You're beginning to realize that it's sink or swim I see you around sometimes, and my heart just melts You're looking like if you had your wish, you'd be somewhere else And it just breaks my heart to see you here this way. Someday I'll get the nerve to walk up to you. We've started just a couple of minutes late, but welcome to the May meeting of the Board of Adjustments. A couple of housekeeping items. First, if you have a cell phone on you, silence it. I do that to remind myself as well. Secondly, the room is pretty full, so you'll have to accommodate each other out there on seating and such. And I'm not sure if we even have, we may even have an overflow outside. I'm not really sure. but we're going to try to give everybody a fair chance and due process today during the proceedings. I see that there are going to be some that look like they're going to be contested and supported. So what I'd like to do is for everybody who intends to speak to stand and raise their hand. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Thank you. You may be seated. I want to ask the staff if there are any withdrawals or postponements to the proposed docket. The staff is unaware of any. I don't know if there are any postponement or withdrawal requests from the audience. Are there any from the audience? Anybody know of any postponements or withdrawals? Okay. Well, what I'm going to do is to go through the agenda. It's called sounding the agenda. We go through one time to see if primarily if the applicant is here, and secondly to see if there are any people in opposition. We take the uncontested applications first. They tend to go quicker, and we save those whose applications are contested to the end of the docket or the agenda. I'm sorry. Used to speaking in court. So the first item is 2016-21 Lex Properties, Inc. Is the applicant here, Mr. Walburn? Is there any opposition to Lex Properties, Inc.? All right. The second is 2016-28, Laura Browning. I'm sorry. I have a query merely. If you want to do it as an expedited, I would leave that to your discretion or the discretion of the applicant. I have a single query. On the Lex properties? Yes. Okay. I'm going to treat that as a no opposition. But I'll let you speak. That'll be fine. Thanks, Ms. Clark. Laura Browning is the applicant here. Okay. And is there any opposition to 2016-28 Laura Browning? No opposition that I see. The next item is 2016-26 Synchronicity Development, LLC. Is the applicant here? Mr. Murphy, is there any opposition to Synchronicity, Inc.? Seeing none. The next conditional use application is Christian Student Development 2016-27. Is the applicant present? Mr. Murphy again. Is there any opposition to Ms. Clark? A couple, three, four, five. Want to speak? Okay. Okay. we will put that towards the end of the docket the next application is 2016-14 Clay's Middle Baptist Church is applicant present thank you is there any opposition to Clay's Middle Baptist Church any opposition no opposition The next is 2016-22 Tony L. Sheets DVM. Applicant is here. Any opposition to Tony L. Sheets DVM? I see one. No? Yes? Is that opposition in the back? I can't hear you. Is that yes, opposition, or no opposition? Raise your hand if you're in opposition to Dr. Sheets. I don't see a hand. All right. Hearing none, seeing none. The next is 2016-24 St. Joseph Hospital. Did I miss one? Oh, sorry. I beg your pardon. I did miss one. The next one on the docket is 2016-23 Sharon Spots. Is the applicant here? Applicant is here. Is there any opposition to Sharon Spots' application? Seeing none. And the next is 2016-24 St. Joseph Hospital. Applicant is present. Any opposition? Seeing no opposition. The last one is 2016-25 Christian Academy of the Bluegrass. Is the applicant present? Yes. and is there any opposition? No opposition. Okay. So this will be pretty straightforward, I think. The first item on the docket uncontested is Lex Properties, LLC. Applicant representative, please come forward. Mr. Wahlberg. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board. jacob waubern on behalf of the applicant lex properties thank you we have read the staff's report we are in agreement with the conditions agreed to abide by them would like to take a moment to appreciate my our appreciation for the staff this was a postponed item last month we're very cooperative in getting things in a row for us so i wanted to express our appreciation to staff for working with us glad to hear it does the staff have any comments on this one none anybody on On the board, have questions or comments for Mr. Walburn? I have a question. Sure. I went out to see the property, and I saw there was a slab there, and I saw the width of the driveway. Is the slab new? It says that in our report that the side guard is being requested in order to move the residence. So there's a slab there. Right. And I guess my question is the width of the shared driveway. I believe it is 10 feet across, but it straddles the property line. The applicant actually controls both properties on either side. Pursuant to local law and actually state law, we have to execute an easement agreement, which we have done between those properties. So I think it's five on either side, but that requires moving of the house a little bit. So how long and how wide is the driveway going to be? The width of the driveway is a 10-foot wide driveway. The applicants are proposing that seven feet of that driveway would be on the subject property and three feet would be on the neighboring property which they own. The variance, the side yard variance is to the opposite side yard requirement in order to give the seven feet to build the driveway. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? I have a question. How many mature trees are we going to take down to build this driveway? I don't believe any. I think the site has already cleared. Staff can correct me. I did pull some overhead photos, but I don't believe that the driveway will consume any of the trees. There may be a couple along the rear property line. We do have a 2016 aerial photo of the subject property and the surrounding uses. We can put that on the overhead now. As we lighten up the image, the subject property is the vacant property that you can see construction is going underway. To the staff's knowledge, there is a tree line near the back of this property and other properties, as it shows on this. I'm unaware if those trees are still there today or not, but there's no reason with the applicant's proposed plan that those trees cannot remain. this property the rear yard of this property backs up to property owned by the university of kentucky and you can see other than the triangle of trees and vegetation there that that property is primarily a very large parking lot yep i saw that thank you jimmy any other questions for the applicant? I'll hear a motion. Mr. Chair, though I might regret this, I believe this is the one that Ms. Clark had. Oh, it is. I'm sorry. I beg your pardon. Ms. Clark? Don't let me get away with anything. Thank you, Mr. Walburn. I had spoken with Mr. Walburn at the time. Thank you. I simply have one query, and it's really both for the staff and the applicant, and the question is this. it's pretty plain that the other cars parked in the immediate vicinity that are used as comparanda to say that it would be needless hardship for the applicant not to have them too. It's clear that they must be non-conforming uses. They wouldn't conform to the present zone. It looks like there are four on each lot next door and so on. My question is simply, are they legally non-conforming uses or are they illegal? and I can't answer that question I think I can without doing research on the history of those particular building permits I do believe that the maximum parking requirements for infill and redevelopment lots I believe that went into effect in 2009 much of Colfax and those areas like that, many of them were developed prior to that. The development that you see on the properties next door with the shared driveway and the four parking spaces on each side, that was a very common practice before the current regulations. What did the regulations in 2009 change? Just curious. At that point in time, within the infill and redevelopment area, there were parking maximums were placed on properties. In this particular instance, the subject property, typically it's 50% more. So in a single family home, usually your minimum requirement is one and your maximum allowed is two. However, there are provisions in Article 16 that if you are on streets that somehow have restricted parking, you are allowed one extra parking space, which Colfax does have restricted parking on one side of the street. So this applicant and all other properties are allowed to have three parking spaces by right. They are asking for a variance to allow a fourth parking space on the subject property in this instance. the staff detailed in our in our staff report when you look at the micro vicinity of the subject property we did feel that the one extra parking space was justified considering the large parking lot the uk owns directly behind this and the fact that the properties two properties on either side of the subject property are are primarily parking i believe the photo kind of helps explain that But if you look at our recommendation for approval on that, the findings are very specific to this particular property. Yeah, I understand. And I understand this is one of the last, if not the last, piece of property on Colfax to which is asking for the relief from the zoning regs. It may not be the last one, but within this micro area, you can see that many of the properties have already been redeveloped. Mr. Edmonds, would them getting these four parking spaces, are they still allowed to request restricted parking spaces on the street? In the way, the mask is because I don't know. Is this going to alleviate any parking issues, or are they now going to have these four plus maybe two or four more on the street? The restricted parking in this instance is that the opposite side of Colfax is signed for no parking. So you can only park on one side of the street. the applicant's proposed plan would still allow some on-street parking, but that would be open to anyone who can legally park on the public street. Because I know when I was in the U.K., I lived on Montmolin, we had to get tags. Is this a restricted tag street? It is. So would these tenants be able to request restricted passes in addition to having the four spots so they could possibly have eight spots taken in the area? I believe that they can request the parking tag from the parking authority. I think the residency is the biggest thing that they look for. Okay. If I could speak to that briefly, this is a restricted parking street, much like South Hill is or other areas. Typically where you see a large influx of commuters, you want to keep commuters from eating up all of the parking that's needed for the residents, so you restrict it during certain times. They would qualify as residents, just under the blanket terms of the ordinance, to request that. However, one of the big things in student housing, I brought it up in front of the planning commission before, you typically need to have one space per bedroom in order to be able to rent your unit. That's what we're requesting the variance for. So while I can't say with certainty that there wouldn't be a request for a parking tag, it would be unnecessary for anyone who actually resided there because they would have a space per bedroom. That is what's driving the variance request from our perspective is it's tough to market a four-bedroom house with three parking spaces. Any other questions? Any other questions? I'll entertain a motion. Any motions? No motions? I make a motion that we approve V-2016-21 Lex Properties LLC's request for two variances, one to reduce the side yard from 5 feet to 3.5 feet in order to construct a residence with available room for a driveway, and two, to increase the maximum allowable parking in the infill and redevelopment area from three spaces to four spaces in a single-family residential R1E zone at 153 Colfax Street, Council District 3, based on staff's recommendations and subject to their following to their conditions. Thank you, Mr. Needham. Do I hear a second? I second his motion. Motion is seconded by Mr. Forrester. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Also opposed? Opposed. One opposed. Motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Walton. Thank you all. The next item is 2016 Days 28 Laura Browning. Applicant, come forward, please. Hello. Hello. Tell us your name, please. Laura Browning. Ms. Browning, have you read the staff report? I have. And do you agree with the recommendations of the staff? Yes, I do. Any questions on Ms. Browning? Does staff have any comments or questions? I'll entertain a motion. I move to approve V2016-28 Laura Browning's request for a variance to reduce the required side yard from 30 feet to 12 feet in order to construct an in-ground lap pool in a single-family residential R1D zone at 4429 Heartland Parkway. for the reasons recommended by staff and subject to three conditions outlined by staff. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, Ms. Whitman. Motion made and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Unanimous. Thank you, Ms. Browning. Good luck. The next item on the agenda is Synchronicity Development, Inc. is the applicant present. Please come forward, Mr. Murphy. I'm Dick Murphy. I'm pleased today to be representing Synchronicity Development, LLC. Jeff Morgan is with me on the first row. He is the developer of this. Adam Bender Saunders from CMW Architects is here. There he is. Our designer, CMW, has come up with the outstanding design for this building. And we are in agreement with the staff recommendation and conditions of approval. we got a letter of support from our next door neighbor just two hours ago and instead of me saying anything more I'm going to read one sentence from that letter in the middle of it this is from Mr. Maloney who owns the property me leads to the right and it joins us this will quickly transform a dormant maligned property into one that the great city of Lexington and its visitors will support and enjoy I can't say it any better than that so we'd be happy to answer any questions you all might have. Okay. Does staff have any comments? Does the board have any questions? What property does this... If you're looking at our property, this is immediately to the right, the antique store. Okay. And the other store next to that to the left of us is the Main and Rose project. This is the old A1A sandbar and grill. Okay. I think that has what, lock and lock in it is that building a couple of combo okay all right and we were approved we had to had to do a development plan on this we were approved last month at the planning commission subject to your all's approval of the drive-through facility and our front yard variance i would like to make one comment to the board before we vote in that um the downtown area we We do not have enough spaces for banks due to the fact that we do not have teller lanes available in most of the lots that are developable downtown. And so I'm going to – I plan on voting in favor of this because I think we need to have more access for our banks downtown. I agree as well. I'll entertain a motion. Unless there are any other comments. Any other comments by the board? When I read this, though, the bank is actually inside the parking garage? No, the bank is going to be inside the building on the first floor. The drive-thru portion is in the rear. Part of it is in the parking garage structure there. I think when he pulled out the plan here, how do people get out of the drive-thru? I mean, drive in and out the same way? All access is off Eastern Avenue. There's no access. We have no curb cuts on Main, which I think is what designers would request us to do. But it's all in and out of Eastern Avenue. In and out the same drive? I think, yes. Yes. Okay. Is that currently where the block and lot guys park? Yes. Okay. Are you going to write me, Mr. Angelou, see a parking space? So if you come in on the right side there, you have to go to the left and cross over. They're both two-way ramps. Come up to the microphone, if you would, and identify yourself again for us, please. My name is Jeff Morgan, and I'm the developer and builder. This is Adam Bender-Sonners with CMW. The ramp closest to Main Street goes downgrade and loads the first floor of the parking garage and accesses the drive-thru. I'm new at this. Right here. So this ramp here loads the first floor parking. This is the drive-thru right here. So you would have a, it's a very traditional drive-thru, so you'd have a teller window right here. with good visibility for your two lanes. And then you would leave the drive-through, come out, and go out, either toward Midland or toward Main. This here, this line really shouldn't be there. This loads the top floor of the deck. So you would go up in grade and load the top floor of the deck. It's not on this. Yes, there it is. so this would load the top floor. So it's second story parking. Exactly. Sure. And then you would leave out as well. It's two-way. I think the concern was, maybe CMW can answer this better, was that when you go down the ramp and turn left, you're crossing traffic, whatever traffic there might be coming out of that drive-through. Is that right? I mean, that's. No, it's going in. And you take a left. Going in, you take a left, and you cross any traffic coming down. So you come down the ramp, and you take a left to go into your drive-through. And you take a right, and you come back out. And really, the two uses from the inception of the project, the bank and the residential use really fit very well together. Because most of the residential parking is actually on the second floor. And then this would be some additional residential parking with the remaining being staffed for the bank. But the two uses fit very well together because when people go to work, the bank fires up and they go to work. But we've seen four iterations of this drive-through, and this really is working with traffic engineering. this is the most simple and best iteration of the drive-through to this point in the project. It's very simple. You come in and you leave. And these parking here, you think most of these people would be working for the bank and there would be no transitioning of these spots during the day. And then these people are probably gone because they've gone to work. Does that make sense? Do you have anything to add? That just seems to, I mean, what's the first 10 foot? Is that a VIP spot? This one right here? Yeah. That would be a VIP spot. That's correct. All right. And then that's where all the left turning's going in. I get it. So you're coming in? It seems like that's a tight turn with traffic coming the other way. But, you know, because you're crossing over, that's my only concern. I think it's fine inside. I don't really have a. We did use the program AutoTurn in order to check all these radii, and there is plenty of room. And we used a very large car, 17-foot long, or 19-foot long, 7-foot wide car to take these turns, just to look at the worst-case scenario. And it was able to navigate this parking lot with no problems. One of the things that we had trouble with is, obviously, there's building columns, and so we had to find a way for traffic to be able to safely navigate those building columns. But this plan works with using the auto turn program to analyze it. I think also with the low volume of traffic that's going to be on that floor of the garage, as Mr. Morgan mentioned, a lot of it's going to be bank employees who are going to be there all day, not coming and going. A few of it may be residents, but there's not a great number of spaces either. I don't foresee that there's going to be a great deal of conflict with the people coming in and turning left to use the drive-through window. Okay. Any other questions? Any comments by staff? Any questions by the members of the board? I will entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move that we approve CV-2016-26 Synchronicity Development LLC's request for a conditional use permit to construct and operate a drive-through facility for a bank, and a variance to reduce the minimum front yard to 8 feet in a downtown frame business B2A zone at 367, 375 East Main Street and 107, 111 Eastern Avenue, Council District 1, based upon the recommendations of staff in the report and subject to the conditions set forth therein. I'll say Mr. Gross. Thank you. Mr. Forrester, seconds. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Good luck. Thank you very much. The next item with no opposition is Clay's Mill Baptist Church 2016-14. Is the applicant present? Come forward, if you will, and identify yourself. My name is Jay Millian. I'm a Millian Architecture PLLC, and our client is the Clay's Mill Baptist Church. Mr. Millian, have you read the staff report? We have. And do you agree with the conditions? The church takes exception to a couple of the conditions. Pastor Jeff Fugit is here to discuss one of them. The first one I'd like to address is the first condition requiring that the underground detention parking spaces be placed before the 44 spaces are allowed to be constructed on the adjacent properties that we will consolidate with 3,000 Clay's Mill Road. we would submit to the board that the construction of those parking spaces and the investment that that will require in the property will present a financial hardship to the church in terms of the financial viability of the project. Mr. Chairman, I did speak with some neighbors that are here today. It's my understanding that they were concerned about this application, not in opposition if the applicant agreed to the recommended conditions. I'm trying to make sure that everybody gets their voice heard during today's hearing. Sure. And I think, did you have a short presentation or prepare to make some comments? I have a short presentation prepared should the board wish to have a full hearing on this application. Well, I think this was a case where there was no opposition, but you said there was some concern expressed. I think it would benefit the board to hear from you, from the staff, Mr. Emmons, if you would. Mr. Chair, should we hear any other unopposed applications and then come back to this one? What's the pleasure of the board? I'm prepared to hear Mr. Emmons now just to get this one over and done. How long will it take, Mr. Emmons? That really depends on the discussion. I believe that if you can read in our staff report, condition number three has five sub conditions to it that we believe that the timing of the construction of the 44-space overflow parking, and I believe that's what the applicants wish to further discuss, is not necessarily the overall staff report, but the timing conditions. We also wish to address an exception we take regarding the use of buses that are stored on our property currently and used as part of the ministry. Okay, hold on a second. There's some feedback. Hopefully that fixed it. Well, if there's going to be an extended discussion, let's postpone yours towards the end of the docket, if you don't mind, Mr. Billion. Very good. And we will take up the next one. Thank you. And we'll come back to you. So the next item on the docket is 2016-22 Tony L. Sheets DMV as the applicant present. Come forward if you would and identify yourself. I'm Tony Sheets and I'm just requesting to put a veterinary facility at 39 of Hemsdale Way. Thank you, Mr. Sheets. I think that microphone may be the one that's getting a little feedback. I'm not sure why. Who's the expert in the audience on audio here? Maybe separating, maybe turning off one of those microphones or separating them will help. Thanks. Hope that solved the problem. Is it Dr. Sheets? Yes, sir. Dr. Sheets, have you read the board report, and do you agree with the conditions in the report? I have. I do. Okay. Any questions, any comments by staff? Any questions from the board? my only comment is that you know i kind of agree with the with the board's review that um i don't really think it has any unless i was waiting if there was going to be some opposition here for this but uh i don't believe it has a negative impact on on the surrounding properties and it should work fine in that development i agree i will uh any other comments by board members I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move we approve C-2016-2220L Sheets DVM request a conditional use permit to establish a veterinary clinic, small animal hospital in a neighborhood business zone at 3090 Helmsdale Place Suite 220, based on the staff recommendations and the two conditions. Thank you, Mr. Forrester. Can you second? Second. Second. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. I agree. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Dr. Sheets. Good luck to you. Thank you. The next one is 2016-23 Sharon Spots. Is the applicant present? Come forward, please, ma'am. Thank you. Working her way from the back. Hello. I'm sharing spots. Spots, pull that microphone down towards you if you would so we can hear you. Okay. Have you read the staff report on your application? Yes. And do you agree with the four conditions that are listed there? Yes. Any comment by staff? No comment. Any questions by board members? No questions? Yes questions? No questions. I'll entertain a motion. I move to approve 2016-23 Sharon Spott's request for a conditional use permit for a home occupation, creating natural skin care products in a single-family residential R1C zone at 4712 Matthew Court for the reasons recommended by staff and subject to the four conditions outlined by staff. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. I second. Second. Thank you, Ms. Whitman. Second. all in favor say aye aye motion carried good luck to you miss spots and your skin looks lovely thank you All right, the next one is on the agenda is St. Joseph Hospital, 2016-24. A helipad. identify yourself if you would please. Yes sir. Mr. Chairman my name is Scott Southall I'm with CDP and I'm representing St. Joseph East Hospital. Any comments by staff about this application? Any questions by the board members? CEP CDP What does that refer to? I'm sorry. And that is your title? My title is Vice President for Sustainability. I'm a landscape architect and urban planner. CDP stands for Carter Dixon Partners. Gotcha. Okay. This looks like it's going to be a helipad right next to Richmond Road. Y'all have done traffic studies or flight patterns and such for helicopters and things. Sir, we have reviewed this with one of the services that would be providing the air ambulance service, and they have selected this as a probable location. In the staff report, they have suggested that we have with it up to 50 feet for moving the helipad around from its current location to accommodate any FAA or transportation cabinet's request. But we also will have a specialist on staff, part of our design team, that will go through the FAA and KYTC permitting process. Okay. Currently, there's not a helicopter service for that facility. Is that correct? Currently, there is not a helicopter service for this facility. And in our report, there are two primary activities at the hospital that have accreditations, both for the cath lab and for the mother baby, that in their accreditation, one of the criteria is to have a helistop. Would this be the closest helipad in the city to kind of eastern Kentucky, if this were to go in? I cannot say for absolute sure, but I would say for probability. Right now, services are going to either UK, Central Baptist, or St. Joe's main hospital on Harrodsburg Road, and they would be flying over this location. Okay. Any questions, any comments by the staff? Any questions by, any other questions by board members? I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move we approve C-2016-24 St. Joseph Hospital requests a conditional use permit to construct a hello stop in a professional office P1 zone at 150 North Eagle Creek Drive, based on the staff recommendations and the three conditions. Thank you, Mr. Forrester. Second? Second. Second. Thank you, Ms. Whitman. all in favor say aye aye any opposed hearing none motion carries good luck to you Mr. Southwell thank you very much the next item on the agenda is C 2016 H25 Christian Academy of the Bluegrass Inc. is applicant present Mr. Murphy Mr. Chairman Dick Murphy here representing Christian Academy of the Bluegrass, which is a new Christian-affiliated school which is going into Lexington. Mr. Terry Carter is with me, who's one of the founding board members of Christian Academy of the Bluegrass. And staff has recommended approval. I don't think we have any opposition. We'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. We, of course, agree to the conditions proposed by the staff. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Does staff have any comments? Any additional comments to the report? Any questions from board members about Christian Academy of the Bluegrass application? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion. I make a motion that we approve C-2016-25 Christian Academy of the Bluegrass Incorporated. request of a conditional use permit to establish a school for academic instruction in a single-family residential R1C and a townhouse residential R1T zone at 549 Parkside Drive, Council District 6, based on staff's recommendations and subject to their conditions. Thank you, Mr. Needham. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Good luck to you all. Since we started the conversation with Christian Student Fellowship, I want to return to that one, if we can, simply because I thought it was going to be unopposed, but we had comments and such. I'm sorry. Clay's Mill. I'm sorry, Clay's Mill. Yes, sir. Mr. Million, if you'll come back up. We'll give the staff just a moment. We have received several letters for this one. I have copies for the board members. I'll pass those out now. And if you'll give us just a minute to take a look at those written documents, we'll be with you shortly. If I could point out, Mr. Chairman, in the course of reading those letters, our initial application to this body requested the opening of Knoll Court which is a dead-end street that joins our property. Since our initial filing we have found that that was closed by action of the council and therefore we withdrew that on our subsequent application. Many of those letters may be addressing that and I wanted to make clear that that is not a part of our petition to this board at this time. Thank you. If the board would like me to, I could do my presentation while you're looking at those, or do you want me to wait? Well, just give us a second. It's hard to read and listen at the same time. Two ears, but one brain. And I'm not of that generation that pretends to multitask or be able to multitask. Thank you. And we'll be ready. Okay, Mr. Emmons, you got some comments? Yes, sir, if I can. I believe I can. I've got a quick presentation that highlights the staff report for this. This property is located at 3000 Clays Mill Road. There are also two properties at 509 and 513 Andrea Drive that are a part of the application. This is a conditional use application for church expansion for the Clay's Middle Baptist Church. If I can, just an overview of the subject property. As we bring it into focus, the primary main campus, as referred to in our staff report, is at 3000 Clays Mill Avenue. And the applicants are also proposed, they also own 509 and 513 Andrea Drive and propose to have some uses on that. The applicants revised submission with their revised development plan. There are essentially several things going on on this staff report. Once again, to kind of keep the color scheme the same, there's the main campus at 3,000 Clay's Mill and the two residential properties at 5,09 and 5,13. Kind of the first thing that is proposed is that there is an existing building that will be demolished and new parking area that will be put in its place at the front of the property. They are proposing a new sanctuary that would be just over 15,000 square feet, a one-story building. and they are proposing on this plan an expansion of the existing parking on the main campus at 3000 Clays Mill Road. There is also a parking lot, a 44-space parking lot on the backyards of the two Andrea Drive properties. That will probably be the focus of the discussion today. And as mentioned earlier, the original application did have an access to Noel Court. The revised application does not. That is not a part of today's application in front of you. Also, once again, go back looking at the aerial photograph, just using the same. You can see in real life, these are also using our 2016. aerial photographs. There is the building that will be demolished in place of for the new parking area. The new sanctuary will be going in this area. There will be some buildings that are demolished. All in all, there will be less square footage of overall buildings on the subject property after everything is said and done. There is an area that is in the rear that is a green space right now that is being used for on-the-ground detention for stormwater. That is proposed for increased parking. And then finally, the area in the backyards of 509 and 513 Andrea Drive that will be the 44-space overflow parking lot. Included in the revised application, the The church does recommend, they do propose to use those two properties as either parish houses, Sunday school, or church offices, a church use. In our original staff report, staff questioned if those remained just residential properties. was there, we brought up the threshold issue of is there even a church use on those properties where they were proposing to put the parking lot in the rear. Once again, that's the null court access that will remain barricaded. The staff is recommending approval. As you break down all of the different things that they're asking for, We do feel on the main campus that it is appropriate for the expansion of the sanctuary and the expansion of the parking that they're requesting. The staff's biggest concern is the expansion of the church onto Andrea Drive. other than changing the uses that those two houses are going to be, there's really no physical change between the current submittal and the original submittal when the staff expressed concern about that. Being as such, with the change in the proposed use, the staff does think that we are recommending approval of the church's expansion onto Andrea Drive, But we only think that it's appropriate if the timing of that expansion onto those properties on Andrea Drive after five things occur. So that's expressed in condition number three on your staff report and in the agenda for the 44-space overflow parking area. And we are recommending five timing restrictions. The first is that all of the available parking on the main campus is to be constructed before it's expanded onto Andrea Drive. The next is that the residences at 509 and 513 Andrea Drive are to be utilized for a church use. Next, the staff is recommending that those properties be consolidated with the main campus property. And the staff is also recommending that 22 of the buses on the property be removed. The question on 22 buses is because a parking space, a typical bus takes up two parking spaces. They're proposing a 44-space parking lot. And the staff is also recommending additional screening of that parking area above and beyond the typical vehicular use area screening. Staff believes that if all five of those conditions are met, that the applicant will have exhausted their growth potential on their main campus and that the church has done everything that it can do to reduce and mitigate any adverse impacts that they would have about expanding onto Andrea Drive and that it's necessary for the function and continuing ministry of the church. So staff is recommending approval, and I believe that it's the timing restrictions that the applicant and possibly the neighbors would want to discuss with you today. I do have a question, Mr. Emmons, about 4D. Just to make sure I understand the condition. I'm sorry, 3D. Yes, sir. What, as I read the condition, is that the church has reduced the bus fleet parking at this location by 22 buses? Is that from another number to 22? In the staff's review, we found during our initial review of this property that there were anywhere from 17 to 25 buses regularly parked on the subject property. The most recent 2016 aerials, which were not available when we were originally reviewing this application, I believe we counted 28 buses on the day that the aerial photograph was flown. So there's 20-some buses on the subject property. And as the staff noted, that that is an atypical amount of church buses, that most churches do not have that type of buses or that number of buses on the property. The staff is not recommending that the buses be removed from the property at this time. However, we do feel that it's appropriate that if this church is going to expand onto Andrea Drive, that they do everything possible to mitigate the negative effects of bringing that church use onto that residential character of Andrea Drive. So are you saying that, just to make sure I understand the language, are you saying that the maximum number of buses that should park is 22? No, we feel that the maximum number of buses that should regularly be parked at this location is three, which is more typical of a church in a residential zone. Sure. So with a maximum of three, and so they're keeping 25 or so down, you suggest this condition would limit it to three buses regularly parked and stored on the site? That was the intention. At the time that the staff report was written, it was under the assumption that they had 25 buses. Okay. Mr. Edmonds, are, can those, are we, should we be concerned whether or not buses will be parked on the Andrea or is the turn radius too small? I don't know if buses will be able to easily maneuver. If I can flip this one more time, I've got the applicants. I believe that they could drive back in there looking at those radius, but I don't know if it's advisable. It's more likely that they would be parked in the larger parking area of Clay's Mill. I can say it's not the intention of the applicant to park the buses on the Andrea parking lot that's proposed. I would hope not for the sake of those neighbors that are right next door to you on either side of Andrea Drive. We still feel that the overflow parking area itself is out of character with the other residential properties that are in the general vicinity. None of the other residential properties have parking lots in their backyards. However, if this were church use, that's kind of where we were going. The biggest concern of the staff is the expansion onto Andrea Drive. However, we feel that if these things occur, then the church has proven that they have grown to their maximum extent on their main campus and that it's necessary for them to come out onto Andrea Drive, and that in this case they would have done everything they can do to mitigate those potential negative effects. Mr. Chairman, if I could ask that Stan Lee be recognized as counsel to the applicant and could address this issue a little further. We'll get to you in a second here. We've got some questions for Mr. Emmons. Mr. Simmons, how many parking spaces are currently at the facility? By the staff's count, the site currently has 272 parking spaces. And they'll have, ignoring the expansion area, how many will they have when they're done? If they were to build everything on the main campus, they should have 360 parking spaces, which would be about 120 additional parking spaces over and above the minimum requirements of the zoning ordinance. And the building square footage is actually being reduced, the building square footage? Overall, there will be about 4% less square footage of buildings on this site than there is today. Okay. It's a minor reduction. just so i understand so just to finish his uh couple questions when if we if you build the current one store or you want to add the existing one-story building and you take down say you don't even remove the building uh in the front where you propose the 16 spaces you don't lose any parking spaces, correct? And you still have 160 additional? For the staff's count, we were assuming that the main campus is built as proposed. So that 160 additional parking spaces includes the teardown and build of the new parking spaces. I believe there's about 40. I'd have to go back and look. The front parking lot that is for the existing 46, I think it says. I think it's about 40 spaces. So it would still meet the minimum requirement even if they did not build that. Is there any kind of water control being put on the property? They would be required to. The plan, if it were built out to the full extent that they're proposing, would require vault detention, underground detention. Could we go back to the overhead so that we could have a visual for the... Let me go back to one that... That shows that overhead. I think the green space that's there now is going to be gone. No. No cordon. Because we can see the buses parked there. Yes. And then the green space behind those buses... Is proposed to be parked. Is proposed to be parking. And then the green space beside that as well? Yes. But I think the vault parking is the same that we approved for the church over around Southview a few months ago. The vault storage. The vault storage. So that's where they put it. Underground? Underground? Mm-hmm. Is that, I mean, is there vault storage in their plans, in their application? Or is it just? On the two-dimensional site plan that they've submitted, in order to meet the stormwater requirements of the engineering manuals, it would require the vault detention. So that's kind of inherent in their application. Okay. Would that solve the problem of the standing water, which was raised by many of these letters that we got commenting on the application? I don't know if it would or would not solve the problem. I would defer all of the stormwater questions to our Division of Engineering. I guess the question is whether or not it resolves, but at least it doesn't acerbate the problem. Exactly. That's the main point, is that if it's done according to our engineering manuals, they cannot make the problem worse. Okay. Is that engineering, is that a fair comment on? Yes, that's correct. They wouldn't be able to make the current situation worse. and any additional square footage that they made impervious on the site, they would have to account for that and additional storage as well. Okay. So would they have to get approval from engineering? Is engineering going to have to sign off on the construction? Is that the question? Yes, we would. Okay. All right. Any other questions to Mr. Emmons at this point? This concludes my prepared remarks. I'll be available throughout your hearing if you have any questions. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Emmons. And Mr. Millian, back to you. You had concerns about the staff's conditions, I think. Is that right? We did. And briefly, if I could address this and then Stan Lee, who is here as counsel for the applicant, the number of spaces that is required for the 1,200-seat sanctuary, as we are proposing, are already met on our property as designed without the expansion into the green space, which is now above-ground detention. Our proposal, our application, is to construct that portion of our project eventually as our church grows beyond the parking that we have. I would point out to the council, or to the board, that the construction of underground vault detention is very expensive construction. and our application to do that is for our future growth and not necessarily the order in which we would like to proceed with the project. So the recommendation or the requirement of the staff that that be constructed prior to the 44 spaces on Dandrea Drive presents a hardship to our client because the investment, a significant investment, to gain those parking spaces is not really reflected in the value of the property as it appraises and is allowed to be financed for the project. So while we have applied to expand our parking in this area in a vaulted, engineered, responsible manner, we would not like to be required to do that in order as a condition of the other points in the application. You don't want to be required to do the responsible engineering for water retention first? first. I presume that the applicant doesn't want to have standing water on their property. Is that a fair statement? That's correct. And so if you so which part do you object to doing first? Because I didn't see any specific water retention conditions in the staff report. The requirement that we construct the underground detention and the rear parking prior to the expansion of the 44 spaces on Andrea Drive. It's what we take exception to. That would be condition 3A on the staff's recommendation. We would like to be able to construct the less expensive 44 spaces on Andrea Drive in order to maximize our parking initially with our initial project to construct the 1,200-seat sanctuary. That parking expands beyond the requirement of the city for parking, the minimum parking space is required for those, that number of seats. Yes, sir. Mr. Lee, identify yourself if you would, please. My name is Stan Lee, and I'm here on behalf of the church, Clays and Monroe Baptist Church, and I certainly appreciate the opportunity to address your Chairman Glover and the entire board. Appreciate all the work you do. Volunteer board work is tough. I know a little bit about that. And I certainly want to thank the staff for all the work they did. And I'd like to, again, thank them and point out that they did recommend approval of this. And I think the only concerns that we have on behalf of the church are basically twofold. One, the timing issue on doing the other parking spots before we do the 44 spots on the two property zone on Andrea Drive. Mr. Million touched on that, and I wanted to touch on that as well. And then the second thing I'd like to touch on with the board's permission is the issue with the buses. I think, in our school. Before you mention the buses, just to make sure I understand what the staff is proposing, is it the site plan of 427-16 that contains the expensive water retention plan? Say again. Is it the – it looks to me, and that's why I'm asking for information, that the church's objection, Mr. Million, you can probably explain this. It's not an objection. It's a timing issue. I think that's something that we're agreeable to doing, but that's, quite frankly, going to be probably the most expensive part of the project, as I understand it. And it could put the project in jeopardy, the total overall project in jeopardy, and that raises some issues that we could get to. The real need... Before you get there, is the expensive part contained in the site plan of April 27th? Is that okay? Just to make sure I understand that we're talking about the same thing. Mr. Emmons to confirm that the construction that we are proposing would add no additional water runoff burden to the property. The point being, we're not adding any impervious material. Therefore, the above-ground detention as is currently in place should be adequate to handle the work that we're doing. I think we did understand that. Okay. But we also have before us letters and photographs of standing water on the property. So we're concerned about that as well as part of the application. So, yeah. With that clarification, Mr. Lee, go ahead. Well, again, with respect to that condition number, I guess it's 3A, and requiring that to be done before the church can use the 44 spots on the two pieces of property, again, as I've indicated, that could potentially jeopardize the entire project, which we think is problematic, considering the fact that staff has recommended it and it would seem to make more sense, obviously, and from my client's standpoint, to be able to do those least expensive spots first because this is a question where they do need the parking. It's not like they don't need the parking. I go there, I tend there often. They do need it, and they do need to expand the sanctuary, and by expanding the sanctuary, it's why they need additional parts, even though they're going to lower the overall footprint of buildings on the site, they're going to have a bigger sanctuary building, which would necessitate more parking. But requiring that condition as a precondition to getting to the 44 spots, we believe, jeopardizes that and quite frankly believes it gets to the point where it might violate certain statutes and I think constitutional rights, quite frankly, of the church and its members, which ties into the second issue I want to address is the buses. I think that factually there's just been a misunderstanding. If you read the report and the recommendations, the implication is given is that because there are 25 or 28 buses that are there, that are parked there, that there's a perception that there's not enough parking. The fact is, is those buses are moved anyway. They're not there when services are conducted at the church. They are moved, so they wouldn't be there. This is not a perceived parking problem. It's a very legitimate and real parking problem. I would invite anyone to come by on any Sunday and see. It's very legitimate, and on Sundays they have to run at least two services right now, and this would help in that regard. But the bus ministry, and, again, if you read the staff's report, and I appreciate what they've done. They've obviously done a lot of work into that particular Mr. Emmons. but I think it doesn't understand that these buses are more than just buses. These are more than just vehicles used to transport people. These are a vital and important part of this church's mission and ministry. They run a church bus ministry, and quite frankly, they are a national model. People come from all over the country every year to study how Clay's Mill Road Baptist Church runs its church bus ministry, And on any given Sunday, they go out and they pick up anywhere between 750 and maybe 1,000, sometimes 1,100 inner-city youth and bring them to church. And for a lot of these children, this is the only time, quite frankly, they even feel safe all week long. This is the only time for a lot of them that any of them feel loved. And they get a warm meal, and they get taught the Word of God, and they're shown that they're valuable. and the church has people who are on staff now who were reached from this ministry. So when there's a comment in the report that this is not like other churches, it may not be like other churches, but it is very much a church ministry. And to say that the church, when they're not having services, couldn't put those buses there, just store them when they're not having services on Wednesday night and on Sundays, I believe does run afoul of the religious land use, the RELUPA statute. I had an opportunity just last night to consult with what I discovered was a national, or who I discovered as a national expert on this issue. One of my new law partners introduced me to him. He actually wrote the book. He actually wrote a book on litigating these cases. And I explained these facts to him, and he said he believed that there probably would be a problem there, a violation of this statute that I believe would put the church and its members in a bad situation where they may not have any other alternatives but to look to the court. Nobody wants to do that, nobody whatsoever. He reminded me that there was a case recently up in Michigan. It was called Lighthouse v. City of Southfield, where the city had attempted to oppose certain parking restrictions on a religious institution, and the court for the Eastern District of Michigan said, no, you can't do that. That violates the statute. And then, Chairman, just this week, the Sixth Circuit ruled on a similar case. A tree of life case was the name of it on Wednesday. Again, it ruled that a locality can run afoul and did run afoul of the RELUPA statute by imposing unreasonable restrictions that cause a substantial burden on the religious liberty of the institution in that case. So we believe that requiring the church buses to be removed and then only have three buses because, quote, that's what other more normal churches may have, I think that that's a pretty clear violation of that statute. Moreover, I think it probably violates First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and I have little doubt that it violates the Kentucky Constitution and the Kentucky Religious Liberty statute that we passed several years ago. So when you look at that and then the other requirement to do the most expensive part of the project first jeopardizes the whole project. And there's a concern that that violates that statute and the rights of the members of this church. And we would ask the board to take that into consideration. Again, the staff has recommended approval for this project. and we would ask that the board would favorably look on this application. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lee. Yes. Do any board member have any questions for Mr. Lee? Mr. Emmons, any comments to Mr. Lee's comments? not at this time um staff would like to hear if there's any other comments from the audience and if you will allow us to make our closing remarks at the end sure mr minion go ahead mr chairman you noted that you had photos with the letters of standing water in the detention right and i would like to ask the engineering be consulted on this but i would point out to the board that the purpose of detention is to catch the rainwater runoff from the impervious material, in this case being our parking lot in our buildings, and hold that water so that it seeps into the stormwater system at a slower rate and does not then flood the stormwater system. If there are photographs of our detention pond holding water, that is by design. So I wanted point that out we've got photographs showing water in the detention basin after a heavy rainstorm that would be expected let me take a look see what the photographs show because i i know i i know we saw several in the uh in the package the photographs that i remember were standing water in the parking lot so uh mr chairman if i could do you have the original photos what we have is a xerox copy that you cannot make heads or tails out of yeah it's the best uh it's the best copies we've got i i suppose we've got the best thing may i approach and see one because once we got Yeah, I'd be happy to see it. Okay, good. Yeah, let's put some of those up on the screen if we've got them available. That appears, Mr. Chairman, to be a bit of a berm that exists underneath the guardrail that was installed in 1999 by action of the council. But if there's a berm underneath that guardrail, as I perceive it, that would be blocking entrance of that water into the detention basin, which is lower than the base of that guardrail. Do you recognize this, Pastor? That's Noel Court going to Stone Road. So this is the far end of Noel Court at Stone Road. That's a little block away from our property. Is that Noel Court looking? So that wouldn't be water blocking going into detention base, and that would be water over far end of the street. Yes. When were these photographs taken? Do we know? They were received on, looks like, April 25th, according to the photograph. This appears to be water at the intersection of Knoll Court and Andrea Drive. Am I correct, Pastor? Is that... Which is several hundred feet from our property. That's not on your property. Has the water issue been an issue in the past? We've received a lot more rain in the last few weeks. Has the water issue been an issue in the past? Or is this coming up now because of all of the rain we received in the last few weeks? The property falls back to the detention basin naturally. It sheet drains to the detention basin. There's not storm catch basins that then defer it to the detention basin. So we have not experienced any problems that we're aware of. However, I don't know that the church is commonly on Knoll Court because it doesn't connect to our property, and it's the long way around the block to get back there. But we don't know of instances where the detention basin has overflowed. I can say that, Pastor. Sure. That detention basin was installed to address this issue when the church last expanded it. It was engineered to be as it is now. Over time, detention basins tend to pick up debris and things like that. and they have grass growing in them that blocks entrance of water, but we don't know of the detention basin failing by design. Okay. Didn't we hear that there's any detention basin, there has to be a maintenance schedule at some point that it would fill up? I think that was best practices that was discussed a few sessions ago, but I'm not 100% certain that it's mandated that it be cleaned out. Right. Engineering may know. And if it's a basin, it's going to hold? Yeah, it's the property owner's responsibility to maintain the basin. The church does mow the basin and keep it in. Okay. And the retention basin, as I understand, is simply a lower green space area that is designed to catch excess water that comes from the watershed, collects it, allows it to seep into the soil to allow the slower acceptance of surface water into the ground. Well, it looks to me like the issues kind of before us are twofold. Number one, do we approve the project on the main property that's currently being used as a church? And then number two, are we going to approve parking in a backyard? and then we're going to make the parking in the backyard come after they've maximized their parking in their main property. And as I understand it, that's the intent of the word after in condition number three. Am I reading that correctly? That's my understanding, Mr. Emmons. Oh, sorry. The understanding is that the reason that the term after is in there is that the staff recommends that the applicant maximize its parking on its main property before we convert the residential lots into a parking lot. You have very accurately depicted the staff's position. I think that's a reasonable position to take. I agree. I don't think that's an unusual request to maximize the space that you have on the original site before you move parking into the plant, proposed overflow parking area. Mr. Lee? Well, I would offer, Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen of the board, that they have done that. They've done everything they can do. to do that. And part of that was to purchase those properties, which the church has done, and the church does own that property, and the church is willing to put that, make that all part of their one property boundary, which is suggested by the, or is recommended by the staff. The only issue we have is that by requiring the most important or the most expensive part of putting in that underground vault, which is going to be exceedingly expensive, that that could jeopardize the whole project. And what we're proposing is that we be allowed to use that overflow parking now on property they already own. We'll put up the fencing that is recommended by the staff and then move forward after that, which would not jeopardize the whole project. But really putting that as a primary and a first requirement jeopardizes the whole project financially and I believe that it probably runs afile of the federal statute I alluded to, or not alluded to, identified. Which federal statute was that? The Verlupas statute. Thank you. But the other issue is it's just a timing issue and a financial issue that could jeopardize the whole project. And we would request that the board take that into consideration and either allow a reordering of those conditions and the deletion of the removal of the buses. Mr. Lee, has your client and staff had an opportunity to talk at length about your suggestions for these conditions? These conditions, the board, the planning staff. Have you all had a chance to discuss your suggestions? Mr. Edmund was kind enough to call me back the other day, and we did have a good discussion about this. But I think as any good author has, he has pride in his authorship and the proposal and his recommendations, and I appreciate that. I don't think maybe staff fully understood the church bus issue, but we just disagree on that. Well, I mean, I think it seems to me that there's some room on both issues, both the order of the construction and the parking issue for buses that could be resolved through further conversation. And I don't know if you all have fully explored that yet. That's what I was asking. Well, I think we've made some efforts with respect to trying to put these buses, park them temporarily on other locations. We have done that. As the board may be aware, the church also owns a college out on Bursells Road, where there's plenty of room to park these buses when they're not being used. And I didn't bring that up here with me, but the city has said that they didn't want the church to park buses on the Bible college that it owns on Vercels Road. So certainly if we could work through that on another issue, I think that might go a long way to alleviating at least item 3D on here. Mr. Lee, would your client be agreeable to moving this to the next board meeting so that you and the city could possibly work on those couple issues? Unfortunately, if we were to vote down the application, you have to wait a whole year before you can refile. Well, that's probably true on the filing, but as I understand, the procedure next will be an appeal directly to circuit court. Well, yes, that's true, but what's being suggested to you is that would you be willing to continue the hearing of this application for a month so you can have further discussions with staff to see if you can reach some kind of compromise on the disagreement that you all have with the staff report and recommendations? I, well, with due consideration, Mr. Chairman, I would just ask if we could maybe take about a two-minute recess and let me consult with them on that issue. It was our intent today, because this has been put off a number of times, to get a vote today. Hopefully and obviously we want a vote of approval taking care of those two other conditions. but if you would allow us just a couple of seconds or at least a couple of minutes. I think it's probably appropriate since we've been going for an hour and a half that we take about a five-minute recess, allow us to stretch our legs and such, and if you want to consult with your folks during that time, that would be appropriate. And I think the suggestion is being made for our continuance until next month to avoid what you're suggesting might happen. So you might consider that as well. And so we'll stand in recess for five minutes. Let's reconvene the Board of Adjustment hearing. and let's see, I guess Mr. Lee we were asking you if you would agree to a 30 day continuance of the case, what have you determined? Well I think we've had some discussions with staff about at least one of the conditions. I'd like to hear that proposal and he was about to tell us, I think I told the members of the board we were ready perhaps before we were. I think they where they have a recommendation on one of the conditions and maybe some additional discussion on the other. I'd like the board to hear that. Well, I think, I guess we can hear from staff about that. Mr. Emmons? I can go ahead and discuss that now. Now, on item 3D in particular about the church has reduced the bus fleet parking by the 22 buses, based off of the evidence that was presented today by the applicant and no evidence presented to the contrary, the staff would understand if we deleted item 3D. However, on the topic of buses in general, there are a lot of buses there, and the staff was having a very brief conversation with the applicant about considering a bus management plan to try and park the buses in such a way that they are the least intrusive to the neighborhood so that they are not parked along edges of property and near residential properties and things of that nature. We do not have any specific recommendation on any sort of bus management plan on the fly or of that matter. But we were trying to briefly discuss that with the staff based off of the as far as 3D. Okay. Do you think you need any language as far as unobtrusive bus parking as a condition on this application or not? I don't have any language. I didn't hear what you said. What staff has recommended is deleting 3D as a condition, 3D. Okay. But they also express some concern about efficient and unobtrusive parking of the buses on your property. I don't think that'll be an issue. I think we can work with them on that. I believe if the board were looking for a condition, if you wanted to replace D, something along the lines of that the applicant will submit to the staff a bus management plan to show the least intrusive parking of the buses on the property. prior to the prior to the, we still believe that it would be a condition that should be met before the 44 space overflow parking is constructed. As far as 3A, the other condition that was discussed at length, the staff does believe that that is an important part of our recommendation. If in our first staff report in the original application, the staff had said that we would recommend disapproval of the 44 parking spaces because it was inappropriate. It was only after the applicant had revised their application to bring a church use, and they were proposing church uses in the two residential lots, that the staff then accommodated that proposed growth with the conditions that we felt were appropriate. So I don't know that we'll be able to. Staff understands if the board doesn't agree with the staff on 3A. But I think that's a key factor in our recommendation. Okay. Mr. Lee? I didn't get to hear all of that, but I got to hear the – I believe I heard the gist of it. If it's the board's pleasure to take a vote today, I think if the staff's recommendation is acceptable to the board to delete D and then we propose a bus management, I try to write it down, abatement or less intrusive plan, something to that effect, then I'm told that we will withdraw our opposition to item 3A in order to have a vote today. Okay. That sounds reasonable. I guess that means that brief recess we had was productive, and I'm glad to hear that because we've inconvenienced everybody else in the room by doing that. So is there anybody else who wishes to speak on this issue in the audience who has not been heard to date? Any other comments from any? Yes, sir. Come forward, please, and tell us your name. I'm Marvin Rexroad. I live at 501 Andrea Drive. That's the corner of Andrea Drive and Noel Court. I moved here in 2012 and in so doing from Vienna, West Virginia, I sit on a board similar to you in Vienna and understand the things you're going through. And I appreciate the work that you do because I know what it is and I appreciate the staff and their work. And also congratulate the Blaise Mill for increasing their attendance. It's great. The concern that we had on the L Court in Andrew Drive is the detention pond. And when I looked at this plat that came in the mail, I said, well, who in the heck drew it up? They don't show a detention pond. And I thought, that's a must because from the, if you put the video back up of the properties, could you do that? Yeah, this one. Yeah, that one. You want to see the site plan, is that right? Site plan, yes. Okay. Yes. the property which is composed of approximately five and fourth acres, five and third acres, from this point down is quite an elevation change. Is it which? Elevation change. It runs to this. And the detention area that is in place now is a must. If not, the homes on the east side of Noel Court have a great chance to be flooded, without question. This house here, you go over the curb, you're actually at almost the level of their garage and family room. The next house, next two houses, the crawl space is actually lower than the street. And so with the amount of water that's going to exit this property, it is all paved. And, of course, the new roof, it's not going to receive any water either. So everything comes down here. I think they're proposing the vault retention. Yes. I really don't think it's needed. I think the detention pond they have there now is quite adequate. And if you'll look at... I think they want to expand their parking into that retention... I don't know that it's needed. The reason, there's very few spaces here. There's a road here, and the detention pond is here. So they're only going to be gaining about 44 spaces there. Approximately. And why would you go to that expense when you're already in excess of the number required? And I don't see, you know, if I'm on that board of the church, if you have a board, why would we be spending that kind of money to put in an underground vault to gain like 44 slots? It just doesn't make money sense to me. But anyway, the other concern I had was on this. My property is right here. This property slopes this direction. With this parking spot that they wanted to incorporate, I don't know how the excess water is going to be. Because remember, we're talking 250-some feet, 57 feet by 90 paved. A lot of water's coming off in rain. Not only that, their own property, his son lives here, his mother lives here, is in jeopardy of being flooded. And so, plus, it runs this way. The Marshall property, they have a great chance to catch water. Water is a big concern. It was a big concern of our neighborhood. and with a new Elk Court. And if you go out there on hard rain, it gushes into that retention pond. And so when I looked at this, I said, I can't believe that the engineer has not indicated that there's going to be some type of retention pond maintained. And in doing so with redoing the parking lot, I think lighting needs to be addressed, too. I'm sure the homeowners on Neal Drive don't need night lights at night to go to the bathroom because of the way the lighting is now. That lighting needs to be addressed as a downlight and not interference lighting. And I think that needs to be looked at by the board. Any questions? Any questions of Mr. Rickstraw? Maybe that engineering can confirm, is there a detention pond for the 44 spaces that are being proposed? I can speak to that somewhat. They won't be able to increase the runoff from their property because of this development. But I don't know why they need to add just that expense of an underground vault to gain 44 spots. Yeah, I think that's more at their discretion. Yeah, that's a question for the applicant, I think. And because of that, they're going to intrude into Andrea Drive with parking they don't need. I think Mr. Neiman's question was on the 44 expansion spaces, how the water was going to be addressed. And then also I guess we have a question about lighting on adjacent properties. And so I'm not sure who could address those issues for. The lighting on that 44 that they're going to put in, that needs to be addressed. And since I know any time that you get in the building business, which I was in at one time, once you start redoing things, you've got to make it all come under code. And that's where I think the lighting of the parking lot needs to be addressed. The big parking lot. Okay. And I can respond to that. Mr. Million. The runoff calculations for the additional 44 spaces will be engineered into the underground detention, the vault detention that we will be installing at the rear of the property. There will not be any additional runoff as a result of that. I understand that. As far as lighting, the lighting will be code compliant and meet the minimum requirements for foot candles in the parking lot. And in terms of the light pollution, we will address that in accordance with the city requirements. I'm sure that it affects more NOEL than it does ANRIA, because NOEL is the way it's located in the size of the lot on ANRIA. Thank you, Mr. Rickstraw. Any other questions? Any other comments? Anybody else wish to testify about this uncontested application? Any other questions from the board? Any comments from staff? Mr. Emmons. We can put up on the board now. We did come up with a proposed language for the board to consider for a new 3D on the listed conditions. That would read that a bus management plan shall be submitted, which addresses parking of the buses to provide for the least impact to the surrounding neighborhood. I did have a moment to briefly run this by the applicants. I believe that they would be agreeable to such a condition. I'll let them speak for themselves. Okay. And do you all agree? I see nodding of faces. We do agree to that condition. Okay. All right. Good. And so, therefore, any other questions about board members to anybody else? I'll, if not. I do have questions. If we're changing this 3D, can we add the fourth that addresses the lighting, the parking lot lighting? I have one drafted that I'll be glad to put on the overhead for the board. Thank you. And for that. And you'll probably have to read it. Yes, sir. My printing's rather small. F would be any lighting of the parking lot shall be shielded, such as a shoebox design, to direct light downward. We accept that condition. Sure, sir. Condition of lighting or existing lighting. We should probably consider that right now. I mean, we'd be agreeable to have additional lining, but conditional lining, I mean, that's already been approved. The existing has. The parking lot's currently lit? Yes. And it's not of a shoebox design? I don't believe it is. I don't believe it would meet the current standard of what's called shoebox. We'd be agreeable for additional lining, for that condition. How about additional or replacement? Yes, certainly. Okay? I'll make that edit and put it up there for the board. Okay. With those changes, it would be nice to have a comprehensive motion so we can move on. Mr. Gross, do I hear a motion? Yes, Mr. Chair. I move that we approve C-2016-14 Clays Mill Baptist Church request for a conditional use permit to construct a new sanctuary and add to the existing parking in a single-family residential R-1B zone at 3000 Clays Mill Road and 509 and 513 Andrea Drive in Council District 10. based upon the staff's recommendations of approval and the testimony we heard today and subject to the recommendations in the report provided condition 3D as presented shall be amended to what the staff and the applicant have agreed to. And then we shall also add a condition 3F that will address the lighting as the staff and the applicant have agreed to at this hearing. Thank you, Mr. Gross. Do I hear a second? I'll second. Thank you, Mr. Forrester. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Opposed. One opposed. Mr. Needham is opposed. Motion carries. Good luck to the applicant. the congregation. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is 2016-27 Christian Student Fellowship, Inc. Here's the applicant here. I know that we have I would ask that thank you all for attending those who are departing please do so quickly so we can get on with this next application thanks for coming. We have I think Mr. Emmons is going to have a short presentation. Is that correct, Mr. Emmons? We'd love to hear from you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. This case is CB 2016-27. It's located on your agenda on page three of the agenda. The properties, it's a total of seven properties. The main church campus is at 600 Woodland Avenue and 502 to 504 Columbia Avenue. There is also a properties on the odd side of the street on Columbia Avenue from 507 to 537, a total of five lots for that property. Subject property is the Christian Student Fellowship, the existing site location at Woodland Avenue and Columbia Avenue at the corner. So we bring it into focus. The main church campus is located here, and they are proposing to redevelop this site. And also with this proposal is a proposal to take the five lots along Columbia Avenue and develop an 88-space parking lot. Also to kind of look at the aerial photo, I'm going to keep kind of the blue color for the main campus and the pink color for the parking lot throughout my presentation as we switch views so that you can kind of keep yourself oriented. The subject property, the proposed development plan, is to completely tear down and rebuild the Christian Student Fellowship on the properties located at the corner and to build the new 88-space parking spaces on Columbia Avenue. They are asking for several variances with this proposed development. I'm just going to very briefly go over those. The first variance that they're asking for is a height variance. They're requesting this property is currently zoned R2. In that zone, there's a maximum 35-foot height limit. They are asking for up to 66 feet for the subject redevelopment. They are also asking for dimensional variances along Woodland Avenue to take the required setback of 30 feet in the R2 zone and asking to bring that forward to 15 feet. and along Columbia Avenue for the main church property. They have also requested that from 30 feet to 15 feet. In addition, they have requested a dimensional variance to decrease the setback for the parking lot along Columbia Avenue from 30 feet to 15 feet so that they can bring the parking closer to the street. And finally, they have requested a variance. the proposed new sanctuary at this church would require a total of 160 parking spaces. The Board of Adjustment has the authority to grant up to a 50% variance. They have requested a total of 88 parking spaces, so not the full 50% parking variance that you're allowed to do, but very, very close to that. the staff report goes into great detail on each one of the requested variances each one as you look at it individually has its own special circumstances and its own justification and that is detailed in the staff report moreover though the applicant is proposing a what the staff is called a signature building, they've given a kind of a highlight of the massing of the building that they're proposing here on their proposed site plan. And you can see that is part of what they're proposing to do with these variances. The front setback of the main wall at the ground level along Woodland Avenue would actually be 29 feet back from the right of way very nearly meeting the 30-foot requirement. However, they are proposing a large, not cantilevered, but the second floor will come out to 15 feet from Woodland Avenue. Cantilevered? I'm sorry? Is it cantilevered? Cantilevered is whenever there's no posts holding up. And if it were cantilevered, a variance would only be necessary from 30 feet to 29 feet. However, because their proposal and with the weight of the structure they're proposing to come down with posts to support it, therefore the second and third and fourth floors have to meet the required setback of 30 feet because they come down and touch the ground. the staff overall like we detail in our staff report how each of the individual variances is justified but the staff feels that it's also more important in the context of the proposed building that they're proposing that in the context of the surrounding uses primarily the 68 foot tall four or five story University of Kentucky residential structure, the Wesley, it's a very tall three-story building for the Wesley Foundation, and the approved but not yet constructed fraternity house that's in there. We feel that the proposed signature building in conjunction with the surrounding makeup of its surrounding uses are in total makes the variance is justifiable in total, even though we do see that each individual variance has its own reason that it should be approved. As far as looking at the parking on this particular use, the applicants asking for a reduction of parking from 160 spaces to 88 spaces. Whenever the staff has looked at parking variances in the past, in addition to the other required unique circumstances and the things that we normally look at, we also look at three other things that would kind of, in our review, that kind of paint the picture of whether it's appropriate or not. We look at the pedestrian friendliness of the area. We look at the need, whether this use is actually generating as much of a need for the amount of parking as a typical use in that category. And finally, if there are other parking opportunities available. For the subject property, they actually are quite exemplary on all three of those accounts. There's no denying that this is very much a pedestrian corridor. The applicants believe that about 5,000 students walk by this corridor. They do believe that as far as their need for the subject property, many of their parishioners in this church are geared towards the students, and many of them live on campus or just off campus within walking distance. And finally, there are other available opportunities for parking, particularly the parking lots after hours in the University of Kentucky whenever they are no longer being patrolled. The staff is recommending approval for the reasons that we've recommended in our staff report. We do find that the church expansion is a use that can be supported. We do feel like the variances are justified. And ultimately, the staff is recommending just four conditions with that. The first three are very standard. and then the final one that all exterior lighting shall be directed away from any adjoining residential property. We do anticipate that a signature building like this will have a lighting plan and we want to make sure that all lighting, whether it's parking lot lighting or anything else, will be directed away from nearby residences. That concludes my very brief remarks. As I mentioned, there's many more details in our staff report. I just wanted to highlight those for you today. Thank you, Mr. Emmons. Does the board have any questions for Mr. Emmons? What's the height of this proposed fraternity or building that will be built on the other corner? I do not remember the exact height on that one. Did that come through us? Did that come through us? I don't think so. It did not come through you all. It was a zone change and a conditional use combined. So the Planning Commission reviewed not only the zone change for that property, but the fraternity use on that. And it's also controlled by a development plan. If memory serves me correct, I believe that it's a two-story, but a very tall two-story building. Okay. Which would be how many feet, roughly? I would guess that it is in the 35 to 40 feet range. I'm not positive on that. I can try and find that throughout the hearing. This is a fairly comprehensive project, and the board report is pretty detailed. I think I read it a week ago, and I read it again yesterday. And quite frankly, I don't have any questions. I think it sounds like a good plan. But I understand there is opposition to it, so we would like to hear from the opposition, and perhaps after that we can hear from the applicant. Is there opposition to this application? Yes, sir. I see three hands. If you come up four hands, if you come up one at a time, We'll hear from you each in turn. We've been here a while. I'd ask you to limit your remarks to a reasonable time. I would think 10 minutes ought to be adequate to say. If you have, if you disagree, let me know, but 10 minutes sounds fair. Sir, before he begins and we start the clock on him, I apologize, but we did receive several letters, some in support and some in opposition, and some that were in support with concern. I apologize for not passing those out at the beginning of your hearing. I'll do that now. Okay. Well, in that case. Like a minute to review those letters. Yeah. Give us a little while to look at those. Mr. Emerson is going to pass them out. So if we can all get copies of those to review for a few minutes. And, again, we can't read and listen at the same time. Mr. Murphy. I just want to tell you, we have a number of letters, too, which we're going to hand out to you right now since the staff is handing out theirs as well. Thank you. We've got two sets. We've got a set of letters in support and petitions, and then we've got some. And then we have a second booklet of other written statements that we've received from alumni and supporters in there. So. Just put it right there if you want. Thank you. Thank you. I think that's one. I need to share that. Thank you. Go ahead and start back up. We've reviewed the best we can the materials that were presented to us. We were hearing from someone who wasn't a... Okay. You're going to switch the order on us? Hi. I'm not used to be on this side. I'm Council Member Jake Gibbs. I represent the district. I live at 220 Delmar Avenue. and i urge you to reject this proposal i have no problem with the church building it looks very interesting to me but i have several concerns and they all concern the parking lot goal one of the 2013 comprehensive plan is to expand housing choices this goes in the wrong direction what we're doing is taking five residential parcels and turning them into a parking lot under objective sorry mccain under the comprehensive plan goal number one objective b calls for quote housing near employment in commercial areas the housing here is perfect for students and faculty and staff uk It's easy walking distance of Woodland Avenue and Chevy Chase shopping areas. I'm also concerned about changes in the vicinity. This is from, I think, the staff report. It said this proposed will not affect the public health, safety, welfare, or will it alter the character of the vicinity. I find this last clause to be very questionable. Again, my concern is only about the parking. It's hard for me to understand how going from four houses and a grassy lot, which is actually very ripe for residential development, to 88 parking spots is not changing the character of the area. In my view, it would be aesthetically unpleasing. These might seem minor issues, but I think environmentalism is a major deal that we need to be more concerned about. But these 88 parking spaces would be a sizable chunk of impervious service, and we have plenty of impervious surface in that area already. It would absorb radiant heat from the sun and heat the area. I'm somewhat concerned about stormwater controlling the area as well. Residents in the neighborhood have expressed concerns about increased traffic. The closure of Rose Street, which is likely to be permanent, that's still up in the air, but I think it's leaning in that direction, has put additional traffic onto Columbia Avenue. we'd have the potential for 88 cars coming and going out of this lot. It could cause traffic congestion. Another problem is, someone mentioned, I think Jimmy mentioned something like, how many pedestrians a day go by there? Is it 6,000? The applicant estimated about 5,000. About 5,000 a day. And here you have, I don't know how many curb cuts going in there. You know, back and forth. I think it's potentially a pedestrian. And again, UK has been leaning in the direction very heavily of making this area more pedestrian-friendly, which is the cause for the shutting down of Rose Street. And I think the city is working in that direction as well. And this could be a pedestrian or bicyclist nightmare along this area here. So in sum, I oppose this development, and again, only the parking lot for four reasons. It'll cause a reduction in much-needed housing stock. It'll alter the character of the area. The more impervious surface will have negative environmental consequences. And there's likely to be traffic congestion and associated dangers with walkers and bikers. And I appreciate you hearing my concerns. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gibbs. Any questions for Mr. Gibbs? While he's here, going once, going twice. Thank you, Mr. Gibbs. Thank you. Yes, sir. Tell us your name, please. My name is Robin Mickler, and I'm the president of the Aylesford Neighborhood Association, and I live at 439 Marquis Avenue. And I'm going to... Our neighborhood association met at the beginning of May to review this project, and we decided to also, like Councilmember Gibbs, opposed the conditional use permit and one of the setback variances on the Columbia Avenue, the parking lot portion of the project, and that's what I'll be discussing today, not the CSF lot itself. And since you had a lot of reading material, I'll first go over our formal neighborhood association view, and then I wanted to put some images up on the board to show why we took that view. The Aylesford Place Neighborhood Association requests that the Board of Adjustments deny the conditional use permit for 507, 511, 523, 527, 536 Columbia Avenue. Additionally, we oppose the variance request to reduce the front yard setback from 30 feet to 15 feet along Columbia Avenue. For the conditional use permit of particular concern to the Neighborhood Association is the residential border of the Neighborhood Association will be encroached upon to convert housing into a large institutional surface parking lot. We request that this conditional use permit be denied for the five residential lots. The need to demolish four houses and develop five lots exclusively for parking indicates the overreach of what is appropriate for an R2 zone. Additionally, because these lots are not connected to the CSF, this surface parking lot damages the feel of the block while adding no architectural interest on these five lots. For the zoning variance, currently the north side of Columbia Avenue serves as a residential border to the neighborhood, The applicant's request to reduce the setback from 30 feet for front yard space to 15 feet moves the pavement closer to the street. We ask that this reduction in green space along the sidewalk not be approved. The applicant will need all 30 feet to ensure that the street keeps a different feel than the university. And I'll have photos of what a 15 feet and 30 foot setback looks like on a parking lot here. So I'd like to... So here is aerial imagery pulled from the city. clearly at Ural's GIS aerial imagery hasn't been updated to what you all use for your own for your own presentations but what I did right there is just to show the pink is the current corner where the parking is proposed that currently is being used as all residential space and then the surrounding three blocks are university or university affiliated student groups let me go to the next one and so this is a view to the south side of Columbia Avenue you see the new dorms you see the Methodist building and then CSF is further on the corner that side of the block already has a dominant feel of parking and institutional buildings along the sidewalk And then the lower picture is the current profile of the way that the north side of the Columbia Avenue block looks, which is residential front yards, trees in the front yards. The house there, which they're proposing to be demolished, is landscaped in the front. And then we can go to the next one. This one, this is sort of a length perspective if you're walking down. The parking lot will be all along that right-hand side. The way the lighting is, that white vehicle that you see on the right-hand side to that sidewalk is about halfway down that parking lot. So in terms of a perspective, we're changing very small lots with the small houses to one large parcel representing an open paved surface lot. The next photo. So this top photo is an example of, and I went out and measured this, this is what a 15-foot setback used. This is landscaped with trees. So this is sort of the applicant's 15-foot landscaped setback, which just gives a very institutional parking lot feel. And we believe that it is inappropriate for that R2 zone and that the required 30-foot setback should be kept for any parking that is used by the church on these lots. And then the second picture here, this is a 30-foot setback, still clearly an institutional parking lot. Not our ideal, but the 30 feet makes a large difference in terms of the size of the trees. You can do the size of the landscape buffer. we believe every inch of 30 feet would be necessary to create a different profile from the very paved and institutional profile of the north side in order to protect this residential block in our neighborhood. And then the next... If we can zoom out to just look at these signs together because they go together, I just couldn't get them in the same frame. In terms of use, the Newman Center parking lot has these signs out where it's e-parking for the university during the day and in the evenings and on weekends it's parking for the Newman Center. We believe that parking for the CSF and their staff and their students, the university has plans for their side of Woodland Avenue that they bought. They have large surface lots that are currently shared with CSF at the library. They have spaces affiliated with the new dorms. dorms. We think that as the university is supportive of CSF and they work in partnership in many ways that other avenues for addressing the staff parking or even just a more logical way of doing parking than such a large lot that most of the time would sit empty because according to their own applications they only intend to use it for their events And for their staff parking, their staff's only about 25 people. So instead of creating such a massive lot that's going to sit empty six days a week, except for a few services and a few events, they should look to partner with the university instead of demolishing housing in our neighborhood to address such a narrow need for such a narrow time windows during the week. and then the was that my last photo there? and then and so just to sum up, we brought these photos just to demonstrate again as Council Member Gibbs noted we we take issue with the staff's analysis that the parking lot does not negatively affect the neighborhood, the residential character of the neighborhood in the R2 zone. And we respectfully ask you all to consider denying the conditional use permit for those residential lots along Columbia Avenue and to also deny the variance request to reduce the setback from 30 feet to 15 feet along those lots. Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Mitchler. Any questions for Mr. Mitchler? Thank you very much. My name is Mark Barker. I live at 439 Park Avenue. In the past, I've been on the board of Columbia Heights and the president of Columbia Heights, although we have not voted on this for or against the proposal today. I share some of the concerns that have been mentioned about the tearing down of houses and the variance. I have mixed feelings about that. I don't want the houses to be torn down, but I'm also concerned that they may get torn down anyway. We've had several houses torn down in this area in the recent times, and what's been put in place of it is sort of a slum style houses that aren't complementary to the neighborhood, unfortunately. So I have mixed feelings about that. I agree that a less of a variance would be helpful, and perhaps they could tilt, instead of 15 foot, they could tilt one of the parking areas so that they could just do 20 feet or more. If they are going to do a variance, it needs to be limited just to parking. what I saw on one blueprint didn't specifically say just parking there's just a variance so I want clarification if there is going to be a variance on those lots on Columbia that it just be parking and not be allow a house in the future to be or a building to be built closer because I think that would be very inappropriate for that residential area I think there's been some discussion of what's going to be across from it I might say I do believe that very recently UK has put Woodland in its inclusion zone. So I think the fraternity that was approved is now in UK's acquisition zone. I don't know if they're going to acquire that or not. So UK has been, along Woodland, been putting in these about two or three-story fraternity houses. So that would, on down the street, down Woodland, that's probably what's going to be there in the future, be my guess. In the past, CSF has had some very loud concerts outside. I don't think R2 allows that, but I'm concerned that by getting this conditional zoning for church that CSF will think that it's appropriate to do that. So I would like an explicit restriction, if the board is going to approve this to specifically say no amplified outdoor concerts on these premises. Another concern I have is the sidewalks. The sidewalks are just four feet wide. I don't think they're wide enough for a larger building. I think one of the conditions needs to be a wider sidewalk if they're going to build this. The other thing on the blueprint that I saw initially, I think it was an early draft, maybe it's been changed. I'll let the applicant talk to that, is there was no turnaround space for five-minute parking, for loading and unloading on the main site. And I think that's really needed because if you don't, people are just going to stop in the middle of the road and unload and load people. I think it's going to provide a public safety hazard. I do think stormwater is a huge issue. The stormwater is at the bottom of the hill do overflow when it rains hard. So it's very important that they do as good a job as possible in the stormwater. I prefer an impervious surface on the parking lot if it's going to be there. I mean, pervious. I prefer it be pervious where the water can go through it if possible. The other thing is traffic, and traffic is a disaster in this area. UK has shut down rows for construction and they want to permanently shut down. It seems like that might happen. What we're seeing is just a huge amount of traffic coming off of rows where they shut it closed at Columbia. Going down to Columbia and right at this intersection, there is just a flood of traffic when school is in session. And I'd hope that the city takes that into consideration. one possibility is if you're going to allow parking the other side is I think the city should consider closing Columbia completely so that people in the parking lot can walk across and have to cross the traffic and we can eliminate all this cut through traffic the neighborhood's seeing which is really very harmful to the neighborhood. So if the board is inclined to vote for this I would hope they also make another resolution, oh you can't close Columbia But I think you can make a resolution that traffic engineering will look at closing Columbia in this area. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Parker. Any questions for Mr. Parker while he's here? None. Hearing none. Thank you. Yes. Can I start with the second of the slides, triple zero? My name is Amy Clark, and I live at 628 Castle Road. This really is very near where I live, and I live on Castle Road, which is a major traffic artery that's very intimately connected with Columbia. I also have worked and studied and researched at the university. This is my route to work and my husband's as well. I was grateful to CSF for inviting us early on the conversation. They've been very gracious and forthcoming in sharing ideas and telling us what's going on. I took seriously a responsibility I felt I had because they did invite me to be a part of the process. I made sure that everyone I could think of to send the word further in my neighborhood, Hollywood, which is also the Hollywood Terrace neighborhood, which shares with Columbia Heights. I made sure that the Columbia Heights board was aware of it. I brought information to the Aylesford Neighborhood Association meeting, and you can see that they had deliberations and actually went in a different direction. I would say that I pretty much agree with the things that Mr. Barker, Mark Barker, has said, and I have some others to add. I want to really, I should begin by saying I support this conditional use. I support this enlargement. It's amazing how many people are here, and they are our neighbors. They are our student neighbors. And I think the enlargement of the facility is needed. I think the work that this church and fellowship and community does is terribly important on campus. And I think they need both the building and, regretfully, I will say that I think the parking is needed for them. Welcome to my world. I want to give some background on what they want to put in. It's a lot. I hear a lot on the Planning Commission. They're always talking about trying to get 10 pounds of flour in a 5-pound sack. I think this is one of those situations, but it's that university area. Frankly, I think we can get in at least 8 of those pounds. I think if you can put some conditions and restrictions and back off on some of the variances, we'll have a very workable plan that won't injure unduly. the welfare of the larger neighborhood. Its character is a between-ways place. Unfortunately, there's a lot of institutional in it already. Two main issues. First of all, they are responding to an enormous increase in population. These are all the new dorms that have been built in the university's building program in very recent years, And it comes to 7,000 bedrooms, either new or renewed, replacing older ones. If you see the yellow there where it says CU, the dorms that spell CU, the corner of the C, those are the dorms right, the woodland dorms immediately next to CSF. So that's the big picture, and that's what they're responding to. They're right next to all these students whom they mean to serve and are already serving. Next slide, please. Sorry, the next one. How about 01? Good. Okay. You saw, as Mr. Emmons presented it, this is a peninsular development. It's a half-acre lot. You see CSF there. And it is surrounded by what are or are about to be major arteries, traffic arteries. That's a huge challenge. The schematics, the 001 is what they want to put where that low-lying building is, edge-to-edge, 001. I'm sorry. 001? Okay, you're getting it. That's all right. Okay, go on to two then. Okay. So you have this problem of a peninsula with an enormous building, pretty near edge to edge, 52,000 square feet, surrounded by traffic, pedestrians, bicycles, and major city traffic and university traffic. Okay. The parking lot, you've already seen pictures of this, I'll try and jump through things you've seen, would be from that building all the way, the one in red, all the way to pretty nearly the edge of the slide. and 03, this is what it would replace. This is pretty nearly 100% canopy on that lot. So we are losing something, but sometimes you lose to gain other things. 04, please. Mr. Barker mentioned the alternative, five house lots. Many of our house lots are being developed in that way. These are duplex lots. It's our feeling, we who live really quite close to CSF, that a well-landscaped, well-managed parking lot, particularly with green infrastructure and good water management, may actually serve more important public needs in the immediate neighborhood. Okay. Back to the peninsula, 05. Okay. I'm sorry. Is there an 05? Okay. Go to 06. I'm trying to skip a little. Okay. This is the state map of the roads. As they understood it, it's actually current for 2015. You can see where the blue Woodland Avenue meets the green hilltop that turns into university. Woodland carries about 10,000 a day by the last count, which is several years out of date. It's a minor arterial. The green is a major collector, so one step down from that. And there are wider public roads. You notice that Columbia Road on this map is simply in gray. The city, sorry, the state does not regard it as a collector street because it's too narrow, because house lots empty onto it the whole length of it. Ms. Clark, do you have a pointer there at the podium? I'd like to, I want to make sure I understand what... I appreciate your asking. Can you instruct me? What do I do? I want to make sure I get oriented on this map. I will get better at this someday. You should be able to hit the red button. Okay. I hit this. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We might have to darken the ambient lights so we can see the... Woodland. I'm sorry, which is the blue line? The blue is Woodland. Okay. Okay. And it carries about $10,000 a day by that count, and I think that was like 2012, so it's a way out of date count. This is Hilltop, the library entrance, the main entrance there is there. So Hilltop turns the corner onto University Drive, which is the one with the grassy median down the middle. Okay. Mm-hmm. So what you have is the situation that was with a minor arterial woodland feeding a major collector, Hilltop University and so on. Okay. Columbia along here by the state is regarded or unless they change it quite shortly. It's simply regarded as a local street. That's why it's in gray. Okay. It's not a green collector or any kind of collector. The city, however, does regard it as some kind of a collector, a local or a minor collector of some kind, because it does carry so much traffic. Why don't other people call it that? Well, it's quite narrow. It's essentially a road... Actually, let me get the... Let's see. Could I have slide 11, please? Street cross sections, slide 11. I know you're not going to be able to read the numbers on this, but I will read them to you. Okay, Columbia Avenue is the top road there. It's 45 feet wide in all. 26 of those feet are for two lanes of travel, plus for most of its length also a lane of parking, one-sided parking. So figure 26 with three rows of cars, three deep in cars. Eight feet is for sidewalks on both sides, and there's a remaining 11 foot on either side for utility strips, a little grass on the other side of the sidewalk. So it's a 45 foot road, but three parking plus two lanes, and in some places the parking's been removed, including in front of CSF. So Woodland is below there. It's a 60-foot road, and it's got 40 feet of roadway that now includes bike lanes, five-foot bike lanes on either side. So you're getting really about 15 feet for each travel lane, car lane, and then five-foot bike lanes. And then on the one side, on the dorm side, it's got a 10-foot wide sidewalk. This is the, I'm sorry, woodland, never mind. Woodland to the north, not beside CSF, but to the north, has a four-foot sidewalk, and it's got five and a half feet on both sides in grass, a little utility strip, a little grass on the other side. When, however, you get... Let me get you a picture now. Could you go to 01 again? 01, thank you so much. Okay, I'm sorry the angle of this is weird, but I think it will help you see how the sidewalks and so on work. To the Let's do this. To the north side of Columbia, Woodland has a four-foot sidewalk with green on both sides. But to the south side, where CSF is, and the university, you lose that bit of grassy verge, so it's narrower. The sidewalk is right on the street edge. you can see that it has added bike lanes along the length of the road very recently. I'm going to do this on the fly. I'm trying to avoid information you've heard already. This intersection is fraught with traffic. It is vexed all day long. The central turn lane on Woodland is shared in both directions. So it's very short. This is very short. Then there's a turn lane here to go into the loop road beside the dorms. Okay. the loop road along the dorms let's see there's a good slide for that and I'm almost done with this on the roads there's a point to this can I see 05 I think that'll do it That's the wrong one. Let's see. Oh, 09. Try 09. No, okay. Go back to 05 and I'll use that even though it's not happy. Okay. The loop road. here is just a little narrower than Columbia. The issue is that it has a lane of traffic, car traffic in each direction. It's got a bike lane, a five-foot bike lane. All this is generous and good. It's got a 10-foot sidewalk on the dorm side. It has no sidewalk on the CSF side. So this part of the peninsula is a little broken. If you could return to the number 10. The university, there's the picture I wanted. Generous 10-foot sidewalk on one side, no sidewalk on the other, bike lanes on both sides. Okay, so if you could then return to number eight. Okay. The main point here is the traffic situation, these roads, this whole design of this area is very much in flux. Right now it's chaotic. They're working on it. CSF has met with the university. CSF has met with the city. The city has met with the university. The university, in wishing to close rows and other things, would like for the loop road that the blue road that runs from CSF, between CSF and the dorms, around the dorms, past where the student gym is, and on out SportsCenter Drive crossing Cooper all the way to Alumni, the university would like to see that become a major path for traffic. And they would like to see the sidewalks you just saw in front of the Woodland Dorm and the hilltop here reduced to limited traffic. That means there will be more traffic in the area, not less. It also means that road width is needed. There isn't enough. Probably not a good idea to try and solve these problems today, but is it a good idea to yield on yard width when the entire right-of-way situation is so completely vexed, when we could use right in front of CSF a left-turn lane in one direction and a second left-turn lane in the other direction when we don't even know what could solve this problem. I think variance to the depth of the yard on woodland there in front of CSF is very unwise. It will have an adverse effect on the future development of the area. Already the present development of the area is impacted by the difficult road situation. when this came before the whole change of the traffic pattern came before the council not long ago a great many of the council members expressed concern as well as some neighbors the situation with UK is there really isn't a peak hour There's quite a lot of peak hour in the morning, but there's also peak hour all day long. The parking lot will be used probably a great deal around 2 and 3 in the afternoon. That's also a time when people get their children from the child care center, kitty corner from CSF, and the whole area students are going to and fro. It's a much congested and vexed area. Let's see here. But could I have 03 again? I want to talk a little about leave the peninsula fraught with traffic behind and the need for those variances. Talk a little bit about the parking area there, and I will try not to repeat what's already been said. Could you go to 00 the development plan, please? Part of the application of CSF, and it's a note on the development plan, is to connect the two lots and provide all the stormwater treatment in an underground basin. you can see that they have put stairs in here to raise the level of the land at this corner of Columbia the downhill slope would be in that direction you can see that here, do you see that bit of a retaining wall along the edge? That's to raise the level of this parking lot along that edge because, again, the downhill slope of the water is in that direction, down this way. Along woodland is where the water is collected in the storm sewer pipes. You can see here in the schematics that this front corner tips down, and of course here as well. So you can see that that's where the water goes. The proposal to take all the stormwater from this site and send it for underground detention apparently uphill and around the corner to this site, I think puts too much of a burden on that parking lot to do all the stormwater control. there are a lot of trees there now we would like to see green infrastructure the city has a manual for low impact development strategies to use for storm water management including ditches with thirsty grasses in them including keeping some green you might lose four or five parking spaces but keep the trees, keep the green and separate the two lots in their stormwater management so that this lot has its own tank. Why not have a tank under a terrace? It won't be disturbing a tree root or a blade of grass. The water won't have to go uphill. The fear is that if you put a tank here, it's going to be a great big tank. There's a tremendous sycamore. It's a neighborhood landmark. It's huge. It's beautiful. It's right here. The CSF has made a genuine commitment to keep the trees. I think they're going to try and keep trees all along the perimeter of that site. We're grateful for that. We'd like to see that commitment expressed as a condition of the use, that they employ low-impact development stormwater management. There's a city manual for it. There's a whole process for doing it for that parking lot. It's probably important to separate parking lot stormwater management from the other one, because if it's handling double the volume of water from that other site, which is paved pretty near edge to edge, you'd need such a huge tank somewhere. You couldn't do, I would think, the green infrastructure and the low-impact development. So the request would be, some have said, please don't put a parking lot here. We need housing. Our request from the people I've talked to and the work I've done to try and see what would work is, if there must be a parking lot, let it be a parking lot that's bordered with trees. and for stormwater detention, don't cut the roots of all those trees with a giant underground tank that's capacity would actually go for two lots. Don't make it do the work of two. It would be hard to make it green. Thank you, Ms. Clark. We've heard I let you go for about 20 minutes now, which is about double the time that everybody else has taken, so we appreciate your talking to us. Are there any other points that you want to make? We may have some questions from the board to you, so we want to give time for anybody to ask you questions about what you presented. Thank you. I'll just skim what I gave to you, the sheets of suggested conditions and so on, and make sure there's nothing that hasn't been addressed at all. And, of course, if you have questions, that's lovely. And basically the two points are it's a peninsula in a very vexed traffic situation. Don't yield on yard variances when you don't even have enough public right-of-way. Mark mentioned four-foot sidewalks turning into five, for example. That's just the beginning. Okay. I'm just going to go through here the conditions for the conditional use permit. They have added something about developing the property according to the plans. Well, we can read those for ourselves. We have those from you, and we appreciate that. Alcohol-free is something they said in the application. Let's keep it loose, generally alcohol-free. Sound shall be contained within the building, especially no outdoor amplification of sound. We would like the lot to be controlled at all times. I think it would be a terrible shame to have a big, fat parking lot and not put cars on it. I understand they'll have a variety of uses for it. The delivery and passenger drop-off area is critical. Probably along SportsCenter Drive would be the best point of access. If these tight, tight streets everywhere pulling over and dropping off people, they're going to have a snack bar, they're going to have pancakes, suppers, they're going to have trucks in there. They're talking about maybe a lunch counter. I mean, whatever. It just needs some delivery space. I think it's important just to say that the stormwater and sanitary sewers will be under engineering. Some of this comes in a permit. It doesn't need to be in the conditional use. The low-impact development guidelines won't be in there unless you put it there for us. And also adding tree protection as well, and that's number 10, note 3, talks about landscaping. There's a whole city ordinance on tree protection. It's a framework we already have in this city for ensuring that trees are protected. The Columbia Avenue variance, we don't like it one bit, but the point is you as the board, when you grant a variance, may add a condition of use to it. But once that variance is granted, it runs with the land. and if you don't restrict that variance now, it can't be restricted later. It could be a fraternity with a large building and so on. You might have to get a conditional use permit, but the setback is what you grant in a variance, and if you can restrict that variance to the use of parking and landscaping only, that takes care of it for the future as well as the present. I really think 600 Woodland does not currently have the variance on it. The variance was granted for 502 Columbia and not for 600 Woodland. Back off on that corner, we absolutely need some space there to give some wiggle room to solve the traffic problems. I think putting written agreements for the dormitory space, There was also mention in the application of shared parking at the library. If they have that, that's great. Let's have it written in a written agreement, a parking contract off-site. That's customary for these conditional uses like churches and schools. Thank you, Ms. Clark. I think that's it. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Any questions for Ms. Clark? That was a pretty comprehensive comments. I'm sorry it couldn't be shorter. We appreciate that. Does anybody have any questions for Ms. Clark? We do acknowledge your requested notes, I think, that you gave us these two pages. So that will be taken into consideration. I guess, if you'll permit me, I would like to say in closing, we would like to see this happen. We would like to see them have a giant enlargement that's cramming because they meet such a need for the students. And the students are here to tell you that. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Mr. Murphy, I think it's your turn. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Mr. Chairman. Sure. We appreciate all the comments we've had. As you know, I'm pleased today to be representing Christian Student Fellowship, which has been at this location for half a century. They're celebrating their 50th year here at this location, at UK, this year right now. They've been in existence for 55 years. It's incorporated as a nonprofit corporation. It's a church. We are supported by 1,761 contributors. 80% of those are individual people. They're not churches or other organizations. They're individual people, many of whom came through the program and are alumni of not only UK but Christian Student Fellowship. The other 20% are churches, and we have a list in the little handout we gave you, and it's interesting that they include Christian denomination, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, Lutheran, and Independence. and anytime you can get that many people of those differing Protestant denominations to support something, you know, we must be doing something right here. We have a number of people here, and I'm going to try to rearrange your presentation a little bit to try to answer some of these questions that we're concerned, but we do want to share with you some of our plans. Brian Marshall is with me here, who's the lead minister of CSF, Christian Student Fellowship. Devin Freeman is the finance director who's been with us and instrumental in this. Sam Coons is going to be helping us out back on the audiovisual. There's a number of other representatives here, but we know there's some issues here. We know there's issues about the parking lot, the stormwater drainage, traffic, those issues. The architecture of this building is important. As you saw from the pictures across the street from us on what they call now Sports Center Drive. It used to be Cooperstown Drive, I think, back when I was there. They're now pretty big monolithic structures all the way down the road, pretty close to the road. And we knew we had to come up with a plan that would work with that. So we have EOP architects here. Rick Eckhoff of EOP is here, along with Richard Polk of EOP. You're somewhere in the back there. Josh Gilpin of EOP is here as well. They're one of the outstanding firms in this area, as I'm sure you know. They're designing the Senior Citizens Center out on Richmond Road right now. They designed the Southland Christian Church's campus on Richmond Road. They designed the apiary up on Jefferson Street. They've done the College of Pharmacy building at UK. They're the architects for the Lexington Center Convention expansion. They did the Main and Rose mixed-use development here in town. And I think you can see from those, they've done many, many others, but I think that you can see from those, they're very sensitive to the context in which they work, and they have very creative solutions to architectural issues. We engage one of the best engineering firms in the community, Strand Associates. Mike Willem is here, who's vice president of Strand. Sarah Tuttle, landscape architect with Strand. And Steve Vogel, you're somewhere here, I think, from Strand, who's one of our engineers. Maybe he's not. I don't know. But they have been contracting with the city for almost 50 years to do stormwater studies for Lexington, sanitary sewer studies for Lexington, and many other communities in this area. Just say that to you all probably know them, but to let you know their experience in this area. We also had Dave Leonard, Dave Leonard Arborist, to look at our parking lot as well to give us advice on saving that sycamore tree that Ms. Clark mentioned and how we deal with our parking lot with the surrounding landscaping. If I can, Mr. Chair, I'd like, we've had a lot of people here a long time, and I think they'd like to stand up and tell you if they support this, if not. If that's okay, if all our supporters could stand up. We're also wearing little labels that tell you that we're supporting this as well. Well, we appreciate your coming. You've been very patient to sit here all afternoon. Thank you. I hope, Mr. Murphy, that not all the people that stood up proposed to testify this afternoon. We've asked 10 of them not to testify. The rest of them will here. No, just joking. We have a few of them who want to speak. People feel very strongly about this. This has had life-changing impact on a lot of people, and we have a lot of comments you saw. We won't be repeating them all in letters and that sort of thing. But if we could show some of the slides we have here, we've been around for 50 years in this location. We're the largest registered student organization at the University of Kentucky. We're religious. We're totally independent, but we're also a registered organization at UK. This is the type of thing CSF does. They feed a lot of students. That's a big way of attracting people into the program. They feed a lot of students, and if you can go on to the next one, they... And you're making me hungry. Well, if we'd know it was this long, we would have brought some here. But this will make you hungry, too. They did, the goal was 100,000 meals for Haiti. You can see they're all wearing the hairnets in here. They prepared 100,000 meals to go to Haiti. That was one of the mission programs. This is very mission-oriented. It's a way of getting students engaged and doing something for the bigger community. This is the sanctuary. The building was built 50 years ago. This is the sanctuary addition, which was built 40 years ago. And you can see that it's very crowded. We're at the situation now where people come in, and new people especially, come in and see it's crowded, and they turn around and go out. That's the situation we're dealing with. We know we need to expand. This building is a nice building, but to be honest about it, it's been loved to death. It's worn out. One of the staff members told me that they think it's being held together with Band-Aids. After one of the meetings there, I was surprised to learn there's only four toilets in the entire building here. And it needs, we need a new building. It's concrete block walls in many rooms, concrete floors, just needs to be replaced. Next slide I put in here is sort of a joke. This is the opposite of CSF. You all know what this is. This is State Street after celebrating the U.K. celebration. Of course, we found out many of the people there are not U.K. students, but this is the exact opposite of what we are. You can go on to the next one. U.K. enrollment has gone up. I just want to show you we've gone, U.K. has gone from 13,007 in 1966 up to over 30,000 today in the 50 years CSF has been around. We have expanded to, if you can go on to the next slide, 1987 we got down to about 20 people participating. 2016 we have about 700. And the 700 count, our worship size is not that big. 700 count is we have 76 small groups throughout the week. They're mainly Bible study groups. They meet various times. They average 8, 10, 12 people in them. That's the 700. A little less than that participate in the worship groups. But we have 35 staff members, full-time staff members. These aren't undergraduate students. These are mainly people who have graduated from UK and are full-time staff members. That's how many they need. They need to make contact with students. We have outside volunteers who handle some of these small groups as well. That's one reason we need parking. We've got 35 full-time staff. We've got outside volunteers coming in here. We need a place for those people to park. We also need a place for the commuter students to park. As you know, about three-quarters of the UK students live off campus. Go on to the next slide. We want to tell you a little bit about the building. Our professionals will be telling you a little bit more. This shows where we're at. The WT Young Library is 74 feet tall. We're proposing 66 feet right across the street from us. That big brick building we showed you was 66 feet tall. the four-story Woodland Glen II student dormitories. We're proposing a 66-foot tall, which will transition down. This is going to be a fraternity, which was approved by the Planning Commission previously right here. And if you haven't been out there, I was flabbergasted when I went out there that the U.K. had changed so much without knowing about it. If you take this road off of Woodland Avenue, of course, here's Columbia. This is the road. It used to be called Cooperstown Drive. It's now called Sports Center Drive. It goes down by the track, and the Cliffhagen Stadium is just next to that off the picture, then the U.K. practice facility. On the other side, though, this is a huge complex. Down here, it's 86 feet tall. This is seven stories plus down on this side. It's a massive change. We've estimated there's, in this area, South Campus and Central, there's about 5,000 students living. That's where we came up with this 5,000 figure there in this area that we're trying to serve them, we're trying to serve the people on the North Campus, and we've been very successful in doing it. If you can go on to the next slide, this is, again, this is what we're looking at right outside, across the Sports Center Drive. It used to be Cooperstown Drive. This is what we're looking at at 67.74 feet tall. If you go on to the next slide, this is the Wesley Foundation, which is the only building that, only property that actually touches us. We have the streets on three sides. This is right behind Wesley Foundation. I never knew this, but it's three stories, almost 40 feet tall. It started out as a sorority house, and they still have 48 beds in the Wesley Foundation. It's not only a church, but it's a residence. They have 48 beds there. And one reason I say that is because we've obviously had some few neighbors comment on this, but we're proud to say that our surrounding neighbors, the closest ones, most greatly impacted by us, have given us letters of support. We have actually two from the Wesley Foundation, one from the current director, one from the former director. We have a letter from the resident advisor from the U.K. dorm across the street. We have a letter from the fraternity that's going across Columbia from us. And we have letters from most of the neighbors on our parking lot as well who are supportive of that. We have one neighbor who is concerned about drainage. We didn't go to the Woodland Studio condominiums. There are 78 condos there. Only three of them are owner-occupied. All the rest of them are rented out, probably student housing. We didn't go to the condos to get a sign-off on that. But even adjoining our parking lot, we have support. If you could go on to the next one, that's Woodland Studios. The other side of our parking lot, that's almost 30 feet. Going on to the next one, this is 5U Sorority House down the street. This area is part of the Greek community that the U.K. is building up in this area. This is one of the new ones. This is 5U. This is 41 feet tall. If you go on, this is a map showing, this is the 500-foot radius. We had to send letters to everybody within. Now, what we've identified, of course, this is UK, appropriately blue. These are these dorms going down SportsCenter Drive. This is our property here, CSF. There's Columbia, and there's Woodland, and there's Cooper. Well, we've got labeled Cooperstown Drive. It's now SportsCenter Drive. This is the Wesley Foundation, the Methodist dorm. We've got a label. This is our proposed parking lot. The dark blue dot, dark blue is UK-owned. The light blue we've identified as non-owner-occupied. Now, that would be mainly student housing around this area. Every dot here is blue, non-owner-occupied, except for one right there. That's the only owner-occupied one within this circle. And everybody has a right to say what they want to say, but I have to point out to you that the people who are closest to us and we have the greatest impact upon are all in support of us and have given us very strong letters of support. I know Ms. Clark lives back here about four-tenths of a mile away. do we have that Ailsford slide to show the neighborhood concerns and Ailsford has every right to comment on us when we did start approaching people we went to the Columbia Heights Neighborhood Association which is the one again right in our area here. Ailsford is a little farther away I'm sorry we didn't go to them I'm sorry we weren't invited to the meeting there's our there's the turf. Okay Ailsford disagrees with that, so we'll put that on the record. But here's Columbia Heights. That's why we went to Columbia Heights, because here's our building. That's what the map showed us, and perhaps the official city map is wrong, but that's where we went to Columbia Heights. And we approached Columbia Heights, Mr. Barker's group, and had fruitful discussions with them. We went to Ms. Clark, because we knew she'd have concerns about that as well. We engage in a number of activities, which we told you about. I do want to tell you about the, do we have the slide that shows the zoning on there? I'm trying to save time and unfortunately skipping around a little bit. This is the one that explains to you our situation. Yeah, that's the one you had there. There we go. And we are zoned R2. We were approved 50 years ago. We were approved for an expansion 40 years ago as a conditional use. UK, I think, we don't have the zoning on them. I think they're actually zoned R2. Now, the change in the area is that what UK has built, I know when Ms. Clark brought up her aerial photograph, the UK dorms weren't even there. That's only a couple years old. This has been a major change in this area. This was zoned across on the other side of Columbia. The fraternity was zoned R3 a year ago with a fraternity approved as a conditional use by the Planning Commission, another change in the area. But the point I'm making is that we're R2. This area is R2 down here. UK is zoned R2. We're one of the more unique R2 areas in the community because UK has built extremely dense housing in an R2 zone. They're exempt from zoning. They can do whatever they want. As you know, we have zones from R1 to R5. R1 is single family. R5 is a high-density apartment, the highest-density residential we have. I would guess that if UK were having to go on its own, it would be off the charts. It would be R7 or R8 because it's so dense there. And that's fine. That's good. UK is building on-campus housing. That's what everybody has been after them to do. That's good, but it also presents an opportunity. We found that 50 years ago, we may have been on the fringe of campus. We are in the central location, the prime location on campus to be where we are. There is no better location for this mission, doing what we showed you to do, than it is being right here. We can't. We want to expand. We're not like other groups. We can't go out to Manowar Boulevard to accomplish this mission. We can't move out to where there's an open 20-acre lot to do this. because that takes us away from UK. We have to be right here. That's what Brian and his people are doing. They are ministering to the people who are right here. Our dilemma is that to expand in R2 or any zone, to build a church, you have to supply parking. We're nonconforming the way we are right now. We don't have enough parking as it is. We're nonconforming. But to expand this building, which they wanted to do for many years, they couldn't do it because to expand, we have to supply additional parking to meet the zoning ordinance, to meet our own needs. We have practical needs, and we have zoning ordinance needs as well. What brought our window of opportunity open was when the property across the street became available. Mr. Merritt, through various companies, owns all five lots. he made them available Christian Student Fellowship thank goodness got an option on it when that parking is available that allows us to expand our building because now we can supply our required parking which we're asking you for a variance for you can vary it down 50% so that has opened the opportunity for us to expand and we have a limited time when we have that option and once that option is gone, our window closes and we lose the ability to expand the building because we don't have that parking there. I want to mention a couple things about the parking and the property before I get some of my experts up here. There's been discussion about the housing over here. There's four houses there right now. There's four houses on five lots. One of the lots is vacant. How many people are living in those four houses? Three. Three people are living in those four houses. They're not the best of shape. We've done some preliminary analysis of them. There's asbestos in those houses. They're going to have to be taken down. They're not good quality. If we don't get the property, it's on the market. We can speculate all afternoon about who will get it. I'll speculate it'll be either UK or one of the other private housing builders in the area. and you saw some pictures of what kind of houses those are. We need this parking. We need this here, and we're going to do it right. The... I want to go to... Brian is going to come up a little bit, and he's going to describe a little bit about the ministry. Then I'm going to get our architect and our engineers up here because we have carefully considered many of these issues, the drainage, the site triangles, all that sort of thing. And we've put a lot of person hours into solving this. We're not going to take many of your person hours, hopefully, but we want to give you a little summary of how we dealt with all these issues. So Brian's going to come up and tell you a little bit about the ministry here. Chairman Glover, board members, thank you all for just your time and hearing us. And I do want to be very brief with my remarks about the nature of our ministry. We are, as far as any of us know, the largest. Tell us your name, please. Sorry, Brian Marshall. I'm the lead campus pastor at Christian Student Fellowship. There aren't any official numbers that I'm aware of at UK, but I think for several years now we've been, to our awareness, the largest student organization at UK. We do offer all our services for free to students. That is an important note to hit in a time of rising educational costs and just students having a hard time even finding money to eat. UK recently added a food bank on campus, something that may not be known to a general population. We serve 15,000 to 20,000 free meals. Sometimes that's 50 meals here, 50 meals there. But over the course of a year, we have many different meals. We offer pancakes every Friday night, if you count that as a meal. Maybe a snack is maybe a better way of phrasing it. Empty calories might be another way. But weekly programming for us looks like on Monday nights we offer a program called Shift. This is kind of a shot of our Shift program where, again, freshmen come for a meal. It's for freshmen only, helping them shift into college life. We think the freshman year is a very, very important year. Senators, I'm so nervous to talk to you all. I don't get nervous to talk to these guys, but you all wear ties and look official. And it's like, man, gosh. But Thursday night we do a program called Synergy. It's kind of Thursday nights at 8. There are other activities, as I'm sure you're aware, on college campuses on Thursday nights at 8. We offer a worship service for our students. A couple of slides. I think we've got one more shot of that. Pancakes I mentioned already. I think I can see our pancakes here. Retreats. We do off-site some of our retreat shots. We go to area camps. Services. We built habitat houses around the 100,000 meals that Dick mentioned as well. Small groups, we host 76 different small group Bible studies. I think we've got a couple shots of those. One thing that we do not list to the point of our parking lot even being needed during the day, we do a 3 o'clock prayer Monday through Friday for students just to come in as a space to pray. So that kind of highlights just to get a sense for just the, I mean, we just use our building, and we need more. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Marshall. Next, I'm going to ask Rick Eckhoff to come up and describe the building a little bit. There hasn't been really much objection to the building itself, so I'll ask Rick to zip through this as quick as he can, but you need to get a flavor for what we're doing here. Thanks, Rick Eckhoff. I'm a design partner with EOP Architects here in Lexington. Can I advance this, or do you have to advance it? You can advance it. Okay. Okay. I'll go quick. Probably the most compelling indication that this is an area in transition is if you would look at the University of Kentucky's master plan. I'm just going to kind of give you a reference to the blue building that is the CSF site. If you point to this, the board will be able to see it. You guys can see it. You guys are moving forward. That's actually the building site right there. And this is Woodland. And then Columbia is kind of in the crosshairs right there, if that gets you referenced. There's been a lot that's already been talked about. The EDR, University Housing, the first phase of this master plan and all the kind of student housing that's been already built in this area. In the master plan also is the area around the library. These are all going to be locations that are earmarked for additional academic buildings. And then it's been discussed about this Greek park where fraternities, sororities are in the process of already being built. We're designing some of those. The structures will vary anywhere from two, three, four stories in height. So I don't think it's any surprise that the appetite that University of Kentucky has in this area and how they're going to sort of march their future master plans forward to Euclid. And their master plan, not ours, actually has the other side of woodland shaded lightly in green for whatever that means. Oops. Our firm, and I'm going to do this very quickly, but our firm was fortunate enough to be approached by CSF the first part of this year, probably mid-January. And since that time, we've had a number of design workshops with board members, with staff, with administration, with students. We've had the opportunity to, we think, get to know CSF really, really well. And as architects, I've been doing this for like 35 years, and I appreciate every client, every project that I've been fortunate enough to work on. The ones that stand out to me are the kind of projects that change people's lives. Those you take, I don't know, there's something about those that just make a difference in your life, ultimately. and some of the things that came out of probably the months that we've actually worked with them is their integral tie to the UK campus community. It's already been explained today about how important the mission that they have is and the opportunities, and in some cases even more so, that they offer the students. As architects, what our role and responsibility is is to take the principles and the beliefs and their mission and work with them to create those program spaces that support their ability to carry out those missions appropriately and reach out to the students. And to define an architecture that not only responds to what their needs and their desires and their missions are, but as architects to also be very, very sensitive to the context, to where these buildings are being built, because there's going to be people, The reality is there's going to be people that pass by this building that will never go into this building. So the definition of great architecture is a building that not only provides and meets the needs of those who are going to use it, but also actually contributes to the environment that it's located in. I'm just going to really briefly walk you through some of the sort of components that make up this building. and I'm going to spend a little bit of time just talking about these variances and I am going to do this quickly. But I found out basketball is a big thing here. It's sort of to provide activities. One thing that resonated with the design team was that they wanted a facility that students came and stayed and to provide a number of activities, recreational activities, social opportunities where people just bump into one another, meet people, feel welcomed, feel invited but one of the things at the top of their priority list when we were trying to get their 62,000 square feet of wish list needs down to a more doable square footage, we actually got it down to 52,000. The importance And so that basketball court never moved from a lofty position. So the lower level primarily is basketball, and there's some other support spaces down there as well. The first floor, a huge message that was sent to us was how this sort of inviting notion about how they wanted to make sure this building was inviting and was almost compelled students to be curious and have an opportunity to walk in it. A couple of things I want to point out is the existing building today. If you would go out on the site right now and measure the existing building, how far it sits back from Woodland, the closest wall to Woodland Avenue is roughly 20 feet from the property line. And we think this is important because right now, if the setback's 30 feet, the existing million doesn't comply right now as well. So what we've done, and this is a plan of the first floor. Here's Woodland Avenue right here. This sort of entry plaza has been talked about a few times today already. But one thing that sort of stuck out to us, not only an importance to Christian Student Fellowship, but sort of the notion of that area, and that's the context of the front porch. It was something that we thought was suitable not only for some of the outdoor, indoor relationships between CSF, but we also thought that whole notion of inviting what is very indicative to the bungalow housing that's built up and down the streets as well. one other thing I want to talk about really quickly too is there's like 10 feet that exist right now I know it's debatable it's somewhere between 9 and 10 feet but right now the way this is the front facade at this ground floor sits back from the property line 29 feet and then if you add another 9 feet or 10 feet kind of how you look at it we're basically those front doors the ground floor area is roughly 40 feet back from woodland avenue the same occurs on this intersection at columbia as well that lower level facade sits back from the property line roughly 30 feet and again you have sort of that 10 foot buffer from the property line to the curb um You know, when you think about zoning ordinances, or you think about rules in general, rules apply really simply if this building was a box. You know, because you could say, okay, you know, we're going to have these walls sit back 30 feet, and we're only going to be X amount. You know, it's just going to be this box. But part of what we do as architects, we try to break down the mass. We try to break down the scale. We try to create a sense of architecture, which is something that's interesting. And what you'll see is that that's kind of how this architecture was created, is that it becomes this sort of sculptural expression of function and heights. Not only does certain portions of the building bump out and certain portions pull in, but likewise the height of the building does the same thing. So when you apply this building to these ordinances or to these variances, it's not just black and white. And that's part of sort of the complications of the architecture, I guess, we created. Let's go to the next one. Again, I'm going to walk through these really, really quickly. On the second level, that's where the main sort of assembly space is going to happen. There's a lot of pre-function. I won't get into it, but a really important part of the design of this is how the students would experience the building. because we had to go up because we didn't have room to go out. There was social connectivity. There was just a physical, you know, how do you get people to experience the building by moving vertical through the building? So, you know, we've had to kind of create these spaces that had interest. There's a huge monumental stair that sort of brings people up through this building. So the next level, the third level actually, is, and you'll see when I show you a really quick session here, is that sort of the two big function areas, the basketball court and the sort of main assembly space, are the two big areas. And those are actually two storage spaces, and they stack on one another. So all the other functions in the building basically have to wrap around the building on two sides. This is the upper level, and there's what, as architects, we think the responsible thing to do, particularly in an urban core area where land is at a minimum and it has to be optimized, is to create roof terrace space, particularly with green design in mind. So we're in the process of working with Brian and the rest of the staff and students. you know to develop you know what if you know what if we could actually have sort of green terraces and and really do the right thing and and so that becomes a big part of what we call level four um one thing that i'll reference really really quickly because when i showed you how the first floor set back but we were 30 feet and and you know we were almost basically we almost were right on the variance or the existing setback at the ground floor area because of all the things that we know are important in terms of pedestrian experience and so forth. But where we had to sort of make up this square footage that we needed started on the second, third, fourth floor. So, but again, keep in mind that this building moves in and out just in this notion. This is terrace area. This is terrace area. So, I mean, at that point, this portion of the building is something like 42 feet back from woodland. This portion of the building is 25 feet back, and at the closest, it's 17. So even though that facade varies all different kinds of dimensions off of woodland, we had to ask for the variance that was the closest. So that's why this is kind of complicated, I guess. This is a section through the building just to kind of give you probably a visual understanding of what I've been trying to explain. But you can see the basketball court is a two-story space. You can see the main assembly space is a two-story space. So really, it's just floors one, two, three, four. That's what makes it a four-story building with basement. One other thing that I'll mention, because of the sensitivity, this is the area that faces down Columbia. This is the edge that's up against Woodland. we purposely made the edge that faces down Columbia the shortest portion of the building. I think at that point the floor height there is like 42 feet. So where we're asking for the 60, 67 feet, whatever it was, it really occurs right along the woodland edge. And the reality is it's the only, if you, I'm going to go to the next one, If you see, and I'll give you some quick dimensions because this is also, could be confusing, but that height is 58 feet. This height on that corner is roughly 46 feet. This height, which is sort of a special gathering space, kind of this beacon, that's 63 feet high. So it varies, if that makes sense. So not only do the facades push in and out, but they also push up and down. And the reason why we went after the 66 or 67 feet, I forget, is because of screening that we have to do for the mechanical units up on the roof. Because if you have a mechanical penthouse, it's technically defined by the building ordinances as part of the structure. So we want to screen those mechanical rooms. So that's kind of the reason why we went after certain numbers. But this is a perspective of the corner of Woodland and Columbia. You can see how the ground floor plaza engages the street to create that pedestrian experience. There is a fairly substantial six feet, five feet or so grade difference from tip to tip, so we are going to have some steps, but we see that could be a really cool, kind of a nice place for students to gather and sit and so on and so forth. And also, just to activate this whole facade, the notion of transparency, really important. Part of that sort of notion of curiosity. So we're developing an architecture that would have a lot of glass so that people can see the things that are going on in there. When there's special gathering, a student that would never know about CSF, if it's their lucky day, they will say what's going on in there and have an opportunity to walk in and meet some of the people in there. So transparency is a key, key thing. This is a perspective of Woodland and Sports Center. So again, you can see that the design that we've made extra steps to try to activate it, to try to energize it, to, we're in the process of trying to define a design, that is unique because what CSF does is very unique as well. I'm just going to take it on the building really quick. If you're going down Sports Center towards Woodland, this is the portion that you're going to see as you approach that intersection. And then this is the perspective if you're on Columbia, basically at the parking lot looking across the street. this is the so we've done everything we think sensitively in terms of trying to break the mass down because if you think about a 52,000 square foot building you know we could have done a square and we wouldn't have had to gone so high and we wouldn't have had to pull out so much and ask for variances but when we have a client that appreciates the value of design and the value of architecture then we're going to put him in a position where he's going to ask for exceptions. And that's what we've done. Sorry about that. But to sort of break this up. That is really it because I'm trying to get through this real quick. This is just a summary of all those setback variances and so forth that I've just talked about. but hopefully what resonated was the fact that these facades pull in and out, and if when you're on the ground floor, we're actually at or exceed the setbacks on Woodland and Columbia. It's only when we go above, and it's only because we have columns. Thank you very much. If you have any questions, we'd be glad to answer them. Thank you, Mr. Eckhoff. Does anybody on the board have questions before we let him sit down? Okay, Mr. Murphy, who else you got? Asking Mike Wollum to come from Strand Associates, who's going to discuss the stormwater and other engineering issues. Okay. How many witnesses do you anticipate? He's the last one. I'll be summing up after him. But there are a few other people in the audience who just want to come up and, I think, make a free statement to you. When you say few. When you say brief. Yeah. Brief. I said brief. When you say few and when you say brief. I think when I have those who use five or six will try to hold it to a minute or less. Okay. That would be great. Yes? Kind of hard for a dirt, stormwater, and traffic guy to come up and follow that act. So anyway, but I'll do my best. I'm Mike Woolen. I'm a Strand Associates, as Dick said earlier. I am a civil engineer, so these are things that we're very accustomed to dealing with on projects, both for the private sector as well as for the public and for the city on projects that we serve them. And I think my presentation will respond to many of the concerns that have been expressed by some of the earlier folks from the neighborhood. And certainly if there are questions along the way that maybe I haven't responded to, feel free to ask. And we'll go ahead and start. Engineering considerations. Four primary things that I want to focus on here today. We'll try and talk about each one of those in detail. Certainly these are all things that we identified that were serious considerations going in even before we had actually reached out to the neighborhood as a team. Initially, I want to just speak briefly about traffic. And certainly when you put a parking lot in a new setting like this, you know, some people think a parking lot, you just go down and put asphalt on the ground and stripe the thing, and then you put it into use. But there's certainly a whole lot more to that that goes into the thinking and the planning and just the sensitivity and how you place a facility like this, certainly in a neighborhood as we have here. And traffic is one of those considerations. You see the layout here showing the parking lot. Some of the decisions that we had to make, for example, were should we have one access point or two access points. One of the things that we responded to was to basically have only one access point to the parking lot. I think someone mentioned that there were a lot of, they were concerned about connections with vehicular crossings over the sidewalk. And so we basically eliminated five driveways and consolidated those into one access entry point into this parking lot. So we think that's a responsible decision that we've made in planning for this. We've also positioned that access point 370 feet at the furthest point that we possibly could with the property that we have away from the Woodland Avenue intersection. And what that does is a couple things. It certainly takes away traffic congestion near that intersection where it's important to preserve room for stacking vehicles because that is a signalized intersection. And like you've heard, there is a signal there, and there are some delays where people wait to move through and progress through the signal when it turns. And so we have located in a remote point as far away from that intersection as possible. I would also remark that the, I'm just going to use my pointer here, that along this frontage right here, along the CSF building frontage there, that area is, there's no parking there. That area is actually where deliveries currently occur, and certainly that's something that we wanted to protect the integrity of that going forward for this project in responding to that particular issue. Another factor that we look at as far as traffic is concerned is the location of our entrances and how the building, for example, and I don't want to say encroach it because we've done the opposite. We pulled our building back away from Woodland Avenue, for example. There's a plaza out front, and you see some green triangles on there. Those green triangles represent site triangles where we conducted an evaluation to make sure that we had clear lines of site. and looking, for example, if you were in this car, you can look southbound along Woodland Avenue or northbound before you made a movement to make sure you had a safe gap or a safe view, line of sight, to be able to know before you made a right turn, for example, that there wasn't somebody traveling down the street. And we've evaluated, for example, this plaza where it projects out. You know, that sight line crosses those stairs, and we've actually conducted a sight line study to demonstrate that this is an acceptable solution for the layout that we received from EOP. Likewise, we did the same analysis here at Sports Center Drive. There's a plaza that projects up close to the corner of that intersection as well, and we also had similar results with that. For the actual parking lot access point, another one of the benefits of where that was actually placed is that that access point is at the high point. There's like a crest for the street where it crests in a vertical curve. So we've positioned that at that crest in the roadway so that there is good visibility both in the eastbound, easterly direction as well as the westerly direction so that there will be safe egress from the lot when people enter and exit the parking lot. And it is opposite an existing entrance that goes into the Wesley Foundation where they have their parking facility. sewer capacity was a another thing that we wanted to look at another consideration certainly when you get into redevelopment um and given the fact that we are an epa consent decree community and the city does have a program where you have to evaluate these kinds of considerations for any project any new project that comes along a redevelopment project so we've actually conducted an evaluation following LFUCG's prescribed process where you look at the use, the intended use. You can look at both the existing conditions that you have and then the proposed condition that you will have after redevelopment to basically evaluate whether you have capacity, whether you require additional capacity to be able to meet your proposed wastewater needs going forward. Our first step involved looking at the existing condition. And as you see there on the upper portion of that slide, that kind of reflects the existing CSF usage there with 500 visitors. And we've sort of looked at everybody coming on all on one day, kind of a peak day kind of a scenario. We've also added in the five single-family lots that they would acquire since there would be credits made available for that. And so the total existing credits that would be available to support this project is about 1,700 gallons per day. in evaluating the proposed condition, we have anticipated some growth as a result of the ministry, the new building, the facilities, and the opportunities that that presents reflected the addition of the two apartments that would be included. And the capacity required for that facility would be about 1,500 gallons per day. So basically what we're saying here is that there's actually existing capacity, enough capacity credits available to support the development of this project without having to ask the city for additional capacity reservations. So we see that we get a checkmark here and that the actual excess capacity will support future ministry growth as time goes forward. And I would also add that this is not even an issue for this area. At least it won't be after this year because there are actually two actual capacity enhancement projects that the city has ongoing right now in this sewer shed where once they're completed later this year, this problem will be, I guess, solved in effect for current folks that are looking for capacity to support development in the watershed. Stormwater was certainly one of the first things that we saw as a main consideration in the development for both the parking lot and the redevelopment of the existing site. And what we're showing here is the existing conditions, showing the existing drainage patterns. And I think some folks expressed some concerns about drainage, and certainly we see that same concern and share that because when you look at, for example, the parking lot on the upper portion of that slide, it all slopes to the northwest corner of the site. You've got the Woodland Studio apartments there. There's also a single-family residence right in this area, and all the water basically, for the most part, 93% of it accumulates right there in that corner. So when someone was alluding to the fact that we had to raise the parking lot in the rear, we're doing that intentionally because we're trying to solve a real issue for this property owner and the fact that there's really no existing storm sewer system there that could receive the water that leaves these existing lots. If you look at the... So where is that water going? It just sheets over land, like through the backyard. I mean, where is it proposed? Where do you propose for it to go? I'll show you on the next slide. We're getting it. Okay. Thank you. I'll move on. All right. To answer your question. Sure. So we raised the parking lot. We shift the drainage forward towards Columbia Avenue. We are looking at some underground solutions for stormwater management here. We've actually met several times with the Division of Engineering with Thomas and his peers, kind of looking at solutions here. The proposal would be to construct a facility on-site and then extend an off-site storm sewer, that green dash line that you see, which would actually tie into another existing storm sewer where we would be able to convey stormwater responsibly away from our site. We will actually solve both the drainage for the parking lot as well as the incremental impervious surface that's created on the main building site. We will also address that by restricting the release of flow from the parking lot area. So we feel like we have a very responsible plan, and we've received basically a conceptual acceptance of that from the Division of Engineering. And I don't know if Thomas may speak to that later if you have a question. But we're very comfortable with where we are with that, and we think we've taken a very serious situation, and we've made it much improved. Another consideration? I have a question. So all the water from that parking lot is going to exit now from the front and head down the street, take a right on Woodland, and hit what storm sewer? There's a storm sewer right here that flows to the north that goes into an existing culvert system that runs to the west. That's where it all goes right now, except it flows overland through yards, backyards, driveways. It gets there anyway. And we will actually have, in addition to our underground system, we'll have some inlets here, and there will be a way if, let's say this system were to get stopped up, for example. That's obviously something we have to think about. We also have an emergency mechanism to release that water so that it will follow essentially the same path so that we're not putting someone else's property in harm's way in the event of such an occurrence. So that's our plan. Any other questions on that? Parking lot aesthetics. I think before I talk about what we're going to do to landscape the project, it's important to understand some of the things that we've tried to do to protect the integrity of the existing landscape, the trees that already exist. I think Dick may have mentioned earlier that we had engaged with Dave Leonard. We actually spent an afternoon with Dave out on site looking at trees, collecting his input on things that we should consider and how we would position the lot, how we should, trees that were worthy of saving, others that are invasive. and there were probably just an estimate, probably 20 to 30 percent of the trees that are on these five lots, he classified as invasive type trees that needed to be removed. So we're taking his input, and then we're making planning decisions to try to reflect that in the design. And one aspect of that, parking stalls around the perimeter of the parking lot, instead of the standard 18-foot depth, we've actually shrunk those to 15 and a half to reduce pavement, anticipating that the front ends of those vehicles will overhang the parking lot by that same two and a half feet. So in effect, reducing our impervious footprint. We've also shifted the parking lot a little closer to the east, to the right, as you look at this slide, because we're putting a retainer. There are no trees along that common boundary. There is going to be a six-foot screen fence that will go all along the perimeter on all three sides there. but that parking lot is right on the five foot minimum setback for a parking lot which gives us a little more room. There's actually some existing trees on the west side of that parking lot where we can basically respect the needs to preserve the root system for those trees to the best of our ability and also to allow us to raise that parking lot up. If you see here, that's the retaining wall that basically encircles that end of the parking lot. And so that will be an integral part of the design to help facilitate the objective. You also see on here what I would call an enhanced landscaping component along Columbia Avenue. And I think that's in large part to respond to neighborhood concerns about the aesthetic, the appearance. And we basically, we've asked for the 15-foot setback waiver, and that's in part because we want to make sure that we have the ability to be flexible with existing trees in the back by pushing the parking lot forward. But we also want to be responsible and put in what we call this enhanced landscape area here along the frontage, which includes a, there's actually a wrought iron fence here that will extend all along the frontage to keep people from actually walking through the landscape area so that can be maintained in a very neat, clean appearance at all times. This is the large sycamore tree here that we're going to take efforts to preserve in some of the construction that has to take place in close vicinity. This is a seating area right here, another just a short access to get into the parking lot area, just a place for if someone wants to sit down and read a book, they're waiting for someone to give them a ride. So a lot of things like that that we've done. And to help give you a little better visualization of what this is going to look like, this is a rendered version of that, basically standing across the street at CSF and kind of looking in a northeast direction. This is the large sycamore tree here. You see the wrought iron fence and the enhanced plantings here. And then we will also be adding additional landscaping to fully comply with Article 18 of the zoning ordinance as far as plant material and trees, bushes, things of that nature are concerned. And then we had one other slide, and again, this is showing the other entrance, and one of the things that we are considering is whether there are some maybe gate systems. That's something that's under consideration, again, as a way to maybe manage the parking lot, but again, that's still in the thought process at the moment. Any questions? Any questions for Mr. Willem? Did you say something about a drop-off for delivery, a drop-off space? Yes. Is there one? Yes. Well, I'll tell you, I commented on what currently takes place. And if you see right in this area, that's all striped as a, the curb is painted yellow in that area. So there's no parking that occurs all along the entire length of CSS frontage. And so what happens is a lot of the deliveries that they get, and I can't tell you how many they have in a given day, but they would tend to pull in there, and if they run in with a package or something like that, that's where they would park. So there's sort of already a built-in accommodation there for those kinds of things in that location. And it doesn't impede traffic? Well, there's no parking. Yeah, that's correct. So someone has to just go out around them. Right. And it would be the same for any other UPS delivery that went to any house in the neighborhood. They would have, they navigate, they always find their way through our neighborhood. I'm not sure how they do it, but they do it. Anything else for Mr. Willem? Thank you, Mr. Willem. Thank you. Mr. Murphy, who you got? I'm going to sum up, but one person here who needs to go real quick, he's from the Wesley Foundation behind us, William Herndon. I told him I'd ask him to go. Sure. Mr. Herndon, I think we saw your letter already. Yes, I want to repeat essentially what's in the letter. My name is William Herndon, and I'm the director of the Wesley Foundation at the University of Kentucky. We have 48 students who live at the Wesley Foundation. It's part of our Christian living community, and I know that they're very grateful for everything that you've seen and heard. CSF has done a lot of hard work, it looks like, here today. I feel myself excited about their project after being here all afternoon. And I think they've went to great lengths to talk to neighbors, including myself. And I feel like the room's probably convinced I could be wrong about that. But I just want you to know that our students that live and sleep there, they very much appreciate the ministry. And I heard someone mention something about noise at some point in time. And every time CSF is doing something event-wise, it's in the rhythm of the campus. And so K-Week is always, all around campus, is people having a great time. And CSF is very much the contrast to what you saw in the picture, which of State Street. I'm not from Kentucky. State Street. And they offer these wonderful events. in a safe environment, which is a huge, huge contrast, I think, to what we offer everywhere else. And so I fully support what they're here to do today. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I'll sum up. We apologize for we took some time here. I think you can see, though, that a lot of time and effort has gone into this, and we have a lot of professionals that have listened to what CSF needs, listened to the concerns and implemented them, and I think you can see how enthusiastic they all are. As Rick Eckhoff said, this is a chance to work on a project that changes people's lives. I want to just discuss a couple items here as mop-up traffic issues. I just want to emphasize that we're mindful of traffic issues. However, the majority of our activities are after 6 p.m., after the rush hour. I want to point out to you, too, that CSF is most active about 30 weeks a year. During summertime now, starting last week, when UK is off, their activity level decreases a great deal. We're mindful of the traffic issues. We're one piece of private property. we're not capable of solving Lexington's and UK's transportation issues UK seems to be doing their own thing on that and they're coordinating with the city they've built SportsCenter Drive as the connector down to Cooper Drive and we certainly understand what's going on but this is not the linchpin to solving all those issues the city and UK are going to have to get together and do that themselves there's been some discussion of sound as Mr. Herden mentioned we do have some activities outside occasionally that do have some sound amplification during K week which is the big week before school starts when people are coming here for orientation there's activities other times they have outdoor movies in the yard between them and the Wesley Foundation which also involves some sound amplification We do have that occasionally. We're aware of the staff's conditions on us, which Mr. Emmons has written up. We're fully in agreement with every one of the staff conditions. We checked on our own sound issues before we came. We found out that as far as the records go back, Lexington police keep records for five years, UK for seven years, UK police. We've had one call on noise during that time, which was taken care of. zero calls to the UK police in the last seven years. As Mr. Herndon mentioned, the Wesley Foundation, which is directly behind us, 48 beds, is in full support of what we're doing. We have 35 staff members, full-time staff members at CSF. Our student activities are alcohol-free. We're near UK. We're in an area we feel that the staff recommendations are, excuse me, staff conditions are sufficient to deal with the issues that have been raised. And I know there's a few other people who want to say a few things, but just in summing up, we handed out a handout to you of letters of support. We have letters from everyone from Mitch Barnhart, who we didn't put in there because he's the athletics director. We put in there because he and his wife are active in the ministry. They're familiar with the impact it has on lives, both student athletes and students who are not athletes' lives. We have letters from other UK people who emphasize the safe environment, safe haven that this supplies students. We have letters from a philosophy professor. We have letters from our Wesley Foundation. We have letters from the fraternity, which is going in across the street. We have letters from the person who owns this property right here, Mr. Chesney, who is fully in support of it. We have a letter from Mr. Burton, who is right here in fully support of it. We have a letter from Mr. Hardin, who owns one of these properties right here. His only concern is that we ought to park more cars on the lot because there is an on-street parking problem there that you should give us more of our variance so we can park closer to Columbia. We're happy with what we have. We'll go on the record saying that. But he was in support of us and in support of having off-campus or, excuse me, off-street parking. And we have a letter from the Woodland Early Learning Center, which is catty-cornered down the street from us, and a number of other letters of support. We have a letter from Dave Leonard in there telling you about his checking of the tree situation on there. Again, this is our window of opportunity because when these lots became available for parking, that gives us the opportunity to expand this ministry. We hope you've seen that this is a very important, worthy, life-changing ministry for the students at UK. and we're here and all of us involved are so enthusiastic about this because in coming out to meetings at CSF and meeting with staff members, meeting with students, we really see the enthusiasm and the life-changing opportunities it gives to the students here. I need to mention one more thing to you. We asked in our application for additional time to complete this project. I know last month or the month before, there was one for Transy in which you gave some additional time, and typically you have done that over the years for churches. How long is this project going to take to construct? We are asking for three years to, let me get where I wrote out exactly what I was asking for. The staff mentioned it in the report. I just wanted to make sure that if you are so inclined to approve this, which we certainly hope you do, you include the staff's recommendation on timing. That is three years to initiate construction with the ability to phase construction for the build-out over a period of time for an additional five years. We think we'll do it quicker than that, but we just want to be safe on that because we are doing fundraising. They're in the middle of fundraising right now. It's going well, but we do have to raise the funds to build this, and we have every reason to believe that we will raise them. But normally, if you don't put any extension on there, we have one year to initiate construction on that. And we just need a little extra time to make sure our fundraising is in place and make sure everything can get going. And we'll have to phase this, obviously, because we can't build it all at one time. So that's why we're asking for the additional time. So if you are inclined, which we certainly hope you are, to approve this, we'd ask for just a specific mention of those time. extensions that the staff has mentioned in their report. They just didn't put it down in the findings section. I didn't see it in the staff report. Are you suggesting that we need some additional language? It's the paragraph right above the staff recommendation on page 4, where it says the staff recommendation recommends approval of the conditional use on page 4. It's the paragraph directly above that. So I'm just hoping that if you make a motion to approve that you'll mention that additional time that we have there. And, Mr. Chairman, as you know, we could go on and on for more time about this. I think you've probably heard enough at this point, but if you do have questions, we'd be more than happy to answer them. And we thank you very much for your time on this. Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Murphy? If not... Staff is supportive of the additional time. We are recommending the fifth condition that just highlighted from the body of your staff report that the applicant shall be allowed up to three years to exercise this conditional use and initiate construction within the site with the ability to phase construction and with full build-out over an additional five years, so a total of eight years for the subject property. Often the board will put that in as a separate condition. It was a part of the application and a part of the applicant's request, and the staff is supportive of the extra time. Okay. Mr. Murphy, do you agree to that language? Mr. Murphy, do you agree to that amendment to your application? I suppose the applicant shall be... Allowed up to three years to exercise conditions. I'm sorry, allowed up to three. construction on this site with the ability to face construction over five years. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much. Five years. Okay. And that would be added to the proposal as additional condition number five. Is there anybody else who wished to speak with anything new, any other new information? There's a gentleman in the back with his head held his hand up a couple of times. Come forward, please, if you would. We'll hear from you briefly. My name is Russ Williams. I own 564 Woodland. I'm Mr. 93%. What I'd like to have is some sort of an assurance that if the system that they've designed doesn't work, they won't wash me into the street. Well, we heard from Mr. Willem. He's probably the best person to respond to your concerns. Were you here for his testimony? I was, and he said that the problem is the 93% is absorbed by the yard and the trees and all that. Now, when we have a blacktop on it, nothing's all going to run off. And if one of these systems don't work, where's my spillway? Where is, you know, if you build a dam, you've got a tube that carries the water out. But when the tube plugs up, you've got a spillway. I need a spillway. That's all I've got to say. Thank you, Mr. Williams. I think we heard detail about that, as I recall from Mr. Willems' testimony, specifically addressing that and with the angled parking towards the street with the emergency measures that he talked about. I think we've heard in response to that question. Thank you, Mr. Williams, for your concern. And Ms. Clark, you had one final thing to say before we take this up. This is new information, and I will be quick. The Woodland Dorm setback is 18 1⁄2 feet of sidewalk to the terrace wall on the Woodland Dorms, and then there's a 16-foot terrace. The Woodland Dorms are actually two feet further back from the curb than the church wall. We really need an on-site delivery area. There is not room anywhere on any of those roads surrounding it. You heard 800 in the sanctuary. You heard 20,000 meals a year. The roof terrace is a good reason for a sound condition. And we're delighted they have Strand. Strand is great at this. strand can do us low impact development put it in the conditions for the water they're exemplary in town and please put a tree protection put them under 26 of the zoning ordinance as well as the landscaping thank you thank you Ms. Clark is there anybody else Mr. Murphy that you have Ms. Bledsoe who is here who is also a member of the urban county council thank you sir sure thank you my name is amanda bledsoe i represent the 10th district on city council i thank you all for your time and consideration we were here till nine o'clock last night on a zone change so i feel it i won't reiterate what they've said jake and i are very good friends although we vote very differently we did last night we do all the time and i'm hearing strong support of the application i've been a board member at CSF for eight years. They do a phenomenal job reaching a demographic that desperately needs a safe place to be. They are good, good neighbors. I would stake my reputation on them being good neighbors. I would urge you to strongly consider supporting the applicant, and I want to thank the planning staff. This has been a dream of the 10 years working to get to today. It was not something that was done lightly or with not consideration to the neighborhood or all the different variables with UK and others that play into this thing. It was very well orchestrated to come to this point. And I thank planning staff for working so hard to get us here and I thank you for your time and consideration today. Thank you, Ms. Bledsoe. Mr. Murphy, is that it? Well, we've got three or four people who want to spend one minute talking to you if we can hear those. I'll give three or four people one minute each. Chairman Glover and committee members, thank you so much. I know it's been a long day, and we're going to make this short. We're Jim and Jerry Harnett from Louisville, Kentucky. We had two children that came through CSF where they were up here at UK, and it had a tremendous impact on them. We help on Thursday evenings occasionally and come bring dinner to feed 500 students, and I'm telling you, they need the space. They are out in the parking lot. We're setting up tables everywhere trying to feed those students who want to be there. So we appreciate your looking at this and accepting the application. Thank you. You got what I was going to say and then some, so we're done. God bless you all. Thank you. My name is Jared Polson. I'm on staff at CSF. I do fundraising. So I just want to say quickly, I came through in the ministry as a student. I also played basketball at Kentucky, and I can honestly say CSF is way more important to me than UK basketball ever was, and I really mean that. And my brother came to the ministry, my sister, and all these people that are here right now, they're just like me. CSF has impacted them in a way that they'll always have for the rest of their lives, and this is just a very small percentage of the people that are impacted by CSF. So I would just urge you guys and even the opposition to think about not just a building. We don't want a building just to be cool and have a nice building. We want a building because we want to impact more people. We're at a plateau right now. We don't have enough room to impact people. The first worship service of the year, we had over 800 students coming. I saw personally about 100 people leaving the sanctuary because there was no room to fit. So we're at a plateau. If we don't get this new building and parking lot, we can't really grow, and we can't have the impact that we have on all these students. So thanks. Thank you, Mr. Paulson. Hey, Chairman and Council. My name is Kaim Steinbeck. I also work at CSF. I'm coming up on my second year. When I came around CSF my freshman year, I was one of probably five of the African American students that were involved. And now, I mean, it's increased to around 50, 75 just minorities. And I say that just because we're a community that focuses a lot on diversification. We've seen growth in our international students, just the international students that come to our community. We've had events that have hosted at the very least 200 international students. So I just would implore you to take that into consideration, that we're a place that cares about people from different backgrounds and embraces those different backgrounds and cultures. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tainbank. And one more. Yes, ma'am. Hi, my name is Allison Harvey, and I'm from Chicago. And when I came to Kentucky, I didn't really have a community. But between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I became really sick, and I was actually in a coma for 10 days. And even though I didn't have very great friends, a couple people from CSF had heard about my story. And they came and prayed over me. They gave gift cards to my family. They painted my hair. I'm sorry, they painted my nails, and they cut my hair. No, they didn't cut my hair. Anyways, they just took care of me and my family, and I had never experienced community like that, and now I'm just so passionate about having the unreached parts of campus know that there is a place for them to be safe, and I am so passionate about seeing international students come to CSF, And I lived with three Chinese students who felt like they had no place to go, and now we're seeing over 200 international students saying, I know I belong here and that I made the right choice. So, again, I hope that you see our vision to just encourage others that they do belong, they have value, and that go cats. Thank you. Anything else? Any other testimony? Any questions by board members about this application? Any other comments from staff? Thank you. I'll entertain a motion from somebody. I move to approve CV 2016-27 Christian Student Fellowship Inc.'s request for a conditional use permit to establish a church and associated parking in variances as follows. A, to increase the maximum allowable height from 35 feet to 66 feet. B, a front yard and side yard variance for 600 Woodland Avenue and 502 to 504 Columbia Avenue from 30 feet to 15 feet. a rear yard variance for 502-504 Columbia Avenue from 30 feet to 7 feet and D to reduce the required front yard at 506-537 Columbia Avenue from 30 feet to 15 feet and E to reduce the required off-street parking from 160 to 88 parking spaces in a two-family residential R2 zone within the infill and redevelopment area at 600 Whittlin Avenue and 502-504-507-537 Columbia Avenue for the reasons recommended by staff and subject to the five conditions outlined here by staff and discussed today at this hearing. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. Do I hear a second? I'll second. Thank you, Ms. Forrester. Motion is made and seconded. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. I agree. Any opposed? Motion carries. Good luck with the project. Are there any other matters to come before the May meeting of the Board of Adjustment? Mr. Chairman, if you will, if I can direct your attention to page 5 of your agenda, the landscape review committee. Mr. Rory Cayley, who was a member on the landscape review committee for the tree board. His time on the tree board is expired and there is a new volunteer from the tree board, Ms. Ann Bowe, who has volunteered. The staff would respectfully request that she be appointed. Do we need a motion to that effect? Yes, sir. I'll hear a motion. to replace Ms. Cayley with Ms. Bowe. So moved. Second? Second. I hear a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carried. Thank you very much. Any other business? Thank you. The staff has no other business. Well, I'll welcome back Mr. Stumbo next month. This session of the Board of Adjustments is adjourned. Thank you. Oh!