# Board of Adjustment Meeting - March 28, 2014 > Auto-transcribed civic record · March 28, 2014 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3313 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3313?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2014-03-28 - **Last revised**: July 15, 2026 - **Length**: 25,304 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. 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 Board of Adjustment met on March 28, 2014, at 1:30 p.m. at 200 East Main Street in Lexington, Kentucky, with Barry Stumbo presiding. The board considered nine agenda items, including variance requests for property setbacks and yard reductions, conditional use permits, and administrative appeals. The board took 10 votes and heard 4 public comments during the meeting. Of the nine items presented, the board approved five requests: a variance for Barbara B. Pickett to reduce side yard requirements from 3 feet to 0 feet; a variance for Salas Enterprises Corp. to reduce setback from 25 feet to 20 feet; approval for Eighth Pole Inn, LLC to continue operating as a bed and breakfast under new ownership; an administrative appeal for Eric DeJonge (DBA Net Biz, LLC) regarding an internet cafe with sweepstakes; and an administrative appeal by Walker Properties concerning a sign permit revocation. Four items were postponed for further consideration: Mitchell Construction Management's request to reduce side yard from 17.5 feet to 10.5 feet; Peter Tate's variances to reduce side yard from 18 inches to 6 inches and rear yard from 20 feet to 8 feet; Fotios Moraitis's conditional use permit application for a pawn shop; and Bill Mead's conditional use permit application for a botanical garden. ## Attendance **Present:** - Barry Stumbo - Janice Meyer - Thomas Glover - James Griggs - Casey Kaucher - Chuck Saylor - Jim Marx - Tracy Jones - Bill Sallee - Jimmy Emmons - Tammye McMullen **Absent:** - Noel White - Kathryn Moore ## Votes and Decisions The Board took action on ten items during the March 28, 2014 meeting. All votes were unanimous with four members voting in favor and no opposition or abstentions. **Postponements** The Board postponed four items: - **C-2014-15**: Conditional use permit for assisted living center at 2930 Spurr Road [timestamp: 00:07:50]. Motion by Janice Meyer, seconded by Thomas Glover. - **V-2014-19**: Variance appeal for Peter Tate to expand garage at 101 Hampton Ct. [timestamp: 00:11:02]. Motion by Thomas Glover, seconded by James Griggs. - **V-2014-18**: Variance appeal for Mitchell Construction Management to expand garage at 125 E. 4th St. [timestamp: 00:18:04]. Motion by James Griggs, seconded by Janice Meyer. - **C-2014-12**: Conditional use permit for pawn shop at 1536 N. Limestone [timestamp: 00:47:54]. Motion by Thomas Glover, seconded by Janice Meyer. - **C-2014-14**: Conditional use permit for botanical garden at 9086 Old Richmond Rd. [timestamp: 01:56:11]. Motion by Thomas Glover, seconded by Janice Meyer. **Approvals** The Board approved five items: - **V-2014-16**: Variance for Barbara Pickett to reduce side yard from 3 ft to 0 ft at 109 Pleasant Ridge Way [timestamp: 00:14:12]. Motion by James Griggs, seconded by Thomas Glover. Conditions included compliance with submitted site plan and obtaining a fence permit within 60 days. - **V-2014-17**: Variance for Salas Enterprises to reduce setback from 25 ft to 20 ft at 3501 Lansdowne Dr. [timestamp: 00:15:18]. Motion by Janice Meyer, seconded by James Griggs. Conditions required development per submitted site plan, obtaining necessary permits, and referencing the Board's action on the final development plan. - **C-2014-13**: Continuation of bed & breakfast operation under new ownership at 3463 Rosalie Rd. [timestamp: 00:17:57]. Motion by Thomas Glover, seconded by Janice Meyer. Six conditions were imposed, including compliance with original conditional use approval, obtaining required permits, septic system review, parking maintenance, signage restrictions, and compliance with applicable codes. - **A-2014-11**: Administrative appeal for internet cafe with sweepstakes at 1555 E. New Circle Rd. [timestamp: 02:59:16]. Motion by Janice Meyer, seconded by Thomas Glover. - **A-2014-20**: Administrative appeal to reinstate sign permit for Walker Properties at 3898 Haley Rd. [timestamp: 03:18:08]. Motion by Thomas Glover, seconded by James Griggs. All four Board members—Barry Stumbo, Janice Meyer, Thomas Glover, and James Griggs—voted in favor of each motion. ## Public Comment Four speakers addressed the board during the public comment period. **Pawn Shop Conditional Use Permit** [timestamp: 00:20:44] Fotios Moraitis spoke in support of a proposed pawn shop conditional use permit. He clarified that the application is for a pawn shop only and does not include a used car lot. Moraitis noted that he has secured support from the property owner and Goodwill for parking arrangements. He acknowledged that the property has been vacant and in poor condition, but stated that the proposed use would improve the site. **Botanical Garden Conditional Use Permit** [timestamp: 01:05:43] Bill Mead presented arguments for a proposed botanical garden conditional use permit. He characterized the use as a low-impact, environmentally sensitive recreational facility that is consistent with the Rural Land Management Plan. Mead urged the board not to delay approval pending text amendments. **Sweepstakes Internet Cafe Appeal** [timestamp: 02:19:10] Chris Westover appealed a decision regarding a sweepstakes internet cafe. He explained that the sweepstakes component functions as a non-gambling promotional tool comparable to standard retail promotions. Westover stated that the business is not adult-oriented and that the business model has been reviewed and approved by the county attorney. **Sign Permit Revocation Appeal** [timestamp: 03:01:48] Chad Walker appealed the revocation of a sign permit. He contested the revocation, asserting that the sign is not located in the right-of-way and that the permit should not have been voided despite having received approval from building inspection. ## Contested Items Three items generated significant disagreement during this meeting: **Pawn Shop Conditional Use Permit** The applicant and staff engaged in heated discussion over a pawn shop conditional use permit. The primary points of contention centered on parking adequacy, safety considerations, and how the proposed use aligned with the Central Sector Small Area Plan. Staff emphasized the need for streetscape improvements as part of the approval process, while the applicant argued for approval of a small, specialized use without extensive additional requirements. **Botanical Garden Conditional Use Permit** A botanical garden conditional use permit application sparked heated debate regarding the timing of a ZODA (Zoning Ordinance Development Amendment) text amendment. The applicant contended that waiting for the text amendment process could significantly delay a long-standing project. Staff, however, raised safety concerns about shuttle services that would operate across a federal highway, prioritizing these safety issues over project timeline considerations. **Sweepstakes Internet Cafe Appeal** The Board was divided on an appeal concerning a sweepstakes internet cafe, with members split on a key question: whether the use constituted an adult entertainment business. Staff argued the operation was similar to an adult arcade and should be classified accordingly. The applicant countered that the business was a non-gambling promotional retail service and should not be categorized as adult entertainment. This fundamental disagreement about the nature and classification of the business resulted in a split vote among Board members. ## Barbara B. Pickett - Variance to reduce side yard from 3 ft to 0 ft **Case Number:** V-2014-16 **Outcome:** Approved **Overview** The Board considered a variance request for Barbara B. Pickett to reduce the required side yard setback from 3 feet to 0 feet in a Planned Neighborhood Residential zone. The variance would allow the retention of an existing fence on the property. **Presentation** William Pickett presented the case on behalf of Barbara B. Pickett [timestamp: 00:13:41]. The applicant sought to retain an existing fence that does not comply with the standard 3-foot side yard requirement for the zone. **Board Findings** The Board approved the variance based on the following determinations: - The fence is not obstructive to neighboring properties or the surrounding area - The fence does not negatively affect neighboring properties - The variance is necessary due to the home's unique layout, which features only a side porch door - The existing fence configuration is appropriate given the property's specific circumstances **Decision** The Board granted the variance request, allowing Barbara B. Pickett to retain the existing fence with a 0-foot side yard setback rather than the standard 3-foot requirement. ## Salas Enterprises Corp. - Variance to reduce setback from 25 ft to 20 ft **Identifier:** V-2014-17 The Board considered a variance request from Salas Enterprises Corp. to reduce the required setback from 25 feet to 20 feet for a project in a Planned Shopping Center zone. [timestamp: 00:15:18] John Talbot presented the variance request to the Board. **Outcome:** The Board approved the variance. **Rationale:** The Board found that the requested setback reduction is consistent with modern infill redevelopment trends and will not alter the neighborhood character. The variance allows Salas Enterprises to enclose a patio within the reduced setback parameters. ## Mitchell Construction Management - Variance to reduce side yard from 17.5 ft to 10.5 ft [timestamp: 00:18:04] The Board considered variance application V-2014-18 regarding a request by Mitchell Construction Management to reduce the required side yard setback from 17.5 feet to 10.5 feet. **Outcome** The Board postponed this variance appeal. The postponement was based on two primary issues: incomplete application materials and lack of proper notice to relevant parties. **Key Issues** During review, the Board identified that the applicant sought to expand the garage height as part of this request. However, this garage height expansion was not included in the original variance submission materials. This discrepancy between what was originally submitted and what the applicant now sought to modify created a procedural problem that prevented the Board from proceeding with the hearing. The incomplete application materials and the failure to provide proper notice regarding the full scope of the requested modifications—particularly the garage height expansion—meant the application did not meet the requirements for the Board to conduct a complete and fair review at this time. ## Peter Tate - Variances to reduce side yard from 18 in to 6 in and rear yard from 20 ft to 8 ft **Identifier:** V-2014-19 **Type:** Variance **Outcome:** Postponed The Board considered a variance application by Peter Tate requesting approval to reduce the side yard setback from 18 inches to 6 inches and the rear yard setback from 20 feet to 8 feet [timestamp: 00:11:02]. **Key Discussion Points** Jimmy Emmons was the key speaker on this agenda item. The Board noted that staff had recommended approval of the variance, and the applicant had provided email agreement to the proposal. However, the applicant was absent from the meeting. **Concerns Raised** The Chair expressed concern about proceeding with approval of the variance in the absence of the applicant, despite the staff recommendation and the applicant's email agreement to the terms. **Action Taken** Due to the applicant's absence and the Chair's reservations about approving the variance without the applicant present, the Board voted to postpone consideration of this item. ## Eighth Pole Inn, LLC - Continue operation of bed & breakfast under new ownership **Agenda Item:** C-2014-13 **Type:** Conditional Use **Outcome:** Approved [timestamp: 00:17:57] The Board considered a request to continue operation of a bed & breakfast at Eighth Pole Inn, LLC under new ownership. The property is located in an Agricultural Rural zone. Tom Marks presented the item to the Board. The discussion focused on the continuation of a long-standing bed & breakfast operation that would remain unchanged despite the change in ownership. The Board noted that there was no adverse neighborhood impact associated with the request. The Board approved the continuation of the bed & breakfast operation, recognizing that the change in ownership does not affect the nature or scope of the use itself. The approval allows the new ownership to maintain the existing bed & breakfast business at the location. ## Fotios Moraitis - Conditional use permit for pawn shop [timestamp: 00:47:54] Fotios Moraitis applied for a conditional use permit to operate a pawn shop in a Highway Service Business zone. The application was discussed by the Board, with key speakers including Moraitis and Jimmy Emmons. **Concerns Raised** The Board identified several significant concerns with the proposed pawn shop: - **Parking inadequacy** — The Board determined that parking provisions for the location were insufficient to support the proposed use. - **Safety hazards** — Safety concerns were raised regarding the operation of a pawn shop at the proposed location. - **Gateway vision misalignment** — The Board noted that the application failed to enhance the Central Sector Small Area Plan's gateway vision, indicating the proposal did not align with the area's planned development and aesthetic goals. **Outcome** The Board postponed the application rather than approving or denying it outright. This postponement allows for further consideration and potential modifications to address the identified concerns. ## Bill Mead - Conditional use permit for botanical garden **Application:** C-2014-14 **Outcome:** Postponed The Board considered a conditional use permit application from Bill Mead for a botanical garden [timestamp: 01:56:11]. Key speakers in the discussion included Chris Westover and John Carman. **Concerns Raised** The Board identified significant concerns about the proposed project's parking arrangements. A primary issue was that parking would be located at a distance from the botanical garden site, requiring visitors to cross a federal highway to access the facility. This arrangement raised questions about the practicality and safety of the parking solution. **Pending Regulatory Considerations** The Board noted that a pending ZODA (Zoning Ordinance Development Amendment) text amendment could potentially clarify how outdoor recreational uses are classified and regulated. The Board determined that waiting for this amendment to be finalized would be prudent before making a final decision on the conditional use permit. **Board Action** Rather than approving or denying the application, the Board voted to postpone consideration of the botanical garden permit. This postponement allows time for the ZODA text amendment process to conclude, which may provide clearer regulatory guidance on outdoor recreational uses and potentially address some of the Board's concerns about the project. ## Eric DeJonge (DBA Net Biz, LLC) - Administrative appeal for internet cafe with sweepstakes [timestamp: 02:59:16] The Board considered an administrative appeal by Eric DeJonge, operating as Net Biz, LLC, regarding the classification of a sweepstakes internet cafe operation. **Key Speakers** - Chris Westover - Eric DeJong **Issue** The appeal addressed whether a sweepstakes internet cafe should be classified as an adult entertainment use or as a retail service with promotional sweepstakes. **Board Determination** The Board approved the appeal. The Board determined that the sweepstakes internet cafe is not an adult entertainment use, but rather a retail service with promotional sweepstakes—a classification comparable to common retail promotions found in other businesses. **Outcome** The appeal was approved. ## Walker Properties - Administrative appeal of sign permit revocation [timestamp: 03:18:08] The Board considered an administrative appeal by Walker Properties regarding the revocation of a sign permit. Chad Walker presented the appeal. The core issue involved a sign permit that had been revoked based on a determination that the sign was located in the right-of-way. Walker Properties contested this determination, arguing that state transportation data contradicted the finding that the sign encroached on the right-of-way. The Board reviewed the evidence presented, including the state transportation data referenced in the appeal. Based on this review, the Board found that the original revocation decision was based on an incorrect determination regarding the sign's location relative to the right-of-way boundary. **Outcome:** The Board approved the appeal and voted to reinstate the sign permit. --- ## Decisions - **C-2014-15** — postponed (4-0): Postpone conditional use permit for assisted living center at 2930 Spurr Road - **V-2014-19** — postponed (4-0): Postpone variance appeal for Peter Tate to expand garage at 101 Hampton Ct. - **V-2014-16** — passed (4-0): Approve variance for Barbara Pickett to reduce side yard from 3 ft to 0 ft at 109 Pleasant Ridge Way - **V-2014-17** — passed (4-0): Approve variance for Salas Enterprises to reduce setback from 25 ft to 20 ft at 3501 Lansdowne Dr. - **V-2014-18** — postponed (4-0): Postpone variance appeal for Mitchell Construction Management to expand garage at 125 E. 4th St. - **C-2014-13** — passed (4-0): Approve continuation of bed & breakfast operation under new ownership at 3463 Rosalie Rd. - **C-2014-12** — postponed (4-0): Postpone conditional use permit for pawn shop at 1536 N. Limestone - **C-2014-14** — postponed (4-0): Postpone conditional use permit for botanical garden at 9086 Old Richmond Rd. - **A-2014-11** — passed (4-0): Approve administrative appeal for internet cafe with sweepstakes at 1555 E. New Circle Rd. - **A-2014-20** — passed (4-0): Approve administrative appeal to reinstate sign permit for Walker Properties at 3898 Haley Rd. --- ## Full transcript Take a walk with me downtown. Let's take a look and see where there are some opportunities to make some improvements. Maybe the city can do their share. To have an organization such as the Downtown Lacing Corporation that could bring to the table the private and the public sector and have the conversations that need to happen in order to do the events, the business transactions, the kinds of things that made a downtown successful. We kind of charted our course as to what else could be done to kind of orchestrate, you know, improvements for this area relative to landscaping and parking and development and people feeling like that their tax dollars were really doing good work. The mayor called and asked me if I would be interested, and I think Deborah Hensley had talked with him about that. And I said, yeah, sure, let's give it a try. And 15 years later, I left the DLC, but it was his return from 1989 to 1990 that I took over. All these people would come together over the lunch hour, once a month, in separate committees, and have a discussion, and there was this open communication between property owners, residents. Happened. The DLC enhances the vitality of downtown by promoting it in different ways, whether it's parades, the Thursday Night Live events, fireworks, Fourth of July. The best thing about the events the DLC puts on are you have lawyers, you have CPAs, you have bankers, you have people in the nonprofit world that are there. So you kind of mix all sorts of different industries and organizations come together. I think that what they're doing with downtown is absolutely amazing. We come down here every chance we get, pretty much every Thursday night. We come from the atmosphere, the camaraderie, for a little piece of downtown Lexington. I can remember coming here when they started in 96 and it was like 30 people in a beer truck and it's a lot better than it used to be. We come here just about every week and bring the dogs and get a couple drinks and enjoy Lexington. We walk around. We walk around, we have... In the rain Thumbing for a ride On this lonely Kentucky back road I've loved you much too long My love's too strong To let you go Never knowing What will grow Kentucky rain keeps pouring down And up ahead's another town And I'll go walking through With the rain in my Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo The March meeting to order. Good afternoon. I'd like to ask everyone, if they would, to please turn off all your cell phones. And if you need to take a call, please do so out in the foyer. Anyone that is planning on speaking today, would you please stand and raise your right hand? Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you. You may sit. Before I read the agenda, I'd like to go ahead and ask if there are any withdrawals, postponements. Yes, sir. You want to come forward, please? State your name for the record. My name is Jim Baker. I'd like to postpone the Huber-Ramsey development C2014-15. Ask for a postponement for 30 days. This would be on page 4 of this? That's correct. Yeah, page 4, item number 4. Okay. 30-day postponement. Does any member of the board have any questions? I have a question, please. I'm wondering about the location of the generator. I might ask the staff if I can just bring this up so that you can be considering it during this period of postponement. But it looks like it's located between your facility and the residential area. And so my question is, if it is required to run every day or every week for a half hour just to keep it reliable, if it could be moved further away from the residential area. Are you referring to a generator for power services? Yes. Isn't there an emergency generator in that area? No, there's not that I know of. Well, that's great. We've had other applications with similar facilities that have emergency power backup, and they run those loud generators on a weekly basis. As a matter of fact, all the utilities are to the site, including a stubbed-in street. Okay, as long as there's not a loud generator next to a residential backyard, then it's a non-issue. Okay. Thank you. Is there a motion to postpone Mr. Baker's request for 30 days? So moved. Second. Thank you. Mr. Glover seconds. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Very good. I'll go ahead and read the agenda. There is approval of the minutes for February 28th, but I understand that they are not ready to go today. Very good. I'll go ahead and read the agenda. I'm going to ask if the applicant's present. And if there's any opposition, we are going to ask you all to step out in the hallway and try to resolve your differences. Those without opposition, we're going to hear those cases first. And I'd like to start with item number one. I'm going to read the agenda out. Barbara Pickett, is the applicant here? Is Barbara Pickett here? Is there any opposition? Is there any opposition to V2014-6? Okay. Salas Enterprises Corporation, are they represented here today? Very good. Is there any opposition? Is there any opposition to Salas Enterprises? Mitchell Construction Management, are they here today? Mitchell Construction Management? Staff does not see the applicant or their representative here. The staff is recommending postponement of this item. We need a motion to postpone this. I would say that we could wait until it would normally come up on the agenda and give the applicant some time to get here in case they're running late for some reason. Okay, we'll come back to that. Peter Tate, is the applicant here, Peter Tate? Mr. Chairman, the staff did receive an unusual request on Peter Tate. he is out of the country and did not have anybody that would be able to come and represent him today because all of his family that he knows about this project are also with him on vacation out of the country. He did send the staff an email request to the Board of Adjustment stating that he had read the staff report, understood the conditions and agreed to abide by them and respectfully request approval of the board at the appropriate time. He did say that if there, he went on further to say that if there was any opposition to this today or if the board did just simply feel uncomfortable approving it in his absence, then he would request in the alternative a one-month postponement. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Evans. I personally don't like to approve something with the applicant not here. And so I'd like to ask the board their wishes, and I'd like to see this postponed for 30 days so the applicant can be here. I agree. Is there a motion? Move to postpone. Thank you, Mr. Glover. Is there a second? I'll second. Mr. Griggs second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Very good. We'll postpone that. we've got a conditional use appeal that's coming up, which the staff has recommended disapproval. Is the applicant here? Very good. Is there any opposition? Okay, we're going to hear your conditional a little bit later on. Bill Mead, the applicant is here. Is there anyone in opposition? I know that staff has recommended postponement. Mr. Mead, I assume that you want to proceed? Yes, sir. Okay. And there's no opposition? Okay. Eric DeJong, applicant is here. Is there any opposition to Eric DeJong NetBiz? Okay. Okay. We missed 8th poll in. 8th poll in. Is applicant here? Is there any opposition to 8th poll in? Okay. Thank you. The first item with no opposition we're going to hear is Barbara Pickett. Would the applicant please step forward? I beg your pardon? I'm sorry. I did. I missed Walker Properties. Is Walker Properties in the building? Okay. Is there any opposition to Walker Properties? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Glover. Applicant, please come forward and state your name for the record. William Pickett. Mr. Pickett, the staff has recommended approval subject to two conditions. Do you agree to abide by those conditions? Yes, I do. Does the board have any questions for Mr. Pickett? If not, the Chair will entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move that we approve the 2014-16 Barbara B. Pickett's appeal for a variance to reduce the required side yard from 3 feet to 0 feet in order to allow an existing fence to remain in an R3 zone at 109 Pleasant Ridge Way, based on the staff's recommendation of approval and subject to the two conditions. Second. Thank you. Mr. Griggs, second by Mr. Glover. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Salas Entertainment, or I'm sorry, Salas Enterprises. Applicant, please come forward. State your name for the record, please. Good afternoon, Mr. Tumbo. My name is John Taup, and I'm here on behalf of Salas Enterprises. and with me I have, let's see, John Kingston, the architect, and Mr. Mils-Galeos, who are the owners of Silas Enterprises. Very good. The staff has recommended approval subject to three conditions. Does your client agree to abide by those conditions? They do, Your Honor. Thank you. I'd like to ask the board if they have any questions. If not, the chair will entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move to approve the 2014-17 Silas Enterprises Corporation's appeal for a variance to reduce the required setback along Lansdowne Drive from 25 feet to 20 feet in order to construct an enclosed patio in a planned shopping center at 3501 Lansdowne Drive for the reasons recommended by staff and subject to the three conditions outlined by staff. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. Do we have a second? Second. Mr. Glover, seconds. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you. Mitchell Construction is on the agenda, and I see that they're still not represented. I'd like to go ahead and make a motion or have someone make a motion to postpone this for 30 days. So moved. Thank you, Mr. Griggs. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Very good. We'll postpone that, Mr. Emmons. All right. We have a conditional use permit to establish a pawn shop. Would you please step forward and state your name for the record? Hi. My name is Fortius Moraitis. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to correct myself here. It's actually scheduled for disapproval, so I'm going to ask you to take a seat for just a second, and I'm going to call you right back up here in a minute. 8th poll in step forward good afternoon my name is Tom Marks I represent 8th poll in and also have with me one of the owners Jason Shortino and also the current owner of the property Rosalie Swan very good thank you sir the staff has actually recommended approval subject to six conditions and we accept those conditions very good I ask the board if they have any questions for the gentleman if not the chair will entertain a motion Mr. Chair, I move that we approve C-2014-13, 8th Poll N, Inc.'s application to continue operation of a previously approved conditional use for a bed and breakfast under new ownership in the AR zone at 3463 Rosalie Road for the reasons cited by staff and subject to the two conditions listed by staff. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Glover. Is there a second? There's six conditions. Very good. Is Ms. Meyer a second? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. The next item on the agenda is Bill Mead. I'd like to ask the applicant to please come forward, state their name for the record. Bill Mead. Thank you, Mr. Mead. Mr. Mead, the staff has recommended postponement for a couple reasons, and I'd like to ask the staff if they would give us a brief report before you begin. Mr. Chairman, I wish I could give you a brief report. Unfortunately, we have about a 10-minute presentation planned for this case. I might suggest perhaps hearing this in a full hearing fashion, if it's agreeable with you and the other board members. I have a number of photographs and maps to show you about this property. We've also provided at your place a packet of staff exhibits and also alternative findings for your consideration of this case. It will take a little bit of time to explain that. I'm not sure we could do it in an abbreviated hearing. Very good. Well, let's hold off on this for just a few minutes and go ahead, Mr. Mead, if it's all right. We'll get through this agenda, and we'll get back to you. The next is an administrative review, Eric DeJong. The staff is also, well, I guess I probably should go back. Staff has recommended disapproval, and they've also recommended disapproval on a previous. and I think we'll go ahead and take that one first. So, sir, would you come back up, please? Mr. Moraitis? Yes, my full name is Fortius Moraitis. Thank you, Mr. Moraitis. The staff has recommended disapproval for your conditional use permit to establish a pawn shop in a highway service business zone at 1536 North Limestone for several reasons, and I'd like to ask the staff if they're prepared to report on their findings for disapproval. And then we'll give you an opportunity to respond. I brought also my property owner here and my wife. I want to start that there was a misunderstanding the way I presented myself at the Planning Commission. When I first went over there, I got so much paperwork and all this and all the regulations, so I sort of got a little bit desperate, and I thought, oh, my God, I've invested so much money in renovation, and I signed the lease and everything, so I was thinking, what else can I do there? So I went a couple of steps ahead and see if I could get a used car dealer place over there, and that's basically where the confusion started. it. There's going to be only two shops there in this building, which is an already car repair shop and me with a pawn shop. There will be no used car lot over there, just to make it clear. When the people came from the planning committee, it was a little bit messy on the parking lot because the place had been vacant for three months. There were a couple of cars from the former owner there that had been moved and the mechanic shop. Basically, it was a little bit messing with the parking situation, but that's something that can be solved. It's not a problem and the property owner is here and can explain it even better. And worst case, I also have a written statement from the vice president from Goodwill, which is right next to me, that they can provide me with parking if needed for my customers. And that's basically it. I have the written statement from the property owner with Gordon Patterson and from Goodwill. And I also have a statement and me saying that I'm not planning, neither do I want to have a used car lot. And that's basically my case. Very good. Thank you. I'd like to go ahead and hear from staff then. Mr. Emmons. Up to the . You can kind of flip through those here, like a quick question. I'll just get off with this one and this one. Remember the first piece. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. The staff reviewed the conditional use request for the C-2014-12, Fodios Moritis, and I apologize if I didn't say your name correctly. The request is for a pawn shop in a B-3 zone. which, of course, is a conditional use. This is a very small property, and if we can put the applicant's site plan first. This is the applicant's submitted site plan. This is a very small piece of property that currently has a single building oriented toward North Limestone. It's just inside New Circle Road on North Limestone. This building is directly behind the fairly recent CVS Pharmacy that is located on the corner. And on the other side of the property in the gray block on the top side of the exhibit is a newly developing property, the Waller property. That's a B4 property that's currently under construction. It has some of the units leased, and some of the units are under construction. The staff in reviewing this particular request for a pawn shop had to first look and see what was there. It is a single building, but it does have two uses in it. Highlighted in the orange is the applicant's proposed suite where they're proposing the pawn shop, and in the blue is an existing car repair shop. The previous use in the suite, the subject suite, was also a car-related facility. They added big guys' audio. They added car stereos and stuff like that. So it was still a car repair, but it wasn't a typical mechanic. there is a an informal parking area out in front of the building that is not striped but could potentially hold five or six cars directly in front of the building there is a curb cut that has an entrance into and on to North limestone and there is also an informal parking area to the rear of the property. If we can flip through the photos really quickly. This first photo to the left side of the photo would be the CVS parking lot. This focus is on 1538 North Limestone, and it's the shorter of the two buildings. The taller building is Shorts Auto Repair. That's the existing auto repair. You can see that there are cars parked directly in front of the building. I'm standing about halfway towards the North Limestone Street. If we can flip to the second picture, this is essentially standing at the edge of the right-of-way, and you can see a small median for the audience this is the median you can see a small median there that delineates where the two entrances from north limestone to this is and as i mentioned of great concern to the staff is the fact that this front parking area is not striked it's not delineated every time that the staff has been by there. There have been cars parked there. We believe that primarily part of the car repair shop, the Shorts car repair shop. If we can flip through a few other pictures, you can see in the background of this picture the newly developing Waller properties with the B4 uses and the new sidewalk that's been recently been built as a part of that development. You can see the median. I'm standing on that median, which serves as both the curb for the street and the sidewalk. But you can see it doesn't line up with the sidewalk. It is directly adjacent to the travel lane of North Limestone Street. The pedestrian that you see walking while I was there, he actually walked through the parking lot. I assume that he didn't feel comfortable walking on the sidewalk because it was so close to the street. This is looking back toward New Circle Road, standing again on the median and the CVS, and you can see the new sidewalk as it comes through there. One of the important reasons for this, the staff is concerned about the technicality of whether this site and the change of use that's being proposed to add a pawn shop to this site. We are concerned on whether it can, not whether it can meet the number of required parking spaces, but with the evidence that we have on hand that the Shorts car repair shop already has a lot of parking out in front of there. We wonder with this particular retail use, even if they had three parking spaces dedicated and striped in front of their property, how hard would it be to get in and out for the applicant's pawn shop? You know, even if they were able to separate that, that would actually ensure that people would have to back out of the subject property onto North Limestone. There is a lot of available space in the rear of the property, but it's also, once again, not delineated. More than the technicalities on the parking also, this property is a part of the Central Sector Small Area Plan, and the staff went into that in great detail in our staff report. The Central Sector Small Area Plan is essentially a plan for redevelopment for the Central Sector, and this is a part of it. But in particular, in sub-areas D and E, it has some specific recommendations for this corridor. It's a plan to revitalize the central sector. It's a plan that calls for additional streetscape improvements, increasing the pedestrian activity, increasing the landscaping, putting in street trees. for the CVS property that you're looking at, they shifted their development in order to provide a much larger landscape buffer along the corridor, a much larger landscape buffer than what is required, and they actually put in not a lot, but more landscaping than is required by the zoning ordinance. But the most important part is that they left open that possibility for a gateway entrance into this. The Waller property, which we were just looking at, that is on the other side of this property, they, in addition to putting in the sidewalks, they also had architectural standards on their buildings that they agreed to through the planning commission on the development plan. So the properties on either side have moved towards the revitalization goals, and in particular the fact that the small area plan calls for this to be a gateway into the North Limestone neighborhood area. If we can flip through a few other pictures. This is looking across the street, directly across the street at the parking lot for the Goodwill site. And you can see in the bottom right-hand corner the start of the Goo Goo Car Wash, the next picture. This is just looking toward New Circle Road again, and you can see the edge of the Goo Goo Car Wash in a new building that is for an automobile dealership at the corner of New Circle Road. These are some photos of the parking area to the rear. The building that you're seeing stick out, that is the applicant's portion of the suite. and that was a picture into the sun. But the parking area in the rear, it's kind of a combination of gravel and old pavement and broken up pavement. There's no delineated parking spaces. Still, the staff, looking at the amount of space that is available, if you were to park cars around the edge, The staff estimates that there could be approximately 15 cars to park in the rear. The staff, while we were there, we did notice that there are some cars that are double parked, you know, double stacked in front of each other. We assume that those are cars that are either awaiting repairs or being worked on. This is from the applicant's parking lot looking at the CVS toward New Circle Road. And this is looking toward the back of the shopping center that faces New Circle Road. Once again, this is just standing in the back corner so that you can kind of get a feel for the entirety of the back parking area. And the Fody was there on site when we were visiting. He was inside working, and so he explained that his proposed pawn shop, that they would have this very front area as soon as you come in the door that would be open to customers, and the rest of his units would be closed in storage of the goods that he was doing as a part of his business. And I think that's just additional pictures of the inside of the unit. In short, I think that's the last of the photos. In short, whenever the staff looked at this pawn shop and we looked at potential reasons to approve this conditional use and potential reasons to disapprove this requested conditional use, the disapproval was the stronger of the positions. The proposed use does nothing to help revitalize the area or help create that gateway entrance that's recommended in our small area plans. There are questions about whether the existing parking lot out front in particular is safe and whether it would be adequate to serve the proposed use. And then on a final note, the staff is of the opinion that if this pawn shop were approved, it would be a change of use going from an auto repair shop, the big guy's audio, to the retail sale and pawning of items. Our ordinances would require more, the pawn shop has a higher parking generator than the previous use. So our zoning ordinance would require with that change of use that the landscaping for this parking lot and the rear parking lot be brought up to speed. I do not believe that that is part of the applicant's proposal to do this. Granted, if the applicant wished to postpone a month, they could also request the landscape variances at the same time that they are asking for this conditional use. But I cannot in good faith tell you that the staff would be supportive if that request were made because of our recommendations for the gateway treatment of this area. The staff is recommending disapproval for the four reasons that are listed on the agenda and in the staff report. In order to clarify the applicant's thing, one of our reasons is saying that disapproving this requested pawn shop does not deprive the applicant of a reasonable use of the property. The staff has issued a zoning compliance permit for the auto sales at this location. Because an auto sales does not require any additional parking than the auto repair, it is a different use, but they're listed in the same classification in the zoning ordinance. Whether the applicant chooses to actually do that business or not, the staff has determined that that is an allowable use at this location, and we have issued a zoning compliance permit for it. If you have any questions for me, I'd be happy to try and answer them. Mr. Glover, questions for him? I do have a couple of questions. Jimmy, you didn't say much about the interior of the building that he was proposing to use as a pawn shop. It sounded like that you didn't have any particular objections to what the interior of the building looked like or complied with the use or anything like that. No, sir. Whether this were primarily, he's proposing a very small customer area and a very large storage area. Whether it was more storage, the amount of storage of goods and the amount of customer space is not necessarily of a concern to the planning staff on this case. And the way I understood your presentation and the reasons for disapproval is that there's nothing about this property that has changed. And that's basically why the staff is recommending disapproval, because his neighbors have all improved their property and he hasn't. It sounds like that's basically the reason. Since the neighbors have all improved, made improvements, probably expensive improvements, and he hasn't now. His property looks pretty poor by comparison. Is that a fair summary? That is not, and I apologize if that's what I got across in my presentation. the change of use of the pawn shop would kick in those additional landscaping requirements and things like that. But ultimately, whenever it comes down to it, the staff did not feel that this is a proper location for a pawn shop. And you also have parking issues. There are the technical issues of the parking, the required landscaping, and those sorts of things. Is there any way to eliminate that front parking area? Or is it grandfathered in because it's there? It is grandfathered in. I believe that we would have a hard time to get rid of that front parking space without a major proposed redevelopment of this site. Thank you, Mr. Emmons. Thank you. Yes, sir. Would you come up and state your name for the record, please? I'm Gordon Patterson, the owner of the property, and I appreciate what the staff says. This building is about 70 years old. It's a little too close to the street. Not by my doing. But the landscaping in a gateway area is, I guess, supposed to happen over a long period of time. And this building does have a lot of use to it, and it's not in disrepair, and it's not ready to be torn down. We can't help it because it doesn't fit the landscape of the other buildings, which are very nice. And I, but any landscaping in the front of the building or change of curves would totally eliminate all parking in front of the building. So basically, if that were required, we'd probably have to tear the building down. So I know that, and I'm for making the city more beautiful, but it would have to be done over a period of time in conjunction with the property being able to be redeveloped. You all have any questions about that? I have a question for staff. We didn't really talk about the specific amount of parking that's required for these two uses combined. and if it's a small customer service area in the pawn shop and the existing auto repair next door and there's 15 spaces in the back and two or three in the front, would that be enough parking with this change of use? it might be enough parking to meet the minimum required parking number of spaces in the zoning ordinance however the staff does not feel that the minimum required parking for this one is adequate because of what we have observed on this property with a lot of extra cars from the existing auto mechanics shop next door. They're taking up more than their minimum required parking for this site. Auto repair shops do that, and when parking lots are not delineated, then arrivals, they're clueless about where to put their car. So if the parking lot was improved with spots that were delineated, and there was enough of them, and since the landlord can control his tenants to some degree, is there any, can you see a solution to this other than just saying no? Good question. Thank you. It may be possible that if there were a revised site plan where we can look at the parking layout, where we can look at the landscaping required by the ordinance, in doing all of those types of things, getting into the specifics of how much of that square footage they're using for customer space, how much of it using for storage space, those types of details, it might be possible to look at it. But really the things that we would be looking for are physical changes to the property, to delineate the parking, to make it safer for pedestrians and vehicles combined. I'd just like to comment, too, that on the application, one of the items that he is listed as pawning is an auto, or autos. And so the question arises about where are you going to park these autos that he could potentially have to on his site. Jane, I think that he testified that he was not going to sell automobiles there. Sir, you had your hand up. Did you want to say something again, Mr. Malczew? I do have an agreement with each tenant that they're not, especially the mechanic shop, that they're not supposed to leave automobiles on the lot for more than 30 days. Now, the lady at the Goodwill has graciously, across the street, has graciously offered parking for the people that work there. So they're not going to cause a parking problem. Now, I'm not an expert in how much room it takes to park a car, but the lot in the back is pretty big. And I've purchased the extra 25 feet from the CVS owners a year or so ago, and that's made the parking increase back there. but the landscaping is out of the question as far as the landscaping, the way the CVS people and the water people have done it because it would take up the whole area in the front, and I'd be down here trying to get a variance from you all, you know, because it's not possible to have a landscaping change there. So when you say that would be something that would have to happen, it couldn't. well is it is it reasonable to think that maybe we could postpone this and let the staff and the applicant talk a little bit more and and see if we can work something out um you know as far as the parking and and maybe you know he said he and maybe redo the application and take out the autos or you know we're clear about what he fully intends to to do here if we mr chairman And if we need a motion, I'll be glad to move that we continue this for 30 days to give the applicant a chance to speak with, to talk with staff. Very good. And Mr. Glover, sir, did you want to say something? Yeah, I can exactly describe what I'm going to do as a pawn shop. It's really specialized. So it's not going to be like a Kroger, in and out, people in and out. If I get one, two customers a day, that's already a lot. Because I really specialize my staff to certain things. It's not going to be a pawn shop in the wise of everything. For example, when I submitted the papers, I also wrote down that I don't want to do anything with guns and all that. I mainly will deal with motorcycles and small staff. And as I said before, of the parking where the people from the commission say it's an issue, a safety issue, this is what I explained before. Mr. Patterson was missing for some time. The property was empty for some time. Everybody was parking. Whoa. If you looked at the picture where the car is parked on one of the pictures, there's not supposed to be a car there, which basically makes the people that park right in front of me back up nicely and go face out to limestone, not causing a hazard. And there have been numerous businesses before there where they were selling a lot of stuff and there was a lot of traffic there and never there was a complaint. and big guys customs was not just a repair shop. The whole front room was basically selling audio equipment and stereos and all that in it. My customer area is 16 by 17 foot. Reason for that is because I'm really specialized in a small item thing. I do not expect 10, 20, 30, 50 people to come in there. As I said, if one, two people come in there, that's already a lot. and I'm willing to have a test child for a year or anything or talk further or line out the parking lots, absolutely no problem. And that's what I have to say. Well, I would say this. I don't think that this board, if you want to continue, I don't see the support of this board to grant your conditional use. And I think Mr. Glover has come up with kind of a good compromise. I have a problem with the parking as well. Obviously, the staff does too. And I would suggest that we continue this for 30 days and let you and staff work something out because if you want to continue to pursue this, I don't think you're going to have the support here to approve this today. Yeah. Then in this case, I would like to work it out for 30 days, whatever it is. Would you be willing to do that? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Mr. Glover, you made a motion? I did. for a continuous for 30 days. Does that give you long enough, Mr. Evans? Is there a second? Second. Ms. Meyer, second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Well, hopefully you can get this worked out. Okay. Thanks very much. I think the next item on our agenda is Eric DeJong, NetBiz. I think actually it might be Bill Mead. Well, we were going to, we were going to, and Mr. Salee had asked that we do Mr. Mead's last. So I was going through the agenda. Oh, okay. We can do Mead now? Okay. All right. Very good. Very good. We'll go back. We'll go back to. Chairman, we're distributing the communications we've received on this application. Mr. Evans is handing out two, I believe it's two, three, that we have received in support. And then this one that I have distributed is from the Old Richmond Road Neighborhood Association, which is in agreement with the staff's recommendation for postponement. Ordinarily, I would address the board at the podium, but it might be a little quicker if I stay here and flip through a number of photos and maps, if that's okay with the board. Very good, Mrs. Lee, that's fine. Thank you. The subject property has an address of 9086 Old Richmond Road. It is in the very southeast corner of Fayette County. And depicted here on the map, this property is just over 12 acres in size. It is described by the staff as being at the corner of River Road and Old Richmond Road. As you can see, River Road actually bisects the subject property, and it does have frontage along the north side of Old Richmond Road, which is also known as US 25 and 421, right where that roadway crosses the Kentucky River. It is just north of the interstate, 75, at the Claves Ferry Bridge. We have a photograph of the same exact area. The subject property is here. On the northwest side, River Road extends north from this sharp curve just before you cross the bridge into Madison County. This is the zoning of the area. Let me zoom out just a bit. most of the subject property is zoned AR, that is an agricultural rural zone. A very small portion of its frontage along Old Richmond Road is in a B3, Highway Service Business Zone, as are properties across Old Richmond Road from this location. This is a view of the topographic map for the area. In essence, River Road is about the boundary of the floodplain from the Kentucky River, and that is an elevation just under 600 feet above sea level. And the property extends about 50 feet above that point to the top. To the northernmost portion of the property is in a clearing, and there are a number of structures there, including a dwelling, a barn, a pavilion, several other structures, and a small clearing in the trees at that location. This is a view of the floodplain map. They're just confirming our flood elevation, and that elevation is within just a few feet of River Road. I have a few more photographs to share with the board of the subject property. This is perhaps the best picture of the subject property that we could find. This is looking from the east to the west, and so the road that we've seen actually crosses here into Madison County. This is looking from Madison County. The subject property is here, does have shoreline along the river, extends up the river into this clearing that I described here. As you can tell, the steeper slope of the property is heavily treed. River Road parallels the river here and serves three or four other properties in addition to the subject property. There is a dedicated driveway off of that road up the hill from about this location to the improvements on the property there. It's a little closer up view of the barn, the pavilion, and the dwelling that exists on the property in the clearing area. This is a view, again, of the commercial area directly across Old Richmond Road from this property. The staff spent probably two paragraphs in our staff report describing the physical conditions of this location. Much of the parking that is proposed for the conditional use, that being for a botanical garden on the subject property, is proposed across the road in association with this restaurant. The parking is physically in one of two parking areas, the staff understands, one possibly here on this side of the restaurant, the other here. In the initial application, it was indicated that perhaps golf carts or ATVs would shuttle patrons of the facility from these parking areas up the hill to the site. We found out from traffic engineering midweek this week that actually minivans or passenger vans are now being considered for that shuttle service instead of those vehicles. Those smaller vehicles on this federal highway at such a sharp turn were of great concern to the staff from a general safety standpoint. A little closer view of that intersection and of some of the parking that you can see in this photograph here associated with a restaurant. And another view looking from the north to the south. I would ask you to view this red dot that we've added to the photo because now we'll go to ground level views of this area. This is the same location looking at that intersection and at the curve in the roadway at ground level. From the same location looking back toward the bridge and back toward Lexington at this location. That is the sight distance there at the parking lot access entrance. This is a view from the River Road intersection, again looking in the same direction as the last slide, back toward the interstate bridge. And the same location looking at the bridge crossing into Madison County at that intersection. It's an odd intersection at that location. I have just a few more photos. This is a little later in the day with some of the shading issues there. and perhaps one of the best views the staff captured of what River Road looks like here in this location. This is going away from Old Richmond Road. Just a photo to show the staff did post the required sign. We do have a photo also of the entrance, general entrance to the property at this location. Staff has recommended postponement of this request and I think the next drawing which I believe is in your packet will illustrate why staff is concerned with the application. Closest point of the parking to the proposed use is almost a quarter of a mile in distance. There are a few parking spaces proposed at this location on the property. Get that to show a little better. Here. And one issue the staff raised in our report was whether or not it would be possible to have additional parking on the subject property itself rather than such a heavy reliance of the parking across the roadway. The staff's general concern is if patrons or visitors grow weary of a wait for a shuttle service, they may take off on foot. and actually be walking across the highway to get to their vehicles to leave. That is a general concern the staff has with this particular application. If that were not enough, there is also a text amendment that is being considered by the Planning Commission for general outdoor recreational uses in our agricultural and other zones. The staff has a strong preference that many applications for those uses such as this should be delayed until that text amendment process can go through. We have recommended postponement really for two reasons. One is because the text amendment is in process and being reviewed by the Planning Commission and has not yet been completed their review or review obviously by the Urban County Council, which is required after that. The second reason is due to the parking issue that I've described in going through the photographs and the drawings with you. The staff, though, is cognizant that the petitioner may not agree to our recommendation of postponement. And in an attempt to serve the board, we have provided with you in one of the exhibits that we distributed at the start of the day, alternate findings for you to consider, either to approve or disapprove the request. Should you be inclined to approve the request, we have drafted eight possible conditions for your consideration as well. The disapproval portion of this document, which is the one legal size sheet that we've distributed to you, has virtually the same identical two findings that we have on your agenda and in our staff report to you for postponement, with just a couple of wording tweaks. Just before the start of our meeting today, we did converse with Ms. Jones of the Law Department, and she would advise that finding A under the disapproval recommendations not be adopted by the board should you be inclined to disapprove the request. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for not having this as an abbreviated hearing and for the opportunity to explain our report and our recommendation to you, and I'd be glad to answer any questions that you may have about our report or any of this information prior to hearing from the applicant. Thank you, Mr. Salih. Anybody have any questions? Mr. Glover? I'm curious, Mr. Salih, about the text amendment that's proposed. How will that clarify the regulation of outdoor recreational activities? And how will it affect this application? As to how it will clarify outdoor recreational activities, there are a number of definitions that are part of the text amendment proposal. I have copies of it if you would like to see it, but looking at it, it is quite extensive in terms of its scope. It's based on about 20 meetings of a task force set up by the vice mayor that met throughout most of 2012, and which summarized their recommendations last year. I'm not sure there are any specific changes proposed to botanical gardens or zoological gardens, which this applicant is proposing. However, there may be other changes that will result from the text amendment, either dealing with parking or mandatory conditions of these types of uses, it's a little early to know what those might be. And what's the timetable for those text amendments? The Planning Commission has been reviewing them since October of last year. We know there will be at least one more review by the Commission at their April work session. There has been no public hearings scheduled by the Commission yet on that. The earliest that could happen would probably be May. It may even be later into the summer before those hearings could occur. Is it your opinion that the text amendment, if approved, would affect this application in some way? Or when you said clarity, you're talking about defining terms and such as that. Yes, this use I don't believe has a term proposed for it. I am looking through the text as we speak. Botanical garden is not included. I'm looking now for zoological garden. Zoological garden is a new definition proposed, and the draft reads a park-like area in which live animals are kept in cages or large enclosures for public exhibition. That is the definition proposed. Is this application for a zoological garden or a botanical garden? It's for plants only, right? That's right. Thank you. It's listed in the ordinance of zoological garden, which includes both plants and animals. But yes, their application is for the plants only. Any other questions for Mr. Sally? I have one about the, it seems like the most intense uses would be the weddings and receptions, class reunions. Are those, well, this is owned AR application. It looks like it's the AR portion of the property. Yes. Are those permitted conditional uses in the AR zone? They are not independent of another use, such as a church or any other conditional use in the AR. You mean you need to have a principal permitted use before you can have those as a conditional use? I'm not sure I understand. Yes, I think that's correct. You cannot have something like a banquet facility in the AR zone. That's not a permittable use, either by right use or conditional use. Well, do they meet the requirements of the zoning ordinance to have these receptions and class reunions? There really is no requirement in the ordinance for those. They are considered an adjunct if you have some conditional uses. It may be possible that the text amendments will address those further. There is not a specific conditional use for a banquet type of facility in the AR zone. So are you saying that they might be permitted as an accessory use to a botanical garden? Yes, sir. Oh, okay. Are these uses, weddings, wedding receptions, or class reunions, are they on the ZODA text amendment? Not in a definitive manner, but it is part of why the ZODA has been drafted in review. It is one of the things that led to the review of this change to the zoning ordinance. So the weddings, receptions, and class reunions would be addressed by the ZODA text amendment in the AR zone as it moves forward? Yes, that class of new use is part of the text amendment package. Thank you. Well, if we granted this appeal before the text amendment passed, and it was determined that this use doesn't comply with the text amendment as adopted, what happens to his conditional use? If the board adopts the conditional use ahead of the text amendment, that action would prevail. So he'd be basically grandfathered in? In the event that this text got more strict, let's say, and further regulated these aspects of the use, yes, sir. That's correct. Thank you. Any other questions? I'd like to hear from the applicant. Please come forward. State your name for the record. Good afternoon. My name is Chris Westover. I'm representing the applicant who's here, Bill Mead, along with his wife who's in the back, and John Carman, the landscape architect, is here. And I have to say with this project, it's really seldom that I've seen a project that is so right for the particular spot. and we will walk you through what the proposed use is going to be and why it's appropriate and why it should be approved we can deal with the issues related to the text amendment we can deal with the issues related to to the parking the the first thing I want to do you may have it but in In case you don't, I'm going to hand it out. And this was the proposal that Mr. Mead came to me with. He has this fantastic garden that he and his wife had been working on for 30 years or more. We'll show you a DVD that was prepared in the summertime because the photographs that Mr. Selle showed, He's a good photographer, but it doesn't do justice to really the beauty and the serenity of the garden in its natural state. So I'm going to hand this out to the board so you can understand what he's trying to do. But this project, it's fair to say, has been a generation in the making. And the Meads have done this for their own personal enjoyment as a place to go to relax by the river. This is really a unique property that is immediately on the river. And now what he would like to do is to open it up, not to the general public on an admission basis or that sort of thing, but to open it up to small groups of people. Let's say a yoga class, an art class, somewhere where people can get out into the country and take advantage of the beauty of nature. There are some amazing plantings on here. There is sculpture. There's a water feature. I don't know if you all are familiar with Yugoen, which is the Japanese Peace Garden in Scott County. It's the closest type of facility I can think of for this purpose. And Ugo Inn is a public park, but like what we're proposing to do, in addition to just being able to stroll on the grounds, sometimes people might have a wedding or a reunion there. But this project is not going to be a party palace. It's nothing like that at all. The very nature of this facility is such that it requires the lightest footprint, the lightest touch, and too many people would, in fact, destroy the natural beauty that's there. I think at this time what I'd like to do is call up Mr. Mead. I'm going to give the folks this, whatever you call this thing, and he can walk you through just what this looks like and what he's trying to do. Mr. Mead, just state your name for the record, if you would. Bill Mead. Thank you. Thank you. I have a DVD. It's working. Thank you. What's that? What is it? Well, this is the health drive is wrong. In my home, I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. I got a camera right there. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to actually get the motorcycles down there. Right. There appears to be some technical difficulties with the government system, But what we could do is bring the computer that Mr. Mead has and show it to you. We can always introduce into evidence the DVD and the thumbstick or whatever you call it so that you can see it. You really have to see it. Ms. Westover, are you saying to bring the computer up here and let us see it? Right. I mean, it's really important that you see what China Grove looks like. And if the government's system isn't operating, then I don't know how else to do it. It's unusual, but... Could you bring the laptop up here and we can kind of gather around? Yes, so that you can see it. I mean, this is not something you often do, certainly, but... We're going to try and play it here on the overhead. Okay. Okay. Just I'm standing and turning in a circle. Potting shed, entrance to the pond, barn behind it. Little pavilion, pump house for my irrigation system behind the pavilion. Dry stream beds. Sorry you're not getting the true view of it. That's looking towards the entrance. Coming up the hill from the entrance. Patio in the back of the cabin. This is where we have dinner parties and what have you. My dog just got out of the pond. Happy dog. Sorry, I dwelled on her a little too long. And then there's a few slides of just some general plannings that my wife, I have to give her credit for the majority of it. Beside our cabin. towards the barn obviously. Dry stream beds, which serve also as drainage. Looking towards the entrance. You cannot see the entrance from there. It goes around. The drive goes around the corner. Entrance to the pond. Again, back entrance to the pond. Pavilion. Some statuary. Thank you. Fire pit in front of the house. Patio on the garden shed. Behind the garden shed. Or what I call a woodland garden. Head of the pond. It's from Henry Clay's home, the cherry tree that came down and we had that carved. This is moving more towards the getting close to the entrance closer to the Richmond Road over Richmond Road. In front of our drive. Last month. An old barn, which is a little over 100 years old, is all cedar post. That was my son's wedding reception. I think the staff might have given you some letters of support, and I have those also to hand out to you. But I'd like to point out that among the letters of support, we have John Karloftis, who you probably know is one of the internationally renowned landscape designers. and he finds that this is such an unusually beautiful and photogenic site that he thinks this would be a wonderful use to have botanical gardens opened up on a very limited basis because as you can see, with the way it's designed, the Meads have put too much time, money, and effort in this to have it opened up, to have it overused, and therefore it's really best appreciated in very small controlled groups. That's why they're thinking about maybe an art class, or maybe Mr. Koloftis could teach a course in landscape design, that sort of thing. And there might be the occasional wedding or some sort of event like that, but not a lot of people and not on many occasions, because by design, this has to be a low-impact use. I'm going to hand out some of these other letters. Another letter of support is from Claire Sippel, who you may know as an ardent conservationist, and she has some property close by where she monitors very closely, and she is a watchdog in making sure that the land in this area is used appropriately and not abused. So I'll hand these out to you. It's important when we talk here about the zoning ordinance text amendment and the impact on this property. And maybe in an ideal world, it might be appropriate to wait on this. But there's something that I think would be very important for you to see. I have another exhibit here that gives a little history of this zoning ordinance text amendment. And it really starts in 1999 with the Rural Land Management Plan that was adopted by the Planning Commission to guide development in the rural area. Over two years ago, more than two years ago, Vice Mayor Gordon created a work group to study the issue of recreational uses in the agricultural rural zone. And they met for over 20 meetings. The meetings finally terminated with a report in May of last year. So this has been going on for a long time. I'll hand this out now. Thank you. And this issue of recreational uses in the AR zone has been going on for years. The work group sent its report to the Urban County Council in something like July. In July, the Urban County Council sent it to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission didn't initiate the text amendment until December. They've had at least three work sessions. Work sessions are when the Planning Commission talks to the staff, but there's no public comment. And they have yet to set this for a public hearing. There's no telling when this will come for an actual public hearing. And let's say it does come for a public hearing. The Planning Commission has options. They can recommend approval. They can revise it. They can recommend disapproval. They can put it in a committee and study it. and at such time as the planning commission may be done with it it goes to the council the council has no timeline in which to act on text amendments none they can put it in a committee they can hold a public hearing they can disapprove it they can approve it they can totally revise it there's no telling when this will occur. And it is difficult when you're a private property owner, as the Meads are, who have lived here and own this for over 30 years. They don't live here full-time, but they're down there all the time, to ask them to wait for months or years. And then the issue is will this even resolve the issue that the staff says may be resolved? Because we don't know in what form or whether the council will ultimately change the law. And in terms of this specific use, I'm going to hand out to you, there's something called the matrix. The matrix shows what the work group recommended and the kinds of issues that are being studied. And I can also tell you that the Planning Commission is changing some of these matrices. So everything is in a state of transition. And let me hand this out. Our conditional use permit request was for an outdoor recreational facility, and the closest thing we could come up with was a botanical garden, because as you can see, that's really what it is. It's plantings, it's landscaping, and so forth. And I have some arrows over here, and if you see in yellow, it has the little C's. That means conditional uses. And it includes bird watching and nature preserve. Really, this is closer to a nature preserve than almost anything else. And there will be bird watching there just because birds, wildlife, they come there. This is a place for the enjoyment of the natural beauty of the setting. Down here, there is a listing for a zoological garden. This is not a zoological garden. There won't be any animals kept on the premises. But if you see down there, these C's in yellow show that even if this matrix is adopted, what we're asking for is still going to be a conditional use in this zone. And so I think at the end of the day, you know, what is the point of waiting? And let me go back to the Rural Land Management Plan. I think some of you know what the Rural Land Management Plan is. This is an area of, it's an environmentally sensitive area. It's pristine. It's on the Kentucky River. This is a page from the Rural Land Management Plan that talks about what is envisioned for land in this area right next to the river. And you all can certainly read it yourself, but what it's talking about is in these environmentally sensitive areas, you need low-impact uses to protect these types of areas. It talks about land with a high degree of environmental sensitivity, floodplains, steep slopes, woodlands. You saw that on there. Although agriculture can and does occur in portions of this area, it's not the predominant character of the area as a whole. The policy for land in this character is for preservation and enhancement of the land in a natural state with a minimum of intrusions. And that is exactly what we are trying to do here. In fact, I would venture to say that this land is really not as conducive to agriculture as a number of places would be in that it would not be really conducive to cropping it in a row crop. or if you had livestock grazing there, the current use, which he's doing for his private enjoyment, makes the most sense in the future for the best use for this property. Finally, in terms of waiting, there is a case in Kentucky. It's called Conley v. the City of Anchorage. That case deals with this very issue here. And in that case, there was somebody who was applying to the city of Anchorage for some sort of relief, and the issue was, well, the law was going to change. But the court in that case said it is clear that the subdivisions were approved under the regulations, in effect, at the time of their approval. It was not the responsibility of the commission to delay the approval and second-guess whether the City of Anchorage would enact the proposed revised ordinances. We believe that no effect should be given by the Commission to propose revisions of a zoning ordinance which officials contemplated enacting at a future date. And that's really what we're doing here. This is not a case, and I think that the staff has seen it and we've all seen it, where there is a proposal to change the law, and then you have this rush of people coming in to file under a deadline. This is not a case like that at all. This case was filed in all good faith. We have no idea when, whether the text amendment will be approved and in what form it will finally be approved. But what Conley tells us is we are entitled to be judged under the law in effect at the time of the filing here. The staff raised a concern about parking. When we proposed this, we thought we were doing the right thing by saying, let's park on this B3 property, because something else the work group was doing was considering a proposal to encourage, there are a number of B1 and B3 uses in the rural service area. You all probably know that. And so what to do about those uses? And one of the discussions at at least a couple of the meetings was, why not use those properties for a staging area so people can park there and then be shuttled to uses in the rural service area on agricultural property? And the point of that is to minimize the impact of infrastructure on the agricultural properties. So we thought we were doing a good thing to suggest parking on this B3 property, which I think is currently vacant. But there's plenty of parking there if we wanted to do that. But we have the ability to park fully on our own property. And if that would allay the board's concern and the staff's concern, we can do that. But that was the point, was to, again, minimize the hard structure on this particular property. Mr. Carmen is here. I might ask him to talk about the parking as well. He and Kevin Warner in his office have been meeting with Casey in traffic engineering, and I think we've worked things out to a large extent in terms of how to provide for the parking with the least intrusion into the area. I've prepared findings of fact, but I'm very pleased with the findings of fact prepared by the staff for approval and with all the conditions, we have one clarification that we would ask, I suppose, Casey to discuss. But right now, let me get John Carman up here to talk about how we envision parking. Before you introduce yourself, Mr. Carman, I'd like to ask the board if they've got any questions for Ms. Westover. Ms. Westover, you speak of limited basis use, but yet I see weddings and class reunions. Are you limiting size of the weddings? I mean, I think that has to be defined. I think that has to be really tight. Limited use is pretty broad, and I think that we need some more direction from you about what you mean by limited use. I will ask Mr. Meade to come up and address that. Yes, I definitely want it limited. If you're speaking of size, as far as the number of people there, I can only address I have had 150 for my son's reception. You saw one of the pictures, and you can't tell that many people are there because there's enough room for that. And we parked all on my property. Again, the reason for using the property across the street was a backup. We thought you might want that. Are you going to charge? I mean, they're going to use your property, so are you charging for these events? Yes. Yes. I want to make that clear. So that becomes a commercial, you know, there's some commercial aspect to this use, this application. It becomes a destination, but we're not selling, we're not preparing food, we're not, have nothing for retail sales. But yes, to rent the property, and I'm using several examples I found on the Internet of private botanical gardens around the country, that they limit the size and the no tents and this and that and the other, and limit so many people, and it costs $300 for a two-hour use of the barn, that type of deal. And, yes, that's what we are looking at. If you're talking about the number of events, I can only say that I was recently on the board of directors for the Healy Whitney, and my wife still is, and they had weddings out there, and if they had six a year, they were just thrilled to death. So it's not like this is going to be an every weekend thing, if there's any clarity. I have a question for staff. If there's a special event where there's 150 people that attend, is there some number of required parking spaces for that quantity of people? Not in the zoning ordinance. would you say there should be a parking space for every two people? Most uses in the ordinance, broadly, I think are based on one to five is a common ratio. In a restaurant, one to four seats. In a nightclub, one to three seats. Those are the ratios that come to my mind off the top of my head. If there was going to be special events and a large number of parking spaces required, would it have to be graveled or paved or delineated? Could it be in a floodplain? Probably could be in a floodplain. I think, you know, after a flood or after heavy rains, portions of land in floodplain may not be suitable to parking just because of mud issues. In the AR zone, some uses have been permitted by the board to use gravel. Some have been permitted to use gravel, say, over and above a minimum number, such as their plan shows. They have some on-site and then some off-site. I think much of the parking associated with a restaurant is actually gravel, but most of it is in the floodplain as well. Okay. And so you all are prepared to gravel maybe 75 parking spaces? Mr. Carmen can address the parking issue. That's just one segment of the issues that staff has with this application, but I thought it would be interesting to explore it. Right, right. And, too, if there were an event, let's say a 100-person wedding, we still can park on the Riptides parking lot and van people across. because the idea is not to pave an unnecessarily large area on this particular property, not because we don't want to for any kind of cost reasons, but we're trying to protect the pristine nature of the property. That's what we're trying to do. And I haven't had a chance to thoroughly process all this, but the idea of a wedding or a reunion up there with 150 people and folks waiting for seven or nine passenger vans, either at the bottom to go up or at the top to go down, and drinking, I'm sure a lot of people won't wait, and that's a very dangerous section of road to cross at night on foot, and I'm sure there would be a lot of that. It would be unavoidable. So I have worries about the parking across the street. good afternoon my name is John Carmen for the record with regards to the parking issue we we have my office has met with traffic engineering and we feel like we've addressed and vetted some of the issues and some of the concerns as this was over mentioned there was an initial proposal to perhaps use a golf cart or a gator or something but in recognition of some of the potential safety issues it was agreed that vans would be utilized should there be a need to transport people from the parking lot across the road onto Mr. Meade's property. There is more than adequate space across the road for events of the nature that Mr. Mead and Ms. Westover were talking about. We have availability of 100-plus parking spaces utilizing the ratios that Mr. Salee just mentioned that would be more than adequate for the size of attendees at a reception or reunion on site. I think it's extremely important that we recognize what Mr. Mead is trying to do and actually has already done for the past 30 years, and that is to continue the preservation and the sustainability of this really very unique piece of property. Mr. Mead is well ahead of his time. I think it's of note that it was just last year that the Planning Commission adopted sustainable principles while Mr. Mead was 30 years ago acting sustainable principals. And we want to maintain that and preserve it and continue. We really do not want to add impervious area to this very unique piece of property. We have the ability to park on site if necessary. Sure, if it were to flood or to rain, the practical nature of it is that people would not park there, but we do have an existing impervious parking lot in place that we can utilize should that be necessary. The numbers work with parking. We've worked out the mechanisms with traffic engineering. While this road may have a posted speed limit that is 35 or 45 miles an hour, I think, the reality of it is that there's some built-in traffic calming just because it's in a curve. You're coming across a narrow bridge, one lane bridge, and the road itself is narrow. Without regard to the posted speed limit, people are not going to reach a high speed that would create additional safety concerns. And we're not trying to diminish the issue of safety with conflicting pedestrians and vehicles. But I think that Mr. Mead is, that would be his biggest concern also, and I can assure you that he would be taking measures with the vanning and carpooling people across the road. Are there any questions? And I do, let me just further add that there are some designated parking spaces that you see on your plan for primarily accessible parking. We want to make sure that we do have the availability to accommodate the accessible vehicles on site closer to the facilities. Questions? Thank you. Excuse me. I also have not only in the front of the property, I have an acre behind the barn that is bare for parking, which we use the front if there is a large reception. It's a little better than an eighth of a mile from where the gathering area is to the waterfront parking that we talked about. And any gathering that we have had there, no one has walked. We always provide plenty of transportation. Number one, people don't want to walk that far. And number two, it's a service. They're getting shuttled. They like that. I rent large golf carts so I can use a bunch at a time, and I'll get several of those and hire people to shuttle back and forth, and it's proven very popular. Expensive, but popular. Would you have specific hours of operation? Would you have evening weddings or reunions there? Within reason. In all honesty, I don't have a complete game plan laid out because I don't know what you folks are going to say about it. But right now, to start out, my wife and I would be doing it. And I'm getting too damn old to be able to tell the truth. I'm looking more for the 20 and 30 people type. Mr. Karloftis has said, Bill, if you get this through, I will use you constantly because I have groups of little old ladies that I give lectures to and I'm always looking for new places. And he helped me with this place a few years ago. And he said, well, I will use you. And so this is what I'm looking for mostly. I don't want a lot of people, because if I do, that means I've got a lot of upkeep, and I'm not up for that. I'm getting too old. Thank you, Mr. Mead. Does anybody have questions for Mr. Mead? I have a couple concerns. Number one, I'm really a little perplexed that you all didn't agree to a postponement to work out some of the recommendations that the staff were adequate for them. Because we do rely, we don't always agree with our staff. I want to say that. But we also want to make sure that they have their proper input and they vet the proposal. Mr. Meade, you've got a beautiful piece of property, and it's just absolutely gorgeous. But I can't support this conditional use permit to operate this outdoor recreational facility today, and primarily for a couple reasons. Number one, you don't have a business plan. There is nothing specific that we've discussed here today, you know, the types of uses, the size of use. I have a huge problem, as Mr. Griggs had mentioned, with the safety issue. I mean, I've been down that road several times, and obviously when you have events there, and they are commercial activity, bussing people up and down the hill on a very treacherous part of that road is a huge concern for me. And I was hoping that we might be able to, I would recommend us either continuing this and trying to work out some of the details, because if you're asking for a conditional use permit today to be approved, I can tell you I'm not going to be voting for it. We just wanted to be heard. Step up to the mic, Mr. Meade. Excuse me. We just wanted our day in court, so to speak. And I have no problem with the postponement. We just wanted you all to know what we're looking for. And to be told, our biggest problem was this soda thing. It's been going on since 99, and it could be 2019. And Mr. Meade, and I understand that. Ms. Westover, you made a good point there. We don't know what that timetable might be, but we also can't base our decision on that. So if a motion was made to disapprove this conditional use permit, the ZODA text amendment, that text amendment would not be part of the conditions. But I, for one, and I'll ask my colleagues here on the board what their wishes are, but I think that we have to have something a little bit stronger, a little bit more detailed, a little bit more structured, because I'm not ready to move forward. on this today. That's fair enough. I don't have a problem with that. I just, like I say, I wanted my day in court to, so that, because the Zota thing was bothering me. Thank you. I agree with Mr. Stumbo. I think that if, if in the past, um, if, if I've learned anything on this board is, is, is to keep it as tight and as, you know, particularly with conditional uses in, in this, this you know setting um i think that we have to tread lightly but we and we also have to have we also have to know what what the plan is what what do you want to do what you know what are your hours operations are you going to have limitations and and the more information we have better sure and i might add that in this staff report your activities include other similar small group workshops. That just is so open-ended, we don't know what to think of it. I think you need a very specific list of activities that will be approved, and anything that's not approved is disallowed. So if I... Well, for example, though, Mr. Griggs, let's say a photography workshop, if we didn't say painting workshop. Well, I'm just saying that we have conditional uses out there where everything is vague and they're misused. And so I'm tired of vagueness. I want specifics. I just think that that keeps everyone on the same page. Thank you, Mr. Griggs. Mr. Glover, did you have anything? You know, I'm kind of on the fence about this. I'm not sure what the specific concerns are of staff, And it may be that staff hasn't had an opportunity to formulate specifics. I'm not persuaded that waiting for the Zota to pass is a good reason. And I'm not familiar with the Conley case, but I can believe it sounds plausible to me that you base decisions on what the law is, not what you expect the law to become. but I'm not opposed to a postponement or rather a continuance of this case because I have a great deal of confidence in the staff and in their assessment. So if they're not happy, nobody's happy. That's usually been my rule, and usually they have good reasons for being uneasy about making recommendations, Even though they have proposed alternative actions for us, I got a sense that there are still some things that they would like to know about this application that they don't know. And my fellow board members have said some of those things. Another concern might be one that we've heard in the past on establishments that are requesting conditional use is the use of outdoor music. There was mention in here about outdoor speakers, but I'd like to see something more specific about that as well. So I'm, when in doubt, trust the staff is sort of my motto. and if I were pressed to vote today, I'm glad I'm not pressed to vote, but I think my vote will be I will support a motion to continue this case for some period of time. Whether that's 30, 60, or 90 days, that's up to the applicant, so you all can figure that out yourself, but that's kind of how I feel right now. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Glover. Ms. Westover? We're agreeable to a continuation to work with the staff and address those specific issues that the board had. We can continue it to next month, and we can see where we are. And if we need to continue it some more, then we would ask the board to continue it so that we can have it so it is in a form that you all can approve. Because it's a very worthy project. Thank you, Ms. Westover. Mr. Glover, did you want to make a motion? I move to continue this case for 30 days. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Myers, second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, Mr. Meade. Thank you, Ms. Westover. That was a hard case where we didn't make any enemies. Well, Mr. DeJong, I think it's your next. Yeah. Ms. Westover, you're here for Mr. DeJong as well? Yes. Okay, I'd like to go ahead and call this administrative review to establish the Internet Cafe. staff has recommended disapproval. Ms. Westover, and I'd like to hear from the staff first, and then you're welcome to address those concerns. Mr. Emmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record, the staff has passed out at your place setting already a news article from the Bowling Green Daily News that has a news article for some of the similar issues that will likely be coming up today. Do you need any extra copies? You are. The staff would also like to submit for the record a copy of the zoning ordinance in its entirety, primarily because we are planning on focusing on just a few of the sections of the zoning ordinance today, but the zoning ordinance does work together as an entire document, and the provisions work together. It might be during rebuttal that I might need to refer to additional parts of the zoning ordinance that we don't bring up in our staff report or in our presentation. To kind of work you through why we are here today, this is an administrative review on a decision that the Division of Planning made about an interpretation of the zoning ordinance. The staff has received several requests from Mr. DeJong and other applicants that have been coming into our office asking for zoning compliance permits and looking for locations for a use that we are calling a sweepstakes internet cafe. The staff was unaware, especially at the time of the writing of this staff report, that this use would be anywhere in Lexington. It's not a use that is listed in the zoning ordinance. When we were requested for this type of a use, we had to look at the zoning ordinance and try and figure out where it would fit in. If it's not specifically listed, the first step that we would do, and we do this on a daily basis, is to look at what uses in the zoning ordinance it would be most similar to. And in this particular instance, the staff has determined that the proposed sweepstakes internet cafe would be most similar to an adult entertainment use. In particular, an adult arcade. The staff will explain further on through that. Primarily, as the staff came in for this particular applicant and several others, they came in and they requested a zoning compliance permit for a convenience store, which included an Internet cafe with sweepstakes as a major portion of their business model. In looking at this, the site plan that was submitted with this was a store, and they had rows and rows and bays of computer terminals. The staff was unaware of this type of use anywhere in Lexington, but we were aware of this use moving across the nation, and we were very aware of the zoning issues that had occurred in Bowling Green. And so hence the reason I'm not going to read that article to you, but we did want to make sure and get that article submitted there. In Bowling Green, the applicants there very similarly applied for a retail store and opened up the Sweepstakes Internet Cafe. The city of Bowling Green then began zoning enforcement actions against them, determining that the use that they were actually doing was not the use that they had been permitted for. The staff, in looking at a typical sweepstakes internet cafe, how this operation will work is that a person will come in and buy time on the computer, or they'll buy a commodity, some other commodity. You buy a drink, you buy something, and you get the opportunity to play on their sweepstakes games on their rows and bays of computers. These games that are played are typically casino-type. They're modeled after a casino type of games, such as slot machines and kino and other types of games. The stated purpose of that is to provide entertainment and attract customers. As we were continuing to look into our research on this, we found that this use requires you to be over 18 to participate. Or at least that's part of the typical sweepstakes internet cafe model, is that you have to be an adult in order to participate in this entertainment use. As the staff, you can see in our staff report, as we were looking for what is the most similar use in our zoning ordinance, since it's not a listed use, we looked at the adult arcade, and you can see a table in our staff report. Both of those require you to be an adult to participate. Both of those involve some sort of machine that you're using, and where they diverge is the adult arcade definition talks primarily about sex in sexual-oriented materials, whereas the use for sweepstakes is primarily about the sweepstakes game. While we were searching for other uses in Lexington, we did, you know, what we could think of trying to find out what is a sweepstakes internet cafe. Are there any in Lexington? We put in a Yellow Pages search. And what we found was is that the sweepstakes portion, which is an integral part of the applicant's business model, is also a very important distinguishing characteristic for this use because that really puts it into the entertainment industry. And whenever you do a yellow-pages search for a sweepstakes internet cafe in Lexington, Kentucky, you end up with a lot of entertainment uses. Several of them are escort services that we looked at, which once again help make the staff feel that we are making an appropriate determination in determining that the requested use is most similar to an adult entertainment use. in comparison whenever you look at just an internet cafe in Lexington Kentucky you got the Java Jira in Bardstown Kentucky which was described as an internet cafe coffee and tea shop much different than the facilities that are being proposed here whenever you started looking at other uses that have rows and bays of computers open to the public for use for a fee, we thought about business centers. Whenever you do a result in business centers, you get things like small business centers. You get the FedEx, Kinko's, things of that nature. The applicant contends that their use is simply a retail use and should be allowed in any zone that allows the retail zone. Our staff report lists several of those. Let me grab it. But considering that a picture speaks a thousand words, I'm actually going to run you through several pictures of what we are looking at and what types of uses that we're talking about. And so the very first thing, I thought about trying to do a live search on our computer, not knowing what the technicalities would be. These are just screenshots. But this is a Google, anybody can do this. This is a Google image search for a sweepstakes internet cafe. And as you can see, you can see rows of people sitting at computers playing games that simulate casino games. They're slot machines and kino games. That is the primary use that you come up with whenever you look at a sweepstakes internet cafe, an entertainment use. If you get rid of the word sweepstakes and just do a Google image search of an internet cafe, you get things that look like business centers and look like coffee shops. whenever you do a google internet business for a business center you get things where i was actually quite pleased to see that you get bays of computers but it's very much in an office like setting and also just a google search for a general retail store where you have lots of merchandise, you don't have the rows and bays that you see whenever you look at a typical sweepstakes internet cafe. To get a little bit away from just what is the typical use, to look at the subject property, where this one is requested is not necessarily important today because what is before you today is the staff's interpretation that their requested use is an adult use and should be categorized and regulated as such. Where they are proposing this particular use is in the Woodhill Shopping Center, located off of New Circle Road, kind of in the end of the shopping Center. Looking at the end, it's the quick snack area that they're proposing, and that is we have issued a zoning compliance permit for a convenience store. However, on that zoning compliance permit, we specifically said that the applicants would not be allowed to have computers available to the public unless and until the Board of Adjustment approved such a use. This is just the front of the Woodhill Shopping Center to look at some of the more typical retail stores. the staff did say in our staff report that we were unaware of any other of this type of business anywhere in lexington and that was true at the time i wrote the staff report we found out this week that there is a similar business that is open in eastland shopping center so to orient everyone the the business is located off of the winchester road entrance as you come in the main entrance into the Eastland Shopping Center. I drove out there. It's apparently operating as the now open store. The staff has not, the staff investigated this week to see if there were any kinds of permits for this particular use and we could not find any. The Division of Planning has not issued any zoning compliance permits for this one in Eastland Shopping Center. There hasn't been any certificate of occupancy for it. So as I went and looked at this particular use and Eastland Shopping Center, a couple of things that kind of popped out to me that helped, you know, solidify that the staff has made the correct interpretation of the zoning ordinance is that this use, they had their now open use, they had a very dark, solid, kind of mirrored film over it so that you could not see in. They've got their labeling that this is not a gaming or gambling establishment. And on their door, staff would like to point out that they have must be 18 to enter. Games are free and for entertainment purposes only. In short, there are all sorts of possibilities. If you provide a computer and you buy time on the computer, yes, you can get on that computer, you can work on your resume, you can print off your business things, you can do those types of things. The staff was not looking at this of what is possible to do in these uses. What is likely? What is typical? What is being requested for us today? And this is a different way to look at our zoning ordinance. Not zoning ordinance, but just our zoning. Looking at the urban service area, this is all of the zones of all of the properties inside the urban service area. If you agree with the staff's interpretation, and the staff is not saying that this use that is not listed, we are saying that it is most similar to an adult entertainment use, That would limit the possible locations and that would limit the possible zones to the B2A and the B3 zones, which allow, under certain circumstances, the adult entertainment uses. If you do agree with the applicant and approve their appeal of our decision, that it is nothing more than a retail store, that would open up most of Fayette County for most of our areas where you can sell any kind of retail use. in the end staff is recommending disapproval of the applicant's request we feel that for three reasons first an internet cafe that has a sweepstakes that is an integral part of their business plan is an entertainment use that offers participation to adults therefore it is most similar to an adult entertainment use in our zoning ordinance and should be regulated as such. Second of all, the zoning ordinance does give the Division of Planning the authority. When a use is not listed, then we have to look at uses that are most similar. And finally, should the Board of Adjustment deny the applicant's request, the applicant's appeal, That does not mean that they cannot apply for one of these uses in one of the areas as a conditional use. Furthermore, if they do not like that interpretation of the zoning ordinance, they would also have the opportunity to file a zoning ordinance text amendment and go through the process to define the zoning ordinance for this use in a way that they thought was a better than the way it has been interpreted by the Division of Planning. So denying their appeal does not take away those possibilities for the applicant. The staff will be available for additional questions throughout this time. If you have any questions for me now, I would be happy to try and answer them. Mr. Emmons, the main branch of the public library has computers that anybody who has a library card or maybe anybody else can go in and use. I don't think they advertise sweepstakes, but certainly you don't even rent time there. You just simply go borrow it, sit down, and look up what you want. They also block certain adult sites like the applicant is proposing to do. So what's the difference? The library is not offering as an integral part of their business as a library a sweepstakes promotional as the integral part of their business. And I don't know what a sweepstakes is. Is that like when I buy groceries at Kroger's, I get points on my Kroger's card that allow me additional merchandise and such? I highly suspect that each one of them is slightly different, which is the reason why the staff relied on talking about the typical model of this type of business. The staff is unclear as to whether this use is a legal use in Kentucky or not. Assuming that it was and not listed in the zoning ordinance, our task at hand is, is there a use that it is most similar to that we can make a determination of? If it is a legally allowable use and it's not listed anywhere in the zoning ordinance, one could make the interpretation that it's just simply prohibited in this town from a zoning perspective. But the first step is, is there something similar? And the staff did find that there was. Mr. Glover, also to address your question, the main difference between the library example is the admission is not prohibited to adults only. That's the main difference in that use. The thing that I don't understand is in their business model of a sweepstakes internet cafe that's free, how do they generate income? I do not know. That's a question that you'll need to ask the applicant. Is the sweepstakes, is that a particular software or a particular site or a particular international corporation that these people are a franchise of, and so their computer terminals are set to go to one particular site? I do not know the answer to that. The staff research would indicate that there are several of these types of businesses' models available. And if it's not really any different from a modern electronic one-armed bandit, it's just on a laptop, then would it be illegal in Lexington even if it was in the more restrictive zone for adult entertainment? Because we don't have those even at Keeneland. Ultimately, that's not a decision to be made by the Division of Planning. That's a decision that we'll have to work through the police department, our Department of Law, and ultimately our prosecutors. Are you intending to let those departments know about the now open in Eastland? Yes. In fact, the staff also talked to the Division of Police whenever this use came in, particularly Lieutenant Lyons, who is in the police planning department, which is our number one contact. He did say that the Division of Police, not he himself, but the Division of Police was aware of that one and was looking into the one on Eastland Shopping Center. Did he offer any opinion about what looking into it means? No. Once again, it gets into the process where the police department has to look at the laws, make recommendations, work with the Department of Law, and decide if they're going to the prosecutor. I'm not an expert on criminal law in any way. I am an expert on zoning law. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Emmons. Any other questions? Thank you. We'd like to hear from the applicant, and I think, Ms. Westover, if we could, you need to define what sweepstakes are for us. I'm happy to do that. This is all in part of my presentation, and I can try to answer that question now, or I can just lay it out in the way I think would be very important for you all to understand. for example, as to why it is an error to call this an adult use. So I can jump around or I can do it. Go ahead with your presentation then. Okay, thank you. With me today, I'm Chris Westover for the record, representing NetBiz. With me today are Barry Yokely and Eric DeJong. They are the operators, they're the tenants of this business in the Woodhill Shopping Center. And it's true. They originally came and they asked for a certificate of zoning compliance in order to operate a retail store and have this component, the computer, fax, copy machine, basically a business center use there within the premises. Now, one thing I want to point out, and I hope you do not judge us, because it would be highly unfair on what some illegal business is doing, and they're illegal if they don't have the proper permits. What NetBiz did right from the start was to engage the staff in a conversation. They were upfront and open about what they wanted to do. And they are trying to do the right thing. And we believe very strongly that this is the kind of use that is permissible within the B3 zone as this location as any other kind of retail use. First of all, let me show you the proposed plan in the layout here. And it's a two-part document. One is it's an outline of what they're selling in the retail. It's basically a convenience store where you buy snacks, pop, and, you know, the whole stuff. And then on the second page, it shows the layout of the store. It's your garden variety, everybody knows what they are kind of convenience store. But if you flip on the back on the next page, you see the hatched out area there is the retail portion. And over there on the side are where the computers would be. Now, first of all, children are not prohibited from coming into the premises. They are not going to prohibit children, minors under the age of 18, from coming into the premise at all. There's no sign on the door, keep out if you are under the age of 18. The purpose of this is to offer a service to people who may not have the ability to have a computer or a smartphone or something like that. The game is a separate part of this. We, in our connected age, we forget that there are a lot of people out there that don't have access to computers at home or at work or on their phones. And this serves a legitimate function to have a computer that does this. We'll get into this a little bit later, but the games portion, that's not even on the Internet. That's a closed software system. And in order to play this, when one buys Internet time, this is something that they can find out at the cash register. They never have to play the game. What they're selling is Internet time. And the sweepstakes are something entirely different. There's no consideration. There is no money. There's no risk. This is not gambling. And so we get to, well, what is this? And the staff was talking about adult uses and so forth. Well, this is really the reason we have the definition of adult arcade at all was the result of a real crisis that erupted in this community in the mid-1990s. And I don't know how many of you were around at the time. I know the planning staff was because at the time I worked for the government and we were drafting regulations about this very thing. Let me show you what started things going. And I think it's critically important to get into this so that the board can understand what was the intent of the Urban County Council to enact these adult arcade regulations. But basically, and it's here in the articles, there was a bust of a number of bookstores along Winchester Road and some other places, and there was a bona fide public health crisis because of some of the activities that were going on in the bookstores there. And it was really gross, and I won't get into it, but feel free to read it there. And so that spurred the health department, the Urban County Council, the planning commission, and the police to take some sort of action to cut down on what they perceived was a real public health and public safety emergency, in effect. As you can see, these articles were from October, November, and this first thing you have before you is a resolution that was enacted by the Urban County Council It was enacted in December in response to this problem that was seen in Lexington. And this resolution said, Planning Commission, we need a tax amendment to regulate these uses. As you can see, quite unambiguously, the uses that were being looked at were sexually oriented businesses and specified anatomical parts. I mean, that's what they were regulating. And after the next page is the ordinance that was finally enacted. and I also have the staff report that I think maybe even Mr. Selle prepared because he was also working on this. And it was in this package of text amendments that the term adult arcade came into existence in the zoning ordinance. This was the history of it. And it was not enacted just as one text amendment. We changed the definition of adult bookstore, adult video arcade, and a number of other sex businesses, basically. And so the whole point and the intention of the adult arcade wasn't just a place where adults go, but it was a place where adults go, and there are sexually specific activities, images that were at stake. that's an adult arcade and um the that's what that's what you can see from there so let's look closer at the definition of adult arcade It is true that adult arcade talks about an electronically or mechanically operated device, and that would include a computer, I think, fairly. But the operative word here is and. where the images displayed or distinguished or characterized by specified sexual activities or specified anatomical areas. And I can tell you specified anatomical areas is defined in the zoning ordinance, and you can read it for yourself, and it includes certain body parts that were unmistakably of a sexual nature. It's the word and that you have to pay attention to Because if you just look at the beginning, well, any place where there's a mechanically controlled thing and where adults can go, then there are any number of places that would fall into that without being considered an adult arcade. And I've got that. What are some other examples? Well, I will give you some examples. There are many places within this community where children are allowed in, but there are certain uses that they can't do, and where there are electronic machines, like at a hotel business center, at the library. There are many places where there are electronic devices where the second part is not true. In fact, let me show you this. But we've probably all been in hotels, and in one part of the hotel lobby, there is something called a business center where you can access the computer, and you can print your plane tickets or whatever it is you want to do or do some typing. There are the probably Lens Blueprint might have some computers where there are computers there. And what I have here are examples of places like this retail store that we're talking about where children can come in, but there are certain things they can't do. And in this case, they cannot do the sweepstakes, but they can have access to the other areas there. And we've all been in the grocery store, drugstore, gas station, and restaurants where adults can purchase cigarettes, purchase beer, purchase alcohol, purchase lottery tickets. But yet children can't, but they are allowed in these stores. So just because children can't do all of the range of things within a particular area does not make it, per se, an adult use. The library is a good example. I called the library and found out their Internet access policy, and it sounds like they do restrict children from some things. And in fact, they restrict children from checking out certain videos that are seen as, I guess, being inappropriate. So it's very, very common in our society to have places like restaurants, grocery stores, and other places where children don't partake of the full range of the services or goods that are being offered at the particular facility. And it's very arbitrary just to single this out by saying that because children may not be able to do the sweepstakes, that it is an adult-oriented business because clearly, unambiguously, look at the history and the intention of the adult arcade legislation, and it relates to sex. In this business, net biz will have a firewall that blocks all adult-type uses. So it doesn't meet that second clause in what defines an adult arcade. There is law that interprets this sort of thing. And I think what's going on is the staff is concerned about the possible use. It is a use that hasn't come here before, and they're trying to fit it into a peg. But I respectfully submit this is the wrong peg in which to put it, because let me show you. There are a couple cases, I will hand them out to you, that talks about the fact that in Kentucky, zoning laws are in derogation of the common law. And what that means is, before we had zoning, and zoning's not been around for, I mean, been around for less than 100 years, everybody had the full range of property rights. They could do pretty much anything they wanted to do on their property. And when zoning laws were enacted, that limits the uses that you can be put on your property. And so the courts, at least in Kentucky, hold that the government does not have the power to put restrictions on uses unless they are clearly prescribed in the zoning ordinance. And what you have to do is look at what was the intention and what is the wording. I can pass these cases out, too. But it was not the intention of the council to regulate these types of uses when they enacted all of this legislation about adult arcades and adult uses and adult video. That was not their intention at all. Instead, this is more like your garden variety retail use. There is an entertainment component to the games, but how is an entertainment component to even something like a movie theater much different? I'm going to hand these cases out, and you can see what the courts are getting at here, that just because there is a use that the government might have some initial trepidation about does not mean that the government can construe the law to regulate that particular use in a way to deal with it. so really what we have to talk about here is since it's clearly not an adult arcade then what is it and i think it would help at this time to talk about what is a sweepstakes and in a sweepstakes, and I must say they are ubiquitous. You can go to any Cracker Barrel, McDonald's, retail store to get the bottle top. You can go anywhere, Home Depot, you name it, and those are sweepstakes, and those are not gambling. They're not gambling because you're not buying them. This is just something else. It's a promotion. And I will now hand out some exhibits of a lot of different types of sweepstakes that we all commonly experience. In fact, the top one I'm going to show you is my Rite Aid receipt. I never even look at my receipts. I should maybe. But there was a promotional sweepstakes on my Rite Aid receipt that I never noticed because I probably typically just throw it away. But in here are examples from McDonald's, Lay's potato chips, Cracker Barrel, just any number of your common garden variety, non-gambling sweepstakes. Now, if you notice, on a lot of these sweepstakes, you have to be a certain age to play. I think that most of them are 18, like the Lay's potato chips. McDonald's might be a slightly younger age, but there's still age limits on those. There was no age limit on my right aid receipt, but I think that children can buy soda pop, for example, but in order to cash in whatever it is, they have to be a certain age there. But that's pretty standard, that in a sweepstakes of this nature, that the participation by children is limited. And so what we're doing is no different from the potato chip makers, from McDonald's, the soda pop makers, and anybody else that does this. I will hand out the sweepstakes rules that NetBiz uses. They use a certain kind of software. And then I'm going to have Eric come up and talk a little bit about the program and the software. All right, could you please come up here? And I want you to explain to the board the software program and how the business is operated and why it is not gambling. Hi, my name is Eric DeYoung. And she did a very good job of explaining the sweepstakes, but I think there's a little question. the sweepstakes component of this internet business is a promotion only they don't come in to buy sweepstakes chances or they don't come in to buy just time at the games our product that we sell on that part of the store over and above the convenience side which is typical sodas and snacks is internet time they're purchasing that and in the fact that we want people to buy more sodas and ships over here and more internet time over here, the company has a software, not our company, but we've partnered with one of the software engineer companies, and they give a closed system that is a finite pool of winnings, like McDonald's and Pepsi and Lay's and the different companies that she was explaining. In that closed system, what keeps it from being gambling, which I think may be the issue. Some people think it's gambling is with a finite pool of entries into a sweepstakes. Once it's gone, it's gone. It's not like you're, I forget which one mentioned the one arm bandits from the old days. That's an infinite system. Yeah. Like the producer that can manipulate or can change the odds, what have you. This is a closed system. And I can't say that enough because there's no manipulation of the chances, we'll say, or the odds or anything like that. The people that come in and they want to rent their internet time or buy, purchase internet time, they can do any number of activities. She mentioned a few, but some people come in there just to surf the web. That's the main component of it is just web surfing. Some people come in there occasionally. There's a caveat to this. Barry and myself, this is not our first store. We've had several in different states. And so we've learned what customers come in for. We've learned, you know, the hours, what works, what doesn't, what the main band of customers may want. They want cheap prices for their Internet access, which I forgot which one mentioned, the library. They don't charge for theirs. And we did do a search. The reason we chose Woodhill is because it's the high traffic area. Coming from out of this area, we did some research and found that New Circle between Richmond Road and the north part, I forget the top road that we started our search and ended our search, but that's a high traffic area. So we thought that would meet most customers' demands. They could get to our store. It would be high visibility. We did a search for public libraries in Lexington. and I think there's four or five, something like that. And in proximity to our store, it's still two to three miles away, and then there's the ones downtown, but it's several miles. So the need to get on a computer or if you don't have a laptop or phone, like Chris said, this is an opportunity for you to use our computers. It's competitively priced. You don't have to do the sweepstakes. It's the same as you go to, let's see, The McDonald's Monopoly is one of the biggest that are out there that people are familiar with. You buy a Big Mac meal. Well, to get their sweepstakes, is everyone here familiar with the Monopoly game where you just peel off the sticker to see if you won? Okay. With a value meal of any type, and this has been going on for years, McDonald's and Pepsi are two of the biggest ones, is you reveal your winnings by peeling off the sticker. Well, they want to promote their sales of burgers, fries, drinks, shakes, et cetera, by only certain products have those sweepstakes available on them. You can buy a Big Mac, but you don't get access to that sweepstakes. So, yes, you get a product, but they promote their other products, and fries is probably the most common. That's the first one that you'll see that has the availability of the sweepstakes. so they can eat the fries if they want, or like myself, I don't eat fries or a lot of fried foods, but I want a shot at that boardwalk so I can win half a million dollars or what have you. Very similar to ours, all of our odds, all of our prizes, all of that is in our rules, and there's a book at every establishment, and it explains all that. The people that we hire at our locations, they explain that. They drive home the fact that it is not gambling. It is a promotional aspect of we want more people to buy our product, which is Internet time. And at that point, there is a game available to reveal your winnings. Whether you play that game or not does not change the fact that there's an opportunity there. You don't have to play the game. You just use your Internet and leave. When you use part of that Internet, you can come back at a later time and not have to purchase any more. you still have part of your product left. So you can come in at any time and reuse that. Once that's depleted and you want to purchase more Internet time, that Internet time comes with promotional sweepstakes as well. So you continue to accrue that if you want to do that. To participate in that, you have two choices. You can go to the register where you bought it and say, here's my account number, because when you purchase Internet time, just like they do at the library, you get an account, and then they go sign you in. Well, that account number was assigned a sweepstakes opportunity at that point of purchase. You don't even have to move from the point of purchase. You say, okay, thank you. I'd like to see if I possibly won anything. Some are winners and some are not. We don't have any control over that, and it's just like the McDonald's that I've been explaining to you. Sometimes you might not win anything. Sometimes you might win a small food item. Sometimes you might win a cash prize. It just depends on the sweepstakes. And at that point, they've revealed their winnings. Or they could do that same thing with their receipt and go over to choose any one of the terminals and log in, get on the Internet, do what they came to do. And then when they're done, they could press on the sweepstakes button. That sweepstakes button already has the information from that point of sale. And this is another aspect that makes it not gambling, is when you purchased that and got those entries into that finite pool of sweepstakes, it transferred to whatever terminal that they sat down at as a customer. When they completed whatever they were doing on the Internet, they hit the sweepstakes button, and that will reveal in an entertaining fashion, which is correct, whatever winnings were already won, if any, at the point of sale. So they might win two cents. They might win no cents. They might win $10,000. It's the nature of the sweepstakes, the odds and the prize money. So at that point, they're done with that. They still have their product. Their product is Internet time. So they buy, hypothetically, one hour of Internet time. They're going to pay a certain amount of money, and with that came those sweepstakes points. They exhaust their sweepstakes points. They may have won. They may not have won, and we don't know ahead of time what that's going to be. But even after that's done, they still have their product of Internet time. They can come back that day, next week, next month, or continue it until it's fully exhausted, and then the product is gone. But that has no effect on the sweepstakes points, and the sweepstakes points have no effect on the product of Internet time. So that's kind of the gist of it. I did want to address, I believe it was you, Mr. Griggs, that mentioned when the department brought up the other sweepstakes place that was recently discovered that didn't have permits or come asking about it. We came last year. I believe it's last March. We started our search about a year ago. And talking around town, because we weren't familiar with Lexington, we're actually from a town that's not far from Lexington, North Carolina. So we came from Lexington, North Carolina to Lexington, Kentucky. We just wanted to learn the area, see if it was a large enough population, and see how businesses were, and we found a lot of empty buildings and retail staff. So we thought maybe a good opportunity to come here instead of, they mentioned Bowling Green. We did visit there as well. A lot smaller town, a different area. It looked like it was doing okay. We came here because after looking throughout the state, It looked like it could use some extra employment, some investment, and just things like that. So when we started looking, we chose this area, and we chose New Circle because of the traffic, high traffic count. For any business, you'd want a high traffic count, I suppose. but after we chose an area before we did anything else we went to to get a lawyer to ask is this something that we could do here specifically her company and we went to the was police police or the district attorney or county attorney from where i'm at it's district attorney i was not familiar with here but But the county attorney, we wanted to go there before we did anything else and gave them our business model. And they said, well, we'd like to look into it further. And they didn't have a problem with it, but they didn't give us any concrete yes, no, come on over. So what they asked was, could you explain it in detail? And I said, yes, we'll bring our IT professionals from the company, which is out of South Carolina. They've been doing it for years, and they've dealt with many different jurisdictions. And we want to stay within whatever state that we're in within their laws, of course. Well, at that point, they scheduled a meeting. And this was in, if I'm not mistaken, October or November, right before the holidays. And we spent considerable time in the district attorney or the county attorney's office. And we brought a contingent of experts that knew. I'm just a business owner. I don't know all the intricate IT information, but I did bring the people that could answer those questions. After two, two, three, something like that hours with the district attorney and the people that he brought and our legal counsel in an open forum, all questions were answered. and the district attorney, or county attorney, I apologize, made a comment, as long as you do it like you're stating and like Sidney's rules, and the reason he said that is because of the same thing, other information from other cities and other companies that have done it maybe don't do it the same as we do. And so as long as you're doing it the way that you're explaining to me, then I see no problem with it. If you do it outside of this and do any kind of illegalities, we'll say, if it's not what you showed me today, then the limits of the law will be processed. And I said that's good enough for me because I'm here to tell you I'm an upstanding guy. I'm not trying to do stuff under the radar without permits or in the back alleys, anything like that. I'm a retired Army soldier, so I've got a reputation. I did 20 years. I don't want people to think badly of me. So I try to do it exactly by the book is the phrase I like to use. Could I interrupt you and ask the staff a question? Absolutely. Is there a division of Lexington City government or a part of state government that you know of that would regulate these machines? In other words, if we voted to approve this application, could we put a condition on it that they would have to get approval of their business plan in every detail from another division of our government that would oversee the legalities of it? Thank you. I think it would be difficult since this is an administrative appeal and not a conditional use permit application. The board can condition those types of applications, but as an administrative appeal, I'm not sure you can condition a location in that decision. not conditioning a location, but conditioning the legality of it that might be determined by another portion of our government. But I see what you're saying. This is an up or down kind of vote. Mr. Gregg, that was why I said about addressing the county attorney, because without having been from here, We thought he was the top because we looked in the state area and there was nothing. So we went to your local area. I thought the county attorney was the top, but he said, if you do anything outside of what you've shown me here, then I will prosecute you. And other than that, I see no problem with it. So do you have something in writing from him? No, we didn't ask for a written okay or anything like that. But we just wanted to, before we opened, we wanted to, you know, transparency is what we were looking for. Let me say something here, just to give you my interpretation of what we do as a Board of Adjustment. I don't think that if we were to approve this appeal, in other words, grant the relief that they're requesting, that should it turn out that the activities that are conducted, that they're illegal, they can't hide behind our approval. that they can't say that we're approving an illegal activity. I don't see us as doing that kind of thing. So it's up to other agencies to determine whether or not the activities that are conducted at this or any other business are legal by some statute or ordinance or regulation or something like that. That's outside the scope of our jurisdiction, as I understand it. And, Mr. Glover, a caveat to that is we've gone that route, and so it's not like I'm inviting, you know, years of interpretation or anything, but we did want to talk to the district attorney, the police, everybody. So just to let them know that they don't have to come in in the dark hours of night trying to catch us doing something. We're totally transparent and hope that, you know, everything goes well. I also want to say something else about the way that I interpret what our job is, and this is a good case to make this observation. As I understand what our duties are as a board, as I've been on the board now almost a full four years, And during that time, our society has grown, probably outgrown in some respects, the various narrow categories of what are covered in our zoning regulations. Just because something is not mentioned in the zoning doesn't make it either inappropriate, illegal, or not subject to being approved by us, as I understand it. And there's probably a quote somewhere in the literature that just because it's not specifically permitted doesn't mean it's denied. So I understand the struggle that staff went through. I understand the struggle that we're going through to try to resolve this question because it's fairly novel to us because Internet Cafe is not defined as we know it. But just because it's not doesn't mean we are either without jurisdiction or that we have to deny it or that we have to approve it. So just my comments. I totally understand those comments. Thank you, Mr. Glover. Anybody have any other questions? I think Ms. Jones is working on some language. Would you give us a couple minutes? And matter of fact, we have not had a break. I'd like to adjourn for five minutes, please. That's fine. to a determination whether an adult used or not just because of the Yellow Pages algorithm. And let me see. I have findings of fact if necessary. Okay, now I've changed my mind. Mr. Griggs? Just one second. I don't know if this was as evidence, but rather a... Ms. Westover, you said you had proposed findings as well? Yes, sir. Could we take a look at those just for grins? You certainly can. Thank you. Thank you. based on the following. This use is an allowable use in the B3 zone and is not an adult entertainment business. The hearing indicates it is more like a retail, more like a library or a specialized retail establishment with a sweepstakes opportunity to promote its retail sale of Internet time on computers, which will not be used for adult entertainment or gambling. That's your motion. Is there a second? A second. Mr. Glover seconds. The motion is to approve your administrative appeal to allow the sweepstakes. Motion has been made and second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Chad Walker. Mr. Walker, thank you so much for your patience also. You've asked the board for administrative appeal of the building inspector's revocation of a signed permit in AR zone at 3898 Haley Road. What we'd like to do, Mr. Walker, is hear from the staff or hear from building inspection. And then we'll allow you to respond. Mr. Chairman, I spoke with the Division of Building Inspection earlier today, and they indicated that they were not going to be present for this appeal, that they were going to stand by the written documentation that they had submitted and was mailed to the board. after Mr. Walker's presentation, the Division of Planning has a comment for this particular case. Okay. Mr. Walker, come on back up. Basically, this is a tiny little deal. I'll be as quick as I can. I know we all want to get out of here, but this is just on a signed revocation. That's all right. Lift your mic up. A little bit better? Yes, sir. Okay. Essentially, the purpose of this appeal is just to contest what we feel is an unjustified revocation of our sign permit. The short version is we received a sign permit, the permit was revoked, and the reason was that the sign was in the state right-of-way, in the roadway. The longer version, I'll kind of keep this as condensed as possible, But essentially, my brother owns and operates what we call an agritourism business on the corner of Haley Road and I-64. We were granted a conditional use permit in 2013, and this business brings in tourism money, tax dollars, seasonal, non-skilled employment, just a fun place all around. We erected a sign. We didn't get a permit when we put it up, and the sign was up for about seven months. we received a formal notice of violation from Robert Phelps, zoning enforcement officer. And that letter was dated February 12, 2014. I think you guys have a copy of that in your packet there. We've been in front of the board several times ourselves for conditional use permits, zone changes. We were actually the second company that received the adaptive reuse overlay, but this is the first soiree into the sign permitting process. And so I took that on, assuming it would be a very simple process. After getting the notice of violation, I didn't know where to go, so I called, let's call 311. They said to contact building inspection. I went to building inspection, and I spoke with Nancy Marinaro, and she approved our sign as it already was erected. I've got a signed permit right here, and that's also in your packet. Then I went back up to address the notice of violation. I spoke with Mr. Phelps and Mr. Marks, and it was my understanding that since we had a permit that that violation went away. That was on February 12th. I'm sorry, February 18th. On March 4th, that was 15 days later, which includes the date of issuance and the date of revocation, we were told that the sign permit was revoked, and the reason being is it was determined that the sign, this is a direct quote, is determined that the sign has been placed in the right-of-way, therefore the permit has been voided. Now, I believe that it wasn't in the right-of-way, but I can't make that determination on my own. So I called Kentucky State Transportation Department, called a fellow by the name of Mike D. Stone, Transportation Cabinet, Department of Highways, District 7, and he stated that the setback on Haley Road was 40 feet. I got an email from him confirming this and that the sign is not in the right-of-way. I then took this information back to building inspection. I spoke with a fellow by the name of Fred Stokely, and Mr. Stokely confirmed that he didn't get out to measure the sign, but he assumed that it was in the right-of-way because it was in front of the fence. Then I spoke with Nancy, and she basically said that the sign permit has been revoked. That's it. That's kind of where we left off. And I've been trying desperately, even though this is just a tiny little issue, to appeal that the sign is not in the right-of-way. And that was the reason that the sign permit had been revoked. And even though we've got two state boys saying that it's not in the right-of-way, we also have Mr. Inmonds that said he went out and measured it. I think somebody from staff went out and measured it. And they also agreed it's not in right-of-way. And so that's essentially all we're discussing. There's all this other stuff about sign content and things like that, but we received a permit. We played by your all's rules, and then 15 days later it's revoked. So that's kind of where we're at. Would you like to talk about whether it's the right type of sign, what's on the sign? Because there is this issue about it being not a directional sign, but an identification. It's not a – the difference between an advertising sign and a – We can discuss it, but the reason that the sign was revoked is what we're going by. It's not our determination what type of sign is. We take it to you guys for a building inspection, and building inspection is signed off on it. But for some reason, 15 days later, they go, well, no, no, wait a minute, and that's where we're at. Then I have a question for staff. If this is an administrative appeal about the reason this sign is being revoked, but the actual reason has changed midway, that we're not talking about where it's located now, but whether it's in a prohibited type of sign, can we talk about that at this hearing also? Well, I'm confused, to be honest, because I'm reading one thing and I'm hearing another. So maybe it would be best to let our staff do their presentation, and then we can clear it up if we have any more questions. Thank you, Tracy. Any other questions for Mr. Walker? I think Mr. Walker is correct. The sign was revoked for locational issues. The staff, though, once we learned of the sign, did look at the different types of signs, and were wondering if it's a business sign or a identification sign under the ordinance. I'm not sure if that's germane for the board or not. That's kind of why I was looking to Ms. Jones as to whether they could venture into that area. One thing I can do, though, is put those two definitions up on the overhead for you. And I have one additional question. And when we gave these folks their original conditional use permit to operate this recreational facility, was paintball part of that? Was it specifically listed as a use that was allowed? I do not remember paintball being specifically allowed. However, there was a zoning investigation of this particular use. and whenever we looked into it, we did not find that the operation was, we found that the operation that was going on was in compliance with all of the conditions that the board placed on it. I thought this was a seasonal fall type of hayride kind of thing, if I remember the case properly. So is it going on throughout the whole year now, or for six or nine months of the year? it's still essentially seasonal focusing on the fall time and that's it's immediately we could get up the the haunted hayride type stuff and the the um you know i don't know the the fun part of it now this year we're going to do the pumpkins and the kid rides and things like that but essentially it still is just fall activities what time of the year is the paintball operation going on October only. So this sign advertising the paintballs is up year-round, but it's only open for one month? Uh-huh. And we still don't think it's advertising necessarily, the paintball. It's just it is what's going on. It's just the same as, you know, Gene Ferris Wine. I mean, they eat chicken there, but they don't put that on the sign. There's many different uses. It just happens that we pick that one to have the sign up at the time, which was subsequently approved by building inspection. Do you have a copy of the conditional use that we approved back then just to see? Because this is one of those things where you give somebody a conditional use, and it's so vague that they turn it into some other type of entertainment. I'm sorry, sir. I did not bring that file to this meeting. and i and i also note on the on the february 12 2014 letter from mr phelps there is a paragraph that talks about the existing freestanding sign does not meet the definition of an identification sign um it's stated in the letter um so it you know it says the only type of business The sign permitted in the AR zone is for the advertisement of agricultural products grown or raised on the premises, which is clearly not the case in this situation. Well, that wasn't up for, I mean, we didn't actually get a hearing on that, but we did speak with both Mr. Phelps and Mr. Marks, and both in my presence said this sign has been satisfied with the building inspection zoning or the sign permit. But all we can do is interpret what is the zoning ordinance. I mean, that's what our job is. It's to enforce what the zoning ordinance says. Is that true? We're getting way off track here already. This appeal, and Tracy's, I think, catching up now to sorting a lot of this out. The appeal is about the voiding of the permit. Now, I authorized Bob Phelps to issue the notice of violation. In our minds, it was clear that it wasn't the right type of sign. Building inspection had a different view on it. They issued a permit. That happens. Applicants shouldn't get caught up in the middle of that. That's not good government. Thank you, Jim. The voiding of the permit was done in error. This is about whether the permit should be reissued or not. And that's the focus of this appeal. Yeah, my only qualm about the whole thing is we, as I said, play by your rules. We got a permit, and then 15 days later, which has got to be some kind of record anyway, they say we're revoking it because it's in right-of-way. But it's not. So let me, I've got a procedural question, I guess, for either side of the room here. What are we being asked to determine? What is, what's the question that we're supposed to answer? obviously we're not going to decide whether the sign is in the right of way or not either it is or it isn't that's not something that should require the board to have to determine it should be a matter of record somewhere somehow are we being asked to determine whether to reissue the permit or whether the permit was issued wrongfully or whether the denial was an error or, you know, what's the question that we're supposed to answer? Because I don't want to answer, I don't want to give a bigger answer than the question is. My take on that question is that you're supposed to decide whether or not the voiding of the permit was done in error. And if it was in error, authorize the reissuance of the permit. Well, and as I understand it from this letter of February 12th, the reason for the voiding of the permit is that the sign doesn't meet. Nope, nope. We're looking at the wrong letter. Okay. You can have a sign permit then. I'm looking at the notice of violation. That was before the voiding of the permit. After the notice of violation was issued. I mean, I guess the confusion is, do we have anything for building inspection, since they're not here, that documents what reason they voided the permit for? Yes, we do. Where is that? Let's see. We received an email from Nancy. It's in your packet. It's 3898 Haley Road. It's dated March 4th. It's addressed to my brother. It says, please be advised that our office visited the site for the sign permit issued, and it was determined that the sign has been placed in the right-of-way. Therefore, the permit has been voided. So I think that the question in front of you all today, despite the issue about whether or not the sign is proper in this zone as it exists, is whether or not the permit was voided appropriately for it being in the right-of-way, because that's what this email says. Well, exactly, and that's what's a little perplexing here, is that obviously we've got a couple different issues here, And as Mr. Marks said, you know, the applicant gets caught in the middle of it. And in situations like this, I tend to lean toward the applicant. It clearly states that the permit has been voided because it was placed in the right-of-way. And we know that it's not in the right-of-way. So if it's our job to reissue the permit, that's something that I would support. because I don't think that Mr. Walker ought to be penalized because of our confusion, quite frankly. The only revocation we have, essentially, is the email from Nancy. So if you all want to let it fall as it may, we'll keep the permit in hand and keep the sign up, I mean. Well, if we can resolve that part of this question, that's fine. But then if this is an advertising sign instead of an identification sign, I'd like to make a formal complaint to code enforcement that it be looked into. And if it's not the right type of sign, regardless if the text on the sign was permitted, because sometimes building inspection makes a mistake and people have to tear stuff down even though they've got a permit. But there are not supposed to be non-agricultural uses advertised in the AR zone. And paintball is not an agricultural use. Yeah, but neither is a bistro or a wine or whatever. As long as it is identifying the place. And as Jimmy mentioned, we can call it the paintball farm or we can call it the paintball. What's difficult for me is we've been dealing with this issue for several months now. And so I keep saying we played by your all's rules, but we have to be the ones to penalize. Take up my variety. You know, it's just where does it end? At what point do you guys go, okay, now you really have a signed permit, and we're good now? That was the reason for my original question, what is it that we're being asked to decide? And I think the chairman and counsel have defined it. We're being asked to determine whether or not the revocation was appropriate or was done appropriately. That is my, I mean, it clearly states that the permit was voided because it was in the right of way. And that is not the case here. If that's the question, I like the question. We can address other questions at a later time as they come up. I don't want to decide too much, like I said. I think that's the question based on the information that building inspection has supplied to us today. If there are other issues, I don't think they need to be addressed today. I'm not saying they won't ever be addressed, but I don't think that's what we're here for today, based on what building inspection has given us. Well, if that's the case, then, Ms. Jones, because to Mr. Griggs' point, that's another issue. And the issue before us right now, I think, is the permit has been voided because it was in the right-of-way, and that was the reasons as given by building inspection, and that is not the case. So I would almost like to, you know, the other issues can be addressed at the appropriate time, But I think for all concerned here, I'd like to see us move to stop the revocation or reissue the permit. And I don't know, Ms. Jones, what would be the appropriate language to do that. I think the language would be to approve the appeal. Is that right, Ms. Trammell? I believe that you would want to make a motion to approve the appeal, authorizing the Division of Building Inspection to reinstate the previous permit. Okay, I so move. Mr. Glover moves. Is there a second? I'll second that, but I would also like to remind Jim that we should look into this from that other aspect, and I would like to hear back on what you determined. There's a motion to approve your administrative appeal. There's a second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? There you go. Thanks for waiting. Good weekend, y'all. Thank you. I'd like to know if there's any other items to be heard by the board today. Mr. Chairman? Somebody should have a motion. Before that, if I could take you back to the very first page, we had two sets of minutes still outstanding, and I think there was some confusion early in the meeting about that. the board has been sent the February 28th minutes. The board has not been sent the January minutes. Those are still under review, and they will be available for your next meeting, but we do believe that the February 28th minutes are ready for your consideration and action if you'd like. Okay. I didn't receive a copy of them. You did not? Okay. I don't remember. If you have not seen them, then we'll put them on next month's agenda. I didn't either. That'd be great if we could. Mr. Griggs? I have a motion that we move to closed session for the purpose of discussing a pending legislation. Litigation. Litigation, excuse me. Mr. Griggs made a motion and Mr. Glover seconded. All in favor going into closed session to discuss a legal matter. Signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. We'll close the meeting. guitar solo Jimmy, you did a great job there at Sergeant Under Arms over there. Nobody got out. Nobody got in. Is there any other business to come before the board? if not we will see you at the end of at the end of next month April 25th is our next board meeting and with that we stand adjourned thank you