# Urban County Council - Zone Change Public Hearing - February 11, 2016 > Auto-transcribed civic record · February 11, 2016 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3877 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3877?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2016-02-11 - **Last revised**: February 11, 2016 - **Length**: 10,151 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government held a meeting on February 11, 2016, at 5:30 PM in the Council Chambers in Lexington, Kentucky, with Vice-Mayor Kay presiding. The meeting focused on a single agenda item involving a Zone Change Ordinance, which was approved by the council. During the session, one motion was voted on and no public comments were heard. The meeting appears to have been a focused session dedicated to addressing the zoning matter before the council. ## Attendance The following members were present at the February 11, 2016 meeting: **Present:** • Vice-Mayor Kay • Evans • Gibbs • Henson • Lamb • Stinnett • Akers • Bledsoe • F. Brown • J. Brown • Farmer (arrived late) **Absent:** • Hensley • Moloney • Mossotti • Scutchfield **Late Arrival:** • Farmer Note: Farmer is listed in both the present and late categories, indicating they arrived after the meeting began but participated in the proceedings. ## Votes and Decisions The council conducted one roll call vote during the February 11, 2016 meeting. **Ordinance 1615-16** [timestamp: 06:45] The council voted on an ordinance to rezone property located at 1803 Georgetown Road from Light Industrial (I-1) to Highway Service Business (B-3). Ms. Akers made the motion and Ms. Evans provided the second. The ordinance passed unanimously with a vote of 11-0-0. All eleven council members voted in favor: - Evans - Farmer - Gibbs - Henson - Kay - Lamb - Stinnett - Akers - Bledsoe - F. Brown - J. Brown The approved zoning change includes specific prohibited uses for the property, including free-standing cocktail lounges, carnivals, adult entertainment establishments, billboards, and drive-in restaurants. ## Zone Change Ordinance [timestamp: 05:41] The council considered Ordinance 1615-16, a zone change request to reclassify 7.5 net acres of property at 1803 Georgetown Road from Light Industrial (I-1) to Highway Service Business (B-3). The proposed change would allow for commercial services to be developed in the area. Key speakers during the discussion included Mr. Bill Sallee and Mr. Dick Murphy, who presented information regarding the zoning change request. The ordinance aims to provide commercial services to the Georgetown Road corridor by allowing highway service business uses on the property. The council approved the zone change ordinance, enabling the property to transition from its current light industrial designation to highway service business zoning. This change will permit commercial development that serves the traveling public and surrounding community along the Georgetown Road corridor. --- ## Decisions - **1615-16** — passed (11-0): An Ordinance changing the zone from a Light Industrial (I-1) zone to a Highway Service Business (B-3) zone for property located at 1803 Georgetown Rd. --- ## Full transcript Thank you. Thank you. The End Thank you. so so Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have a quorum. We begin. I'm Vice Mayor Steve Kaye. I'll be chairing this meeting, and the first order of business is to call the roll. Ask the clerk to do that. Ms. Evans. Here. Mr. Farmer. Mr. Gibbs. Here. Mr. Hensley. Ms. Henson. Here. Mr. Kay. Here. Ms. Lamb. Here. Mr. Maloney. Ms. Massadi. Ms. Scotchfield. Mr. Stinnett. Yes, sir. Ms. Akers. Yes, sir. Ms. Bledsoe. Yes, sir. Mr. Fred Brown. Here. Mr. James Brown. Here. Thank you. The next order of business is to have the clerk give the second reading to the zone change ordinance whenever you're ready, sir. Number one, an ordinance changing the zone from a light industrial I-1 zone to a highway service business B-3 zone for 7.5 net, 10.25 gross acres for property located at 1803 Georgetown Road, Kentucky Hill Properties, LLC, Council District 2. thank you next I have a witness list from the applicant if you are here to speak and you have not signed in please do so at the back and I ask everybody who is on a witness list who plans to speak or may speak if you would rise I'm going to swear everybody in yes if you would raise your right hand do you swear or affirm that any testimony that you give at this hearing will be true to the best of your knowledge I do thank you I have a few other preliminaries to go through so that we all understand kind of what the procedure is First, as the presiding officer, I have the power to make what's called evidentiary decisions, to exclude irrelevant and repetitious testimony. I can do that on my judgment, or if council members want to suggest that I do that, I can take that under advisement and make a ruling. The petitioner has submitted a witness list. I do not have a list of anybody who is here to object. If there's anybody, I don't see. So I gather right now there are no objectors present. But I'm going to go through all of these preliminaries as if there were some. So each witness who's identified on the witness list shall be subject to cross-examination. and they're asked to stay in the public hearing so that they may be questioned by petitioner, opponents, or a member of council. Ask everybody who speaks to identify themselves by name and address for the record. If you have documents, they shall be marked and numbered as exhibits and entered into the record by the council clerk. and the order of presentation for the hearing will be first a presentation by the planning division staff then a presentation by petitioner then a presentation by opponents if there are any if we need to we'll make some I'll speak to the time limits the petitioner has agreed to limit presentation to 40 minutes if there are people who wish to speak in addition not on the witness list objections we will ask them to limit their comments to 3 minutes after the opponents the staff will have an opportunity to make additional comments, if any, and then the petitioner will have an opportunity to present rebuttal evidence. Then there will be time for a closing summation by those in opposition and a closing summation by the petitioner. At that point, Council members will be able to ask questions of staff, petitioner, and opponent, and petitioner and opponent shall be entitled to rebut any new evidence brought up on Council questioning. At that point, the hearing will be closed. No further evidence will be taken. Council will then deliberate and take a vote to adopt findings of fact by a roll call vote. And then there's a series of motions that will need to be made in addition. Any questions before we begin? Seeing none, Mr. Selle for the staff. Thank you, Vice Mayor Kegg. Council Members, good evening. I'm glad to be here this evening to present to you the Planning Commission recommendation on this own change. For the record, my name is Bill Salley. I'm the Planning Manager of the Planning Services section of the Division of Planning. As you know, there are a number of items we need to enter into the record for your hearing tonight, The first being the legal notice that was published in the local newspaper advertising the date and time of your hearing this evening. Another is an affidavit that I have sworn regarding the mailed notice that has been sent to property owners in the vicinity of the subject property and also to the nearest neighborhood associations in this area. I'd like to enter under the record copy of the final report. It's entitled The Recommendation from the Urban County Planning Commission. This has been provided to the Council at your place, and there are a few copies behind me on the counter for anyone in the room tonight that would like a copy. I'd like to enter into the record. Copy of the 2013 Conferensive Plan, which has been adopted by the Planning Commission. copies of the land subdivision regulations and the current zoning ordinance in effect for the urban county. And then finally, the planning staff has received two communications about this zone change. One is a letter and the other is an email. And I'd like to circulate this to the council members at this time and also provide the council clerk with a duplicate copy. As the reading of the ordinance indicates, this is a zone change request from a light industrial I-1 zone to a highway service B-3 zone involving about seven and a half net acres of property, property having an address of 1803 Georgetown Road. This property is at the northwest corner of Georgetown Road and Sandersville Road. I'd like to take just a moment using pictometry to show a few pictures of the subject property in the area. This is a view of the zoning map showing the property in question. It is the same as it is on the wall to my left. The subject property is light industrially zoned today, as are properties to the north and to the west of this location. That's indicated by the light purple color on the zoning map. Georgetown Road is the dividing line between mostly residential zoning and mostly industrial zoning, residential being mostly to the east and industrial to the west. However, directly south of the subject property across Sandersville Road is the Connor Woods subdivision, which is in an R3 zone. Just beyond that development to the south is the Imani Baptist Church. Those properties are in an R3 zone, and those were specifically rezoned to R3 after initially having I1 zoning previously. Across Georgetown Road, we have single-family residential zoning, R1D at the top right of the slide in the Highlands neighborhood, R1E directly across Georgetown Road in the Coldstream Station subdivision. There is one old agricultural urban property there as well, shown in the green. Also, a neighborhood in this vicinity is the Oakwood subdivision, which is in the lower right corner of the zoning map. The aerial view of the subject property, that indicates that the development in this area has generally matched the zoning that you saw on the zoning map. Light industrial to the north and to the west. There is also industrial zoning to the south and west of this location as well. All the residential subdivisions have mostly developed, as you can see by the rooftops and the residential street pattern. This is an aerial view. Subject property is in the lower right, so we're still looking north in this orientation. Sandersville Road extends across the bottom of the photo. Atoma Drive is the cul-de-sac here off of Sandersville. For the audience, this is Atoma. And there's a four-way stop at Jaggy Fox here. Jaggy Fox is an industrial collector street that parallels Georgetown Road, slightly west of this location. This is the same property, but viewing from the west. The residential in the foreground would be Coldstream Station in Highlands, and then Connor Woods is in the center left of the photo. So the industrial development in this area along Jaggy Fox, Sandersville, and the other industrial streets then borders the subject property on its other two sides. Again, a view of the subject property now looking from the north back toward downtown. You can see, again, industrial zoning is prevalent in this area, a little bit further distant to the south of this location, closer to Nandino Boulevard and New Circle Road, Mercer Road areas. residential. Connor Woods is fully developed in this photo, as is the church property. There is still some vacant land between the Imani Baptist Church site and the industrial development that is more oriented to Mercer Road. As is the staff's custom, we always look to the comprehensive plan anytime we have a zone change request, and we did so in this case as well, and you have been provided a copy of the staff report in the final report from the Planning Commission. This one slide was shown to the Planning Commission at their public hearing, and it really is a good one-slide summation of the staff's review of this application. The planning staff did not find that this zone change was in agreement with the 2013 Conferensive Plan. And this slide showed an exhibit of why we felt that. We thought that other locations were better suited in this corridor for business type of use, more oriented to the Citation and Georgetown intersection, and also we identified some other business locations that were zoned, not necessarily developed in this area. We cited that there is a neighborhood commercial node planned in this area, and that also some regional commercial nodes were planned. None of those coincided with the location of the subject property. The planning staff did recommend disapproval of this rezoning request for the reasons that are in our staff report. There were several, but it was basically that the request did not agree with the comprehensive plan in our view. We felt that the existing zoning was more appropriate than the proposed, and we also could not cite any major changes in this area since the comprehensive plan was adopted a little over two years ago. Those are the commercial nodes there. at New Circle Road in Georgetown, Citation and Georgetown, just north of Citation on the west side of Georgetown, and then around Citation to the west on an undeveloped parcel midway between Leestown and Georgetown. The Planning Commission held their public hearing about two months ago on December 17th and heard not just from the planning staff but also from the applicant and the development team. There were also two objectors present at the Planning Commission hearing. At the conclusion of their hearing that afternoon, they voted 5-3 to recommend conditional approval of this rezoning request to the Council. Their findings were that the existing light industrial zoning is no longer appropriate for the subject property, and the proposed B-3 zoning is appropriate, and they cited four reasons for making that conclusion. The first is, this is a parcel by the Commission. This is a parcel which is not well suited for industrial use. It has remained vacant for all the time that it has been zoned I-1, which is approximately the past 17 years. Secondly, there is a population of about 62,000 persons living within three miles of this property. There is a lack of commercial and service business in this area, which this zone change would provide to the immediate area. Thirdly, retail and service industries are needed in this corridor to serve the employment and manufacturing facilities in addition to the nearby residential uses. And then finally, the intersection of Georgetown Road and Sandersville Road is fully signalized. The developer will construct deacceleration lanes, which are indicated in their traffic study, which was required as part of this zone change. And the developer will construct improvements to Sandersville Road. These were the Planning Commission's findings for approval, and as usual, they made this recommendation subject to the approval and the certification of a preliminary development plan that was submitted in conjunction with this zone change request. That plan is to my left on the wall, and it is not oriented the same as the zoning maps. and we take just a moment for an answer. Georgetown Road is here, heading north or away from downtown, in this direction to the left. There we go. Apologize. Georgetown Road is here, heading out of town to the left. Sandersville Road, here, heading to the west in this direction. This is the signalized intersection of those two roadways. The development proposes about 46,500 square feet of commercial development, including five outlots with various uses, restaurant and retail primarily, and the balance of the square footage in two commercial buildings here. There is stormwater detention proposed for this seven-and-a-half-acre development, this location, and possibly here. Tree stands are identified on the property, and a good number of them are to remain under this development plan. The property will have access to all three streets that it abuts. There will be two accesses to Georgetown Road, one opposite the southern intersection of Parallel Road, which serves the Highlands neighborhood, a right in, right out here on Georgetown, approximately midway between this intersection and the signalized intersection at Sandersville. There will be one full access point to Sandersville Road. It is not opposite an intersection or a street in the Connor Woods subdivision. And Atoma Drive, the cul-de-sac we saw in the photo, would have two accesses as well, presumably for neighbors or citizens coming the opposite way on Sandersville or perhaps even for deliveries at that location. That concludes my prepared remarks. Thank you very much. And, of course, you know I'll be available for questions later in the evening. Thank you. Thank you. I believe you're also subject to cross-examination by petitioner or opponent at this time. No cross-ex. Thank you. Next, if we can have the presentation by the petitioner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Dick Murphy. I'm pleased today to be representing a company called Kentucky Hill Properties, and we have three of the four persons involved in Kentucky Hill Properties with us today. One of the principals is Matt Burton, and Matt could not be here tonight. We just managed to be the one week he couldn't be here, but we understand scheduling issues. The other three members are here. One is David Burton, who's on the second row with me. David is one of the owners of the company, and he's also the father of Matt Burton. So I think if he tells me something's okay, I'm probably okay with the son who's the principal owner. And also we have David Allen and Rob Gabbert, who are on the second and third row. They're working members of the company as well. And their other time, they are commercial real estate brokers with the Gibson Company here in town. I think many of you all know that the Gibson Company is one of the leading commercial real estate brokers, and they have been responsible for bringing many industrial prospects and jobs here to Lexington over the last 30 or so years. Also with me is Matt Carter and Jihad Alani from Vision Engineering. They're our designers sitting back on the third and fourth row on this side. They designed this and also did the traffic impact study, which was required by the Planning Commission. Chaz Height is with me. He works with me as well. I think there's some other people in the audience. Some of them are supporters of this as well. I'll try to be as quick as we can because I know there were no persons identified as objectors, but I wanted to tell you a little bit about how this zone change came about. And if you could put up that first aerial photo there. There you go. Well, yeah, if you could twist that over on the other way. this is the first handout in the in the packet i gave you i think i got a packet to everybody if not raise your hand and i'll get one to you but uh let's twist it around one more there we go we'll get north yeah now north is heading north to the top here the yellow yellow square marks the spot This is the property we have. This is Georgetown Road, Sandersville Road, Atoma Drive. There's the court that was mentioned. So we're surrounded on three sides by streets. We're seven and a half acres. We're a fairly small site here. And right opposite us on the east side of Georgetown Road, we have Oakwood Subdivision. We have Coldstream Station right opposite us. We have Highland Subdivision that had been there a long time. We have right on the same side of Georgetown as us, right south of Sandersville Road, that's Connor Wood Subdivision, which Mr. Selle mentioned. And right to the south of that is the Imani Baptist Church. These are the properties which Mr. Selle mentioned were originally zoned industrial, were changed to residential to allow the church and the subdivision probably 10 or so years ago in this area. And if you could put up the next, yeah, put up that one if you would. In doing the demographics on this, we found out that within a three-mile radius of this property, 62,000 people live. and that i always like to compare that to something so i know what 62 000 people mean and that's greater than the entire population of bowling green kentucky which is one of the largest cities in kentucky bowling green i think has 57 58 000 people there's 62 000 people living within within a three mile radius of this property so it's a it's a growing residential corridor, and that doesn't even count the people who are going to be moving over on the west side of the railroad tracks. Ball Homes has a new plan development on part of the Hillenmeyer property, which is going to add 1,200 bedrooms to this area, in addition to the 62,000 people who are already living here. Even more important, though, this is developed as an employment center and a residential. You can live and work in the same area. We calculated that within that same three-mile radius, there's somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 jobs. We think about 20,000 jobs within a three-mile radius of this. So 62,000 people living, about 20,000 jobs here. But what has been lacking is the services for those people here. If you think of this as being as big as Bowling Green, we sure don't have the services that Bowling Green has in this area. We did this exhibit to show the distances to get to meaningful commercial use. Here's our property up in Georgetown Road and Sandersville Road. The red line coming down is the line to get to Townley Center off of Leastown Road. It's about 2 1⁄2 miles to get to Townley, and it's another 2 tenths. It's about 2.7 to get to the Kroger store down here. So a round trip is going to be five and a half miles to get from up here down to the Kroger and the Townley Center. If you want to go the other way, to get to the Walmart Supercenter down here, which has groceries and drugstore and all that sort of thing, that's three miles one way. Six-mile round trip to go there. You're off there. Walmart is west of Russell Cave, and your blue line extends east to Las Vegas. Okay. Let's say it's— Excuse me. It's inappropriate for people in the audience to comment. Thank you. So it's about five and a half miles either way, a round trip to get to meaningful services. To compare that, we tried to find out something to compare that to. I know in downtown, we're right here at the government center right now. Everybody says there's no grocery stores downtown, which is right. We need a grocery store downtown. But how far is it to get to the Kroger Supercenter on Euclid Avenue? 1.3 miles. 1.3 miles to get there, and everybody says we don't have groceries downtown. We're up here. It's 2.5, 3 miles to get to meaningful grocery stores here or other services here. So that's why Kentucky Hill Properties is interested in developing this for services for the 62,000 people and 20,000 jobs that are within a three-mile radius. Because I think you can see from our analysis it's greatly, greatly underserved by commercial and retail-type uses. We, to test that theory, we went out to a number of the employers in the area, and in page 2 and page 3 and page 4 of my handout, if you could put those up on the screen, we went to a number of the employers, and the first is my favorite, Big Ass Fans, and that's because I get to read the title of the person who wrote the letter to you here, but they point out that they're up nearby on this property and was sent to Mr. Burton, And they employ 800 people. I had no idea they were such a big employer. They employ 800 people in this area. And if you go to the second paragraph of that, they said, The entire area in the vicinity of the Bluegrass Business Park off of Georgetown Road can certainly use more retail establishments to serve employees of businesses in this area. I think these businesses would see benefits from their employees being able to take care of errands close by. We think other employers in this area would feel likewise. We support the project and recommend it to you for your consideration. Signed by Mr. Smith, who is the chief big ass, he says, of this one. The next one is from Crown Lift Trucks. That's a small employer. They have 31 people. And he also says we'd like to voice our opinion and approval of this project. is we employ 31 people, and we believe the addition of retail services and restaurants would be beneficial to the area, signed by Mr. Hartings, the operation manager. And the last one is Kentucky Eagle, which employs 180 people. And they say, we believe the addition of retail services and restaurants would be beneficial to this area, signed by their vice president. So between these, they have just under 1,000 employees, and they are all endorsing this as a service to the people who work there. And if you think about it, it's appropriate for somebody who wants lunch, wants to stop up and get something on the way to work, on the way home, that there's something nearby rather than driving the distances that I talked to you about. And I remember years ago when I was working on one of the zone changes in the area where Imani Baptist Church and Connor Woods is now located, we went to a neighborhood meeting in Oakwood subdivision, and I was struck by the fact that the people at that time said that at that time Imani was zoned industrial. It was vacant. And they said at the meeting, said, we don't want to come out of our subdivision looking at the blank side of a big wall of a factory. We want something that's going to add to the vitality of our residential area. That's how Imani got approved, and that's how Connor Woods got approved. That was industrial, like our property. We feel just like that, that having services there will be supportive to these four neighborhoods that are right around us and the new neighborhoods that are coming down off Sandersville Road, and that it's needed to serve the residential subdivisions. a little history of the property i found from mr gibson doug gibson who's one of the current owners of the property kentucky hill properties has it under contract to purchase from a company which is owned uh by mr gibson and a partner our property was purchased in 1998 by magna international which is a canadian automobile parts manufacturing company they purchased it after they purchased it interesting enough they passed on it after they paid for it they passed on it because they didn't feel it was suitable to their needs and they went to another location farther up georgetown road now we can only speculate on why they passed it up but it stayed vacant since then has not been marketed has not been excuse me not been uh haven't had any interest in it for uh industrial purposes. But I would speculate it's because of two things. One, it's a small size. It's only seven and a half acres. And another, if you remember the map, it's basically triangular in shape here. It doesn't come down to a point, but almost comes down to a point. And makes it difficult to fit a factory on this property. The other I1 industrial uses besides a factory are probably things maybe that aren't appropriate right at this location. One is storage, and we already have a mini warehouse facility right next to us on a Tomah. If you could put up the black and white picture, the owner of that is here, and I think he's supportive of what we're doing. This is the mini warehouse facility, and that's needed. You need a storage facility, but I'm not sure you need that with the RV parking and everything right at a major intersection of this neighborhood, right at the light at Sandersville Road and Georgetown Road. Another use is trucking terminal and that sort of thing, which is major noise, light, sound, 24 hours a day, which we don't think is needed at this intersection either. What do we want to do here? My folks have been talking to a number of users, and here's what they anticipate in this property, these type uses. A pharmacy, a bank, insurance agent, dry cleaners, a sit-down restaurant, fast service restaurant, cell phone store, beauty salon, barbershop, urgent care medical facility, and that sort of thing. People asked us at the Planning Commission, well, are you going to be generating jobs? Yes, we're going to be generating jobs. We estimated we're going to generate between 150 and 200 jobs, and it's going to run the range. At the pharmacy, for instance, you'd have pharmacists, store manager, people who stock the shelves. Bank, you'd have the bank manager, the loan people, the tellers at the bank, and it goes on for all of those. But we'll have a range of jobs here, and yes, they are jobs. Sometimes people say the only type of jobs that we want are industrial jobs, But I think the industries up here want these kind of jobs to serve the properties that are here. In the development plan, I just wanted to point out a couple things to you. We had a neighborhood meeting at Imani Baptist Church, and as a result of that, we made a few changes. This reflects all the changes, but it was pointed out at the neighborhood meeting and by the staff that Sandersville Road didn't have improvements in this stretch on our side. So the owners, the applicants agreed to widen it as necessary, dedicate roadway as necessary, construct roadway as necessary, do curbs, gutters, sidewalks along this portion of Sandersville Road. We're providing additional landscaping along Georgetown Road, especially in this area, at the request of the people who live right across the street from us, right there. We moved the main access point is here, opposite parallel road, to line up with the intersection. and we agreed to a number of conditional zoning restrictions which are in the my packet at page six and these were all adopted by the planning commission the first two were development plan conditions first one was about the improvements to sandersville road that i told you about the second one was the screening along georgetown road that i told you about this is lot four and five right there in front of Lowe's. And the third one was limiting the height of freestanding signs to 20 feet. Conditional zoning restrictions we agreed to. Number one was no freestanding cocktail lounges or bars. This discussion came up with the church, and that is if alcoholic beverages are going to be sold, it has to be in a restaurant which receives more than 50% of its receipts from sale of food. In other words, an Applebee's, O'Charlie's type restaurant. You can't have a freestanding cocktail lounge that just serves drinks, which we agreed to. Second is carnivals or circuses, and that was brought up because it would cause loitering in the area. Third was adult uses. We banned all adult uses there. Fourth was billboards. And fifth was drive-in restaurants. that is the and we have nothing against sonic but that bans the sonic type restaurant where you park and people bring food out to you because it was pointed out to us that there has been have been loitering issues at other locations in this neighborhood so we were trying to remove loitering type loitering type of places on this which all of which my clients agreed to In the page 7 of the handout, I put in a letter. This wasn't in the Planning Commission, but we just wanted to tell you we had a private letter to the owners across the street. These are at either side of the Sandersville Road intersection. Mr. and Mrs. Butala, who I think are here tonight, and Mr. and Mrs. Lopez, because we said we would do some additional things. we'll plant additional trees on the other side of Georgetown Road. We're going to plant them on the right-of-way if we can. If not, we'll put them on their property if they want them on their property. Second, we'll put a requirement in leases that loitering be prohibited on the property. And my clients are going to retain ownership of most of this property. They will be leasing it out, so they will have control over that. The third thing is we'll advocate for a reduction in the speed limit on Georgetown Road. And this was important to the people in the area because the speed limit in this area is 55 miles an hour. And there's, from what we can tell, no good reason to have a speed limit of 55 miles an hour from Citation on in because there are a number of traffic lights, which slow traffic anyway. There shouldn't be that area where you do the acceleration up to 55 miles an hour in that area. We agree with that totally. We've discussed that briefly with the State Highway Department already, but we will advocate for that. And the final thing was asking and having dumpster services after 8 a.m. in the morning. So those were some of the, I just wanted to put that in. That's something we agreed to with the neighbors, but we want to be open about that and put that on the public record. There's other things we could discuss. I felt strongly that not only is the existing zoning not appropriate for the property anymore, but I felt this agreed with the comprehensive plan. The planning commission didn't use that as one of their findings. They said that for the reasons I have mentioned before, that industrial was no longer appropriate and that commercial would be appropriate. But I just wanted to point out that the Comprehensive Plan does call for accessible community facilities and services to meet the needs of people who live in an area. And it calls for compact, contiguous development as guided by market demand. and we think the market certainly demands the type of facilities we're providing. Comprehensive plan calls for reducing Lexington's carbon footprint. As you all know, a number of years ago, we got the dubious distinction of being the, what was it, the worst carbon footprint city in America or something like that, and this will do its part to reduce it by reducing the trips, the length of trips it takes to go to get some of these services and goods. and finally encourages economic investment in our established communities in Lexington. So we have stormwater retention on site. We've done a traffic study, which turned out good. We can go into details if you need to on that, but I'm not going to – everybody's still awake, so I want to keep everybody awake, so I won't go into details on that one, unlike my last hearing here. So we appreciate your attention. I'm just leafing through to make sure I haven't missed anything. I've been trying to give the shorter version on this. But in conclusion, we feel that development in this area will be, this development will be supportive of the other development in the area. I wanted to point out, the one thing I forgot to point out is that you all may know that up north of this property, at Citation Boulevard. Myers has owned property for about 16 years. They bought property in 2000, 16 years ago. It's never been developed. The question came up with the Planning Commission. Well, are you going to be competing with them? And we're not. And that's because that's a big track. There's another big track to the north of that. We anticipate Myers obviously put their big store in there and be drawing traffic in from all over. We're not looking to draw traffic in. We're looking to serve people who already live here. We have, as Bill Salee mentioned, we have about 48,000 square feet total in this development. A new Kroger has over 100,000 square feet. So we're a small, all our buildings together are less than half of the size of a new Kroger. And I say that to point out we're small. We're designed to service this area. people who live within that three mile radius of us. We're not designed to be the super center that's going to suck people in from all over. We're going to be servicing the people who are driving their cars and living out here already. So anyway, for that, we feel we're complementary, and we're going to enhance the existing neighborhoods in this area. we think we're complementary to and will enhance the existing industries in this area as evidenced by the letters we have in the record we have letters of support from the businesses as i mentioned and i have findings at the end of my handout which if you want to adopt that that'd be great but if you want to adopt the planning commission's findings that's fine too on it and i hope i haven't been jumping around too much i've been trying to shorten this down and if I've missed anything, I apologize. We'd be happy to pick it up later with you. But that's our case. We appreciate your coming out tonight at 5.30 to hear this case. It's very important for us. We're proud of it, and we think it'll be very important for this community. Thank you. We'd be happy to answer any questions you all have. I had other people on the witness list. They're not going to speak unless you need them to speak, but they're here available to answer questions if you need them. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. I'm going to check once more. Is there anybody here who has signed up? Nobody signed up, so there is nobody to speak in opposition. Staff, additional comments? Mr. Selle? Okay. In that case, we probably don't need rebuttal evidence from the petitioner. No closing summation by the opponent. Closing summation, anything you want to add, Mr. Murphy? Thank you. So at this point, council members, if you have questions of petitioner or staff, please log in and I will recognize you. Council member Gibbs. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I think this might be a question for Bill. I'm not sure it's a... Bill, at some point here it talks about part of the property being on the aquifer recharge area for an aquifer that feeds into the water system of Georgetown. Is Georgetown aware of this, or is there any concerns about that? I am not sure if they are aware of this application. The aquifer area is, I believe, depicted on the map with that blue line on the left drawing of the development plan. Okay. So part of the site is in the best-known map of the aquifer recharge area, and it looks like maybe a third of it isn't. When the planning staff gets more industrial types of uses, we do notify the officials in Georgetown, primarily with their water and sewer service, to let them know that we have a development proposal in. and on a few of those occasions they will contact us back either with we would like the information of the developer or we'd like to discuss this amongst ourselves whether we have any issues with this or not. And then sometimes they're not concerned about it. This being a commercial development, I'm not sure that we made that contact the way we would for an industrial use. Would they be concerned about a gas station? Possibly. No, that's not one of the proposed uses here, but it could be included. I just wonder if gas stations pollute a lot. I think they tend to. Years ago, definitely gas station tanks were a big environmental concern. Twenty years ago, certainly, when the Wellhead Protection Committee was established and more attention was paid to the aquifer, certainly. My impression is the state regulations for those have improved over the past 20 years, but certainly something like a gas station might be of interest to them. Okay. Well, thank you, Bill. Mr. Murphy, I just have a brief comment. I think you demonstrated pretty well that there's need for some commercial development in this area, but I think saying that there's 62,000 people within three-mile radius just seems overstating it. What comes within that radius is the Meadowthorpe area. You're implying that people from Meadowthorpe might be going over to their shop. Why would they want to do that? But I would just say, from my position, I'd rather you lower your radius in the future. But I think surely with those subdivisions around, I'm very sensitive to our carbon footprint. I like the idea of people being able to walk there short distances. But the 62 kind of graded on me a little bit. But thank you for letting me make the comment. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Hanson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mr. Murphy, I had a question about the main entrance that you showed on the drawing to the development, and I wanted some clarification if you could put that map back up. This one here? That might work, but when you were speaking, you talked about the main entrance aligning with Highlands, maybe, neighborhood. Right there. We originally, just to use in background, we originally showed the main entrance being here in the midpoint of the development. We were pointed out to us by the state and the city traffic people that we should align that with the existing entrance off of Parallel Road, which is right here. Right. Well, Highlands has an interesting access situation in that Hudson Avenue appears to be the main road, but it doesn't hit Georgetown. It comes to parallel, and then you can go south or north on parallel to get onto Georgetown Road. So the southern entrance on parallel is what they asked us to line our main entrance up to, which is what we did. So would it be signalized? that would be this is i believe state control because it's outside new circle road it's up to the state we have a signal at sandersville and there's a signal is there one at capstone capstone vision engineering is telling me yes there's one there so that would be totally up to the states whether there's a signal there or not i'm not sure there ever would be a signal there but it would be up to them to tell us about that. Okay. Because I guess my concern, excuse me, was that if they want a signalized intersection, they would come out on Sandersville, correct? Yes. Yes, that's fully signalized now. And the houses on Sandersville, do they face Sandersville, or is that the back of the homes? Here? Yes. That's the back of the homes. The front is on Connor Woods Drive. They back up to us along Sandersville. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. And then, too, I just wanted to mention I'm all about protecting the neighborhoods, but yet I do think that this would provide good service to the surrounding businesses and residential, like the dumpster placements and things like that that wouldn't be involved in this zone change but that you would be considerate of the neighbors when placing even if you don't empty them until 8 a.m. I think they're ugly if you can see them from your home. And they are sensitive to that. They're nodding their heads as you're speaking on that. We have discussed a dumpster placement on that. As you know, we are required to screen them, and we'll try to go over and above that. Yeah, and all of that will come out in the development plan, I'm sure. But I just wanted some clarification. And this just, as you mentioned, this is a development plan. It's a preliminary development plan. We'll be coming back through the Planning Commission with a final to get these details nailed down if this is approved. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair, Vice Mayor. Dick, on the conditions approved by the Planning Commission, it says the developer will make improvements to Sandersville Road, the right-of-way dedication if needed, additional pavement if needed, curbs and gutters if needed, et cetera. So I guess my question is who determines what is needed? that's going to be determined on the final development plan stage to be honest about it it's going to be determined by probably the city traffic engineering division when they when they review this okay and and it's probably more it'd probably be more accurate to say as needed rather than if needed because we we know that improvements are needed on that right that's what i was going to say i mean i know that we need that the curbs and gutters are needed and sidewalks are needed, you know, turning lanes and pavement. I don't know about those specifically, but I just wondered who is responsible. So it would be the city engineers that will say you have to do the right-of-way here or turn lane here, and that's where it would require that in your final development plan. Yeah, they'll require that, and our folks will pay for it. Sure. And then, so you can't have the entrance to Connor Woods align with the entrance to this property. You said that the entrance off of Sandersville would be mid-block about or? Yes. A little bit, right. So is that going to cause, because it's a fairly short stretch between Connor Woods and Georgetown Road, do you think or would that be probably the road improvements, traffic improvements that might be required there? Yeah, we talked about, and you correct me if I'm wrong, a right turn lane into our development. at the, I'm talking to our traffic engineers right now, into this. So we'd be constructing a right turn lane in there to prevent backup on that. The traffic counts, I think, you all correct me if I'm wrong, were taken at about this point. And generally there was no traffic backup beyond this point. Now, I won't say it never does because some of the neighbors have told me it occasionally does back up beyond that point. But generally it didn't back up beyond that point. Will there be a left turn lane coming from Sandersville to, like, coming from the other end? I don't know which direction. West on Sandersville, maybe? Up here? Mm-mm. Oh. Yes. Coming out of here. If you're coming from Masterson, for instance, up to Sandersville to turn in, would there be a left right, right there? Would there be a left turn in there? No? Okay. we anticipate that if they're going to be doing that they're going to be turning left before they get there at atoma drive and coming in there there we have two entrances on atoma which is a lightly very lightly traveled road it's a little cul-de-sac yes um and that was my next question the two businesses on atoma will they face atoma or will they face the access road between They would likely be facing this road here. Okay. Although, you know, we have parking here. It's likely that... It could be both. I'm just speculating. They could be double frontage. Yeah, it could be double frontage. Sure. Okay. And Atoma is where the storage facility is. Storage facility is right back here. Right. So you're not offending residents on that end. And then I wanted to ask about the letter you submitted to the residents nearby. I think these are both in Coldstream Station? Yeah, they're right opposite. Well, they're right here and here. I'm sorry, I'm wrong. Right down here and here on either side of Sandersville Road. And so their concern was, was it lighting from the businesses? That's why they wanted trees and screening? Lighting and noise, yes. Noise and lighting. Okay. And are you all okay with this letter and proposal? We'd go better with what they're proposing than you should pass this. Okay. I just was curious what prompted the letter, and since we're not hearing from anyone on the other side. Well, we've had real good impact from these two neighbors in particular. Okay. That's all I have for now. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Vice Mayor. First for the staff, just in reading through the case review, on kind of the manila colored pages, these properties are already zoned and are ready for such development. In addition, the petitioner has requested one of the most intense zoning categories, while the less intense categories could accommodate the proposed uses. This causes the staff to wonder about what changes might be proposed to the final development plan if zoning were approved. Any follow-up comment to that? Or why that was dropped in there? You didn't really make reference to it in your presentation. I was wondering if you could fill me in a little bit. And ordinarily, my main focus in being at your hearing is telling you about the Planning Commission hearing and their recommendations. so I didn't focus much on the staff report as we would certainly at the Planning Commission, where we had a very lengthy discussion about our staff report. One of the things that concerned the staff with this application was the fact that B3 zoning was proposed, and we did have some discussions with the applicant through the process and also at the committee stages and at the Planning Commission meeting about perhaps whether one of the other business zones would be better here, one that doesn't allow, for instance, the adult entertainment uses or the more intensive commercial uses. B3 really is our most intense business zone. There are other implications of doing that. For instance, the B6P zone requires a 50-foot setback from all properties, so it would be impossible for any of these businesses to locate close to any existing street if that were the case. B1 zoning has the exact opposite problem. it now requires businesses to be 20 to 10 feet off the street. So, for instance, under this concept, that would just about eliminate all the parking between the building and the street. And so these are the types of dialogue that we had from the time the application, perhaps even at the pre-application conference. And so that's really what prompted the staff in putting that in our staff report, those types of issues. Thank you for your presentation and your comment. Mr. Murphy, do you care to follow up on anything he just said? Probably before the B-1 text amendment was made, which changed it to put the, they call it a build 2 line. It's not a setback line. It's a build 2 line. You have to be between 10 and 20 feet away from the street, which would push us up right up against Georgetown Road. in this instance, and right out and down against Sandersville Road, and then spreading out, since we have three roads that really impacted us, pushing us down right up against Atoma Court. And if we had filed this four years ago, we would have asked for B-1, zoning on it. But with that Build 2 line, we couldn't do that. So we asked for B-3, which does not have that Build 2 line. The B1 works great. It works great, I mean, to me, and you know better than I, and Chevy Chase and places near downtown. But it doesn't work out in the more suburban areas to have buildings so close to major arterials. You know, if you think of having something 10 feet off of Nicholasville Road or that. So that's why we went with B3 here. And that's really the only reason we went with B3 here. But to try to compensate for that, we propose these conditional zoning restrictions, which will take out the uses in B3, which really are not desirable here on these, which is the ones we agreed to on this. Okay, just a couple more. So the hearing was on December 17th. That's when the notes are from. Yes. So you went back and wrote to the neighbors on December the 17th, too? Yes, we did that actually before. We'd been talking about that, and I got that letter out the morning before the hearing. So you tried to answer their objection before they made it at the hearing? Well, we'd been talking to them, so we knew what it was. Right. We tried to assure people of what our intentions were by doing that, yes. And so I can't tell. So none of those people are here tonight or some of those people are here tonight? Yes. They just choose not to talk. The Butalas are here. Okay. is addressed to the two couples mr mrs butala who are here and mr mrs lopez who i don't think are here tonight right weren't here but they were the ones who live right across georgetown at sandersville and who had the main impact of this i admire your getting the letter out early my last one the furthest point down georgetown that kind of is trying to line up with the parallel drive across straight across there yeah any restrictions there or what kind of level of service will that new intersection have based on this build out well our traffic particularly pardon me particularly for those trying to exit and need to go straight across or go left and out of town well the I don't know if we studied the particular level of service there. Generally, Georgetown has a high volume of traffic, but it has a good level of service. This intersection here will be a level of service C, for instance. It's signalized. Sandersville is not a big deal. The right in, right out is not a big deal. I'm just thinking of what I contend is a new intersection at your next spot back there. And people trying to come out and turn left across three or four lanes of traffic or trying to dodge all the way across six lanes to get to the other side. Well, we anticipate, you know, the best way out would be a left turn right here at Georgetown and Sanders with the traffic light. We don't anticipate a lot of lefts out of here. It exists right now up a parallel road that that action exists. but we don't anticipate a lot of northbound traffic here. It could be, but we would hope most of it would come out at the traffic signal right there. So in the traffic study, nothing in that particular potential intersection showed up as this could be a problem in the future? This is Mr. Helani of Vision Engineering who did the traffic impact. He's a returning favorite, yes. For the record, my name is Jihad Halani. The traffic studies that we did is basically address Sandrisville and Capstone at the intersection with Georgetown Road. We did not study that particular point. And the reason was because this intersection is subject to approval from LFUCG Division of Traffic Engineering as well as the Transportation Cabinet. And we did not include it. We started as a worst-case scenario, all this traffic hitting Georgetown Road and Sanderville intersection and what kind of impacts that will generate. If we have another intersection, like it's shown here, right in, right out, or full entrance, it's going to leave some of this traffic out of that intersection. Good point. So we went with the worst-case scenario, giving the fact that these two intersections are going to be subject to transportation cabinet and traffic engineering approval, and we went the most conservative approach. I appreciate those levels of interest later on. Thank you for your answers, both of you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mr. Murphy, if you would, would you expand on the types of screening or buffering around the entire edge of the development? Are there trees, shrubs? Well, Mr. Selle, you may be able to help me. The requirement, I think, is going to be one tree every 40 feet plus a hedge fence or earth mound with a continuous planting. Am I getting that right? That's right. You're talking about the property perimeter, not the frontage. Well, your question was the frontage. Well, I'd like to know where the whole evergreen space up there as to how it's going to be a buffer. I can tell you what's required in the ordinance. I'm not sure of the petitioner's actual thoughts or plans for landscaping. Along the frontage of Georgetown Road and Sandersville Road and Atoma Drive, all three, the ordinance requires all of those parking areas and the drive aisles you see to be screened with low hedges between the right-of-way and the pavement, and as Mr. Murphy said, a tree every 40 feet of frontage, and that would be along all three frontages. Along the property line with the industrial use, the auto parts facility that is industrial, I can look in my ordinance. I believe that zone-to-zone screening is required there, which then gets into the choice of a berm, a double hedge, or a solid fence in addition to the trees. Okay. And you mentioned something about the section where it comes off Sandersville and to the left that it was going to be a heavier. We agreed with the neighbors here along these two lots here. we for sure go over and above the required landscaping. Plus we agreed with them in the letter that we would plant trees on their side of Georgetown Road along their properties either on the right of way if we're allowed. We don't know if the state will let us or not. Probably not. So we said or on their properties if they'll give us permission to put it on their properties up here. Right here. Right here. As well. additional screening like here. We're not at the final development plan stage, so we don't have a final landscape plan for it, but we have committed to go over and above there, across the street there, and of course do what's required there, and I anticipate there'll probably be more landscaping in there too. Okay, alright, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. I have nobody else signed up at this point. That would allow me to declare this hearing is closed. So there'll be no further evidence. It's now time for council to comment if they wish and propose motions if they wish. Any comments at all? Council Member Akers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I wanted to make one comment to the planning staff. While I understand that it's, I guess you all prefer to keep industrial with industrial, it seems to me to be an oversight or something that we have these large parcels or areas of the city that are industrial with no access to restaurants or other businesses, especially when a lot of industrial employees get 30 minutes for lunch in a very short amount of time. And we dealt with this last year or year before with allowing food trucks. We had to change the zoning ordinance because restaurants aren't allowed in industrial zones. And so to allow a food truck in an industrial zone, we had to change the zoning ordinance. And so it seems to me that we should allow restaurants in industrial zones and maybe other some B zoning. So but I guess that's a conversation for another day. But so that's why I do support this. You know, I've represented this district now for three years. And all I have heard in that entire time has been when is Myers going to open? When are we going to get more restaurants? When are we going to get dry cleaners? You know, when are we going to get what everybody else in other parts of the city have? And so the access to just basic services is lacking. And so I appreciate that you all have attempted to satisfy the concerns of neighbors with lighting, or their concerns about lighting, with extra screening and trees. And I hope that—I don't know that we can do it in the right-of-way. We've talked about signage before on major state highways, and they're not really very open to that. But you never know. Maybe far or close to the, I know that there's a fence there. So maybe near that fence. And maybe Haymaker owns some of that that can give you permission. So I appreciate those attempts. And, yeah, I think that this is much needed for the area. So I think that's all I'll have. Thank you. Thank you. At this point, seeing nobody else signed up to speak, I'll entertain a motion on the findings of fact and the options are to adopt the findings of fact And the recommendations of the Planning Commission or adopt our own findings of fact is someone prepared to make a motion Councilmember Akers, thank you. I move to that we adopt the findings of fact as Recommended by the Planning Commission or approved by the Planning Commission We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, I believe we take a roll call vote on this motion. Ms. Evans? Yes. Mr. Farmer? Yes, sir. Mr. Gibbs? Yes. Ms. Henson? Yes. Mr. K? I'm sorry, yes. Ms. Lamb. Yes, sir. Mr. Stinnett. Ms. Akers. Yes, sir. Ms. Bledsoe. Yes. Mr. Fred Brown. Yes. Mr. James Brown. Yes. Just to approve. That vote reflects passage, and now I'll entertain a motion to approve or reject the ordinance rezoning the property. Council Member Akers. I move that we accept the ordinance that rezones the property from I-1 to B-3. So moved. Motion to second. Is there any discussion of the motion? Seeing none, we'll take a roll call vote. Ms. Evans. Yes. Mr. Farmer. Yes, sir. Mr. Gibbs. Yes. Ms. Henson. Yes. Mr. Kay. Yes. Ms. Lamb. Yes, sir. Mr. Stinnett. Yes, sir. Ms. Akers. Yes. Ms. Bledsoe. Yes. Mr. Fred Brown. Yes. Mr. James Brown. Yes. That vote reflects passage also. And motion to adjourn. And without objection, we stand adjourned. I'm going to go.