no authority to create a dead-end and close that right-of-way. However, certainly the residents of that neighborhood could petition the council for such an action to address that particular solution. But again, this body does not have that authority. In regards to traffic calming, there were some informal discussions with neighborhood representatives between planning and traffic engineering. Traffic engineers here, if you would like to talk to them about any potential traffic calming that they may consider, I would say that again, your staff has recommended approval of this plan and traffic calming on Mitchell was not deemed necessary based on this particular development that you see before you today. The development specifically of the CDC lot. Do you have any questions? Are there questions? Tom, one question with that last statement. You were saying it's deemed not necessary for this one lot at this time. Do you think when all four lots are off the corner, the old springs is developed out, they may be? I think certainly in the future with final development plans on the rest of that property, that traffic calming would be an appropriate aspect of the conversation. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Paulson. That was my question. Was there any kind of traffic impact study done to see what No, sir. It's not required for this nature of development. Some quick and dirty numbers were thrown around and looked at. Again, it was not deemed significant enough to require any kind of calming. Tom, my question relates to both of their questions. We're only talking about the blackened portion, section A, building A. Yes, ma'am. That is the subject of the final development plan. The rest is a preliminary development plan. We're not doing in two separate plots. The second part of the question is we may not require a traffic impact study for lot number A, but what about the combination of all four? It could be that if all three of those came in together after this one, you could certainly require that. Since it is a contiguous parcel under same ownership, doesn't it seem to evade the purpose of the traffic impact report to piecemeal individual parcels, individual buildings? Shouldn't we look at it holistically? You could require that as this body. Yes, ma'am. You do have the authority. If you wish additional information to determine an impact, I believe you could request that information. Are there other questions? Thank you, Mr. Martin. This time I will close the hearing and open up for further discussion among the Commission members. Ms. Phillips. Mr. Wilson. Thank you. I like Ms. Phillips' point about a traffic impact study. I would certainly like to go on record as recommending that as a full parcel. I mean, I would not like to think that we could parcel that out in pieces. I don't think that would do any of us any favors. So whatever happens, I certainly would be in favor of a full traffic impact study for that area. Are there other questions? Mr. Owens. We're all rushing the microphone here. I would definitely concur with that because from what it sounds like, it would probably take the fourth piece before we got to where we possibly would need a traffic impact study. I'm okay with A, but when the second part goes in, I think we do need to see that. I would also add the fact that had not thought of a dead-ending Mitchell Street as was proposed, and obviously that's not for us to decide here, but, you know, that might be a good alternative as well to pursue. Mr. Krivins. Yeah, Tom Martin. What triggers a traffic study? What size development? Generally a zone change, we have to determine a certain size. Off the top of my head, I'm not aware of the number. Mr. Salih probably has that memorized. The ordinance requires a traffic impact study for any zone change that generates 100 or more new vehicular trips in either the morning or afternoon peak hour. And I don't know, I hear some of them asking for an impact study, but how do we know what's going to be on the rest of that? We don't know that those buildings are going to be built there. We don't know if it's going to be another motel. We don't know, you know, it could be a Rite Aid instead of a CV. I mean, we don't know what's going to be there. And to ask for a traffic impact study now would be a lot of extra expense. And where does Mitchell go to? I don't know. Mitchell leads from Lane Alley, and you can see that intersection as shown on the plan, up to the right at Clay's Mill in Rosemont. And what level of street is it? What level of street is it? It is a local street, yes, sir. It is a local. Ms. Phillips? Well, again, back to the idea that it is one contiguous parcel with four potential land uses. I don't think it's possible in a professional office setting that we would hit that 100-trip threshold for morning and evening. So, again, I'd be in support of a traffic study or something that at least gives us some empirical information by which we can make our decisions. We have an idea how much traffic may flow onto Lane Alley and how much may flow onto Mitchell Avenue. I'm talking about the entire parcel. Are there other questions for Mr. Martin? Thank you very much. Are there other questions for the commission? If not, the Chair will entertain a motion. Mr. Collins. Madam Chair, I appreciate the residents being here today. And believe me, I believe all of us would concur with the fact that we understand what they are asking. And I believe the, I'm not going to commit them to it, but I believe that the applicant is also understanding the fact that there is a need for a traffic study. With this going further, at this point in time, with what is being proposed, I think it is adequate. And for that reason, I would move for approval of DP 2010-54, Chancellor's subdivision, the springs amended subject to the 19 conditions. Is there a second? A motion by, excuse me. I'm sorry. You want clarification on that? If I may, and Tom might have to help me on this, would it be possible to add a 20th one to ask for a traffic study before the next piece comes? I believe it would be appropriate to denote that a traffic study be done as parcels B, C, and D would come with the final. Yes, sir. As if that be denoted on this plan. I would note that a traffic study would be done with any of the remaining three B, C, or D plans coming in. Mr. Wilson, are you agreeable to the change in the motion? I have a motion from Mr. Owens, second by Mr. Wilson. All in favor, please vote electronically. Motion carries. Thank you all very much for coming today. We appreciate your interest and we thank you very much for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Tara Richardson. First item on our agenda for zoning items today is MAR 2010-7, LARE Properties, LLC. And this is found in tab one in your notebook and can be found on page two of your agenda. This is an application for a zone change from an R1C, which is a single family residential zone, to a P1, which is our professional office zone. The property is located at 1610-1612 Harrodsburg Road. The property currently is bound to the both north and south by existing P1 zoning, and then the St. Joseph Hospital is located at the intersection of just to the northeast at the intersection of Harrodsburg Road and Waller Avenue. Also in the vicinity, there's B1 zoning across at Shaker Drive, and to the rear, the Oaks and Oakwood subdivision is R1C. Also in this general vicinity, the fire station is located at 1612 Harrodsburg Road. And then there's an elementary school. The applicant is proposing to maintain the existing structure at this location, and they propose to use it for a medical office building. And then they also propose to share parking with the adjacent two parcels. The subject parcel is recommended for professional service land use, and again, we have Harrodsburg Road, and the large P professional service recommendation at the corner here of Harrodsburg Road and Waller is the hospital, and you can see the professional service recommendation follows Harrodsburg Road until the parcel that's recommended for the fire station. And since the comprehensive plan is in agreement with what the applicant is proposing in terms of zoning, the staff is recommending approval of that rezoning from the P1, I'm sorry, from R1C to P1, because it is in agreement with the comprehensive plan, and our recommendation is also subject to certification of the development plan within two weeks. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Are there questions from the commission? Mr. Owens. Tracy, 1610, 1612, that's the one building? It is. It's currently an R1C parcel, but I believe it's been used as a duplex, which explains the two addresses. Thank you. Are there other questions? Thank you. Mr. Martin. Thank you. Item B, ZDP 2010-47, South Grove Subdivision, Lot 1. You will also find handed out to you a pink piece of paper with revised conditions, hopefully easy to find on this particular preliminary plan. The property, as Ms. Wade explained to you, is fronted on Harrodsburg Road between the fire station and St. Joseph Hospital. The zone change request is for this lot. We actually have a final development plan for lot number two that goes back to a previous zone change. Interesting enough, this shares P1 zoning, but was done at such a time that no plan exists for this. It could very well have been done in the 60s prior to merger. The plan that you do see before you incorporates these three properties in a preliminary development plan. There is extensive floodplain on the property, which you've outlined for you here. There is a creek that flows behind the property, and you may know the area. There's a big relief change. You go on up the hill towards Lafayette High School, and this stream flows here and then across and on down along Mason Healy in that direction. Harrodsburg Road has, in fact, functioned when it was built as a form of a dam, and the floodplain in this area is quite extensive and affects these properties. Initially, when this plan was reviewed, it was a final development plan, and that concerned staff, and we recommended it become a preliminary development plan, and the big reason for that was the floodplain. And they had not addressed the floodplain and were not aware of how extensive at that time it affected the property. This was complicated by the fact that there had been some development in the area. There had been some paving of a parking lot without receiving the appropriate permits. And when you work in a floodplain, it's not just a matter of getting a permit for a parking lot. You have to get a special permit through the Division of Engineering to address the grading, et cetera, so that there's no changes in the floodplain elevations that could adversely affect properties downstream. We raised that issue. We asked them to address the timing. Staff has been informed that they have submitted information to the Division of Engineering. They have submitted their special permits. You can see that we have asked that they correct the note that they've added to the plan that explains such a situation, and that is, again, I would emphasize this is a preliminary development plan. They will have to come back with a final development plan at that time. The note states that they will not receive certification of that plan until that special permit is approved. And that special permit has been issued for the parking lot on the property. We have, other than that, a lot of cleanup conditions relative to just the boundary of the property. Appropriate information easements, as you can see on your pink sheet, a couple of corrections for purpose and a commission note, not necessarily unusual conditions on a plan. And then that they just remove some existing asphalt on lot one. Again, to meet the minimum requirements of Article 18. There was one other remaining issue that was of concern. During the initial review of the property, traffic engineering identified this access point and planning concurred that this should be removed, that this is an old residential access point. All these homes, when they originally were built, had their driveways out to Harrisburg Road. Due to the proposed P1 use, the connection between the lots, we felt it was appropriate to have circulation within the properties with a one-way in out here and a one-way in here and a one-way out at this location. To Harrisburg Road, and again, there's a median in the area which affects the ability to go left. We really felt that it was in the public safety interest to remove this driveway completely from the right-of-way all the way back to the building. They have agreed to that condition. The staff is recommending approval of this preliminary development plan. Are there questions? Tom, in regards to the permit for the paving within a floodplain, there's quite frankly a significant amount of paving, and I cannot believe that it would not affect that blue stream. Are you saying that they have to have the permit finalized and in hand before the final development plan will be certified? Yes, sir. And again, our floodplain ordinance allows a special permit to be issued by engineering. The whole key is to maintain the grade within the floodplain. Thank you, Mr. Martin. Petitioner? Madam Chairman and members of the Commission and staff, my name is Tommy Todd. I represent the applicant, LARE Properties, LLC. Dr. Leanne Scaff is the owner of the LLC. She's a dermatologist here in Lexington. She operates Advanced Dermatology in the two buildings that are already renovated. This third building is necessary for her practice. Her practice is growing, and she needs the additional space to be able to get more patients in and be able to see them sooner. Obviously, we're in agreement with the recommendation of the staff for approval of the change in zoning. As to the particular issues on the development plan, quite frankly, we have our engineer here, Mr. Tom Lambden, and unless there's any specific questions you all have for me, I would just as soon turn it over to Mr. Lambden about the development plan. Are there questions from the Commission members? Not. Thank you very much, Mr. Todd. Madam Chair, members of the Commission, I'm Tom Lambden with Midwest Engineers. I, too, am in agreement with all of the staff's recommendations. I would say that we have worked pretty closely with planning and the other governmental bodies to work through those issues. And we pretty much, you know, we're in agreement and would ask for approval. And I will be happy to answer any question you have. Questions? Not. Thank you very much. Is there anyone in the audience who would like to comment on this petition? If not, the Chair will entertain discussion and motions from the Commission members. I will make a motion, please, for approval of MAR2010-7, Layer of Properties. Is there a second? Motion by Mr. Brewer, second by Mr. Cravens. For approval of MAR2010-7, Layer of Properties, any discussion? All in favor, please vote aye or nay electronically. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Madam Chair, I make a motion for approval of ZDP2010-47, South Grove Subdivision. I believe that's the same one, is that correct? Correct. Motion has been made by Mr. Brewer and seconded by Mr. Cravens for ZDP2010-47, South Grove Subdivision, Lot 1. Is there any discussion? Not, please vote electronically. Motion carries. Thank you very much. We might want to take this while you all set up. Thank you. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. Thank you very much. Once everyone is ready, we'll proceed then. Good afternoon, Chair Richardson, planning commission. The next item on your agenda can be found on page four. It's item number three and behind tab three in your notebooks. This is MAR2010-10 and this is a zone change that the planning commission initiated. So, this is one of your applications. This is a zone change to add a neighborhood design character overlay, which is our ND1 zone to the Montclair neighborhood area. I'm going to explain just briefly what I passed out. There's a blue sheet, which is the staff's revised recommendation. This incorporates the zoning committee's comments and their recommendation. There's a gold rod packet, which is the letters that the staff received. Seven were in support and one in opposition. And then the president of the neighborhood association just handed me one more white sheet, which I think I gave to everybody, or you might have to share one. And I'm assuming that that person is in support as well. So, maybe eight in support and one in opposition. The last thing I would say is in your notebooks, not only does it have the general page for application with the addresses and so forth, it has a letter from the neighborhood association when they asked to initiate this. It has the guidelines with graphics, which are helpful. And then it also has some explanation, kind of an explanation packet that the neighborhood prepared in September that gives kind of highlights for each of the 11 standards that they're asking for. So, this neighborhood, Montclair neighborhood, is located on the east side of Tate's Creek Road and includes properties that border Cooper on the north, and then down to the properties that border Montclair Drive on the south, and is bordered to the east and south by the University of Kentucky, including the KET studio and offices. To the north is the Mount Vernon subdivision. To the east is the Chevy Chase subdivision, including to the southeast, or northeast, the ND1 overlay that they received in late 2008, and then, or early 2009, and then a neighborhood called the Enclave, which is just to the south along Tate's Creek and the extension of Castle. The neighborhood itself was platted in the 1930s through 1940, and it's comprised of four units. This neighborhood at the time, the Mount Vernon subdivision was not developed to the north, and it was still the Berry Farm. And also at that time, what is now UK used to be the Agricultural Experiment Farm, so Cooper Drive did not continue. It was a dead-end street. That's the history of the neighborhood, so it's been there for 80 years. The neighborhood requested this ND1 overlay in order to protect their existing stock of residential houses, specifically single-family residential houses. They indicated in their application that the neighborhood sits in an enviable position, physically close to the university as well as the major arterials, good schools, shopping, et cetera. But this also puts them in a position of some pressure for redevelopment and possibly expansion of or changing to the fabric of the neighborhood. The neighborhood desired to maintain the character both in terms of land, the way it's platted and built in terms of setbacks, but also in terms of the style of the structures and the physical elements that are used to construct it, so the exterior materials. The purpose of the ND1 in our zoning ordinance is to conserve the key features or visual and natural characteristics of a neighborhood, and that's in Article 29. And the ND1 overlay is administered in the same way as conditional zoning restrictions. That is, an applicant would go to the Division of Building Inspection to request a permit for an addition or a new structure, and at that time Building Inspection would review the ND1 standards for their neighborhood. The neighborhood would like or stated in their application that the reasoning or the criteria that they're meeting in Article 29 was to maintain the character of their neighborhood, and they've established a need to protect the visual characteristics that give this neighborhood its distinct identity based on some recent changes to the neighborhood. In the last two years, the neighborhood did do a survey and an architectural survey as well as went through a goal-setting process and established the standards that you see today before you, and that includes 11 groups or subtitles for standards. The staff in our report divided these standards into two groups, the first being those that would restrict or restrict structural changes. So I'll go through each of the restrictions that the neighborhood has proposed in terms of design standards for the properties. First, the neighborhood requested exterior building materials be limited to just stone, brick, and natural wood or fiberboard siding, and this would help to adhere to the goal of conserving the existing neighborhood in terms of materials as 97 percent of the homes are adhering to this requirement currently and would help to create a common unifying theme for the homes. The staff would suggest, and I'll refer you to the blue sheet, an addition to that standard to exclude windows and doors, and the zoning committee suggested and their respective frames so that vinyl or aluminum could be used for those features. The next standard is related to roof pitch and roofs for the shape. In terms of this one, the neighborhood is proposing a minimum 7-12 pitch or slope for gabled primary roofs, and this would be on principal or accessory structures, and there are some exclusions that they're proposing, which would allow for some different types of roofs and also matching existing roofs if you have a structure that does have a different roof shape and also for dormers. I'm going to skip to item 8A, which is limiting the height of structures in the neighborhood. The neighborhood wanted to restrict the height of structures in the eastern half of the neighborhood from the rear of Summit to the U.K. area to 30 feet in height, and then from that same line, the rear property lines of Summit and Castle to Tate's Creek, to 35 feet in height, and if you've been in the neighborhood, and I'll show some photos in a minute, the structures in the eastern half of the neighborhood are mostly single-story or one-and-a-half-story structures, so the 30-foot would allow some expansion, but not probably a two-story or full or definitely not a three-story. And then in the western half, it's mostly two- or two-and-a-half-story structures, so this would allow those to expand some as well. Item 2B, also in that same section, is related to additions not exceeding the height of principal structures, and that's also just to keep the existing scale on those streets consistent. Back to the front page, I'm going to jump around just because these all relate to structural changes. 4A and 4B are both related to the minimum window, door, and door openings, and the neighborhood has suggested that there be a minimum of 10% of any wall plane, as long as it's 150 square feet or more, that those have window or door openings. This is consistent with our infill and redevelopment standards. And then in 4B, proposing a standard to prohibit exterior accessory stairs or windows above the ground floor of a structure. Moving on to 5A, for garages and accessory structures, the neighborhood is proposing a setback of 10 feet for all garage structures, whether they're attached or detached, in order to maintain the relationship of the architecture along the street and ensure that the garages remain secondary along the street frontage. 6B is also related to garages and accessory structures and limiting the size of those to 800 square feet in terms of footprint and a height of 22 feet to the ridge or 12 feet to the eave. At the zoning committee, there was a suggestion to add some clarifying language to have that roof height measured from the finished garage floor, so that's included in 6B of the blue sheet. The one I skipped had to do with the front building features, number 5A. This is to ensure that buildings are oriented to the street with their front entry door. And the staff suggested changing that from the primary street to a public street, just for clarification, because our zoning ordinance does not define primary street, but it does discuss public streets. Moving on to the items that are standards that are more site design related and land development related, and the first of those is 9A for building setbacks. The building setbacks along each street do seem to vary somewhat, and so the neighborhood did a detailed assessment of kind of a range and is asking that the minimum and maximum front setbacks be established for each street. And the staff agreed with those suggested standards, with the exception of Montclair Road. They requested a 25 to 30-foot, 35-foot range, and in fact the 25-foot setback, while that may be existing, is less restrictive. That is, it would allow a building to come out 5 feet in front of what is now the zoning, the underlying zoning's required setback. So 30 to 35 feet would maintain the existing R1C setback and keep it consistent with all other R1C zones across the county. Moving on to 10A, the neighborhood also proposed standards to address rear setbacks, and they've asked that the maximum building dimension be established at 55 feet. That is, the depth of any building be a maximum of 55 feet for principal structures, and then that ensures that the building doesn't project any further into the rear yard than those 55 feet. Lot widths are proposed to be limited only for Summit Drive, Eldemere, and Tates Creek Road, and that appears in item 7A. This is to maintain the large character, or the large lot character of this portion of the subdivision. The staff is suggesting adding a second standard to number 7, that is 7B, to also have a maximum width along these streets so that you wouldn't have further subdivisions to go less than 70 feet in width, but you also wouldn't have people combining lots and tearing down structures to build even larger houses. Number 3A and 3B are related to landscape requirements. These relate to fencing, particularly on Cooper Drive and Tates Creek Road, and limiting fencing in height to 4 feet and setting it back 2 feet from the sidewalk. The staff is suggesting deleting the last line of that standard, which relates to basically upkeep of the hedges to 4 feet in height, mostly because the Division of Building Inspection would have a very difficult time enforcing that restriction. The second half of number 3 talks about limiting, or actually prohibiting chain link fences, and gives some suggestions for the type of other fences that would be allowed in the neighborhood. And these are just to establish some consistency for the, or to maintain consistency in Montclair. And then the last two standards suggested by the neighborhood deal with off-street parking, and the first one is 11A, for front yard parking should be prohibited except Tates Creek Road or Cooper because of the nature of those two roads being more traveled on and no on-street parking. The neighborhood felt that having 120 square feet of parking space in your front yard would be okay, and the staff suggested deleting the phrase loose aggregate or other gravel is prohibited, only because that's already prohibited by the zoning ordinance in Article 16. That Article 16.4, which prohibits material other than hard surface materials. And then the last one, 11B, that all driveways be a maximum of 10 feet in width, with the exception of circular driveways, which can be 12 feet in width. Before I move on to the staff's findings for approval of this, I would just note that we did do some analysis of non-conformities that this would create in the neighborhood. We looked at front yard setbacks, rear yard setbacks, the 10-foot garage setback, and then driveways that might be more than 10 feet wide, and we found in terms of front yard setbacks, that 12.8 percent wouldn't conform to that requirement, We've highlighted those in orange where the non-conformities would exist. In terms of rear setbacks, 11.7 percent would not conform to the standard. That is, they already have structures that are more than 55 feet deep, and those are highlighted in the blue. The 10-foot garage setback, 10.1, which is 18 lots, would have garages that are either, well, that are at the front face of the house now, and those are highlighted in the green. And then the last one was driveways, and a large majority of these are double driveways, and those have 14 percent that wouldn't conform to the 10-foot driveway width requirement. And then the last thing I would say is that the comprehensive plan does recommend overlays for protection of neighborhoods in terms of both H1 and ND1 overlays, and this is something that the neighborhood has desired for over two years and has been working for, and they have brought forward an assessment of their neighborhood and the standards suggested here to protect and conserve the existing character of their neighborhood. In particular, the staff would say that it's in agreement with the comprehensive plan because it's in line with the goals and objectives and specifically goal 15, which relates to or talks about the overlay zoning, and also that the Montclair neighborhood has done their full design character study, established preservation goals, and proposed appropriate design standards for their neighborhood. I'm going to run through some photographs, but the staff is recommending approval of the revised blue sheet standards for the neighborhoods, ND1 character overlay. Some neighborhood signs in the area. And this is an aerial that gives some context to the area. It is about the same density as the neighboring subdivisions. This is the small island at the corner of Cooper and Summit Drive that's landscaped for the neighborhood. Some of the existing structures, and I'm going to run through these. These are all, some of them are one story. These are two that face each other actually rather than the street, which is one of the standards addresses that. Some of the ranches in the neighborhood. Three and a half Cape Cod, quite a few of those. Cooper Drive. And then you can see on Summit and Eldemere, the structures are larger along with the lots, and most of them are two story. That's it. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the staff's recommendation, the staff's changes, and also the zoning committee's recommendation of approval. Ms. Phillips. Ms. Wade, could you please repeat the nonconformities? I got the last two. What percentage are? In terms of front yard setbacks, it's 12.8%. The rear yard setbacks, 11.7%. And then the garage setbacks, 10.1% are nonconforming. And driveways is 14%. In relation to other overlays, I think this is actually, those are low nonconformities. They've done a good job. Mr. Owens. Tracy, two questions more just for clarification, I guess. In talking as far as garages and accessory structures, setback minimum 10 feet from buildings, front building plain, there's still side yard, rear yard restrictions and requirements there as well, I would presume? Yes. So in those cases, the standard would apply. And then on number, as far as the building height, number eight, you're talking about new additions. That's new additions to the principal structure and not accessory, correct? Correct. Correct. The accessory structure height is addressed in 6B, which is 22. Okay. If you could, one more thing. Sure. You mentioned ranch houses. There's a gray ranch house somewhere in there that there. What's behind the chimney? It's an addition. Okay. All right. I would say that's an example of where the addition is taller than the main primary structure. Thank you. Are there other questions? Okay. Thank you very much. Neighborhood Association representative. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the commission. Thank you all for the opportunity to come and talk a little bit more about the Montclair N.D.1 proposal. And also I'd like to thank you all for initiating the N.D.1 process. As Tracy mentioned, we do appreciate your all support so far in at least instigating this effort. My name is Stan Harvey. I live at 1229 Scoville Road. I have been asked to give a little bit of background and history and maybe a particular interest. Tracy's done a great job of giving you some context and also walking you through the standards. But I'll also add a little bit of history of the discussion that went into each of the standards and kind of how we arrived at what is proposed today. As Tracy mentioned, we've had several meetings, so we kind of started at this point in terms of what is the purpose of an N.D.1, which we believe that this particular proposal is very much in line with. I'll walk through a little bit about the process that we went through. But of interest, there was discussions that happened even before I was here on H1, N.D.1. Are there other opportunities? What's the best kind of protection? I think it's worth noting that the discussion in the neighborhood quickly moved towards there was divided opinion about H1. It was considered to be too restrictive by many. And so the idea of pursuing N.D.1, we also met with the Division of Historic Preservation and did some of the required as per URAL's ordinance. The idea of this kind of intent was really what started this effort. Once again, from the ordinance, areas designate the area to be regulated. It's approximately 180 lots. Not all of those lots have structures on them right now, so it's a relatively small geography. But as Tracy alluded to and as you'll see in the pictures and as the standards allude to, it's still a relatively diverse neighborhood physically. Create design standards for the unique character of the neighborhood, encourage the adaptive reuse of existing structures, discourage environmental conflicts, and foster the civic pride. I don't think there's any better testament to the fact of fostering civic pride than the fact that the dormant neighborhood association was actually reconstituted as part of this effort. So it has been a good opportunity to kind of bring the neighborhood together to pursue other activities besides just N.D.1. Tracy gave you a little bit of this, but basically the blessing and the curse of this neighborhood is its location. It's a tremendous location. A little bit of personal history. When my wife and I moved here a little over three years ago from Atlanta, we were looking for a diverse neighborhood, a historic building structure, good schools. My wife decided to have a second career at UK. We can walk to UK. We can walk to retail establishments. And so, you know, kind of all of the things that you could look for in an in-town neighborhood were what drew us to the neighborhood, and not mistaking the fact that it's also a relatively affordable neighborhood, particularly close in to downtown and others. So with our two young boys, it offered us an opportunity to live close to UK and downtown, but be surrounded with a lot of amenities. Tracy kind of outlined it's basically six streets, Montclair on the south, Cooper on the north, and it's only the properties that face those two streets. So the Mount Vernon subdivision begins north of Cooper. So two east-west streets and then five north-south streets. Scoville, which is closest to UK, Castle, Summit, Eldermeer, and then Tate's Creek. The subject of our neighborhood and of the Indy One is the west side of Tate's Creek Road. So it's several properties there on the front. As I'll show you, even that small geography has relative diversity in it, but it's relatively consistent by street, which became a theme of a lot of these standards. As I mentioned, I'm not a historic resident of this neighborhood, but, you know, since we have even moved here and as things have accelerated and redevelopment pressure, particularly around the university, has continued, there has been recent activity that I would say, and maybe some of the speakers will allude to it, that kind of started to mobilize this effort of we need to make sure there is some additional safeguards in place, reasonable safeguards that help protect the character. There's recent additions. This is a home that has been under a structure that has been under construction since I moved here over four years. It's five bedrooms, four baths, 68 feet deep, with three exterior doors. That caused concern and has, I know you've heard from other neighborhoods that pursued Indy One, there are things like this that happen that become kind of threshold events that mobilized a lot of discussion. So that is evidence, I think, of the continued pressure this neighborhood will be under. This started a long time ago. I got dragged into this after we moved. But it had been going on much before that. The conversation, the discussion particularly about Indy One and H1, I think, had been going on for several years. But in terms of the formalized process that we've been through, those of you all remember, Rachel Phillips began our process with a kind of presentation and overview. That was back in spring of 2008. We've had five dedicated neighborhood meetings for this, just for Indy One. That started with an overview. We then did a survey that's required in the ordinance to kind of ask people. Not surprisingly, people came back with architectural character. Trees came back very, very heavily. And so that was kind of the starting point of the basis. Then we had a neighborhood meeting to discuss the survey results. And then a second neighborhood meeting a couple of months later to actually do what you all did several weeks ago, which was do we want to initiate the research and the time and effort to pursue this. And that was decided yes. There was an Indy One committee that was formed of representatives from throughout the neighborhood, several of which at least were here or may speak. That committee worked to develop drafts of the standards. We met and want to thank the Division of Planning has been incredibly accessible and helpful for us. Building inspection we've met with twice. We have tried to refine that and work on the language. There's continued suggestions, even in the staff report and zoning committee's report, that continue to refine that. But that led to a neighborhood meeting to review the first initial proposed standards. I believe the initial package was 17 or 18 standards. We have whittled down to the 11 that are before you based on where there was perceived consensus on an important issue. So I would suggest to you that some of the earlier standards, for instance, issues addressing dormers and sizes, garage door sizes, et cetera, all were deemed too subjective or not enough consensus. And so how I would characterize the standards that are before you is more of the bottom line, most important standards that seem to have some consensus. The committee kept working. As I mentioned, the neighbors of Montclair was constituted or directors were established for each street in September of 2009. We have emailed and gone door to door on several occasions to hand out the standards and then to have meetings to review those, both with the board and ND1 committee and with the overall neighborhood. The last neighborhood meeting to actually vote to submit to the planning commission was in June of this year. Tracy alluded to kind of what are the goals, why are we doing this, to protect the existing neighborhood land use. It is completely a single family neighborhood. To encourage the new construction additions that are compatible with the massing height and architectural character of the neighborhood, but with the caveat of recognizing differences within individual streets. So you'll see a lot of variance in terms of standards that are to be administered by street. To utilize site planning standards that are reflective of the survey we did of all 180 properties. The patterns of yards, setbacks and garages. We recognize and appreciate and support the idea of grandfathering and not making any changes to existing conditions. It's really a forward looking if there's to be new construction or major additions. To encourage community interaction and safety, this became an issue, particularly with some of the site planning and landscaping standards. The ordinance requires that there be a clear set of standards and a documentation of both the historical nature of the neighborhood and the current conditions. We did a parcel by parcel. We worked with the division of historic preservation to come up with a form of 18 survey items, which you can barely make out here in terms of each structure, both looking down the side yard at accessory structures typically or garages and the front structure key map to kind of summarize all of the conditions. This was done, there's one sheet for each of the 180 properties. Just some examples. Architectural style, it's a diverse neighborhood that was built in a variety of time periods. The majority of the neighborhood was built in the 30s and the 40s, but there was significant then construction after World War II. The house styles tend to break up like that. Very heavy number of what I call the Lexington Cape Cod, brick Cape Cods or other types of Cape Cod structures. Colonial revivals, some ranches built after the war. As you move up to Eldemere and Summit, a lot of more Tudor or Tudor revival homes. A couple of bungalows and one more modern structure. This maps that. We did a series of maps, which hopefully were in the package that you all were provided, just to show that in most cases, Eldemere and Summit tend to have a relatively consistent character, and then Castle and Scoville and the western end of Cooper and Montclair tend to have a slightly different character. On the exterior material, over 50% of the structures are brick. And then you see the other breakdown, predominantly the materials that have been recommended as allowable materials. Building height, approximately half of the structures are one and a half stories. The others are either one story or two. And then particularly on Summit and Eldemere, there are, on the eastern end of Montclair and Cooper, there are some two and a half story. Here it is mapped again. You see the kind of heavier, higher heights, particularly on Eldemere and Summit, and then lower heights on Scoville Castle and the western end of the neighborhood. Oops, sorry. Roof types, that was a standard looking at predominant roof character, very heavy focus on front-facing cables, or cables parallel to the public street. The exception is the homes, there are several Gunnison homes built after the war. There are a few that were built with the gable facing, and a few hipped roofs. Garages, Stacey alluded, there are some non-conforming uses. The predominant is detached garages, either to the rear or compromised, as I'll come back to, is at least a slight setback from the front building plane. Then visible additions and features. Most of the additions actually are not visible because they're in the rear, but there are, you know, changes of porches and additions, second story additions, et cetera. Lot size varies. One of the, once again, blessings of this neighborhood is that many of the lots on the north-south streets are very deep. That causes concern with the neighborhood, just given, and that's how, we've had a lot of conversation about the setbacks. I'll come back to that when we get to the proposed standard, but the lots are very deep, up to 200, 220 feet deep. And so there's a wide range of legal construction, obviously, that can happen. And there was a concern, particularly given what's happened in some of the other university neighborhoods, about somehow setting some safeguard against that. But what you also see is the lot width also varies by street. Once again, though, even though it's variable, it's relatively consistent by street. And you see that once again. So a little bit about the proposed 11 standards. Tracy's already walked you through many of these, so I won't, I'll try to be brief. As mentioned, exterior building materials was thought to be important, both for kind of ensuring maintenance and stability to the neighborhood, but also compatibility with what's there. I think that it's fair to say we looked to our neighbors to the east in Chevy Chase and the adopted Indy one. Really didn't want to reinvent the wheel where there were standards that seemed, from our perception, to be working and also addressing issues of compatibility. There are a lot of similarities between the building stock in Chevy Chase and in Montclair. One of those was roof lines and shape. I know that had been a particular concern in Chevy Chase, given some new construction that was perceived as incompatible just because of the appearance of the building. The appearance, particularly of roof lines. Landscaping requirements primarily got generated by a discussion about safety on Cooper and Tate's Creek, particularly Cooper. Because of the amount of traffic on those streets, there was a concern that people backing out of driveways could not see moving, particularly pedestrians and bicyclists on, in particular, Cooper, which is very heavily traveled for both cars and ped and bike. Perhaps there was some logic to having some height restrictions in terms of fences. Similarly, there was very few fences and definitely particularly front yard fences in the rest of the neighborhood. So while it was understandable for Cooper and Tate's Creek that as a parent, perhaps, or someone who would want some safety measures for protection in other areas, we perceived that to be less of an issue. There was a concern that, you know, the majority of the neighborhood is wood or wrought iron or others, brick or stone fencing, and that that was kind of compatible with the historic nature, and therefore, there was a standard about fencing. Once again, looking at Chevy Chase and the IR recommendations, what I would characterize as a relatively minimal requirement was that there was a standard about fencing. There was a requirement for transparency and window openings, et cetera, to avoid large-scale blank walls. The B is a unique standard to our neighborhood. We have seen, including some of the new construction structures built with access to the second floor and multiple doors on the second floor, et cetera, which we would interpret as dormitory-esque structures. And so there was a thought that at least there could be a standard that could address that, which is the reason for Part B of this standard. Entry doors facing the primary street. Again, similar issues of compatibility, but also kind of encouraging going forward a consistent character that reinforces the public streets. Garages, I mentioned the idea of encouraging that they would be slightly at least set back from the front building plane so that the building structure instead of the garage is the dominant feature on the street. Lot widths, the existing R1C zoning, which covers the whole neighborhood, already addresses most of the neighborhood in terms of its 60-foot minimum lot width. The exception, though, is Eldermere and Tate's Creek and Summit, which has some lots much larger than the existing R1C. So there was a concern that there should be some range, and in this case, given the existing condition, a minimum of 70 feet for lot width, consistent with those neighborhoods or those streets. The suggestion that was added by planning staff is agreeable to us in terms of the other end of that spectrum in terms of the existing zoning. But we're not going to go into that in terms of a maximum. Building height was another standard that had probably some of the most discussion, and there you kind of see it even in the wording and the mapping. Because of the difference in neighborhoods, the western end of the neighborhood is almost entirely one to one and a half story structures, and the eastern portion of the neighborhood is predominantly two to two and a half story structures. So there was a feeling that we needed to somehow recognize that, a 35-foot height limit on the east and a 30-foot height limit on the west. The issue, once again, is similar to Chevy Chase of trying to encourage visual continuity in terms of additions and trying to match existing roof lines. Building setbacks, same issue with the streets, just trying to institutionalize the existing setbacks that exist on each of the streets. I mentioned rear yard building setbacks. The predominant, and I believe Chevy Chase's standard is a two-thirds lot coverage. That is actually problematic in two directions for us. One is several of the lots are very, very shallow, particularly the lots that face the east-west streets like Cooper and Montclair. So there was a concern that we'd be overly limiting any addition or anything that could happen on those streets, which was not in general the intent. On the north-south streets, the opposite problem, because of the depth of the lots, two-thirds of a 220-foot lot gives you ample room to make a very large structure on any of those properties. So our suggestion, after a lot of discussion, was to somehow set a standard that would still allow a significant structure or addition, but not a limited, and that perhaps a more clear standard was also just a dimensional standard, not including front porches, et cetera, stoops, et cetera, but from the front major building point. Off-street parking design, except for Cooper and Tate's Creek, there is on-street parking. It is sometimes restricted, as another evidence of the pressure this neighborhood is in. Because of Bluegrass Community and Technical College in U.K., there is a lot of pressure of street parking in the neighborhood. But the idea was to allow it on Cooper and Tate's Creek and recognize those conditions, but try to set some general standards about that and driveway size. So with that, I think that ends our kind of background on the standards and how we got here. Thank you. Are there questions? Yes, I'm coming. I'm sorry. There will be a time for you to ask your question in just a moment. I was talking in regard to the planning commission. All right. I think I might have spilled water on this. That's not a good thing. Next we're going to have citizen comments. Are there those in the audience who would like to speak today? Are those, let's first call on those in favor of the change, the plan. All right. Madam Chairman, Planning Commission, thank you for allowing us to speak in support of our neighborhood today. My name is Deborah Tatum. And I think I'd like to talk about why we began this process to begin with. If you take a look at the neighborhoods, when I was a kid, I used to come into Lexington to see my grandmother, who was a professor at U.K. before one of the starting people at KET. And she lived on Elizabeth Street. And that was a great street, families, there was such a diverse population there. You could look at the Ag Experiment Station there. It was a wonderful neighborhood. That is when our neighborhood was just beginning. And our neighborhood does not want to become the next Elizabeth Street neighborhood that has buildings backed up. If you've seen the one building that everyone's been talking about next to KET, it's a rather large house. I'd prefer to call it a dorm. And we don't need those in our neighborhood. It really is out of character. It's also out of character when other requests have been made about townhouses perhaps being built in our neighborhood. That's what started this all actually four or five years ago in that conversation, but then began to pick up steam. As neighbors of Montclair, in order to protect our property values and our property itself. We come under siege eight times a year or so for football games, and we do pretty well with that. And we do pretty well with our neighbor's U.K. Our problem is when the neighborhood starts to turn, and that's what we are trying to prevent by developing these standards. There have only been a few houses built in our neighborhood in the last 15, 20 years. One of them that I'm referring to, and another one that was on Castle, that the people who bought the land in the neighborhood felt so much and so strongly about the neighborhood, they tried to build a house that felt in character. And we truly appreciate their effort on doing so when they could have gone very modern on us and been a real sore thumb. But we like our neighborhood. It's a diverse neighborhood from big houses to little, from wealthy people to poor people, from married people to single people. I was single there for eight years or so, and I felt very safe in my neighborhood. But in looking at why we wanted to do this, this is why we wanted to do it, so we can protect what we've invested in. And I believe that through many of the things you do, you all have a mandate to help us protect our neighborhoods and protect our investments. We are good neighbors to U.K. U.K. has been good neighbors to us. We just like to keep it that way. I have a couple of letters that came in late at this hour. One of them, I don't know, Tracy, did you give copies of this letter for this price? You should have just received this from one of the gentlemen that was going to have to leave. A couple of them couldn't be here. And I feel it incumbent upon me to mention that Jim Cornish, who started all this, would definitely be here today. I don't know when he had to be absent for this. But I can tell you, with everything he has, he is fully behind this and has really gotten our neighborhood to pull together. And this is not meant to be a divisive thing. This was meant to be something that brought everybody together. And as such, the Neighborhood Association will continue to approach those, bringing our neighborhood together for a great neighborhood for Lexington for a long time. Thank you. Are there others who would like to speak in favor? Good afternoon. My name is Kathy Simon. I live at 1233 Scoville Road, and I've been there since 1992. And I've been to a number of meetings, the general meetings, and then also on the ND1 committee. And it's been very gratifying to meet with other people in the neighborhood, to design the standards, to refine them. We've taken flyers door to door and met a lot of people that we would not have maybe met in the process, and done a very, very thorough due diligence. And I'd like to particularly let the record show that Stan Harvey, my next-door neighbor who I corralled into helping us when he was a teenager, when he moved into the neighborhood, he and his staff have just done an unbelievably outstanding job in doing the research, profiling every single property in the 181 property plants within our neighborhood. People have mentioned about the diversity. It's truly diverse in regard to ages, which is one of the things that we love about our neighborhood. Ranging from young couples with newborns up to people in their 90s. In the survey that we did, it was astonishing to me. I thought I was a longtime resident, having been there for 18 years, but no. 18 people have been there over 20 years, 13 people over 30 years, and seven people over 40 years, seven households. And many of them are multigenerational. They're all in the same houses, and then the children are in the same houses. I think it's important to note that with the proposal for BCTC to move downtown to the property where Eastern State Hospital is now, that that is also something in the future that we've thought about in terms of what will be happening with that property behind us. It will revert more to the University of Kentucky, with the possibility of additional housing being built there, and more students and people. It's also important to note that not every home in the neighborhood is homeowner-occupied. There are some rental properties in the neighborhood, so this is not an attempt to exclude renters. We have renters across the street, and it's just been a wonderful neighborhood to raise my daughter in. And so I applaud the effort of the association, and thank you very much for your support. Thank you, Ms. Simon. Are there others who would like to speak in favor? Excuse me, allergies. I'm Virginia White, I live at 1218 Summit Drive. Most people know me as Ginger. I've been a resident there for about 21 years, and we love the neighborhood. It's a great place for children. We have older people. It's a great mix. It's a great mix of vinyl siding, as opposed to the hardy board, is what they call it. It's a condensed board. Anyway, what we have found, and the reason we asked for the hardy board over the use of vinyl siding, is that vinyl siding often does not hold up to extreme weather conditions, as we often have, especially when it comes to trees in our neighborhood. We personally experienced great damage to one side of our garage that fortunately is on a back or side that can't be seen, where we had siding, and it was completely decimated by the storm and trees and tree damage, ice damage, whatever. The wood is much more practical in that it doesn't do, is not subject to that much breakage like that or holes. It doesn't look like somebody took a gun and shot their way down the wall. The other thing is, in our neighborhood, because of the old trees, the big trees, we have a lot of humidity, moisture retention. The vinyl siding is particularly susceptible to mold, and we have to have ours cleaned almost yearly. I just wanted to address that in case there were any questions regarding that. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. White. Are there others? Madam Chairwoman, Council, staff, I'm Tom Bullitt. I live at 760 Montclair Drive. We've lived there for 31 years. They told me to come and demonstrate the age diversity in the neighborhood. I'm the old guy, in case you didn't know. It wasn't the height and youth diversity that will be my wife. We've lived there for 31 years. It's a wonderful neighborhood. I grew up in Crescent Hill in Louisville, Louisville. I haven't lived in there that long. Louisville, which is a city in a very diverse neighborhood, has big and little houses, rich and poor people, apartments, all sorts of things. Also in Bardstown, where you have big and little houses and a great diversity. I think that is a wonderful advantage. Our children have been raised in that neighborhood. They have come to not think of themselves as rich or poor or privileged or unprivileged. They just live in the neighborhood. We have a wonderful neighbor, the giant next door to us, the University of Kentucky, which has certainly been a benefit, but it also creates to a degree the obvious burden of traffic, of renters, of student renters, and sometimes whose lifestyle is not particularly compatible with children riding tricycles on the sidewalk. So I think there's a safety issue, one, that we consider here as far as the traffic goes, people coming in and out of the neighborhood, and also an occupancy area. It's in areas where you raise children. I guess I couldn't stress, I was educated in the parochial school, so the nuns have whacked me often enough to say the right thing, Tom, about diversity and living in a neighborhood that is rich in socioeconomic diversity. I think that's really important to our neighborhood. I love these standards. I would like to thank and commend all of the people who have worked on the project here, and the champion attention span. That's absolutely amazing. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bullitt. I'm not real good with this new microphone. Are there others who would like to speak in favor? Thank you, Planning Commission, and I want to add my thanks to Stan Hart for a tremendous job. My name is Tip Richmond. My wife, Susan, and I moved to Summit Drive in the Montclair neighborhood 25 years ago. We raised two sons on Summit Drive. Our neighbors include grandparents who raised their children there, young families with infants, many University of Kentucky employees, and retired University of Kentucky employees. Our goal is simply to preserve the uniqueness and the diversity of a wonderful neighborhood that borders a large university. As Tracy noted, what our group is requesting complies with the 2007 comprehensive plan, particularly goal number 15, to preserve, protect, and enhance the character and quality of existing neighborhoods. And specifically under goal 15, objectives A and H. Objective A says that we want to retain the character, identity, and appearance of vital, successful residential and nonresidential areas. Objective H says that we want to encourage innovative design, planning, and development solutions that are consistent with neighborhood needs and character. And that completes my remarks. Thank you very much, Mr. Tipton. Are there others? Madam Chair, I'm Todd Johnson with the Home Builders Association of Lexington. I'm not really here to speak in favor of the proposal. I'm not here to speak against it. I'm here to speak in favor of it. I'd first like to thank Chris King and Mr. Harvey for their receptance of our comments that we've been going back and forth this week since learning of this proposal coming into place. They've been very receptive. And we have gotten some clarity and answers to our questions. But I just wanted to address the commission today on some of the things that we see in the ND1 overlay proposal that's before you today and the latest copy of this that I have is on the TAN sheet, and that's what I'll be referencing as I go through, if you'll bear with me. On the exterior building materials, allowable exterior finishes that are listed there seem to be confining to us. In this day and time with the evolution of new products, sustainable products and things like that, we feel that just listing brick, stone, cement fiberboard, and natural wood are prohibitive to the residents. And as was indicated as the staff opened up today, we see this as a zone change, this is a zone issue. We're not real clear on the process that it would take to go through and bring in one of these products, whether you're the client or if you're in the middle of a job and building inspection stops you to get that approved. Is it going to be a two-month process to go through getting an acceptable product approved? It's hard and fast here in what is allowable and it says very plainly that all other materials are prohibited. I'd like to point out really before I get to it, there's another item 3B, allowable fence materials. It says they're included but not limited to. Again, we interpret this as a zoning issue, a zone confinement as it is written. And our question on that would be why is one very prohibitive and very specific and the other one is left open to some type of interpretation that is not clear through some process that is really not fully known by us or what we have seen in some projects that have been underway not oftentimes fully understood by the client who's got a project going on. Landscaping requirements 3B, again with the fence materials. Again, you're listing and naming products there that may not in effect prohibiting or asking a potential client or potential project to be before you almost in the same instance as a board of adjustment to make an approval on something that the neighborhood may or may not be wanting to allow as a fence material in their neighborhood. I'll skip to item 6C, garages and setback minimums of $20,000. and setback minimums of 10 feet. We did get clarification from staff that this is for an attached or a detached garage. We had some question about a 10-foot setback on an attached garage fitting into a character of a neighborhood where I think it was pointed out today almost a third of the houses have attached garages that are probably less than 10 feet from the front plane of the building. It doesn't seem like that that's a particularly good, in our opinion, maybe requirement on an attached garage to have a 10-foot requirement in the setback. Item D, under number 6, for the footprint of 800 square feet on all accessory structures per lot, maximum 22 feet height. We really don't have an issue or any question about those measurements of 800 square feet or 22 feet tall. Our point is, or what we're seeking is clarity on from what point that 22-foot height, for example, might be measured from. We would assume maybe that would be a set-type figure and not left to interpretation on grade or something like that, but a standard, something like a finished new first floor grade, not necessarily grade, but for the height of the first floor may be measured to that 22-foot height, and we'd like to have a little bit more clarification and definitive answer on that. We also, we know that there are projects that are in play that are under contract or under bid review right now that may not fit into the requirements with setbacks that are listed here, but not necessarily are going to be problematic to the neighbors, not necessarily going to be something that the neighbors wouldn't want there. And, again, having to go through a process is really unclear to us on how to get that done and not knowing the timeframe really plays into if you're a design professional, if you're the remodeler that's going to be doing the work and being able to schedule appropriately and do your budgets appropriately. Staff, Mr. Keating alluded to me this morning of some zoning text amendments that were done, I believe in Zoning Ordinance 6-7C2 talking about where the Planning Commission has a process that was done. I think, I don't know the timeframe when that zoning text amendment was done, but it allows you all through the ND1 overlay to go through a process. And just briefly taking some time and going through, there's a two-week requirement of notice to go through this to council and the mayor. Then getting in line with the schedule of your meetings and whatever is on your dockets, that process could easily take over a month to get done. And a scenario that was presented to me by one of our remodelers was, okay, I'm finishing up a project, I'm putting a soffit material that is not one of the, it's not a cement fire board, it's not wood, but it's something acceptable that everybody would probably be okay with. Well, the building inspector stops them. So you're going to have to go through a month or more process to come down here and get approval for a material that would probably be accepted by this board and by the neighborhood. So that concludes my remarks to you this afternoon for consideration, and we hope that through some fashion we'll get some more clarity and answers to these questions. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Try this microphone again. At this time, are there any other people who wanted to speak in favor of the overlay? My name is Jeff Fox. I am the owner of the house on 1213 Scoville Road, and mostly I'm speaking in favor. I know our neighborhood association and I know the planning commission has put a lot of time into doing this, and I think their intent of maintaining the integrity and character of the neighborhood is well worth the time and would support that generally. I, however, would express some concern about the exterior building materials. I currently have one of the smaller houses on the smaller lots as vinyl siding. If I was to want to put a small addition or, like my neighbor, if I was to have a problem with wind or fire, I would like to replace that to match existing. I don't think that it would look right for me to have a vinyl-sided house with one brick wall and four vinyl-sided walls or a small addition. I don't want it to look like an addition. I want it to match what I've got. So I'm not objecting to what they've put here. I just would like to add match existing so I don't look out of character with the neighborhood and thank them for the work they've done. Thank you. Thank you. Are there others who would like to speak in favor of the overlay? My name is Kevin Compton. I live at 646 Cooper Drive. And I think I am along the same lines as I believe Mr. Johnson to just voice some concerns about the overlay. I recently did an addition at my house. I think, Stan, you should have a pretty good view from where you live of ours. My concern, I guess, is that I believe my addition fits with the character of the neighborhood and complements the structure. But I know that my roof lines on the additions would not conform to the standards set forth in the overlay. I'm like five and a half, I think, in 12. If you know the addition that I'm talking about, I'm right on the corner, right next to the corner house on Scoville and Cooper. But your existing, you were mentioning, is in use. No, actually, my existing is over seven in 12 right now. And I don't know how you rectify a situation like that in drawing out these standards, but I would hate to limit someone who has a one and a half gate pod like my house is. I would not want to limit their potential to add to the structure. But I do, I thank you all for the tremendous amount of time you put in crafting these. My wife and I do support the intention, but want to make sure that they're not overly restrictive. Thank you. Thank you. If there are not any others who would like to speak in favor, we will at this time take any citizen objectors. Yes, ma'am. My name is Katie Youngker, and I'm a 25-year resident of 809 Cooper Drive. I think that this entire project is wrongheaded because if there is a unique character of this neighborhood, it is that there is not a common unifying theme or a consensus standard. The neighborhood was built over a 20- to 25-year period in a variety of styles and a variety of facings. One of the things that is appealing about it is that it does look different. If I wanted to live in a cookie-cutter neighborhood where there were imposed design standards, I guess I would have tried to live in Andover. The last time, in fact, that the majority got together of the neighborhood and imposed a consensus standard, it was to insert in the deed a restriction that no member of the Negro race was to live in the neighborhood unless they were living there as a domestic servant. The existing character of the neighborhood is diversity, and there are many, many houses, if not all the houses, that would violate one of these standards. My own house, which is one of the plainest houses, I think it's designated as a Cape Cod house, I call it a depression house, violates the garage standard. It's not set back 12 or 10 feet. The garage may be too tall, and it certainly violates the idea of having an outside staircase because above the garage is the only attic for the house. The house itself may violate the height standard depending upon where you measure it. The ground slopes away radically. It's at least five feet. There's at least five feet of what I would call basement exposed at the far corner of the house than there is from the front plane. The roof on the back of the house is sort of the one-and-a-half-story part of the house, violates the pitch provision. There is a house that has been referred to, I think, as the international house that probably violates every one of these standards. It's made of cement block. It has a flat roof. I think most people would call it ugly, but it is certainly, it is traditional. It is part of the legacy of the neighborhood, and it exemplifies that people built houses of good quality construction and in a variety and interesting number of styles. I would like to point out a few of the particular provisions that are maybe most troubling. They have referred to the exterior building materials, which do not include such traditional materials as real stucco, would not include something like cedar shakes, but it does include a material that certainly was not around at the time that the neighborhood was built, cementitious fiberboard siding. There is no provision made for roofing materials. I don't know if that means that all of them are allowed, but if there isn't, then obviously some provision needs to be made. Exterior accessory stairs, steps or stairs allowable above the ground floor, presumably is to prevent the creation of multifamily housing, but that, of course, is a matter of the existing zoning, the basic zoning, which is R1. That is, in some ways, too, I'm puzzled by the description of all of these as use restrictions. In Item 2, they are described as the following use restrictions on the properties. There is, I think that there does need to be something addressed. I understand that with respect to garages or other accessory buildings, an amendment, a proposed amendment or addition would have you measuring the height from the ground flooring. I think something does need to be done as well for the main structures because of the issue I've mentioned of sloping lots from ground level is ambiguous. There are, in addition with respect to the front yard parking or the driveways, I will point out that a number of people in the photograph showed it used their driveways as parking, and I guess there should be some clarity as to whether or not the driveway itself is included in the 120 square feet, an area that is allowable if you're parking in the front area of the property. Thank you very much. Are there others who are in opposition that would like to speak at this time? Yes, ma'am. My name is Victoria Graf, and I own a home on 1234 Scoville, and I'm not counting. When I bought it, I thought it was funny. It's 1234, so if you can count, you can find my house. I'm opposed to the ND1 overlay for the Montclair neighborhood. I'm also representing my neighbors, Bill and Jeannie Ransdale, and they signed what I'm going to read. She just is recovering from surgery she had last week, and she couldn't come or they would be here. We believe that our neighbors are responsible citizens and are capable of maintaining and improving their homes in a desirable manner. There's no need for more restrictions. I'm opposed to number 6B. There are already too many restrictions, including not being able to park on our street from August the 15th to May the 15th, I understand, LCC or Blue Grass Technical is down there. But initially the times for the parking were 8 to 4. Those got extended from 8 to 7. Workmen who come to my house can't park on the streets. And now with the new restrictions of the 800-square-foot limit and number 6 item B, that's going to make it, you know, we can't enlarge our driveways. We play this game at night. We're constantly jockeying around the cars before we go to bed. So if somebody is on the street, when you can park at 7 o'clock at night until like 8 o'clock the next morning, but if you're there after 8, you'll get a ticket. So we always have to make sure all the cars are off the street and in the driveway, and whoever is the first one out has to be the first one. It's just a mess, okay. The Ransdales are considering building an addition to their home. They have a bungalow. It's called a Cape Cod. I was trying to figure out exactly where I was on that little map. I don't have any PowerPoints. I'm just talking, so you'll have to bear with me on that. But anyway, they have a bungalow, and I think they're called Gunner Homes or something. They were buried. And they have one of the homes that the front does not face the street. The front door is one of those side ones. Now, it's been my understanding if they can go up, but if they go up with an addition and go out the back, they can't go above their existing roof line. And that's why I have a problem with that pitch restriction, because essentially if they went out because they've got a long house, they can't go over 55 feet because you can't do that according to this, which I would propose that they extend that a bit longer. But anyway, if they put an addition and then went up, they couldn't do that because their existing roof line is here, and they can't go above that according to the restrictions. In item number two, I also have a problem like the other lady with the roof pitch, because I think it could be a problem for the remodelers of homes. Some people have vinyl windows and vinyl siding. I mean, I think it should be an allowable building material. I'm an audiologist, and there's always new stuff in hearing aids. I mean, it's every day. And I think there's new building materials, like the builder said. And if we just zero in and say you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do that, I think it's just going to be really a problem. To me, some people, and I appreciate their efforts, I really do, but they're trying to put too many very restrictive covenants on an older existing neighborhood. It's almost like they're trying to create a covenant on this area. And my husband spoke last month at the planning commission because I couldn't come, and he pointed out that all the houses, and they really are, you can see by the pictures, just a hodgepodge. It's almost like we're trying to make it look like, I don't know, Williamsburg or something with the pitches of the roof. And, I mean, that's just my opinion. So if someone did want to come in with a contemporary house on one of these vacant lots, they wouldn't be able to do that. In fact, I worry that this whole N1 overlay will affect the resale of our home, because someone who may want to remodel an older home will face so many restrictions, just like the gentleman from the home builder said, just because of some, I really didn't exactly understand her, but you'd have to go meet for a month to see if the contractor could finish the job. I've heard that buyers do steer away from historic districts because of the excessive restrictions. Some of the proposals that I've, I think last month my husband said they could make some line-by-line changes possibly, and I would just say that perhaps they could look at proposals number 1, number 2, number 6B, number 8, and number 10, and number 10 try to expand that width so my neighbor could go out back, look at that pitch roof, so if she wanted to put something on her house that would be above the existing, just like the gentleman that's on Cooper that's already done it. I mean, I go back to my original statement. I do believe that these people, if we live there, we want the neighborhood to be nice, and I don't think we're going to put something awful, and I just feel like it's America. I really think freedom of choice is important, and we should be able to do what we want to to our homes within some jurisprudence, but zoning changes I really think can help protect our area, because it is a single family residence area. I just don't think a bunch of people are going to come in there and start tearing stuff down and building condos. Now, maybe I'm naive, but I just think from a homeowner's standpoint, I know I've looked at my mom's living with us now, and she can't get in our bathtub, so I'm thinking about doing something in the back, and I looked at these restrictions. I have a really good architect, and he says you won't be able to do this. This is ridiculous. I mean, I can't build a bathroom for my mother because it's going to go out beyond the 55 feet where I've got to put it. So I'm opposed. I mean, I'm not opposed to all of it, but some of these links and restrictions and driveway sizes, and I'm glad they took the bushes out, because I thought that was really kind of funny, because I have an eight-foot-tall bush between my neighbor and the next neighbor, and the birds live in there, and I really don't want to cut them down. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. My name is Susan Dombrowski, and I live at 700 Montclair. I have been there for over 25 years. The one big, huge, I agree with the two ladies in front of me. I think it's way too restrictive. But the other big thing that I want satisfied before you pass anything is some kind of guidelines for how we get our modifications to this. It shouldn't just be some, okay, for example, we've had two major ice storms. We are in a tree neighborhood. I have aluminum siding on my house. A tree comes down on my house and takes off one whole corner. I'm not allowed to put up aluminum siding anymore. I have to do this other stuff. The other stuff is fantastically expensive. I have to do the whole house in the other stuff. The cretaceous or whatever it's called, concretous siding. My insurance company is not going to pay for that. So you're putting me in a position of having to sell the house at a loss because it's damaged in a market where you can't sell your house. Or having to mortgage my house for more than I had paid for it so I can put on my siding. These things need to be delineated before you pass anything. Thank you. Are there others who would like to speak? Madam Chair, I'm Dick Murphy. I represent Robert Williams. Robert owns the two lots in this neighborhood. He owns the one at the corner of Cooper and Castle, which is right there, 702 Cooper and Castle. And he owns a vacant lot right next door to it to the south, which is 1212 Castle Road. It doesn't show up on all the zoning maps as being separate. Some it does, some it doesn't. There are two separate lots on there. I didn't realize I represented such a famous property, but this is the International House. And like all the other people here, we understand the thrust of the regulations and we have some issues with some of the regulations, because I think some of them are going to have some impact beyond what has been contemplated at this point. But first I wanted to emphasize a couple of things. Robert's house, it's a neat house. It is a concrete block house. It was built in the 1940s. He didn't build it. He bought it in 1972, 38 years ago, and he lives there. But this house was built in the 40s. It was a concrete block house, as I said. It has a flat roof. And coming in here today, I knew those were violations of what is being proposed. I knew he could keep them the way they are, but he could never build another one again like it. Then I learned just in standing and sitting in the audience with Robert that not only is it a concrete block with a flat roof, it has an exterior spiral staircase to a second floor exterior patio. Obviously the exterior spiral staircase would also violate the design guidelines. And we are very thankful that the ordinance does not require demolition of this house. Thank you for that. But he does own two lots, one with the concrete block. He called it California style, and perhaps international style is a better characterization of it. But we understand that if these guidelines pass, there could never be, that house could never be built again. We understand that, and that's the way it is. I don't think Robert would ever build a house like that. I've heard many tales of flat roofs also sitting in the audience here today. But it does say something that I hear two cross currents here in the discussion today. One is saying that we have a very diverse neighborhood, and the international house is cited as part of the diversity that is desired in the neighborhood. But on the other hand, that house would be totally prohibited today. You just couldn't build that house today. So we're having an ordinance which is expressed purpose of preserving the diversity which, however, would actually eliminate some of the lauded diversity in the neighborhood. But I do want to emphasize, number one, he doesn't want to do, he has a vacant lot next door to it. He does not want to put a concrete block house on it, does not want to put a flat roof house on it, does not want to put ten students in it. And I emphasize that because about eight months ago I had the pleasure, I was one of the four outside attorneys that served on the panel that dealt with the student housing issue. Four of us outside attorneys and Rochelle Boland and Commissioner Askew was convened by Mayor Newberry to try to work out a solution to that, and we did work it out, and it got passed by the council. And the solution was that in the future no more than four unrelated individuals can live in a housing unit. Some of the ones that had larger numbers are grandfathers up to six. And that has worked. There has not been a single building permit issued for what we'll call a dormitory type house. So I want to reassure you that regardless of what happens here with this ordinance, those dormitory type dwellings are not going to be allowed, and that's under the ordinance which you all reviewed before it went up to the council and has been in force, I think, for about eight months. And that's because this is zoned R1C, this is single family detached residential, one house per lot. I think we have eight foot side yards on either side and that sort of thing, so that's not an issue either. But if we can give you a little, if we can go to the first exhibit I had, I have the plat of this. This is the 19, I think, 36 plat of Montclair. Mr. Williams houses, this is Cooper, this is Castle. Mr. Williams owns lot 12 and 13, which I've circled there, those right there. And 12 is the one which the house is located on. 13 is 15 feet wide, excuse me, 50 feet wide, a 50 feet wide house, a lot, as are these lots down here. I would emphasize, as some of the speakers have, that there is a diversity in size of lots in this neighborhood as well. This, the other units were over on the other side and south, but over on Tate's Creek Road, some of those houses have 134 feet in width. I think they're all over 100 feet in width, the ones in front of Tate's Creek. The next one over from Tate's Creek, those lots, I looked at the old plats, and they average 100 to 120 feet in width at the front. On Summit, they seem to run about 80 feet to 100 feet right behind us, and you saw some of those. And so those are running, the ones on Summit over here, are about one and a half times the width of these lots on Castle. Castle, they're running 50 feet, and on Scoville, they're running 50 feet too. I think they misspelled Scoville on that plat there, but they're running about 50 feet on that one over there. So there's different issues here, and these design regulations impact these smaller lots a lot differently than the way they impact the bigger lots. As I said, if we could go to the next plat, this house was built in the late 40s. Mr. Williams bought it in 72, and in 83, he came back to the Planning Commission with this amended plat for the two lots. What they did was they made more precise calls, surveying practices had improved by that time. They put the precise boundary lines on here. But they also reduced the building lines along Castle down to 30 feet and Cooper on 30 feet. And that's a big issue with us, the building lines along here, because these have small buildable areas. These lots, if you remember the last one, these aren't as deep as the other lots on Castle, because here we have a lot carved out of the rear that faces Cooper Drive. So our neighbor's lots go back about 225 feet. Our neighbors' lots go back about 160 feet back here. So that with the 50-foot frontage, there's a restricted building area, plus the fact you have an eight-foot side yard on them. So every foot is important. So in 83, the Planning Commission approved a plat where we reduced the building line down to 30. And that's a concern we have, because this ordinance would say it has to go back to 35, and a new house would have to comply with 35. We paid the engineer to do that. The Planning Commission felt it was appropriate at that time to have a 30-foot building line. This has been done on other lots in this area, too. If you go to the next plat, this one is a property along Castle Road. There's Castle, Montclair in the back. There's a 20-foot building line there, and that's a 30-foot building line along Castle. So that had a, we have 30 on our plat. They have 20 at one point and 30 on another one. If you can go to the next one, here's one at the corner of Scoville and Cooper Drive. And they, I shouldn't have put yellow on there. They have a 23-foot building line along Scoville on this amendment, which I think was in the year 2003. So in this area, this neighborhood, there is a history, not with just this lot, but other lots in similar circumstances where they have small buildable areas of moving the building line back forward closer to the road. And we want to keep that. We have a lot of house to go on this property and has been counting on that 30-foot building line, which has been there for the last 27 years, and we'd like to keep it that way. Also want to talk about the garage setbacks on this property. We're particularly concerned about those. As I said, these lots on Castle are 50 feet wide, and if you can go to the aerial photograph, we have some particular issues that we have to deal with, as well as the width. If you go to the aerial photograph, which is the wider one there, I guess we're going to have to zoom back a little bit. There we go. This is Cooper Drive here. Here's Castle right here, and here is Mr. Williams' house. This is a vacant lot. Now, you can see a little bit down here, see this shaded area? That's an embankment along Castle Road. It goes quite a ways down, but particularly on Mr. Williams' vacant lot and there's ones next to him and coming down here, that ranges from usually about four to five feet after the sidewalk. The houses in this area have dealt with that in two ways. One, they have these two houses you can see, they've put the garages in the back. They're detached garages. These next three right here along Castle, they have put the attached garage in front. I've got some photographs of those. That's Mr. Williams' property. This is about the property line. You can't really see this. The embankment doesn't show up in so dark here, but there's an embankment going up right there. This is about the property line between the house and the vacant lot. You can see the embankment a little bit. We took the little station wagon there that shows sort of at the top of the embankment just past the sidewalk is about where the top of his station wagon is to show the embankment. The next photograph, we've got three photographs which show you how those three houses in a row dealt with that. These three have the attached garage at the same plane as the rest of the house. This is the first one going down there. And then if you go on to the next one, which shows another way. Again, they have the attached garage, same plane as the front of the house. If you can go on to the next one, again, we have the attached garage, same plane as the front of the house. And that works because you can see what they've done with the embankment. They've come in sort of straight with the garage and then the house gets to stay on top of the embankment. So they've worked with the topography of the lot to deal with that. And I said on this block, excuse me, on Castle between Cooper and Montclair, there are about 25 houses on that block. Most of them have attached garages at the same plane as the front of the house. Now, some of the others don't have a garage. Most of all the others have a detached garage. So basically if you want to have a garage in this block of Castle where there's 50 foot wide lots with an embankment on it, trying to get around, work around trees and that sort of thing with a limited billable area, with an eight foot side yard on either side, they've dealt with the garage issues just two ways. Either they've done a detached garage in back, which that's great. That's an option we like to have and want to have on these lots. The other option has been to do an attached garage at the same plane as the rest of the house. Six of them did it that way. I only showed you three of them. There's three more, one of them with a two car garage on this same block of Castle Road. Now, the problem we have with the recommendation that there be a ten foot setback, the garage has to be ten foot back from the existing plane of the house, and if we have it here you can see it would be very difficult to do that. It would look strange, and I talked to some of the people from the Home Builders Association before the meeting, it wouldn't be an engineering extravaganza to try to do that. Now, what we're complaining about here is that one of the two options, which is an acceptable part of the fabric of this neighborhood, it was mentioned that about a third of the houses in the entire neighborhood have a garage at the same plane as the front of the house, about a third of them, and I know a quarter of them on this block have done it that way. That's part of the fabric of this neighborhood. That's part of keeping harmonious with the pattern we have established over the last 60 years. You can't solve it the way a quarter or a third of your neighbors have solved it. Everybody's going to have to have a detached garage, and we have nothing against detached garages. They're fine, but not everybody wants a detached garage, and if you're building a new house here, a lot of people who are buying new houses and spending what's probably going to be a half million dollars or more to buy a house in this neighborhood, some of them are going to want to have an attached garage, and we just want to have the option of solving this problem the same way 25 to 33 percent of our neighbors have done that, and that's having a garage at the same plane as the rest of the house. I want to emphasize, we're not asking to have a garage forward like a snout house and all that stuff. We don't want that. Everybody's done that, maybe one or two in the neighborhood have done that, but that's not in keeping with the fabric of the neighborhood. But a garage at the same plane is definitely in keeping in the fabric of the neighborhood. We were concerned a little bit also about Item 7B, which is the staff. I don't think this is part of the neighborhood proposal. It's part of the staff proposal that the maximum width on all lots except corner lots for Summit Drive, Eldermere, and Tate's Creek is 100 feet measured at the building line. Well, again, our plot, which we have 164 feet of frontage on Cooper Drive, which I guess we'd be, as well as nonconforming in every other respect, this property would be nonconforming because it's too long, but it's a corner lot. It has a narrow frontage on Castle and a long on Cooper. Now, I know what this is intended to do. It's intended to prevent further subdivision of lots, and that's fine, but I also am a veteran of the regulatory process, and I know that ten years from now, after all of us are gone and somebody comes in and maybe has to do a house on one of these lots that are on the corners of the frontage, somebody in building inspection might say, well, I'm sorry, you've got a nonconforming lot. You're too big. We cannot issue you a permit until you reduce the size of your lot. Or they may say, well, you have to station your house up here because you're too big or whatever. These lots aren't getting subdivided anymore. We don't have a problem with that, but on the other hand, having a maximum frontage is going to have a lot of unintended consequences, especially on all of the corner lots. So I guess what I'm asking in summary is three specific things. We are asking on item 6C. It says garages must be set back a minimum of ten feet from the front building plane. We would like that to read consistently with one-quarter to one-third of all the houses in this neighborhood, garages must be set back to the front building plane. That would be consistent with the way this neighborhood has developed. It wouldn't give Mr. Williams anything more than anybody else has done out there, and it would not give him the right to build a snout house, which nobody wants, but it would give him the right to build a house on this vacant lot similar to others in the neighborhood. The second thing is on 7B. We would propose deleting that requirement of the maximum width on lots. And the final thing is on 9A4, Castle Road, putting that back, the setback must be between 30 to 45 feet instead of 35 to 45 feet. Again, that would be consistent with what your predecessors on the Planning Commission decided was appropriate in 1983 and what has been decided on other similar smaller lots. Again, this is not as deep a lot as the other lots on Castle, but make that 30 to 45 feet is what we're requesting. The last thing I'd do is if you put up the last exhibit there, the excerpt out of the ordinance, this is the ND1 ordinance enabling legislation, Item 29.1, where it discusses the intent of the Neighborhood Design Overlay Ordinance. And the intent up there, up at the very top here, is to give a harmonious appearance of structures which stabilize neighborhoods and maintain their character, maintain their character, be protected, conserved and preserved. And over here on the right side on Number 3, this specifically deals with new construction. It says encouraged construction that will lead to continuation, conservation and improvement in a manner appropriate to the scale and physical character of the original buildings. Assure that new construction is in harmony with the scale and physical character of the original buildings of the neighborhood through the use of design standards. Now, that's what we're asking you, especially on this garage plane issue. What we're proposing, which is to allow us to be the way other houses have been, is in harmony with the scale and physical character of the original buildings of the neighborhood. What is being proposed to you, which essentially gives you two options, have a detached garage, which is fine, or set it back ten feet from the front plane of the building, is not in harmony and character with the physical appearance of the existing buildings in this neighborhood. You've seen that from the pictures. Other witnesses have said that to you as well. We feel that by doing this, you are keeping this in the intent of what the neighborhood design overlay is to do, is to have buildings in character with what has been done. So we thank you very much. And as I said, Mr. Williams knows that he's not going to be able to rebuild that house out there, but we would like to build something that is in harmony with what's been done in the neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Are there others to speak in opposition? I'll be brief. I'm Robert Williams with the International House. And by the way, Mr. Bullock, I beat you up in that 38 years. When I first attended one of the, I think it was the last neighborhood meeting, I took a look at their recommendations and everything. Immediately realized that a lot of these efforts were directly aimed at my house. You know, the issue with an outside staircase going upstairs, I wonder how the fire marshal feels about that. I think he would probably like people to be able to get out of their house. They're also restricting a four-foot wall on Cooper Drive. That's fine with me. But on Cooper Drive, where I circle around on Castle, they won't allow me to continue that wall all the way around if I ever want to. What if only one house is ever built there and just keep a large backyard? You might want to have the same brick wall all the way around. That's one of the restrictions that just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm a building inspector by trade for 35 years. I used to work for you all. Then I started making money later. So changing the building, requiring a certain roof pitch, just is designed, written, so nobody can add on the house. Because you don't want two different roof pitches on your house if you add on. And, you know, I don't want to ever build another or live in another black roof house. But restricting that is discrimination, period. That's all I've got to say about it. Thank you for your audience. Thank you. If there are no other comments, then we will close this and have rebuttal and closing statements. Mr. Harvey? Thanks again. All I will offer in comment or rebuttal is we very much respect the opinions of our neighbors, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Johnson, and others. I think we have prided ourselves on the process so far that we have been open to refinement. We have been open to better ways of saying and meeting the intent. The specific questions that were asked in terms of roof pitch, there is provisions. The way it's written, as far as we understand it, is to match existing, if there is an exception for that. In terms that there was a question about driveways and whether circular driveways count. That is a driveway. We had that exact question we asked in our very first meeting with planning on how that would be interpreted. The standard, as we understand it, is only to dedicated parking pads, not to turnarounds or not to the driveway itself. There was a question about roof height. We believe 35 and 30 feet allows addition to any structure anywhere in the neighborhood, which we recognize is desired, including I did that as well. I'm trying to remember if there was any other questions. I appreciate the comments about the diversity. Understand the conundrum. We are trying to establish some standards that provide an extra layer of protection, which is what I think ND1 is all about, that make it lean on the side of better safe than sorry. We have tried very hard to not be overly fussy or prescriptive in our personal opinion. We're still open. I know what the other point was about the measurement. We support the homebuilders and others in clarifying the language of height and where it's measured and would be fine with language that could be suggested. We also respect and understand the concern over the appeal process or variance process. I would submit to you that's not a Montclair issue. If there are improvements that can be made, our intent and the reason we started down the ND1 road is we wanted to make it relatively easy to make changes if they can be supported, but set some kind of line that at least requires you to make an exception. It's not that we don't expect that there would be exceptions requested. And we don't want an onerous process for homeowners or others either or builders or remodelers. And so if there's clarifications, that seems like a more macro issue to us, but we do expect that there will be variances. And we have tried very hard to set standards that are relatively generic, but meet very specific intents of compatibility. If you have a diverse neighborhood that was built 80 years ago and then built over 40, I respect some of the speaker's position that there is an existing diversity of garages, et cetera. But I still would challenge anyone to come back and say that the predominant harmony that we are trying to do is not what the standard is primarily aimed at. Also, I'm being reminded by some of my colleagues that we also had a lot of questions about vinyl siding, given that, as has been alluded to by many, there is vinyl siding in the neighborhood on several levels. And we've asked planning and I guess we'll defer to the legal staff, but that as an existing condition, replacement of an existing condition would not be affected by the new standard. Our intent is more towards large scale or new construction of additions. So we recognize that concern and that's been a common issue. On the other hand, we also believe that, you know, protecting the character and stability of the neighborhood is served by looking at materials that are compatible with the neighborhood and or that are longer term sustainable materials, building material. So with that, we're open to suggestions from any of the parties and have tried to remain that way the whole process. But we do believe this is an important step for the Planning Commission and the city take to help support one of its historic neighborhoods. All right. At this time, thank you very much. At this time, we will now hear any citizen objectors that would like to rebut. Five minutes maximum. Seeing none, staff comments. The first item I wanted to address is that the Planning Commission and the council did adopt an amendment to the zoning ordinance in early 2009. That does, I'm going to put on overhead, that does outline the amendment process or how to modify an ND1 restriction. Of course, the primary thing would be to approach building inspection when you are seeking a building permit and identify all the issues up front so that you can hopefully avoid this type of process. But if something is, comes to, you know, comes to bear that there is a modification necessary, the zoning ordinance does allow for that to occur on a very similar timeline as seeking a variance to the Board of Adjustment. One thing that Mr. Johnson mentioned in terms of the Home Builders Association was getting midway through a building process and discovering that a building material wasn't going to be allowed. And the staff would just comment that this process actually will require a builder to be up front with building inspection about exactly what materials are going to be used. And therefore, the builder would be aware at the time they're issued the permit what materials would be allowed and what materials wouldn't be allowed. And that would avoid a mid-process, oops, I didn't know I couldn't use that material circumstance. The other thing Mr. Johnson mentioned that I wanted to clarify, he quoted that 30% of the garages in the neighborhood didn't meet. And our calculation was that 10% of the garages were actually at the same building plane as the structure. So not 30%, but 10%. Two other things that were brought up by the neighborhood in terms of concerns were, first, measuring a structure, and that is defined by the zoning ordinance. You measure from this surrounding grade, and yes, it should be averaged for drops in slope around the exterior of the building. And then the second thing would be grandfathering, what we call grandfathering, which is if you have a structure that has siding on it today, what you would do is you would measure from the surrounding grade. And there's damage in some way, or you want to replace it with more vinyl siding because you just love the way it looks or love the way it's acted. That is possible. You would go to building inspection, I would think, and just double check. But if you currently have something that would be prohibited under these restrictions, you can maintain it, you can keep it. But you would have to address new additions, new buildings, not what's existing and in place today. So repairing, I think someone gave an example of one side of their house having damage and wanting to repair it with the same materials. That is acceptable, and that is allowed, whether you have an ND1 restriction or not. Oh, and one last thing. Mr. Murphy mentioned item 7B in terms of lot widths. And I just want to apologize. Our language was not the best for that addition. The staff would propose that it read the maximum width on all lots for Summit Drive, Eldermere Road, and Tate's Creek Road is 100 feet. That is measured at the building line, except corner lots. So this is really intended for those streets in the eastern half of the neighborhood, not all lots. And I think that should alleviate his concern about that because his particular client lives on Cooper and has a lot on Castle. Mr. Murphy, address your one concern. Thank you. All right. At this time we will close the hearing and open the floor for discussion. I wrote down several notes here that I'd like to mention. I think Stan and the Neighborhood Association, I think you all have done a wonderful job with this. It sounds to me like it was very comprehensive and that people have had the chance to input the process. So whatever happens today, you know, kudos to you also. This has always been one of those things that for me is difficult, because you can't please everybody. And I tend to fall back on how do you please the most people and do the least damage. And with due respect to everybody who's voiced their concerns about it, my tendency here is to think this is the right thing for this neighborhood. And I think since we've addressed some of the concerns already that Tracy has mentioned, I think through the expedited variance process, you have a vehicle to address changes that don't fit with the standards that are being provided right now. Everything that's existing right now, everybody has mentioned that they have in their house right now that doesn't comply with these rules to be enacted is grandfathered. And I think the last thing is, you know, with the mention of in harmony with existing or matching existing building materials, I think those were things that I wrote down that we should try to insert into this. And I understand now that that may not be necessary, because it's already in existing law. That's it. Thank you, Mr. Brewer. Are there other comments from members of the commission? Mr. Cravens. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to add to it. I mean, it's well kept. All the houses look great. I didn't see anything too out of line. And I guess I'm just wondering if you've kept it that way all these years without any kind of overlays or restrictions or anything. Well, that's an address that we talked about in the zoning committee. But I was pretty adamant about letting vinyl siding be an accepted material. It looked like to me about 75% of the houses had vinyl siding on them at some point, either on the dormers or places where they had weatherboarding or wood siding that had rotted out and needed replacing. But I mean, when you're going to make the remodelers today, if you make them put these other materials back on your house when you have to repair it, because vinyl siding and aluminum carnage and that kind of work, you can put right over the existing wood. But if you're going to go back with these other materials, you're going to have to tear the old stuff off. And we have new lead paint rules. It's going to be 40 square feet, I think, of the exterior. EPA is going to be in there on you and you have to go through all the lead paint removal processes. And that's very expensive. And then there's some things that aren't mentioned in here. I know you can't mention everything in something like this, but foundations, if you were to build a room addition on your house, the foundation between the siding and the grade, I guess concrete blocks are okay. It would seem ridiculous to have concrete block down there and then you have to put James Hardy siding or brick or something up above that and leave the concrete block exposed. I mean, that's not addressed here. When you write these restrictions, I've done a lot of neighborhoods and have written them. And you write down one thing and sometimes something else pops out that you forgot. And then the grandfather clause, I don't know if you were to build a room addition on the back of your house and you've got vinyl on some of it, does that part, can that part be vinyl? No, that has to be brick or hardy plank or something. And then there's a lot of new materials, exterior materials coming down the road that I saw the other day at a show that aren't mentioned here. You don't even know about them yet. They're acceptable, too. And you're, by this number one, you're eliminating it. So I would like to eliminate this 1A from this. The rest of them, look, the land use issues and that sort of thing, I understand that. You're trying to keep somebody from going there and subdividing it and other things. Mr. Murphy was wanting to build a garage in the front of the house, but he didn't even pick up about the driveway. It could only be ten feet wide. I was assuming he was probably going to put a two-car garage. Well, he's going to have a ten-foot wide driveway to it. That doesn't work. Garages are 20 feet wide. So there's a lot of things in here, but I think, and to change them, I mean, you're basically going to have to do a zone change. A mini zone change, right up there it was. And when you take all these things to the building inspection, then you're at the mercy of the inspector looking at it, how he's going to interpret it. So it may be written here, but he may interpret it the wrong way and send you through the appeal process. So that's my thing. I can probably support it if we take out the 1A. Are there other commission members who would like to comment? I'm not going to repeat by any means what anyone said here. I'm just going to say that I'll echo what Commissioner Patrick Brewer said. I think a lot of this has been worked out over the years. It took me at least two years of work here to get to this point. Most of the concerns that I've heard for the most part have been addressed. There is vinyl in the neighborhood, and it's allowed to stay there, and it's allowed to be replaced if repairs are needed. And I think that would be very adequate for what I've seen take place. Across Nicholasville Road, I think, is the primary purpose for this, and I cannot blame them for it once I own it. So I'd be in favor for this as it stands at this time. Are there others? I respect the fact that this was a very comprehensive process with a lot of citizen input, a lot of neighborhood cooperation. And the neighborhood decided that they didn't want more vinyl siding, and I feel we need to respect that. There are provisions within the existing ordinance that allow for the exceptions that were addressed today. So that seems to be the only real sticking point. The other sticking points seem to have been worked through. There are other provisions in the zoning ordinance. I would like to move that we approve the ND overlay zone with the staff alternative design standards for the following reasons. That the design overlay is in agreement with the 2007 comprehensive plan for the following reasons, including the goals and objectives. Eight overriding themes within the goals and objectives, which is articulated in the staff recommendation 1A. And staff recommendation 1B. The implementation of this ND1 is in agreement with our goals and objectives by providing standards that maintain the character of the neighborhood independent of the existing zoning. And there has been a thorough, under C, there has been a thorough study which defines the existing character of the neighborhood. You all have identified goals towards maintaining and preserving your neighborhood. And I think that your standards do comply with the requirements of the ND1 zone. Yes. May I add that on the blue sheet, 7B, we would add three words at the end in parentheses, except corner lots. And delete it from line one of 7B. I'm sorry. It's in the first line. It should read the maximum width on all lots for Summit Drive, Eldermere Road and Tate's Creek Road is 100 feet as measured at the building line, except corner lots. As Tracy said. Thank you. Motion has been made by Ms. Phillips. Is there a second? I'll second the motion. Motion has been seconded by Mr. Brewer. I won't take the whole thing out, but to allow vinyl as an accepted material. Since there's so much of it in the neighborhood and it looks like you can put it in your windows and on your window frames and door frames. So I'd like to make amendment that vinyl be added as accepted material to 1A. In that case, we have to vote on the amendment first. So is there a second to the amendment? Since there is no second, the amendment dies and we will vote on the original motion. As stated by Ms. Phillips, seconded by Mr. Brewer. All in favor, vote electronically, please. Motion carries. It's taken a very long time. We appreciate you all coming and being a part of this and participating in the process. Thank you very much. I think there is one more item of business for the commission this afternoon. That is correct, Madam Chair. I move that two current members of the Floodplain Appeals Committee be reappointed by the commission. I'm sorry, three. Do I hear a motion by a member of the commission to reappoint Fred Eastridge, Bill Hodges, and Doug Miner for committee membership? Mayor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Are there other staff items that need to be brought before the commission? If not, we are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.