As it's been ten years since we said I'd do I've always heard marriage made one seem like two But you're looking better than you did back then. You still make this old heart given. And if I had it to do all over, I'd do all over again If tomorrow I found one more chance to begin I'd love you all over again The preacher man said Till death do us part That seemed like forever To a young man and small Now the days seem much shorter The longer we love And the memories just keep adding up And if I had it to do all over I'd do it all over again If tomorrow I found one more chance to begin I'd love you all over again If tomorrow I found one more chance to begin I'd love you all over again I'd like to be a fly on your wall When you think you're all alone Learn your secrets once and for all Never tell no one I can't read your mind It's secret telling time Tell me how do I turn you on Tell me how do I turn you on Maybe there's a game we could play Is there something that you want But you're too shy to say How do I turn you on Turn you on to me Oh, I could take you away A million miles from here When I'm getting close, baby, sing With a whisper in my ear How to make you mine It's secret telling time Tell me how do I turn to you Tell me please, I just want to know Tell me how do I turn to you There's nothing I wouldn't do If I knew maybe there's a game we could play Is there something that you want But you're too shy to say How do I turn you on Turn you on to me Just between you and me I'm a little nervous too But just beyond our wildest dreams It's waiting for me And it's waiting for you To choose the world Oh, maybe there's a game we could play Is there something that you want But you're too shy to say How do I turn to you on? Oh, tell me how do I turn to you on? There's nothing I wouldn't do that you know. Tell me how do I turn to you on? Yeah, I just want to know Oh, tell me how do I turn you on There's nothing I will leave I love you so Tell me how do I turn you on We'll be right back. Let us grow, get you to move, it's alright, alright, alright Let us grow, set in the shoes, stand up, alright Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The agenda itself, kind of light, discussion may get lengthy, may not. I'm not sure. A couple of items. First, approval of minutes. Minutes from September 11, 2014 and September 25, 2014 were emailed to commission members. There has been one correction, to my knowledge, on September 11, and the corrected version was also sent out to commission members. If there's no other corrections to be made, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. Move approval of the minutes for September 11th and September 25th. Thank you. Motion's been made and second for approval of those minutes. Please vote when it comes up on the screen. Motion passes. Any postponements or withdrawals from today's agenda. Seeing none, we'll move on. And if it's, if the commission's not opposed, I will ask to take one of the two items out of order. And that would be going to the bottom of page one. and hearing ZODA 2014-7 Amendment 2, Article 22, to establish a planned unit development to PUD 2 zone. We'll take that one first. Good afternoon, Chairman Owens, members of the Commission. This is item ZODA 2014-7, and it's a request by the North Limestone Community Development Corporation to create a new planned unit development to PUD2 zone in our zoning ordinance. That would be part of Article 22, and it would create a new appendix to Article 22. What I just distributed to the Planning Commission was, in fact, what Article 22 currently says, and it outlines basically what any appendix to that article would include. So it includes kind of a list of what any new PUD zone might include. We currently have a PUD 1 in Appendix A, and the applicant is proposing a PUD 2, which would be Appendix B to this ordinance. Before we get started, this application has had quite a few letters of support sent to the staff, and I think I have seven, so I'll distribute those. And as Chairman Owens mentioned, this is at the bottom of page one of your agenda. In your notebook, the information is behind tab two. And within the notebook, you'll find the staff's written report, a staff alternative text, and then also the petitioner's revised text, and that is on a green-colored, I guess, four pages. So the applicant is proposing to add Appendix 22B to the zoning ordinance, and that's intended to create the Lua Guard PUD 2 for a three-block area bounded by North Limestone, Maple Street, the RJ Corman Railroad Line, and West 7th Street. The Lugart Makerspace project, as the applicant is referring to it, they call this an innovative live-work zone designed to invest in the near downtown neighborhood located within that area I just described. Again, North Limestone, 7th Street, and the RJ Corman Railroad Line in Maple. So Lexington's Article 22 for planned unit development zones is intended to allow for unique zoning, a unique zoning tool. It allows for innovation, which may not be accomplished with our traditional zoning categories. And when the applicant came to the staff with their sustainability plan, one of the first things that came to mind in terms of a suggestion to them was to consider establishing a PUD zone, which they could craft themselves in terms of uses and restrictions. So the PUD zone is, again, straight from the intent that you can see on that page I distributed, intended to provide for flexibility, promote more efficient use of land if possible, minimize conflicts, but also further the implementation of the comprehensive plan. so the applicant's proposal is to create a Luigart makerspace project and first thing that comes to mind is what really is a makerspace so the staff did find a kind of a generic definition that talks about a location where people can gather and share information and resources to create something in this regard the Luigart area they're hoping to further artistic endeavors. So everything in that area is, and the uses in the PUD2 zone that you see, are centered around artistic venues or avenues in terms of live work. Most of it is artistic in nature. So the Luigard 2 zone, the existing zoning doesn't provide the adequate flexibility hoped for in this area. Currently there's business B1 zoning along North Limestone, some industrial zoning along the Lua Gart Court area and the railroad track and then the rest of the area is in the R3 zone I believe. The sustainability plan that the applicant brought to the staff is more than just a zoning package they also looked at quite a few other things but in terms of this proposal they wanted to emphasize that home ownership and equity programs were a piece of that. They intended to have artists in residence within the area, provide for visiting artists housing, and then gallery space and areas for makers to get together and work. There's kind of the area, the aerial, and I did print one out for, do you have any questions? So the basic intent then is to remove the typical zoning barriers that the applicant has found in this area and encourage redevelopment and rehabilitation of the area. With that, they proposed a new set of uses for the PUD2 with, of course, principal, accessory, conditional, and prohibited uses, as you would normally find in our zoning ordinance. But they also proposed a two-step approach to design standards. So the Planning Commission would review only when they exceeded certain design standards. And before that, then all applications would be reviewed through planning and building inspection for permits. But those proposals that exceeded the design standards would come to the Planning Commission for further review. The Lua Guard PUD 2 zone provided, let's see, eight new definitions in terms of live workspace, artistic studios, digital maker spaces. These are uses that are not currently defined in the rest of the zoning ordinance in Article 1, so they would only be specifically for this area. The applicant also embedded in the text amendment here kind of a different approach to parking requirements. The normal approach would be each use has a designated parking standard or requirement, usually based on employees or square footage. In this case, there's no established off-street parking requirement, but instead there's a maximum vehicular use area coverage limit. So that would limit surface parking for any lot, and that's intended to maintain the character of the established neighborhood. On-street parking is already available in this area because most of them are one-way streets, so there's parking on both sides of some of the streets or parking on North Limestone as well. And there are alternative modes of transportation since it's near downtown. This is on a bus line. Those are factors in terms of limiting the parking requirements. And then off-street parking is available from nearby churches and other businesses for any special events if that is necessary. When a PUD 2 is applied for, so this is just the text amendment at this point, when an actual map amendment request comes in, instead of there being a standard development plan, the applicant would be providing a site inventory and site analysis and some standards. So what is the existing character of the area, and how are we going to maintain that character during the rezoning process? The development plan applications, though, would be, in the future, if they did come in, be evaluated against those standards in order to hopefully maintain the character of the area or at least keep it contextually appropriate. And then lastly, the text does provide for when development plans are filed that a registered architect in the state of Kentucky would be required to stamp it or sign off on it. And then at least one other design professional, either a planner, an engineer, or a landscape architect. The staff reviewed the application and made a few suggested changes before the zoning committee meeting a few, I guess, more than a month ago now. The applicant considered those and actually reviewed those and included them in a revised text, which they submitted last week. And the planning commission discussed this proposed text amendment at two work sessions. So the green text that you have in your notebooks is their revised text from the 16th of October, and the staff is recommending approval of that text. It includes the staff alternative text, which we previously recommended approval of, but it also provided some changes that I think address some of the Planning Commission's concerns. So the findings for approval are listed here. generally, I guess I don't have to read them to you and they're on your agenda. So if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them at this time. Any questions for Ms. Wade? Don't appear to. Thank you. Thank you. Applicant? Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Brandon Cohn. I'm the representative for the North Limestone Community Development Corporation, NOLI CDC. NOLI CDC currently owns 17 of the 171 properties in the subject area. And with our partners who own 22 additional properties, we would be applying as 39 properties in the first round of MAP amendments should the text amendment pass when we apply for a MAP amendment. Ultimately, NOLI CDC hopes to acquire 40 properties in phase one of our projects, which would bring us to a total of at least 61 out of the 171 properties. in the subject area, which is 36% of all properties total in the subject area. Also here with me today are Richard Young, Executive Director of No Lie CDC, Chris Non, who is an architect and the project manager for the Louis Gart Makerspaces project specifically, and Griffin Van Meter, who is chair of the board of No Lie CDC. and with us on paper, if not in person, are the groups who submitted letters of approval on our behalf, and that's the Bluegrass Community Foundation, Commerce Lexington, the Fayette Alliance, LexArts, the Lexington Downtown Development Authority, the North Limestone, Neighborhood Association, and Seedleaf. And Richard Young is going to give you a brief overview of No Lie CDC and what we do. Chris Nunn is then going to give you a little bit of information about the Luigart makerspaces in particular. I'll be available to talk about the text specifically. Thanks. Hi. Thanks for that introduction, Brendan. Again, I'm Richard Young, the director of the North Limestone Community Development Corporation. And before we get into the specifics of the Luigart makerspaces project, I wanted to give you guys a small overview of what we're working on in the North Limestone Corridor. We are a nonprofit 501c3 organization, and we talk about our work in terms of livability. Livability we see in four pretty broad categories. Accessibility to the neighborhood, the affordability of the neighborhood, sustainability, and the vibrancy of the neighborhood. We execute those goals through these six means, offering affordable housing, coordinating cultural programming, enhancing public spaces in our neighborhood, helping for-profit organizations grow the retail nodes of our corridor, increasing access to social services that already exist in the neighborhood, and addressing threats to neighborhood resources. And we really see ourselves as an organization that facilitates other organizations in the neighborhood. We have a few other programs in addition to Luligart makerspaces. Probably the best known is the Night Market, which is a street festival that we put on once a month that really focuses on economic development and business support in our neighborhood. This year alone, we're going to be having eight night markets, each of which are three hours. So in that amount of time, we're expecting close to $200,000 to come into our neighborhood. And it's been a very great thing for businesses in our neighborhood, and has helped a lot of people expand. We do a lot of work around environmental sustainability. The Neighborhood Association passed a sustainability plan in 2011 with the help of the city government, and we are really working to execute that plan. We have a great partnership with Seedleaf. We have a representative from that organization here today. We're working on the North Pole Garden, which is a free you-pick community garden in the north side. we are working with Kentucky American Water and the Bluegrass Community Foundation on developing one of the largest public butterfly gardens in the city on York Street and we'll actually have a pass through from limestone creating more green space and more public space for our neighborhood next year we're going to be undertaking a pretty substantial storm water quality program and I'm not going to go through all the specifics but there's a lot including planting quite a few trees. We have a partnership with Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras called North Limestone Music Works, which provides free after-school music instruction to children from Arlington Elementary for free. It's a daily program, and will operate from when they come into the program in second grade through high school graduation at no cost to them. We have a few other projects. We partnered with all of the businesses on the North Limestone Corridor for the North Limestone Vibrancy Map. We give out public microgrants to anyone that lives or works in our community, about $150 per microgrant. And we fund that through a partnership with Magic Beans Coffee Roasters, where we sell their coffee, that they do a specific blend for us, and that all of those funds go into this public microgrant pool. And then we're also working on a pretty substantial endeavor in creating a cultural plan for our neighborhood that will guide public space development and arts and cultural access in our neighborhood, and also taking a look at public art, and that's through a partnership with the Bluegrass Community Foundation and the University of Kentucky. And the reason that I want to talk about all of these projects, and the reason that I'm bringing all of them up, is that we want to show that we are taking a very holistic approach to the development of our neighborhood. We want to make sure that that happens in a very equitable and sustainable way. And I think all of that focuses on the project that we're here to talk about today, which is the Luegart Makerspaces. I want to invite the project manager for that, Chris, to come up and talk a little bit about that. Thank you, Richard. So Tracy did a wonderful job of explaining the nuts and bolts of our application and the text. So I'm going to gloss over some of that. But what I really wanted to do was to really ground our application in the broader discussion about what's called creative placemaking, which is a phrase that was crafted to really address the issue of using the creative class, the artistic community, as a vehicle for reinvigorating a community, redeveloping, and infusing that vibrancy that we were talking about. So the economic vitality that that would bring to it is something that we think is critical, and there is precedent for basing it on the artistic community. So that we feel like is a sound and well-documented approach to this sort of redevelopment. One reason why we, some of the information, some of the documentation that backs that up is that compared to Lexington in general, this area has a lower owner-occupied percentage, has higher renter-occupied, obviously. Vacancy rates are higher. So there is that need to bring that equity to the neighborhood. The goals, as Brandon stated, are to ultimately rehabilitate 40 historic houses into this live-work model, stabilize the neighborhood, and empower and create a new cultural district. It's necessary because it allows that flexibility of use that will allow individuals to support themselves from their home as opposed to having to maintain a separate place of business, either retail, creation, or fabrication. Just outlining the area in the broader context, the block that we are discussing, more up close, the 39 properties that are committed to going through the first map amendment, 17 of our own and 22 owned by our partners. And then that economic impact, Richard talked about the economic impact of things like the night market, and this is obviously going to have a much larger economic impact due to the scope and the scale of it. So really bringing $2.5 million of total economic impact just for our part of it, not to mention what the residual impact of really revitalizing that neighborhood is going to bring to the neighborhood. As Brandon mentioned, we do have a number of partners that have been very supportive and helpful in this process. You have letters of support from them in front of you for your review. And with that, that's all we have to say. And I just very shortly wanted to talk about the text, because we talk about the planned unit development zone as being the tool. Another easy way to think about this, for people that aren't familiar with some planning and zoning terms, is as a live-work district. Lexington does not have a standalone live-work classification that would meet our needs fully. So what we're trying to do is designate a subject area on the map where we're creating a live-work district. And in order to come up with a specific text language that we submitted before you today, We first started with some national best practice research, looking at examples from coast to coast, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Wilmington, Oakland, San Francisco, California. We looked at what they're doing up the road in Louisville and how they've managed to be sort of successful with the Lowertown Arts District in Paducah, Kentucky. But the text before you is really all culled from Lexington Zoning Ordinates itself so that there's consistency with terms of art. We worked hand-in-hand with planning staff to develop the text as it exists. Like Tracy said, we incorporated all the staff recommendations into our revised draft and then made the few changes that we talked about in our work session to arrive at the text that you have before you today. Thank you. Any questions? No? Thank you, sir. Anyone else in the audience wish to speak on this request? Yes, sir. Please come forward. Your name, sir. I'm Marty Clifford, president of the North Limestone Neighborhood Association. I've lived there since 1996. Today, I'm driving a large van and find it very difficult to park in underground parking, so I parked at Third Street Stuff and walked down here. It is nice. That's what one of our values are in our neighborhood is to make it pedestrian friendly. We want to get people out of their cars and walk in the community. Parking is not an issue in this area. We want people to walk more. As they've had the night market on Friday nights, you'll see people walking up and down Limestone, coming to the night market where they've had it on Bryan Avenue. We've never had an altercation during that. 3,000 people coming out in our neighborhood, and I'm speaking from 1996 when I first moved to that neighborhood, when there was a fight, three or four to five fights a day maybe in that neighborhood, and many problems. We've never had one altercation during that. Saturday morning when you come out, no trash on the ground. They've been great partners for the neighborhood. I came in 1996. The properties they're talking about doing were all substandard housing. The rental properties that they purchased were mostly what people refer to as slumlords. So not only are we eliminating something bad, they're bringing in something good. And it's an added value. What's there now? Now, since 1996, we've been trying to attract investors to the area to help with our economics there. Haven't been able to attract because of the crime problems, infrastructure problems. This is the first group that have stepped up and said we know how to add value to that community, and we can make a difference. We're willing to put our own money into it as well as write grants and put a lot of other effort into it and been able to partner well with others. So this is going to be – we've been doing community surveys for the last 15 years. and the Neighborhood Association to find out what the whole community values. Public art is one of the top five. Green space, the diversity of the community is number one. This encompasses all of that and values all of that. So they're going to be able to create an added value for that community that nobody else has been able to do and come up with. So this is a great plan. It's great people that honor the community that's already there. and they're not coming in and saying, we know what's wrong. Let me take care of all these problems. They know what. They live in the community. They've asked questions in the community. They've attended community meetings. And they've come up with a great plan to solve a lot of our problems. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak in regards to this plan? Yeah. Coming forward. Your name, please. My name is Laurel Dixon, and I'm here representing Seedleaf, as mentioned earlier, as one of the partners. We have an interest in one of the properties on York Street that's being considered for PUD, and we've been in a lot of talks with NOLI CDC in the past months, and we're really excited about the possibility of building a home place for Seedleaf there. We would really be able to expand our capacity to train area youth in urban agricultural entrepreneurship opportunities. A mouthful, but a good thing. Just green jobs that would benefit the neighborhood as it is today. The PUD would allow us to implement micro-enterprises and support area youth as they work to address nutritional justice issues in their own neighborhood. And Seedleaf has really had the privilege to grow community gardens in diverse spaces for the past seven summers. And one of ours, they showed a picture of earlier, that's our North Pole garden, has been really successful. So with your help, we will be really well positioned to continue this work on a deeper level in a really critical area. Does anyone have any questions? Any questions? Nope. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? Good afternoon. My name is Knox Benogel, and I'm here on behalf of Fayette Alliance. We would just say that we're very much in support of this text amendment. We believe that the NOAA CDC is presenting our community with a rare opportunity to have a destination development in our urban core. The planning commission, we feel, should now do its part and approve the text amendment and furtherance of the express goals of our land use authorities, and in particular, our most recently adopted comprehensive plan and countless community surveys. Thanks so much. Thank you. Anyone else? If not, any questions from the commission? Tracy Wade, anything to add? No? If not, if there's no other questions, I'll close this part of the hearing and open it up for any discussion and or motion. Yes? Well, I don't have a button on here to push, but unless there's further discussion, I'd like to applaud, again, this team. and they've done a wonderful job working with the staff, working with us in work sessions and with the neighborhood, and I strongly support this program. I'd make a motion for approval, ZODA 2014-7, the revised text, Appendix 22B, based on the findings noted by staff. Second. Motion's been made. those several seconds for approval of ZODA 2014-7. If there's no other discussion on the motion, please vote when it comes up on the screen. The motion passes. Thank you, and I would acknowledge what Patrick just said. Thanks for working with staff so hard on all this and listening and working with us. Thank you. Thank you. Now to move on to ZODA 2014-4 and SRA 2014-1, Recreational and Tourism Land Uses. Ms. Wade is going to bring us up to date as to historical information and where we are and where we're headed. So, Ms. Wade. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Owens. Members of the Commission, this is at the middle of page one, and it's the ZODA 2014-4, the Recreation and Tourism Land Uses Text Amendment. A couple things before we jump in. The staff has received a good number of correspondence, And what we've done is, I think, as they've come in, forwarded them to the Planning Commission. With the exception of the very last letter here that arrived this morning, we've been able to forward all of these letters to the commission. So we'll send that around. And then we've also received just, I would say, a handful of e-mails related to that. So those are, again, just one set versus the multiple sets since there's a limited number in because you've seen these letters already. in terms of what the planning commission has available in terms of resources as we move through this text amendment presentation and discussion today we've distributed the Planning Commission's text, 100 pages, so you should all have that at your place setting, and there are some also at the back of the room for anyone else. The basic intent statements from each of the zoning categories in our zoning ordinance today should also be at your seat. And then as we've moved through this discussion over the past year, the staff worked with the commission on a set of tables, which reflects hopefully the existing zoning ordinance. And then as you move through for that category of use, the proposed changes from the work group, and then the planning commission if there were any changes. So I know you all have seen these before, but just for the record, they have also been distributed to the commission. So let's get started. The purpose of the Recreation and Tourism Land USOTA first was just to review the zoning ordinance in relation to those uses and to make some proposed revisions. The goals as established by a work group are put together by the vice mayor. So I guess it was an ad hoc work group from the council. Three goals were established and those were to showcase Lexington and Fayette County as the horse capital of the world by preserving and promoting its unique agricultural industries, environment, cultural landscape, and historic resources. Second, to encourage agritourism opportunities that are incidental to the primary agricultural use in Fayette County. And third, to explore recreational and tourism opportunities that support quality of life, infrastructure, and the environment of the urban, neighborhood, and rural settings in Fayette County. So with those goals in mind, we'll go forward. To date, there has been a significant amount of effort and review on this particular text amendment. It began in March of 2012 with the establishment and kickoff of the work group that was developed by the vice mayor and put together by the vice mayor. The work group spent about eight months going through a good amount of information, which we'll review in just a minute. So to consider recreation uses, they created kind of a summary document with the help of the vice mayor's aide, and that was presented to the council in May of 2013. From May of 2013, when that occurred on, the Division of Planning did research and drafted a text amendment that specifically mirrored the information and the recommendations of the work group. The work group co-chairs reviewed that text amendment prior to it being forwarded to the council as a package. The council received that information in October and forwarded it on to the Planning Commission for further consideration. So they chose not to initiate it, I think because they knew it had gotten a lot of review and it probably would get more review. So the Planning Commission received that information in October, and the staff did a first kind of preliminary presentation in a work session October of last year. So that's been a year. The Planning Commission then has reviewed the draft text amendment from November of last year through May with several work sessions. And, again, we broke those down, if you remember, into topics. We talked about definitions. At one meeting, we talked about agricultural zones at another, residential zones at another. So we methodically worked through that and reviewed the information from the work group. The Division of Planning then took the Planning Commission's recommendations for modifications and changed the text. So the text that you see today was the result of that kind of second-line process. And then the Zoning Committee reviewed that information. and a staff report in July of 2014 this year. And then further, the Planning Commission reviewed some staff alternative information and language from July through September of this year. And then that brings us to today for a public hearing in October. Again, this is going to be a two-and-a-half-year process to date. Moving forward, the Planning Commission, our expectation is the Planning Commission will review the public input that's provided today and make some possible revisions in a work session setting. Then the Planning Commission would take some sort of action on the text. That triggers the staff preparing a final report to be sent to the council, and then finally it would move on to the council for further consideration. So that's our process to date and where the staff believes we're headed. Any questions about that before I move on? Okay. So the work group process, if we jump back to that, they did have 20 meetings in those eight and a half months or ten months of review, and they looked at, they went from the very basics of zoning 101, again, reviewed the intents of the zones just like you have today, looked extensively at resource mapping, which the staff brought as well today. if you have questions or we need to review any of that information. They also looked at information from the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau about tourism and a specific study that they had Preston Osborne do about what people want when they visit Lexington. And then they started to focus more in depth on definitions and looking at two general categories of recreation and tourism uses, and those were ag tourism and ecotourism. So based on the information that they had gathered until then, the work group created a matrix of recreation uses by zone. In that process, they also had two subcommittees look specifically at our neighborhood business zone and also at the agricultural natural zone. And those had some more intensified interest, I think, because the neighborhood business zone is both urban and rural. That zone can be found in both the rural and urban service areas, but the agricultural natural zone had a little bit more intense review because the rural land management plan does call for some special treatment of that area. Overall, there was very careful review of all the recreational uses, and not just in our rural zones or agricultural zones, but in all zones. and the result has been a comprehensive proposed text amendment that will help to define uses, clarify, and for the most part differentiate in terms of intensity of use if something can be accessory or if it needs to be conditional. This is just a snapshot of the work group land use matrix that has been the information that kind of fed the rest of the text preparation. So as we receive the information from the work group, the staff drafted text amendments in kind of two groups or two general categories, definitions and land use regulations. So the definitions are going to be housed in Article 1, and the emphasis there was on improving and expanding definitions. In the land use, there's actually three zones, or articles of the ordinance where those changes are made in 8, 11, and 23. And the focus was on agritourism and ecotourism uses with some minor modifications in our urban zones. The new definition list was quite lengthy, but it does help to clarify and provide needed definitions that have not been in our zoning ordinance to date. So some of these uses are currently listed in the zoning ordinance and don't have any definition related to them. And some of the definitions proposed are for new land uses. One example in terms of definitions is the work group put a lot of effort and thought into campgrounds. Campgrounds are currently not defined, and they looked at kind of separating those out into primitive campgrounds and then the recreation vehicle campgrounds and then treating them differently in different zones. The rest of the list of new definitions, and then one at the end there for bed and breakfast. That's currently defined in our ordinance, but there was a slight modification suggested by the Planning Commission to that particular use. In terms of the two general categories that the work group and then the Planning Commission's looked at, agritourism, these are the proposed new land uses that would be defined and then regulations established for those particular uses, from farm tours, hay rides, and corn mazes, which would be proposed to be accessory in our ag zones, to more intense uses like petting zoos or pony rides, gift shops, seasonal activities, which would have different regulations. There are some existing uses that would be generally thought of as agritourism uses, like wine tasting associated with our wineries, roadside stands, which are currently permitted as accessory, as well as riding stables. Historic house museums are currently listed in our ordinance, but those would be thought of as tourism uses. Ecotourism in terms of that proposed grouping, some new land uses included those that are not listed today, hiking trails and bicycle trails, equine and zipline trails, tree canopy tours, canoe and kayaking launch sites, recreational outfitters and then some of the more natural ones of bird watchings and nature preserves. And then the staff found that really there's kind of only two existing eco-type tourism uses in our ordinance, fishing and hunting clubs. And we have a few of those here in the county. Just as a reminder or refresher for everyone, as we move through the text amendment process, government uses are not going to be regulated by our zoning ordinance. So the parks and recreation parks, Hysel Park, Raven Run, McConnell Springs, the Legacy Trail, are not regulated by the zoning ordinance, and they don't or won't generally adhere to the requirements established therein. So it's always a good reminder to know we have these parks that are there, but they won't be doing the requirements of our ordinance. So agricultural use definitions, KRS does define agricultural use in Article 100, and it exempts several uses. So we need to keep that in mind. Wineries, small farm wineries, are permitted as agricultural uses, as are equine-related uses. So those are not generally things that the zoning ordinance can prohibit or restrict too much. Gift shops, there was a proposed new use of a gift shop, and in the agricultural zone, well, in our business zones, a gift shop would typically be permitted as a retail sale of products. But this was associated with agricultural zones, and in those cases, the gift shops were limited in size, and the text to 1,000 square feet. And also in the text, special events are mentioned, and in agricultural zones, there's information, obviously, that some special events do occur on some of our farms, but they would be prohibited if they are not related to a commercial purpose. So that was meant to continue to allow some of the annual philanthropic events that occur in agricultural properties. There are some of the definitions that are proposed or meant to clarify, and two examples here are the commercial farm market is different than what's already defined in our ordinance as an agricultural market. So the commercial farm market is intended to be like a farmer's market that we would have downtown, whereas an agricultural market is intended to be broader than that. In fact, it was first brought forward when the stockyards were contemplating moving. So it's differentiated by the intensity of use and then the products for sale. An agricultural market can actually sell livestock, whereas a commercial farm market, it's for sale of vegetables and that sort of thing. Tree canopy tours compared to zipline trails are differentiated by the method of construction. Just keep that in mind. And then two last things in terms of the nuances of the new uses. In the agricultural zones, with the exception of the AU zone, there's an overarching limit of 10,000 square feet in terms of a facility built facility for recreational conditional uses currently. And I think the text proposes for that to be maintained. So there wouldn't be any change in terms of a limit of total square footage. And then lastly, the new uses are intended to be in keeping with the intent, stated intents of agricultural zones regarding our core agricultural and or naturalized areas, which are most commonly found in the rural service areas. In terms of the work group finishing their process and transferring that to the Planning Commission for further review, the Planning Commission did thoroughly review the work group's recommendations for several months And that's kind of where the tables were brought forward to help compare existing zoning regulations to what the work group suggested. And then how is the Planning Commission suggesting changes to those? So the specific changes that the Planning Commission brought forward involved some new or modified definitions. And then three or four use changes. The equine-related uses, since KRS does exempt those, the Planning Commission followed basically the state law and makes equine-related uses such as, I think, riding events, if there are more than 70 participants, that those are conditional uses. The commission also added youth camps in our ag zones, added gift shops with 1,000-square-foot restriction in our agricultural natural zone, and then added country in along with a definition, which would just be allowed in the rural B1 zones. The last part of the text amendment that I'll mention was also a subdivision regulation amendment. It's fairly minor. It's a change. It's on the last page of the packet. a small change to the definition of environmentally sensitive area. It adds the words or use in that specific definition. So it says development or use now, or would. That change was made in order to make the definition in the subregs match the definition in the Rural Land Management Plan text. In terms of the staff report, you do have that in your notebook. It reviews the process history, which I hopefully just went through pretty significantly. It also did suggest some alternatives in terms of definition tweaks and also some use changes that the commission has reviewed since July. And then also includes some findings for ZODA approval. And I think that that concludes my presentation. I didn't want to belabor the particular zones and uses because I know the Planning Commission has reviewed those extensively. So I'd be happy to answer any questions about the text or the process that the Commission has at this point. Any questions for Ms. Wade? No? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Tracy. Let me just add a couple things before we get to the public comment. And the ad hoc work group that Tracy mentioned that was organized and started by Vice Mayor Linda Gorton consisted of stakeholders throughout Lexington, staff from mayor's office, council members, planning commission members, board of adjustment members. Planning staff was there, a host of business leaders and citizens alike. Public comment was welcomed at the end of each meeting. There were 20-some-odd meetings, I believe, before it got turned over to the council and then passed on to us. The commission worked on it in work sessions. That was open to the public. And now we're here to hear from our public. That's the purpose of the rest of the day for the most part. I've had several people ask as far as time limits. Let me ask first, let me say first that I appreciate everyone being here. Who would like to speak today? Please show it. Okay. Thank you. As far as time limits, let me say this. I've had two people ask for extended time. One had the feeling that it was going to be very heavy-handed, I guess, and said that she needed three minutes and 15 seconds. One other request was for five minutes. I'm going to ask that you keep it in that time frame, and we'll try and move through it all. You know, the staff and the commission alike has worked very hard on this. We're not done yet, but we do want to hear what you have to say, and we'll move forward from there. Um, there's no sides here. Uh, this is a, one aspect, uh, that we're trying to improve Lexington on. Um, whoever wishes to speak, please come forward, be ready. Uh, I don't, you know, I would say, you know, have a couple of people lined up on the side here and, uh, we'll try and move through it as quickly and orderly as possible. and come at will. Like I said, there's no sides here. We're not taking fords or against. It's simply put, no sides. So please come forward and let's get started. Thank you all. I've got to leave myself, so I'm going to try to be first. My name is Greg Bibb, and I'm the chair of the Rural Land Management Board, and I'm here really just to enter into the record the letter that you all have received from us. I'm going to read it to you. In the year 2000, the Urban County Council passed the ordinance that created the Rural Land Management Board and the Purchase of Development Rights Program. The purpose of the ordinance is to establish a program for the preservation and management of agricultural, rural, and natural lands, which will, over the next 20 years, purchase perpetual conservation investments on 50,000 acres in the rural service area. Since the inception of the program, the Rural Land Management Board has successfully conserved over 28,000 acres of farmland on approximately 244 farms. These farms range in size from less than 20 acres to over 500 acres and include crop, cattle, and equine farmland. The preservation of Fayette County farmland is vital to our local and state economy. According to a 2013 University of Kentucky College of Agricultural Economic Impact Study, This finite resource supports an agricultural cluster that generates $2.4 billion in annual output and provides one out of every nine jobs. This farmland is woven through our economy in ways we do not consciously recognize, yet is essential to our quality of life. It provides the food that fuels the farm-to-table movement in our local restaurants. It enables our farmers' markets to thrive and diversify. It drives the record-breaking attendance at Keeneland and its $530 million in sales last year. and it brings tourists from all over the world who shop, eat, and play in our wonderful city. It is an indispensable component of our economy. As you contemplate expanded recreational uses in the rural service area, we ask that you keep in mind that our community, state, and federal government invested $77 million in protecting our rural farmland. The PDR farm owners and citizens of Fayette County have a vested interest in ensuring these dollars accomplish their intended use, as stated in the Rural Land Management Plan. Agriculture is economic development, and if our farmland goes away, so does our Lexington economy. 50,000 acres is only 27% of all land in Fayette County, yet the return is immeasurable. We ask you to join us in our goal of preserving 50,000 acres and not implementing changes that could hinder our efforts. I have today with me also Marianne Marie, who's our vice chair, and Beth Oberman, who's the staff person. That's all I have. Thank you, Mr. Bale. Any questions for Mr. Bale? Nope. Thank you, sir. Yes, ma'am. Missy Byers from the Fayette County Neighborhood Council would like to read a brief statement. Conditions must be drafted and adopted for many of the proposed uses as part of the text amendment in order to make them user and neighborhood friendly. Without the establishment of minimum conditions for the individual and specific uses that could potentially generate noise, pollution, or other conflicts, neighbors and neighborhoods have no assurances or legal grounds that the use will not have an adverse influence on the existing or future development of the subject property of the surrounding neighborhood. This is stated in Article 7-6, Part A. All recreational commercial uses shall require a posted security bond. The Fayette County Neighborhood Council suggests additional information and clarification regarding ensure intent compliance for activities in each zone clarification, provide definitions for every use, and improve some of the existing definitions for clarification, develop conditions for some specific uses to ensure compatibility, eliminate conflicts within individual zones and across zones, and comply with all other local, state, and federal laws and regulations and adopted plans. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Byers. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, my name is Bill Lear. I'm not here representing anybody. So this is a freebie. As I think you all would have observed, I have not been in the middle of this, even though it's been going on for a long time. However, in the last two or three weeks, I've been asked by an interesting array of people to comment on what I see in this proposed set of amendments and how it relates to things past. When you get to the point in your career where you become the institutional memory, it's a very scary thing. I do want to give you a little bit about my perspective that I have brought to this as I reviewed all of it, including a lot of great work that's gone on. And in particular, I want to talk about a seminal period in planning and zoning in Fayette County over a five-year term beginning about 1995 and ending at the very first of the year 2000. And during that time, I was in the middle of all of this, as some of you were as well. We expanded the urban service area by 5,600 acres, adopted what was known as the EAMP, the Expansion Area Master Plan, adopted the Rural Land Management Plan, which was a very important coordinate of that whole process, adopted the PDR program. One of the little-known historical facts, since I've never gotten any awards from conservationists and don't expect to get any, there were four incorporators named in the PDR ordinance and directed to establish the Rural Land Management Board. Those four were then-Mayor Pam Miller, Frank Penn, Margaret Graves, and me. I was a part of it working on behalf of the Home Builders Association, economic development interests, primarily development interests. And the reason I bring that up is that when I was asked to look at this, this has all been like a walk down memory lane, because as I listened to the back and forth, what the guiding principles were and weren't, they're very much like what we went through back in those days. And what I will tell you that I think should be important, and And the reason I'm going to say it about this in terms of overriding principles is I have found, and I'm sure you all have found, when you get into details of this sort of thing, it's often easy not to see the forest for the tree, or in this case, tree canopy tour. here are some of the things that some of the balances that were struck as important features of our community public policy we expanded the urban service area boundary by a pretty good amount for the first time in many many years but we also laid the foundation for future expansions one thing the people that i worked on behalf of thought was critical was that we not say we're going to do it one time, we're going to establish the Maginot line and never do it again. And that concept is built into all of this. But we also provided maximum protection for the rural landscape, particularly the prime agricultural lands. Now, one of the things that is really instructive, if you want to know what we placed the most importance on and the least importance on from the standpoint of preservation in that whole period is the point system in the PDR program, which establishes where we want to go. The highest point value in that program is for prime agricultural lands. The highest point value is for large lands and lands that have road access. And we deducted points for the prime sewerability areas. Remember I said we laid the foundation for future expansion. We deducted points for proximity to the boundary, the then boundary of the urban service area. But we put in place huge protections for the horse industry because of its economic importance. And I'm not doing this from memory. I went through my old files, and I want you to listen to what I said on behalf of the economic development interests at that time. Number one, I said, listen who's in favor of this compact that we made. The Chamber of Commerce, the Land and Nature Trust of the Bluegrass, Bluegrass Tomorrow, Home Builders Association, Bluegrass Conservancy, the Farm Bureau, Fayette County Neighborhood Council, Kentucky Thoroughbred Association, various planning commission members, council members, the mayor, and other members of the public. And what I said was this is important from the business and economic standpoint because of the economic impact of the ag industries, particularly the horse industry, its role in establishing the character of our area, its role in the recruitment of businesses and employees. We struck a balance, and that balance is still, in my view, worthy of protecting. So against that background, I've looked at some of the things that are in here, and I am concerned. I am concerned particularly about anything which has the potential for putting incompatible uses, that is to say uses incompatible with functioning primarily horse farms, in the AR zone. Horse farms, as John Gaines said, are horse factories. Their product is not some raw material that if it gets burned or lost, you can go order more of immediately. It's not data that you can back up in the cloud or otherwise. It's living, breathing animals. And, yes, you're not going to put your top stallions out on the edge of your farm or out by a road, But you very well might put a mare out there that's in foal and is carrying the next Zenyatta or Wise Dan or anything else, and you might put what's going to be a valuable yearling out there. Now, why do I say that? There are a lot of these uses in the broad definition of ecotourism. There are a lot of these uses in the broad definition of agritourism. Commercial farm markets, mazes, all of them sound great, except you wouldn't want them next to your factory if they had the potential for endangering your primary product. We made a decision in this community many years ago. I'm not saying we shouldn't review it from time to time, but we made a decision to try to protect that primary product not because of its preservation value, but because of its economic value in our community. So the overriding principle that I would suggest to you is go very slow, even in conditional uses, in opening up what you can do in our prime agricultural area, because it runs the risk of endangering the industry that's most important there. Thank you. Be glad to answer your questions or not. Thank you, Mr. Lehrer. Any questions? No. Thank you, Mr. Lear. Yes. He's a hard act to follow. I'm all for protecting. Name. Ann Graham. Thank you. Fifth district. I'm going to address not horse spaces, but people spaces and our small neighborhood parks, particularly one that's close to my home that I know a lot about. That's Acton Park. I grew up in the Acton Park neighborhood, or what became Acton Park after the Ware Farm was sold. In fact, there were farms surrounding our new neighborhood, and we played in the open spaces for hours, cops and robbers in the summer and snow sledding all day at Banana Holla in the winter. Now all that is left of this fabulous open space is tiny little Acton Park, and only half of it is available to the neighborhood, since the rest of it has been consumed by baseball fields, bleachers, a snack stand, and other buildings. An incompatible history. Acton was meant to be a neighborhood park, a place for teaching our children to play tennis, for adult volleyball leagues, beginner's soccer instruction, family reunions, stopping at the store on Romney Road to buy a picnic dinner for the family while they listen to a Tuesday evening jazz concert, walking babies and dogs, hosting tiny tot birthday parties at the playground, a place where Morton, Cassidy, and Christ the King classes can walk to learn and picnic, in other words, a normal park. Even the basketball court had to be squeezed into the center of the park because of the ball fields. When the beautiful 150-plus-year-old tree in the heart of the park came down a few years ago, our view became nothing but the blight from the paved-over grass and the concession building for the ball club. Today, the sign on the side of the building says that they are having a $450,000 expansion campaign, but nothing about moving the facility to a more appropriate location. Before the Park Service finally put up wooden post barriers, The ball club parents were parking their cars on what was left of the grassy area so that they wouldn't have to walk a few blocks to their child's game. So much for the tree roots they were crushing. The 5th District Councilman was told an untruth so they could get access to more of the park to build a third field. They said that tennis courts, in good condition at that time, were never used, even though I had recently had to wait in line to get a court. This group, with many of the families coming from outside our district, has taken over our park. And because their facilities lock up so much of the park space, imagine what is left over for all those community activities listed above. Almost nothing. I am here today asking you to protect our parks as green spaces and not allow special interest groups to come into a neighborhood and corrupt a beautiful and much-loved park. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. And I have copies of this that I'll leave over here. If you have any questions, there's a phone number. Thank you, Ms. Graham. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Chairman Owens, Planning Commission members. As you know, my name is Knox Van Ogle, and I'm here on behalf of the Fayette Alliance, its board of directors, and 13,000 constituents countywide. In furtherance of our mission to sustainably grow our city and promote our farms in Lexington, we submit our revised written position statement and op-ed on ZODA 2014-4, recreation, tourism, land uses for your consideration. We would like to say that we applaud the ZODA initiative as it attempts to achieve the delicate but necessary balance of promoting tourism and recreation on one hand and protecting our farm operations and natural resources on the other. Therefore, we respectfully request that you adopt the ZODA committee report along with our following five recommendations. First, we believe that farm gift shops and homegrown restaurants must have an agricultural nexus between the products sold and the subject farm. Work is needed to determine a feasible and enforceable definition for ag nexus to legitimize the ag aspect of tourism uses in the rural area and in the AR zone in particular. Second, we support farm gift shops only if they are located on working farms that are giving tours, are no more than 1,000 square feet in size, and are selling farm products and or memorabilia that are raised on site. Under this scenario, the ag nexus is maintained and the use is accessory to a bona fide farm operation, upholding the ag intent of the rural zones where they are contemplated. Third, we support non-commercial, passive recreational conditional uses in our core ag areas, particularly in the AR zone, such as multi-use trail system using public rights-of-way along our scenic rural roads. Fourth, we support commercial, recreational, and ecotourism conditional uses, such as canopy tours, recreational outfitters, and campgrounds outside of our CORAG areas in the B1, AU, AB, and potentially AN zones, provided a surety bond is in place where needed on a case-by-case basis to protect the environmentally sensitive lands in that area. The Planning Commission should appoint a work group to explore the use and application of such bonds. Ostensibly, a bond requirement would demonstrate that the business operator is well-financed and capable of stewarding our most precious resources and also able to clean up the site in the event the use ceases for any reason. If we can require performance bonds for development in the heart of downtown, we can and should do it for our most remote and sensitive natural resources throughout our rural landscape. Fifth, new non-commercial recreation and ecotourism programs should be explored on our 2,800 acres of rural parkland in Fayette County. These lands could accommodate a community need without altering our zoning ordinance. The ZODA is a most significant legislative initiative, and a win-win is needed where we build on our assets and not undermine them. To accomplish this, we must strengthen the foundation upon which our acclaimed bluegrass brand is built, while introducing exciting new land uses and public access opportunities that complement this foundation. Protecting the ag intent of our rural zones and preserving our unique natural resources are essential to achieving this vision. Much is at stake, and we very much appreciate you considering our remarks here today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Owens, Commissioners. My name is Gregory Butler. I'm the chairman of the Lexington Greenspace Commission. The Urban County Council created the Lexington Greenspace Commission in 1990 with an ordinance tasking the commission to protect, preserve, and enhance those open spaces within the county which possess the characteristics which give the Bluegrass region its unique identity, to strengthen tourism and related businesses through the preservation of our unique character and to provide an accessible system of open spaces which offer significant educational value and opportunities. Having reviewed the proposed recreational zoning ordinance text amendment, the ZODA, the Green Space Commission unanimously supports the goals of the ZODA workgroup to showcase Lexington and Fayette County as the horse capital of the world by preserving and promoting its unique agricultural industries, environment, and cultural landscape and historic resources. To encourage agritourism opportunities that are incidental to the primary agricultural uses for Fayette County farmland. And to explore recreational and tourism opportunities that support the quality of life, infrastructure, and environment of urban neighborhood and rural areas. These goals are in line with the mission of the Green Space Commission, as well as the goals and recommendations outlined within the Green Space Plan adopted by City Urban Council in 1994. However, the Green Space Commission contends that the proposed use designations within the ZODA are too restrictive and suppress the potential for development of new and engaging recreational opportunities within the rural service area that are accessible, promote tourism, and stimulate economic development. The prohibition of so many potential uses is contradictory to the aims of the Green Space Plan to diversify the rural economy and increase recreational activities while adapting to the needs of the future. The Green Space Commission recommends that the Planning Commission review uses proposed within the ZODA as prohibited and consider amending them to a conditional use. Given the unique nature of each proposed development or improvement, the conditional use designation allows the Board of Adjustment to review each proposal on its individual merits and appropriateness and to take into consideration the uniqueness of its scale, location, and potential impact on the surrounding area. I believe you all have this letter. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer. Yes, sir. Mr. Butler, we do, and thank you very much. Yes, sir. Good afternoon. Nick Nicholson, I'm here on behalf of Horse Country, who I'm sure you all remember were at Ural's work session in August, and Mr. Bell and Mr. Fallon are here today as well. And since we aren't a kind of working operation quite yet, we didn't want to weigh in fully on the Zota, but we did want to address a very specific issue that came up in the work sessions regarding the gift shop. As you all probably remember, the Disney Institute was a consultant for ours, and they stressed to us the importance of the tangible memory item is what they call souvenirs. and they stress that not only does that help the economic viability of these operations, what it really does is it makes people remember their time in horse country and also long to return to horse country. That type of repeat tourism is exactly what we are hoping for and what this horse country, so to speak, is desiring. With that in mind, we had some concerns with the current definition that was submitted with this ZODA. We have put forth an alternative definition. It's the same as the one the Fayette Alliance gave you all in their packet. We were concerned that the existing definition, it essentially puts in a commercial use in the ag zone without tying it to the agricultural zone whatsoever. It also is very ambiguous. As you all know, the Board of Adjustment already deals with enough enforcement nightmares. We don't need to give them another one. and small and inexpensive. I don't exactly know what that would mean. Would that mean that we could sell candy bars, but we couldn't sell, say, a halter that Blaymore in one of his stakes races? It is these kinds of issues that we want to avoid. So the recommended definition that we have is a retail facility that sells farm products grown or raised on the premises and or farm memorabilia representative of the farm products grown or raised on the premises. We feel that this is much more of a basically tie-in to the agricultural use. I believe Knox was using the term ag nexus, and that's kind of what we want to ensure that we do. We also want to stress that in no way is this limited to horse farms. We're not looking for any type of special treatment in any way. We feel that if anyone's entitled to a gift shop, that they should have the full reign that we do as well. Again, happy to take any questions if you all have any. Otherwise, thank you all very much. Thank you, sir. Any questions? No. Thank you. Yes, sir. Hello, I'm Burgess Carey. I live at 8039 Old Richmond Road. Thank you for considering my comments regarding the currently proposed recreational Zota. As you know, the Boone Creek Outdoors project, and you may not know, but as of Tuesday, the project has withdrawn its request for rezoning to the as-yet unused Ag Natural Zone. This project is only relevant to my comments regarding ZODA as an example of the consequences of not including additional principal uses in the AN Zone as part of this text amendment. It is clear that this ZODA is intended, as Vice Mayor Gordon has repeatedly stated for the record, not to look for more uses in the AR zone, but to restrict the types of uses that we don't want. The committee, which recorded and considered no public comments of record, identified its priority as to promoting the three primary brands of Fayette County, the equine industry, traditional agriculture, and wineries, and then anything else that does not negatively affect these industries. What has resulted is a proposed piece of legislation that limits the potential commercial opportunities to sustainably preserve and maintain our treasured green space to these three industries. This is a short-sighted approach. While no one would dispute the priority the thoroughbred industry should be given in our community or the fact that this commercial activity helps support the land values of our green space, It is also true that our county is littered with 40-acre and smaller lots that can never be entirely self-supporting while limited to these three uses alone. The priority, as identified by John Gaines, of preserving our factory floor is sound. However, if the rent and the maintenance of that factory comes from a different type of business, does it matter if another business can support it? What if this legislation were passed 50 years ago and tobacco was one of the few products that landowners were allowed to produce? We now have one fewer way to preserve our green space and be desperately searching for another. The safety net currently in place is sufficient to prevent development we do not want. There is a multi-layered regulatory process that must be met before any new commercial or non-commercial uses are established in the AR zone now. from the planning staff, the Board of Adjustments, the Planning Commission, the City Council, and in my case, the Circuit Court. It is obvious to me that controls are established to regulate unwanted activity in our community. So what do we do, what do we gain by prohibiting virtually every commercial activity from 73% of our land in Fayette County? It is an established principle that gains are seldom made by suppression. And while we all support and admire our current signature brands, refusing to consider new innovations through prohibition will only squash innovation, in which case we all lose as a community. For example, 40-acre lots or those of similar size might best be preserved as is by hosting nano distilleries, yoga studios, citizen centers, bed and breakfast, children's educational facilities, art studios, the list goes on. Bourbon and bluegrass music are two signature brands that are not represented here. Will we regret that later? Please consider allowing additional commercial and non-commercial uses in the AR zone that would not be disruptive to our signature brands. Finally, as I understand this ZODA, it is recommending the separation of ecotourism from agritourism in terms of definition. This is contrary to the existing state KRS, which identifies ecotourism activities under its agritourism definitions. This soda basically proposes prohibiting all ecotourism from the AR zone, as well as many other uses, in favor of allowing these uses to be conditional under the ag-natural zone. However, the conditional use addition is not practical, and it will not result in the intended protection of these lands. The agricultural-natural zone carries a higher standard of use and protection, commercial or non-commercial, because of the sensitivity of the land eligible for that classification. This is entirely reasonable. However, if there are no new principal uses in the AN zone, there is no real opportunity or reason for the landowner to make the investment, to request a zone change, to only have a conditional use to provide the incentive. The AN zone has not been utilized since it was created in the late 1990s for this very reason. The principal uses are the same. Therefore, I'd like to respectfully request that this Planning Commission amend the current ZODA to include ecotourism activities, including canopy tours, as well as bed and breakfasts as principal uses in the AN zone. In closing, I attended every meeting of the ZODA committee as a member of the public. However, public comments were limited to three minutes at the end of each meeting and not recorded for the record. Very few others attended these meetings. while the committee took on a Herculean task, there was little influence on its decisions from many other potential stakeholders from our community. This ZODA needs revision and needs to be more inclusive of our entire populace and to potential visitors alike. On Old Richmond Road, where my family lives, we have numerous alternative commercial activities taking place on AR land, both permitted and unpermitted. From bistro restaurants, wineries, and corn mazes, those operations are benefits to the neighborhood, and they facilitate the preservation of the land as well as help sustain property values. These alternative commercial uses present opportunity to take better care of the properties in our area and can benefit from the impact and proximity of the interstate as well as the potential opportunities from being so close to the Kentucky River. Please consider these suggestions for revisions to this critical change in the law. Our green space is precious to all of us. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Hello, Mr. Owens, Commission. My name is Jim Griggs. I've been a member of the Board of Adjustment for 10 years. This text amendment will be, for the most part, implemented by the BOA. Our hearings are fast-paced. Regarding conditional uses, which is one of the Board's areas of responsibility, sometimes we fail to think of all the requirements needed to protect the existing neighborhood. Nothing would help the BOA more than these three things. Clear definitions of any new terms. Recognize in the text amendment the different impact a use will have in a commercial versus a non-commercial setting. A thorough list of minimum conditions for uses that are likely to be in tents, busy, and noisy, like wedding receptions, campgrounds, or canopy tours slash zip lines. For an example of minimum conditions, may I suggest you look at ag markets, mining quarrying, concrete mixing plants, B&Bs. In the AR zone, you'll find requirements on parking, lighting, noise, and minimum lot size, as well as minimum distances from a conditional use facility to other properties. The BOA has difficulty coming up with these conditions on the fly. In order to limit adverse effects on surrounding properties, thoughtful consideration of these conditions in advance will help the BOA make better and more consistent judgment calls. on a personal note if I can have one more minute of your time I'd like to give you a view into the an zone which seems to be taking the brunt of this zota I live in southeast Fayette County on McCall's Mill Road it's a scenic byway little more than one lane wide we live in a wooded creek valley our driveway is gravel with a switchback obviously we don't have sidewalks or street lights or city sewers. Eight houses on McCall's Mill don't have city water. I have a well. We don't live there because it's easy or convenient. It's not. We live there because it's quiet and peaceful. Rare qualities these days. Our land is zoned AR, but it's in the AN overlay, if I can call it that. Wedding receptions every weekend, a campground or a zip line in close proximity would destroy the ambiance and hurt land values. Without long, very long separation requirements between these new intense uses and surrounding properties, the existing neighborhood will be compromised. I thank you for your time and your efforts with this. Thank you, sir. Any questions? Mr. Bergs, hold on. Can I ask you one question? How large is your property? We are on three and three-quarter acres. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir. Chairman Owens and commission members, I appreciate the time to be before you today. I'm Todd Johnson with the Home Builders Association, and I had the unique experience of being involved with this from the beginning on Vice Mayor Gordon's task force that looked at this initially, and I think I was at 19 of the 20 meetings we had or something like that. So we've been on, I won't say on point, but we've been paying attention to this for quite a while. And it's interesting, I have a letter here that I've submitted for you all's review, and I'm not going to read that. At our board meeting yesterday, we had a very interesting conversation about this topic. It wasn't about the ability to develop land, really, or build houses. It was more along the lines of opportunities for property owners and property rights to make a living from their property, wherever it might be in a way that certainly is compatible and useful and beneficial to the community and our citizens. I think it's important to point out that our association believes it's vitally important to connect our urban services area to our rural service area and to make opportunities and be forward in our thinking and opportunities to connect our citizens and our visitors There's more to the rural landscape, the rural activities, and everything that our community and our area has to offer. I will say that we are speaking, I guess, out of a voice of concern or opposition today against the ZODA as it stands because we don't feel like that there are enough things in place to allow a property owner to achieve the maximum potential that they could to make a living on their property without a lot of barriers in place. Having zones that are available that have no principal use or very limited principal use when there are things that are conditional uses that would seem almost natural that you would include as a principal use just doesn't set well with us. We feel like we could do a better job in looking across some of the zones that are out there and finding good, compatible principal uses to apply. If you look at a B zone or a P zone, there are by-right uses that could be going on there, and there are restrictions to prevent things that you don't want going on. The same could be done in a zone that's been mentioned here earlier today like the AEN zone. We have two very simple requests. We request, one, that you do not pass the ZODA in its current form and that you take a little time, work with the staff, to find some reasonable and logical principal uses for some of the zones that we feel might be lacking. Appreciate your time. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Any questions for Mr. Johnson? Thank you. Yes, sir. My name is Tom Dupree, and I've lived in Lexington for 50 years. I've worked in the summer on horse farms, tobacco, cutting hay, mowed lawns, construction. And currently I work in urban downtown Lexington. Before I get started, I'd like to congratulate Griffith Van Meter and the North Line people. Much love, brother. I mean, these guys, it's good stuff. And, well, I have a letter that's circulating. It's in that book. As you take up the Recreational Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment at your meeting today, you might ask yourself a very simple question. Does Fayette County really need more regulations concerning land use? My business is located just across Main Street from City Hall. Our business sits at street level with large plate glass windows facing Main Street. I see a lot of people walk by during the course of the day. Very few of them have jobs. The reasons why they don't have jobs are myriad and beyond the scope of this letter. However, more arcane and detailed regulations concerning how the land in our county can be used will probably further limit the possibility that these people may find jobs. I don't see many of them becoming ag tourism guides or farm-to-table purveyors anytime soon. You're supposed to laugh at that. Okay, there you go. Another aspect of our business puts us in touch with people who have recently retired. If you look at the impact of employers like Lexmark and Toyota on the financial situations of many simple working people, as I do daily, Your eyes would be open as to what actually creates wealth and prosperity in our community. It isn't agriculture. It's manufacturing. Proponents of the text amendment, also known as ZODA, would have us believe that the further taking of property rights away from landowners in rural Fayette County somehow will create prosperity is based on a notion that the community of stakeholders, meeting numerous times over the past few years, have come up with better ways of managing land than its actual owners. This is a ridiculous notion, but in Lexington Fayette, it is au courant. The idea that Lexington Fayette is an actual agricultural powerhouse is tenuous. If you take away the thoroughbred racehorse industry, we have actually very little agriculture in this county. We don't crack the top ten counties in Kentucky in any agriculture product other than racehorses. And I will cite the study, sometimes suppressed study, done at the University of Kentucky January 2013 on the influence of the agro-cultural cluster on Fayette County economy, showing that Fayette farm employment as a percentage of total employment is less than 2%. and when the sales at Keeneland are added to Fayette County agricultural production it is simply a misrepresentation. The Keeneland sales ring is more like a brokerage company. That sale could take place anywhere including in a virtual environment and it actually does. If you drive around in rural Fayette County, as I do frequently, what you realize is that Lexington Fayette has a mowing problem. Our rural areas are mainly empty fields. Instead of working farms, what we have in rural Fayette County is a lot of high-priced residences on 40 acres or more, And there's the rub. The most recognized group pushing ZODA, the Fayette Alliance, represents primarily large landowners, even as they pretend to be somewhat more populist. I'm considered a member of the Fayette Alliance of their 13,000 group mailing list. While it could be argued that these large owners' land values might be somehow enhanced by ag tourism, it seems that the real motivation is not in my backyard. These people paid a lot of money for their land, and they don't want to look out their back window and see anything but more farmland. And to be honest, I don't blame them. But this is a private matter. Large parts of the notion of private ownership of land have been ceded to communalists over the years in our country, and especially in Fayette County. The problem comes when these community takings seriously devalue the private value of land, its ability to generate real jobs. The Lexington Fayette Urban County government will find itself even more financially pinched as its public safety, pension, and health care costs continue to rise. And its real source of revenue, and let's not kid ourselves, it's the occupational tax, since we only get 7% of property taxes. The rest goes to the school board. But if we continue to constrain more land, these jobs will continue going to Scott County. As you look at ZODA, remember what it really is. In many ways, it's an effort on the part of many landowners, and in some cases a few, to keep rural Fayette County free of people. it's how the whole notion of infill got started but i believe that what rural fayette county needs is more factories of the manufacturing type not the imaginary type i see the effect of our county's land use policies on a daily basis it walks right by my front window It creates an inner city which is a breeding ground for crime and poverty, and it creates a countryside with an artificiality that is good for very little except mowing. That's it. If somebody would like to ask me a question. Questions for Mr. Dupree? Yes, sir. Apparently not. If anybody would like to come and talk about the benefits of Zoda, you're welcome to come on my radio show. I'll talk to anybody who wants to talk to me about it. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Yes, ma'am. My name is Deborah Kelly. I'm representing myself as well as my husband. We own Kelly Farms on Old Richmond Road. It's approximately 200 acres. But we also have a corn maze. We use that corn maze in order to supplement and give financial help to our farm. We raise cattle. If you had been out there within the last week or so, you would have seen me at night in the back pastures moving cattle from one area to another. It's not fun in the dark. but besides cattle we have several acres of blackberries we do seasonal produce and we also sell pumpkins at our corn maze we allow educational groups from schools to come to our corn maze we teach them about how to grow corn how to grow squash we teach them about beekeeping and why it's necessary in order to have farms or for us to even have food on the table. This started as a project by one of our daughters in high school. Another daughter came home from college, and we called staff, and I'm sorry I can't tell you the gentleman's name, but we called staff here at Urban County Government, told them what we were going to do. We went to our neighbors. We let all of them know what we were going to do. They've been very supportive. We've done this for eight seasons. We're closed on Sundays. We do do it in the evenings during the week this year, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, all day Saturday, Saturday evening. We go by the state rules that we have read and found, and we are consistent with those state rules. The fourth year of our maze, we try to make it something historical, except we get outvoted sometimes with the basketball fans within the family. But our fourth year was because of the World Equestrian Games. We had an equestrian rider and a hunter jumper in that maze. That was because of the influence of a daughter who worked for the United States Equestrian Federation. We are lifelong residents of Fayette County for at least three generations and of Kentucky probably for five or six generations. We ask for your consideration in allowing our farm to continue to operate corn mazes, provide education, and be in our neighborhood. And we thank you. Thank you. Ms. Kelly, one question. Your corn ma... Yeah, one question. Sorry, I don't know where you are. Just come back to me. Oh, there you are. One question. Yes, sir. Your corn, corn maize, do you harvest it? The corn is cut down afterwards. There's two things that you can do, and what we find out that happens is it is a home and area for foxes, deer population through the winter. As it stands, we have neighbors who come in and also use and harvest that. This year we plan to use it for silage, however. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, my name is Chauncey Morris. I'm the executive and commissioners. I'm the executive director of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association. I don't have a Snoopy tie on. Some of you know David Schweitzer. I'm just going to read out a brief statement, then I'd like to make some comments, if you don't mind. On the 22nd of August, we sent you, all the commissioners, a letter to say that the KTA, its directors, are supportive of the recreational and tourism opportunities that complement our signature equine and agricultural sectors. We feel that they define our community, contribute jobs, tax revenue, and significant economic impact to Fayette County. Along the lines of the Fayette Alliance, we are in favor of preserving the zone as designated, the agricultural rural zone. Now, as far as comments, it's interesting to hear that the thoroughbred industry specifically doesn't contribute or seems to be regressive. We're not, in fact. Actually, Kentucky has superseded all other states, and we're actually growing in not only the size of our fall crop. We used to be responsible for 29% of the national fall crop. Now it's more like 34%. We're actually producing more foals than anyone in the world, 7,700 just last year. But that's more than just Ireland, which is at 7,100. They even headhunted me back from Australia to come back here because simply put, here in Fayette County in central Kentucky, we are the best at what we do, and that's breeding, racing, racing, and selling horses. And we don't sell them at online brokerages. We sell them at sales. That's the international standard of doing so, and we have the largest sales company in the world at Keeneland, which is a huge economic driver and contributor. Our 24 directors, who some of you would know, they are not large landowners. They are mom-and-pop operations that they are indeed hands-on horsemen and women, and they're going through the hard times of the Great Recession to grow a product that has a heartbeat. So therefore, it's not something that's hearty, but it's something that you have to take care of, and you have to use labor, and you have sort of your gut in your stomach whenever you're selling it. So these are the reasons that we're wanting to preserve the area as it was meant to be. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Morris. Yes, sir. Good afternoon, Chairman and Planning Commission members. My name is Randy Gilbert, and I am the president of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers Club. Before I read my statement, I'd just like to maybe explain part of why I'm here. I am 37 years old, and when I was 9 years old, I came to the Kentucky Horse Park. and fell in love with the surrounding land, the beautiful countryside, the horses in the fields, the white pristine fence. And I knew when I was an adult that I wanted to move here to Lexington. My family lives in northeastern Ohio and just south of Cleveland. I knew that this is where I wanted to be and to make my home. And I moved here in January of 2001 as part of an internship program, the Kentucky Equine Management Internship, which has helped me start me on my career. Real quickly, my name is Randy Gilbert and I'm the president of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers Club, the KTFMC. I'm writing to you on behalf of our 700 members whose livelihoods are dependent upon the land that makes up Fayette County and the surrounding counties. Fayette County is known as the horse capital of the world for good reason. The thoroughbred industry here in Kentucky is a multi-billion dollar industry with the largest concentration of horses here in Lexington. Without our famed bluegrass land upon which we raise our horses, Kentucky would be without one of its signature industries. We cannot create more land, therefore we must protect what we have now. The KTFMC is in full support of preserving the agricultural rural AR zone as designated. Any change should be minimal as it is imperative that we protect the land and the water that we use to raise Kentucky's signature industry. Commercial and other non-commercial-related ventures are best suited for other zones where our industry will not be disturbed. And just a couple of quick numbers for you. I took these off of the 2012 University of Kentucky equine survey that was just finished up last year. The equine industry as a whole in Kentucky has a $3 billion impact. Breeding and raising horses has about a $710 million impact. The racing industry has a $1.28 billion impact. Keeneland itself, in the year of 2011, just its two meets, had a $15 million impact on Lexington and the surrounding area. Why is that important? Of the 242,000 horses in Kentucky, 10%, which is the largest population, is here in Fayette County, 24,000 horses. The next county with a significant population was Bourbon County with 13,000. Fayette County is almost double. So please take to heart. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Any questions? No. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon, Chairman Owens and Commission members. My name is Carrie McIntosh, and I'm here on behalf of the Fayette County Farm Bureau. We submitted a letter to you all, which you should have in your notebook, back in September, and I would just like to read that letter for the record. The Farm Bureau serves as the voice of agriculture. Our mission is to work together to support farmers in practicing sustainable agriculture, to enhance the environment, to provide safe food systems from production through consumption, to communicate factual information to consumers, to encourage youth in advancing education and leadership skills, to represent agricultural concerns to elected officials, and to contribute to the social fabric of the community. In advancement of our mission, the Fayette County Farm Bureau would like to recommend your consideration and adoption of the ZODA 2014-4 and the SRA 2014-1 Recreation and Tourism Land Uses. A diverse group of members was assembled under the direction of Vice Mayor and has worked on this plan for over two years with planning staff present at all meetings. We feel confident that the workings of this group and their final recommendations has been taken very seriously and explored to the fullest and therefore support their findings and recommendations. The Zota work group has recommended new tourism uses in the rural area provided they consider natural resources and some type of production agricultural taking place in conjunction with the conditional use. The intent of the AR zone is to promote farming. Non-agricultural commercial uses should be kept to a minimum in this zone to protect ag enterprise, which is a $2.4 billion impact on our local economy and constitutes our ionic brand here in Fayette County. The creation of the agricultural natural zone allows for advancement in recreation under strict supervision to ensure proposed activities are well suited for the land that's being proposed. Recreation opportunities can be strengthened in the rural areas and should be addressed in a non-commercial, comprehensive way to protect the intent and primary land use of the AR zone. Horse Country, a comprehensive bike trail system using public rights of way, and a re-evaluation of the activities and programs offered on our 2,800 acres of rural park land should be explored. We are aware that this issue of agritourism in Fayette County has been a highly discussed topic for some time, and careful consideration of this matter is very important to secure our landscape and heritage here in Fayette County. In conclusion, we again would like to recommend that you adopt the final report as presented by the Zota Work Group. Let's work together to enhance our county and provide economic opportunities for all in a way that protects our unique bluegrass. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon. My name is Betty Webb, and I'm here today as a citizen volunteer who, like yourselves, spent countless, countless hours in hearings and meetings over a 20-year period, first as a member of the Preservation Committee and then as a member of the Greenspace Commission. I served during the same period as Bill Lear, and I can assure you, although we sat on different sides of the table, we often came to agreement because when we listened carefully to what was necessary in this county, we came to believe that our interests were coincided and that we have an extremely special resource here in Fayette County. Our agricultural land, which is unique throughout this country, it spills only gradually over into a little bit to our surrounding counties. Fayette County is indeed a gem, and I think we all learned that it needed to be protected. But I'm here today to speak directly to one portion of the Green Space Master Plan, which I was part of, that I would hope that you all, Chris King is one of the few people here who may have been there when we developed that plan and who remembers what went into it. But the Greenway Plan, one portion of it provided a framework for our open spaces and riparian quarters along our nine major watersheds for the specific purpose of addressing a growing countywide problem associated with stormwater runoff, declining water quality, and reduced wildlife habitat. I come here today asking all of you to look back at that plan. I don't even know if that's been part of your considerations, if people have reviewed any of it, but I want that it's important to review those guidelines before adding any additional recreation uses to those our important conservation corridors. I personally am a committed supporter to all types of active and passive recreational uses in central Kentucky. However, I believe that you will find that many of the changes included in the current Zoning Ordinance Text Amendments conflict with the carefully crafted guidelines outlined in the original Greenway Plan, particularly as they apply to our most environmentally sensitive conservation areas. Since most of you weren't involved in that plan, I'm just going to quickly summarize. We kind of identified three distinct levels or types of conservation corridors. Now, this is just our major waterways and watersheds. The first and most important are the steep slope, wetlands, and areas with unique ecology. And we strongly recommended that there be no facility development or active recreational activities in these corridors. A second level of natural areas was considered appropriate for low-impact passive recreational activities, such as walking and hiking trails, trailhead facilities, minimal amenities, signage, picnic tables. And a third level in our conservation corridors was deemed appropriate for more intensive, active recreational uses such as hard surface trails and more extensive support services and amenities. But the most important consideration in all of these corridors was to preserve the natural land stake to ensure optimal stormwater management and water quality control. This is an issue of high importance to every area in Fayette County and all of us in Fayette County, both in the past and continuing to the present and certainly in the future. Unfortunately, more intensive recreational uses in these more sensitive areas will have a direct negative impact on the very issue that these conservation corridors were designed to address. I'd also just like to remind you that these corridors run throughout our county. They're not just in the rural areas. They run through our urban service district, and they include public lands and privately owned lands. So the zoning issues involved with uses along these corridors can be quite complex. appropriate recreational uses along these corridors will vary depending on the ownership of the land and the adjacent land uses. For this reason, this is my main point. The original Greenway Plan, I hope that Chris remembers this, included a recommendation that we do small area development plans for many of the portions of these conservation corridors because they would have so many conflicting uses and priorities. That has not happened, not in any one area. And certainly if that had happened in the Boone Creek area, it would have saved us a lot of trouble over the last, and long meetings over the last several years. So what I would like to do is encourage you all to maintain, until these issues in specific areas are resolved and are more fully vetted, I urge the Planning Commission to defer to the guidelines currently in place within the existing Greenway Plan. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Boyle. Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the Planning Commission, members of the planning staff. My name is Susan Enloe. I'm testifying today on my own behalf as a citizen of Fayette County. First, let me compliment you on the very delicate dance you've had to do to try to satisfy many disparate interests in the Zoda agreement. I can't remember in recent years as much contrast as I've watched with all the hearings on various sides of the issue. I'm here today because I'm a user of all these wonderful gifts that we have in Fayette County. And I want to preserve them and make them the best that they can be. I also want people to enjoy those. My husband and I travel to other states and ride bicycle trails. we kayak, and we experience these agritourism, ecotourism activities and enjoy them very much. We've often talked about the tourism dollar that Lexington is missing out on by not developing more ecotourism activities. In light of that, I must tell you with full disclosure that I'm a farm girl born and bred and I certainly have extreme interest in preserving our brand, which is international. I have, for the last six years, been the joyful owner of an off-track thoroughbred. And we see international activities in Lexington. I spent two hours yesterday with veterinarians and farriers from Spain, England, Ireland. They come here because this is the center of the thoroughbred world. They would not be here if we didn't have the farms to support the extended professions that support the thoroughbred industry. What I would encourage you to do, if I'm hearing this correctly, I hear that the commission would like to balance all the activities so that one activity in the ZODA does not impinge negatively on another. And this happens with neighborhoods. It happens with businesses. It happens with property rights as well as public participation in the things that we have in our area. You may recall, I'm old enough to remember this. I haven't heard it in a while, but you may remember the saying that said, your rights stop at the end of my nose. Well, I kind of feel that way about commercial development right adjacent to our signature agriculture industries. And I think while I'm a strong proponent of property rights, I think that if there's going to be a negative impact, and unfortunately it happens with sound, with light, with traffic, with visitors, that that needs serious consideration of the preservation of that industry. What I would ask of you is that your work on the ZODA guidelines include the extra provisions that the Fayette Alliance has asked for, and I think you would have, in my opinion, a very perfect document. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Enloe. I thought it was a good analogy as far as a dance was concerned. Obviously, someone up here was trying to offer some music to go with it. Yes, sir. Good afternoon, Chairman Owens and the Planning Commission. My name is Luke Fallon, and I had submitted a letter to you all dated September 29th, which should be in your records. But the reason I'm here is really to represent a couple of things. two of our voiceless members of our community that are constants. First would be the land, and second would be the horse, that you've heard alluded to many times in previous comments made today. They are critical not only to our agribusiness, but also our culture here in Lexington. I'm a fifth-generation member of a family business, Davidson McGee or Haggard Equine Medical Institute now. We've been in business continually for almost 140 years servicing the equine population here in Lexington. And I would challenge you to find a business that's much older than Haggard's or Millward's or maybe Hillenmeyer's. There's a constant debate on who's older in the community. One thing that we have done a great job of maintaining is the land as it stands. And again, I commend you all and your predecessors for, as she well stated, that delicate dance and balance that you must maintain as far as the urban service area. I would challenge anyone to really say that the horse industry does not contribute to the community in dollars, and even more importantly, culturally, to what our identity is as Lexington and the inner Bluegrass region. As an employer and an owner of a business here that takes care of the equine industry, I know during the fulling and breeding season, we employ 200-plus members at our practice in addition to 60-plus veterinarians. We have multiple, multiple vendors that we support in the network that make up the equine agribusiness here in Lexington and Central Kentucky. And I can sit here for hours and enumerate the many different people that help keep our business going, from medical providers to the guys that provide the hay to the guys that provide the fence planks and the electricity and the water. We also pay a lot in city taxes. We pay a lot in government taxes overall to keep this business going. The reason we have a base for our economic platform at Haggard is because of the horse. And because of the horse being here is because of people that want to own land here and breed these horses. So I would ask you, and I'm just going to read the last paragraph from my letter, as custodians of this unique and precious landscape, which gives Lexington its cultural identity as the horse capital of the world and provides valuable economic growth through agribusiness, we must preserve the AR zone as it is currently written to protect the inner Bluegrass region of Fayette County. It is imperative that the AR zone remain intact, as it has been historically maintained by our predecessors, and other forms of adventure tourism be directed towards B1, AN, or AB areas, given the intent of these zones with the consideration given to the impact on adjacent agricultural operations with these types of activities. Thank you for your time, and I welcome any questions. Any questions? Thank you, Doctor. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, I'm Dick Murphy. My letter wasn't in the record, so I submitted a copy, which is being passed around. I represent Hidden Haven, LLC, which is a company which owns some property in the AR zone, which is eligible for the AN zoning. I'm here today because I'd like to see the AN zone exist someday in reality. Right now it exists only in the pages of the zoning ordinance since it's been on the books since 1995 or 1998 and as far as I know there's not a single parcel of land in Fayette County zoned A-N. A-N has a lot more protections on the land than A-R does. Why haven't we ever had any property zoned A-N? I've had this conversation with some property owners in the A-R zone who are eligible for A-N And they usually go something like this. I like this AN zone. I have a piece of property that meets the characteristics. It has real steep slopes. It has thin soil. It's not suitable for farming. Tell me why I should ask for the AN zone. And we go through it. The problem is that the uses, the principal uses in AN and AR are exactly the same. agriculture and houses on single family houses on 40 acre tracks. Neither of which is a likely use in the AN zone. AN zone is, by definition, is not good for farming, and most of those tracks aren't good for houses either. So the uses are the same in the principal uses, but not really likely in the AN zone. Then we look at the conditional uses. In AR, there are many more conditional uses, which land is eligible for, than the AN zone. So the property owner always comes back and says, so really, if I go from AR to AN, which the community says I should be good because there's more protections in it, I'm downzoning my land. I'm removing a number of uses that I might be able to have as conditional uses, so I'm not going to do it. and nobody has done it for the last 15 years. We got this zoned everybody's talking about, which would be good because it's separate from horse farms. It's on land that's not good for agricultural use, but there's no incentive for anybody to ask for it from you. What I'm asking, as I say in my letter, is we'd like some principal uses allowed in the AN zone which are suitable for the properties they're on, And we suggest four. We suggest commercial and non-commercial outdoor recreational facilities, agritourism activities, ecotourism activities, and youth camps. We think this would give some incentive for people to actually ask for the AN zone and let it do what it's supposed to be doing. Thank you very much. Questions? Mr. Murphy, let me ask you, Hidden Haven, And what sort of address are we looking at as far as being an AN, could be an AN area? The AN area is along the Kentucky River and tributaries. This property is out in the old Richmond Road area. It is not the same property that I was before you with about a month ago. It is totally different and totally different ownership. Okay. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. I'm Phil DeSimone, and I was on the Zota Committee. And I just want to reiterate the intent of the zoning. The AN zone is in the AR zone, and the AN zone was developed to protect the land from erosion, from abuse. It's the only ordinance we have to protect our land, and something that we can't put back once we erode it anymore. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Yes, ma'am. Hi there. My name is Jane Snyder Harrod, and our farm is at 8385 Durbin Lane, which is off of Old Richmond Road, right at exit 99 on I-75. You've heard this story before. We've all been here many times before. We've been farming our land since 1803. We've been paying taxes since 1803. We've gone to war for this country, several wars, several wars. But we are now being asked to be a postcard. We're supposed to look a certain way and make it beautiful for all of you all that live in Lexington. Yet you want to drive really fast down I-75, which goes right 100 feet from the front door of our house. We have to breathe your fumes. yet we are not supposed to have, be creating any environmental problems on our farm. Our farm originally was about 400 acres. When the interstate went through, we lost 75% of all of our tillable maury silt loam. So the problem with our farm is that we're on an interstate. It's super noisy. There are over 50 high visibility sodium lights. I'm a musician. I'm a farmer. I raise Kentucky native plants. But most of our farm, we have cattle, we have some hogs. With the five acres that are left that are tillable, it makes it very difficult to do those operations when you can't raise your own feed. And I know I'm being real specific here, but that's because I'm talking about my one situation. I can't speak to anyone else's situation but my own. with the acreage we have left of our 135 acres most all of it is the cliffs of boone creek on the fayette county side and we have the mouth of boone creek on the fayette county side we go out into the kentucky river it's extremely cliffy extremely rough any thoroughbred owners that would like to come down and staple their horses there i would let them do that for free but they're not stupid. They're not going to put their horses on a farm that is so cliffy and rough. I've worked in the thoroughbred industry for many years as an exercise rider and a groom on the, basically being bottom end of the, of the workforce. It's a great industry, but I don't understand why the industry feels so threatened by a few ecotourism facilities like Boone Creek Outdoors. There's not a horse farm around us. We are right next door. And for us, when this looked like it was going to open up a possibility for a little more revenue, and frankly our farm is so that we can make a living, not just be a postcard for people, then we were really excited. But, you know, over the two and a half years of coming to the meetings and realizing that, you know, this is Lexington, this is Fayette County, this is owned by the horse industry, fine. That's fine. You know, if that's the way it is, that's just the way it is. So I come to voice my opinions as a citizen. I hope that you all will allow in the ag natural area, which is completely unusable for any sort of agricultural use except cutting the trees down. And you don't want to cut the trees down off of those cliffs, right? Yeah, that would be stupid. So please allow some hiking, some biking, some fishing. I mean, if I have to go get a conditional use permit for everything that you've got listed, how long does it take to get a conditional use permit anyway? Can anyone say? I mean, you're all the ones that hand them out. Can staff provide a better answer? Yes, Mr. Chairman. Generally, the time between an application and the Board of Adjustment hearing on a conditional use permit is about six weeks in the average. And what do those cost? Filing fees generally range between about $125 and up to $500 generally, depending on the zoning of the property. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. So, you know, anyway, I just hope you all will not, once again, cut down the creativity of farmers who have very little agricultural land left. We wish the interstate hadn't taken so much, but that's our reality. That's not the reality of very many other folks. But let's try to look at these things in an individual basis and not just broad brush. You know, I love the thoroughbred industry. They are. They're great. They're definitely the goose that laid the golden egg here. But that doesn't mean the rest of us necessarily are benefiting from them. We don't. We raise some cattle and some hogs. So we're doing our best. But don't take away all of our opportunities when we have so little in the agricultural area left to us. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon. My name is Amy Clark, and I live at 628 Castle Road. I'm here really to speak on behalf of some very, very concerned neighbors, in large part across the road from me, across town from me. I ask you to give consideration to a set of recreational uses that, to my knowledge, has been wholly ignored in this process to date. And I think the urgency now is greater than ever. They badly need definitions. They need due assignment to the appropriate zones. And if they're conditional, they need conditions of use. Everything Mr. Griggs said about the need for definitions for every use and the need for clearly articulated conditions is important here. We all thought we knew what a horse race was and its racetracks and grandstands and the uses that belonged to them. Until historical horse racing, as it's called, entered the picture. These virtual races played at lightning speed on video gaming terminals are really no more real races than is a cinema showing of Seabiscuit. And the wagering associated with them badly needs regulation because without reasonable regulation, it stands to offer a lot of harm to our citizens and neighborhoods, especially the least fortunate among us. I have, if you could put on the overhead, number one and number two, if you can get both of them to show, shows you the language that presently exists in the zoning ordinance associated with horse race tracks and grandstands where they are permitted. It's on this brown sheet, and I apologize that I don't have enough for each person. one can wager as many races on these video gaming machines as a whole fall meet in maybe a single day maybe shorter than that maybe five minutes a race you can even push a button to fast forward and omit viewing the race altogether that means that they are different in kind from horse races in real time with real horse flesh. What's different about them, what's dangerous about them, is this very speed and frequency with which you can do damage to your pocketbook if you're not a prudent person, worse yet to your credit card. This is a use, I believe, this associated set of uses associated with wagering and horse racing. I believe it doesn't fit well in or near a residential area, for example. It needs locational standards belonging to the zone and conditions of use specified, separation distances from children perhaps, times of day. We really need your experienced and careful help here to define these uses. What I offer on the white sheets and this brown sheet, if you have a copy, is by way of illustration only. I can't claim to make the right definition. But it seems that the present definitions talk about horse flesh, real horse racing in real time. They talk about simulcast horse racing. That's also in real time. It's played once before everybody together. It's very, very different from an anonymized pick a race. You don't know who's racing. You can read some stats about it. It's a sort of paramutual wagering that's rather different. Just as bars are regulated by state ABC laws, but local zoning has the responsibility for controlling locations and setting conditions of alcohol use in our community. So it is incumbent upon this commission to establish clear definitions, locations, and conditions for these horse racing and wagering uses. And I'm sure you've seen today's paper, perhaps you had the news yesterday, that for some in our community, this need for real reasonable regulation of horse racing and the associated wagering is more urgent than ever. horse racing the wagering of horse racing is permitted in the MU3 special projects entertainment project. This is a partly residential zone. I think I've said all I can competently say just to bring forward to you the urgency for our community of including in your recreational uses a definition of what is probably the, possibly the highest paying recreational use in our community today. If we have discovered of late that we really don't know what a horse race is and the wagering associated with it, we need to formulate something that can be workable for our zoning ordinance heeding the state law as well. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Clark. Yes, ma'am. Hi. My name is Jan Hellebush. I live on Hamilton Park, which is off of Versailles Road. I wanted to kind of follow up with what Ms. Clark just said and ask you all to pay especially close attention to this. I'm very concerned about the detrimental effect this would have on the neighborhood, and especially on students that live in the neighborhood. It's a great concern for those who live along the Versailles Road corridor. the introduction of slot machines possibility on either end of us. Now it's not going to happen on one end, but I just wanted to beg you all to please pay close attention to this in fear that we will end up with slot machines in Lexington. And that has been shown to be most detrimental to the poorest of our community. So thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Yes. Mr. Chairman, Commission members, I'm Gloria Martin, and I'm here not to talk about my part of the county entirely, although I do live in the rural area, but I'm here for the same reason that Bill Lear was asked to come and did come, and that is to ask you all to please look at this globally and how it all dovetails together. I have a little document I'm going to pass out to you in a minute, but I want to say first of all thank you for the volunteer time that it takes and the commitment to do this. I've been asked to come because of my institutional memory like Bill Lear's, which is way too long, but I'm happy to have lived this long. but Chris King and Bill Sally have been here and worked on all these planning issues for about as longer as I have, I think. In some cases, maybe longer, but I think Chris was here in the beginning when I started. Chris and I and the planning staff, and I am, I want to say, very supportive of the planning staff and always have been. We did work on the Greenway plan and the Green Space plan. I was on two comprehensive plan update committees, and we did work on that expansion area and all the stuff Bill Lear has said. I do support everything that he did say. I want you to really look at those plans that people have talked to you about today. Betty Webb talking about the Greenway plan. That was a really big deal, and as you, I'm sure, already know, it resulted in our rural land management plan. But maybe more important than that, it had to do with our stormwater management and taking care of some of the flood control. I'm also here to tell you to please, although people sort of seem today to have concentrated on the rural area and the natural areas, to look at this from a neighborhood standpoint. Most of what's been discussed in Zoda, and I've kept up with that, there were neighborhood representatives who went to those meetings and made reports. In fact, my husband wants to speak, and I don't know what he's going to say, so don't pair that necessarily with what I'm saying to you. The neighborhoods, it is very important to look at those as well for the recreation. We do have neighborhood parks, and we do have regional parks that in some cases are loved to death. We need to look at what recreational uses we put in the neighborhoods as well as what you put in the rural area. And we can't lose sight ever of what KRS dictates to us. I know some people say you don't want a corn maze or you don't want hay rods. I think you can say what kind of corn maze you have, and I'm not sure I support the paintball zombie hayride that has been advertised here as truly an agricultural thing, but KRS does tell us that they do support agritourism, and they do list, which I'm sure the staff knows and they've looked at some of that, exactly what we do need to try to work into our zoning ordinance. I want to thank the staff for all the time they've put into this, you all, and certainly the ZODA committee that did meet, I think, 23 times that you've mentioned. What I have done today is at the request of several of the groups that have already spoken today, which I'm going to pass out to you, I've mainly, because that was what I was requested to do, have looked at the AN and the AR zones. you will see that there are some things in here that farmers have recommended and agreed to doing on properties that the zoning, ZODA, and the Planning Commission has not really even mentioned in the zoning that they are supportive of. So make sure you look at that. What I'm handing you is a text from pretty much as you're used to seeing it. In fact, it is like you're used to seeing it. And worked into the text. What I tried to do was take what you planning commission members on your text that you have recommended, some of the really good things that the staff recommended that's not on the online version, I think, right now, what the ZODA recommended, and also, in addition, are some of the things that neighborhoods and residents out in the area have said that they would like to see. I will give this to you. It's just meant as a suggestion, and it's meant for you to be able to see things sort of dovetail together in the way you're used to seeing them, like the zoning ordinance is written with red where you add things in and highlight where you take things out and underline what you'd like to see in. So I will pass that to you staff and it can be put on a CD if you'd like and I can get it back to you I have one other thing that they asked me to give you I don't know if it got sent it's from the state veterinary folks that had a couple of comments They said they tried to send a few times. It didn't go through. So the man delivered it sometime to my house So, okay, it came and it's been distributed in commission Thank you very much Thank you, Miss Martin Yes, sir. If your wife is done. I'm Mr. Gloria Martin. Charles Martin. I live on the Grimes Mill Road on Boone Creek, and that's why I live there, because of the creek. We've been there for 36 years. We've lived and worked and done things in and around for the creek. I like to think we've done things with an idea of what can we do for the creek and for the natural area rather than what can the natural area do for us. The natural area is not an income-producing item. And I want to kind of list some of the things that we've done with neighbors, concerned neighbors, on about four miles of the creek. The first thing, and I'm going to go through the list and it's for a reason, was a natural area designation with the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission. Then the Nature Conservancy granted recognition for the natural protection area. Implementation of an agricultural water quality plan is necessary for most anyone on the creek. We helped with the Boone Creek Watershed Study, which involved three counties, and compliance with that study. We developed a Boone Creek Conservation Plan that addressed various issues throughout the length of the creek from the river to Winchester Road. We helped with the National Register Rural Historic District designation. This area is one of the largest rural historic districts in the country. We've been involved with NRCS contracts, EQUIP programs, Tourism, Arts, and Heritage contracts. These are people that will help you through cost share fill fences to keep your cows out of the creek, which is a law. They'll also help you cut honeysuckle if you have a mind to do it. So my point is, one other thing we did was a PDR. We made donations to the PDR, and actually our entire farm is covered by PDR easements and the Bluegrass Conservancy easements. So this part of Lexington Fayette County has been studied a lot. I've got stacks of bank boxes full of this stuff. In this area, the Boone Creek area is similar to a lot of natural areas. I attended the ZODA committee meetings as well. None of this came up. It was not why we were there. We were there to talk about recreational opportunities. You've already heard that during the past 20 years, interested community volunteers and the staff have developed the rural land management plan, green space, and greenway plans, and the PDR programs. Those things weren't a major part of our Arizona meetings either. They weren't supposed to be. That's not why we were there. We didn't talk much about conservation. And over the months, the matrix was developed. The final example of the matrix has some interesting things. There are uses prohibited in the AR zone that are allowed in the AN zone, in the area that all of our previous studies said was to be more restricted, to, quote, remain natural, to remain, quote, wilderness. Even hiking was suggested that if it occurred, it should be done by a water-based trail. It was unique and significant, secondary to the beauty and history. So please make permitted uses compatible with the work done by the rural land management plan, the green space, the greenway plans. And please ensure that permitted uses don't negatively impact existing donated conservation easements and other ongoing conservation efforts in these areas. Don't devalue Fayette County's strong planning and zoning. We're very, very lucky to have it and to have this staff. And we're also lucky to have engaged citizens and community leaders who will support this planning. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Martin. Others? Mr. Chairman, if there are no other comments from the committee, the staff was handed during this a letter from Mr. Don Todd that has his suggestions for revisions on the proposal. I can pass out that during there. He wanted to submit his written comments. Okay. Thank you. Please get it to everyone. Ms. Wade, anything to add? No? The staff has nothing further. Thanks. Excuse me? I said the staff has nothing further. Okay. Thank you. Listening to everyone kind of totaled up, I think, 10 people speaking on behalf of commissions, associations, groups, 15 citizens speaking. Every one of them provided some very good information. I would like to thank everyone for being here and providing this information. We probably had close to 20 letters that have been sent. Some of it is from people that were here today. But I can tell you right now, we, as a commission and staff, have some work to do still. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to declare the public hearing section of this meeting closed. Not that it could not be reopened at some future date. What we will do is this part of this meeting will be continued as well. At the present time, it will be continued until the November 13th meeting. Next week, we will be in work session discussing what you have said and looking at all avenues and opportunities and doing what we can and what we feel will be the best for all of Lexington and Fayette County. So with that, any other comments from commission members? If not, once again, thank you. We do have a little bit more business as far as commission items. We do have draft meeting and filing schedule for 2015 that we have to approve. It is before the commission members. If there's no questions, I'll entertain a motion for the adoption of this schedule. Do we have a second? Second. motion's been made and seconded for approval of the draft meeting filing schedule for 2015 that is before everyone um all those in favor please say aye any opposed motion passes thank you uh any other commission items any staff items I don't see anyone reaching for a microphone. As I said, our next meeting is the work session next week. And if there's no other discussion, I'll entertain a motion for adjournment. All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? Thank you, folks. you