called FASI and it started with oral history interviews with Lexington drag queens and kings so the Lexington drag community and it started with oral history interviews and then we added photography and creative writing and we made installations in a few different places and time. And you did all this with students? No. That was not with students. No. That was just you guys. Yes. Okay so then how did you begin to integrate students with some or any of these projects? Yeah. So that's interesting. So when we work with students, I think that's exclusively been through that one class, Community Engagement Through the Arts. Okay. So that's a class that you co-teach? Yes. Mostly freshmen, sophomores, juniors? Anyone can take it. And it's important to the two of us is that the students who take it are not primarily art majors or English majors, that they're from across the university. So with that in mind, then we have a group of 10 to 14 students that can be a very strongly functioning community of themselves first. And then within that, we can more easily and effectively collaborate with people in the city. Okay. So then let's turn to unlearned fear and hate. So how does this fit in with what you've been doing? And first that, and then I'll ask you more about this particular project. Does this grow out of other work? It did, yeah. And before, we'll talk about the specific other artwork it grew out of, but I should say that because since 2008, so for eight years now, we've engaged the Lexington community with or without our students. we've built a level of trust with a lot of people. People expect to participate in our artworks. They expect us to make more art. So whenever they see us, they say, what's next? Which places a lot of responsibility on us. But ultimately, each of our artworks here in the community has been about making the community stronger, getting people to talk to each other, to hear each other's stories, and to become more present to each other. And this artwork is very much about the same. It aims to start conversations and to hopefully allow people to hear each other and to become more human to each other, despite whatever differences they might have, differences of gender, sexuality, race, class, any of that. But specifically, it came out of unaware, fear, and hate. Let's talk about that. So the phrase itself and then... Yeah, the phrase itself is a phrase from a poem that we commissioned Frank X. Walker to write for Love Letter to the World, which is a global tattoo project, which comes from the Lexington Tattoo Project. And that concept was that it's a poem. That poem was written by Bianca Spriggs, written as a love letter to the city. Then we divided it into words and phrases and designed tattoos for each of them. So there are 263 people in Lexington who have a tattoo as part of that project. That was received well. we did it in a few other cities, but then also kind of challenged to see if we could do it on a global scale. So Frank X. Walker wrote the poem for that, for the global tattoo artwork. And in that is the phrase, unlearn fear and hate. And it's a challenging phrase within the poem. But in spite of that, it has from the very beginning been either the most downloaded or the second most downloaded phrase. And downloaded means because with that project, anyone in the world can download a phrase, take the design for that. If there are any additions or deletions, now is the time. If not, we'll entertain a motion to approve both sets of minutes by consensus, if that's agreeable. Mr. Chair? Yes, ma'am. Move approval of July 28th and August 26th minutes. Okay, it's been properly moved by Ms. Carolyn Plumlee and seconded by Ms. Carolyn Richardson that we approve the minutes of July 28th and Office of 25th. Any other discussion on the motion? Hearing none, would you please vote when it comes up on your monitors. Postponements of withdrawal. mr chairman i'm dick murphy on page six of your agenda the text amendment zota 2016-3 amendments to article 816 to allow recreational facilities as principal uses in the b1 zone I represent Transylvania University. We're requesting an indefinite postponement on that. It appears we'll be taking those to the Board of Adjustment, and once we get through there, hopefully we can go ahead and withdraw this. But at this point, we don't know, so we'd just like to indefinitely postpone it. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak to this particular issue? Anyone on the commission? Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Move indefinite postponement of ZOTA 2016-3. Second. Okay, it's been properly moved by Mr. Cravens and seconded by Mr. Smith that we have an indefinite postponement for ZOTA 2016-3. Any other discussion on the motion? Hearing none, would you please vote when it comes on your monitors. Motion passes. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Thank you. Any other postponements, withdrawals? Okay. Then we can move into the first item on the agenda. I think that's Palumbo Properties Incorporated. So Good afternoon, Chairman Wilson, members of the Commission. Before we get started on this case, we do have 11 letters of correspondence related to this zone change, and they do date back to last year when this was originally filed, but the most recent was just from last week, so I would like to circulate those and put them in the record. I would also note that there is a handout at your seat that is an excerpt from the recently adopted small area plan for Winburn and Russell Cave neighborhood small area plan, a one-sheet page, and then a copy of the multifamily design standards that were part of that plan. And then the last thing I would mention is there is a staff report in your notebook. It includes our initial staff report from last year, and it also in the notebook includes the supplemental staff report, which was from this past month. In addition, you'll also see a staff report for conditional use. This case is MARC 2015-7. And again, it was filed last year. It is now an amended application for property at 564 Asbury Lane. It's actually a portion of that parcel address. It's a request for single-family residential zone change from R1D to a planned neighborhood residential R3 zone. The subject site is approximately 14 acres in size, and it is located within the Newtown Springs development, which is about an 80-acre overall development. And Newtown Springs is located at the intersection of Newtown Pike and Citation Boulevard. Just to get a little closer look, the subject property is bound both to the west and the east by single-family residential zoning and use. In addition to the north is a nursing home that was recently constructed in the last four or five years called the Willows. And then to the south, the property remains zoned AU and some light industrial further to the south. and this area is part of Lexmark, and their recreation facilities directly adjoin the subject property. Other uses in the vicinity include mostly Newtown Springs to the west, which part of their commercial development or most of their commercial development remains vacant, although there have been a few recent proposals for some development in that area. Griffin Gate neighborhood and golf courses further to the north. And then to the east, it's Hollow Creek and Green Acres subdivisions, which do not currently have a direct connection into the subject property. They do have a stub street from Hollow Creek. But all of these single-family homes and multifamily homes have access to Russell Cave Road. But all development in this vicinity will eventually have connections to Citation Boulevard once that connection is created between Russell Cave and Newtown Pike. I do have several photos of the subject property. This is a recent aerial photo. You can see that the Newtown Springs development is mostly vacant except for single family and townhouse residential. and that is located on Russell Springs Drive, Dawson Springs Way, and Silver Springs Drive. If I can get this to work. However, the single-family residential to the east of the subject property, those neighborhoods have been completed for a number of decades. So those would be along Hollow Creek and Asbury Lane. at ground level this is a view of the subject property from Silver Springs Drive which is in the Newtown Springs development where we posted the zone change sign just directly across the street from that is currently the existing single family residential structures that have been built in the last few years also at the intersection of and I'm going to point to a map over here to my right, the location where Dawson Springs currently connects to Silver Springs, there is a parcel or a portion of the subject parcel, I'm going to go back, that is not proposed for rezoning, but there is a conditional use proposed at that location. And so the picture I will skip back to depicts that piece of property, and they are proposing a conditional use at that location for a private club. Sorry about that. This is a view at the end of Dawson Springs Way to the south end of the development, again looking into the subject property, and then nearby single-family homes along Dawson Springs Way. And then from the Hollow Creek Roadside, you can see it's currently a stub street. There are single-family homes on either side of that street, and that eastern border of the subject property does have a significant tree stand that exists along there. There's also, it's hard to tell from this photograph, a bit of a grade change from the street level to where the ground is on the subject property. The applicant is proposing to develop multifamily development on the subject parcel, and they propose 252 dwelling units and 504 bedrooms within that development. In addition, they proposed the private club, which would be adjacent across Silver Springs Drive, as well as the required off-street parking. The zone change was originally filed in April of 2015, and it met with some staff opposition. In fact, the staff recommended disapproval at that juncture, primarily because the zone change proposed development that the staff felt was out of scale with the two existing single-family neighborhoods. And also, we knew that there was a small area plan that was in the near future going to begin, and that prompted the staff to recommend disapproval. The petitioner at that point did agree to postpone the request and wait for the small area plan to be completed. In June of 2016, the Planning Commission did adopt the Winburn and Russell Cave area neighborhoods small area plan. It included seven principles, guiding principles, that have, since that has been adopted, guided, or informed the staff's revised recommendation for the subject property. In fact, now that the small area plan is complete, the staff, for that reason, doesn't believe that the request is premature, as we had stated in the past. the small area plan also developed a list or a document associated with that referenced as a multifamily design guidelines and became an appendix to the small area plan since the applicant is seeking his own change to allow multifamily development the staff believes that the project should significantly comply with the small area plan recommendations as well as the design guidelines provided within that plan. The corollary development plan does depict, still depict a mixture of two and three story structures at a density of 18.9 dwelling units per acre. Currently, the three story structures are centered within the parcel, not adjacent to the single family, either the existing single family or planned single family at the border of the subject property, and that provides an opportunity to have entrances along the street. The development plan generally meets the intent of the design guidelines for overall site design, but many details are still to be submitted to ensure that it meets the requirements or standards for some of the other pieces of the design standards, like open space architectural standards, for instance. The following issues are what the staff believes, not issues, points that the staff believes the applicant is meeting with their proposal in terms of the small area plan. And they range from core goal development based on, and if we read through the first one, providing housing options that meet the needs for a wide range of residents. expanding affordable and quality rental opportunities, specifically development of new units in the area. In terms of land use recommendation, providing a range, now a mixture of residential units in the area, and making sure new land development is compatible with the existing residential development in the area, and utilizing existing vegetation, which the applicant has agreed to with the tree stand along the eastern side of the property. In addition, their connectivity and access recommendations, so connections between the local streets, the applicants agreed to connect to the Hollow Creek neighborhood, as well as provide a stub street to the south to the Lexmark property that could be redeveloped in the future. And then also in terms of the sense of place, they are providing an amenity with the private club and also open space within their development that we believe meets those suggestions or recommendations from the small area plan. We also looked in depth at the multifamily design guidelines, and there were four or five that they met reinforcing the existing street development patterns, making sure entrances were going to be on the street and not into the parking lot or within the apartments. centrally locating amenities for more than just the apartment use but the neighborhood use providing smaller parking lots to the rear of buildings and then providing buildings that were comparable or appropriately scaled to the existing residential area that it will be located within that is in terms of height and massing scale so that the neighborhood is the character of the neighborhood is maintained. So the staff believes that those suggestions or recommendations of the small area plan are being met. There are still some other design guidelines within that packet that aren't really things that the staff can evaluate at this point. It would be more of a final development plan in terms of reviewing architectural design and lighting and those we believe would be reviewed at a later step. The applicant also believes not only is their plan in agreement or suggested zone change in agreement with this small area plan that was recently adopted, but also that it's in agreement with the 2013 comprehensive plan, and they brought forward five goals and objectives that they believe are consistent with their proposed zone change, and course related to expanding housing choices, supporting infill and redevelopment opportunities, encouraging development of underutilized parcels, and providing well-designed neighborhoods, and they believe also preserving urban neighborhoods. In reviewing the applicant's justification, the staff did find that this request is in agreement with the Small Area Plan and the goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan. the comprehensive plan really took the sorry the small area plan took the comprehensive plan a step further and encouraging proposed multifamily development but it needs to in the staff's opinion follow the recommended design guidelines in order to truly be in agreement with the small area plan so the staff does believe that those things will occur and I believe we will stand behind those recommendations as the application if it moves further along. In summary, the staff recommended approval to the zoning committee three weeks ago, and the zoning committee likewise recommended approval to the full planning commission of this particular zone change. In the staff's recommendation, we did suggest two conditional zoning restrictions, one related to maintaining a 20-foot buffer along the eastern property line, which you may recall one of the photographs from the Hollow Creek Road location shows a very significant tree stand that runs along the property line. The staff believes that should be maintained, specifically the actual trees in that area. Obviously, honeysuckle and other things could be removed. And only trees four inches or larger with the permission of the urban forester could be removed, only if they're dead or dying. Otherwise, all four-inch trees should be maintained. That's the staff recommendation. And in addition, we recommended no pole lighting on the subject property. I understand from the applicant that they have an alternative suggestion that we have discussed prior to this meeting for some pole lighting. And so I'll let Mr. Murphy present that to you. The staff believes these restrictions will help to make sure that the proposal for rezoning is in agreement with the small area plan and will protect the adjoining neighborhoods. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the proposed zone change. Any questions? Yes, sir. Ms. Collins. Thank you. Tracy, one of those bullet items that you mentioned, and it's on page two of the revised staff report as well, speaks of the proposal and tends to relate to overall height, size, character, to that of adjacent neighborhoods. We're talking two- and three-story apartment buildings? The application, yes, we are talking about two- and three-story apartment buildings. every house in the Dawson Springs, Newtown Springs development is a two-story, or the ones very close to the subject property are two-story homes. So we believe the two-story apartment buildings are comparable in terms of height, and the applicant has chosen to make the width of those buildings much smaller so that they are eight plexes, and they appear from the front to be slightly wider than a single-family home might be, but still size-wise in terms of the height, very similar to a two-story single-family structure. And then they've centered the three-story buildings within the center of the subject property, and I'm sure Mr. Martin can point out the exact location, but they are not adjacent to the Hollow Creek neighborhood, nor are they adjacent to Silver Springs Drive. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Berkeley. My question was along that same line. I know we have some neighbors here, and I thought they might be interested to hear how you all were discussing limiting the scale and mass of the buildings. Any other questions from the commission members? Thank you, Mr. Wade. Thank you. Move to the ZDP 2015. Okay, that's you, Mr. Mark. Mr. Chairman. members of the commission. The preliminary development plan is on page three of your agenda, ZDP 2015-33, Newtown Springs. This is the revised preliminary development plan that was submitted with the revised application. Again, here is Newtown Pike. You may recall, just approved the Tire Center in this location, the restaurant, retail buildings in this location up front along Newtown. Of course, here is Citation. This is the Trilogy Healthcare campus in this location, and of course Hollow Creek neighborhood to the rear. They are proposing 21 buildings as part of this multifamily development. You can see a connection with Hollow Creek here. They have internalized their parking, spacing the locations that you can see here and here. There are, as I stated, 21 buildings. Only four of them are three stories, and they are located in the interior. The others are two stories, and again, you can see the orientation of the two-story Silver Springs. The plan was reviewed by your committee, your subdivision committee, and recommended for approval. There are just a few cleanup items that you can see from your agenda. There are several discussion items. And the first one I'd like to address is, and it's not a discussion, it's to clarify the existing and proposed landscaping along the single-family home area. And Ms. Wade addressed that with the recommendation of the conditional zoning, and that was intended, and this condition supports that concern, and we believe that conditional zoning will address it, that they have appropriate screening for these single-family homes that border the property. And you can see it's in this location. So that was the intent of that particular condition. We had one to discuss the adequacy and the need for improvements to Citation Boulevard. Now, they don't obviously touch on Citation Boulevard. That was a condition that grew out of our original concern with the original plan and the intensity and the amount of density and that sort of thing about whether or not there was appropriate infrastructure to support that proposal. Now, the new proposal has fewer units. There are, as I said, 21 buildings. They are two-bedroom units. There's 252 units along with 511 parking spaces. This is a reduction in density. However, it is worth noting the FAR is maxed out just about less than 800 square feet available in the FAR. So they are making good use of the property. But this is it. You can't see and won't see any more increased density on this problem. But back to Citation Boulevard, several things have happened in the interim. One is we've had a traffic study done, and Mr. Emmons is going to go over that with you. And it indicates that there will not be a problem, but he will get into that with you. As well as staff is now, because of the small area plan, Citation Boulevard has moved up on the state's funding list in a priority status. And it's our understanding that they are attempting to fund in the next cycle when the design money for this portion. Of course, staff is very pleased with that. Asbury Lane is ours, that we actually own this little section, and we will be responsible to build that. Now, so again, that condition actually came out of an initial concern about the original proposal, and staff believes that could be stricken from your conditions. We had another item, which was trail linkage per the Greenway Plan. And again, the Greenway plan was at a scale that indicated the possibility of a trail in the area of this development and down and towards our legacy trail. The small area plan for Windburn did not reflect that, but it does reflect a public system that would link to the trail through the sidewalks and others. But again, that was a condition that arose out of the initial plan submittal. That could be resolved at a final development plan. The compliance with the Windburn-Russell Cave Small Area Plan, the multifamily, and Ms. Wade discussed that briefly with you. The Small Area Plan came up with very detailed recommendations. and they go anywhere from street presentation, from trees and berms, and the way things are aligned, whether it's buildings and intersections, to the types of facades and materials and that sort of thing that are being recommended, including fenestration and a breakup and that sort of thing. They're quite detailed, very similar to some other design standards we've used in some other zones and some overlays in corridor areas. That is something, and the applicant is going to, I'm sure, elaborate on this with you because they've done some renderings. That is, of course, something that we believe is important to address at the final development plan, where you're going to want to see those details because that's what they're going to build off of is the final development plan. And we would want to see a commitment at that time and a demonstration of the types of things they intend to do at that time. You can see, just as an example, they've sewn some landscaping in right here where this parking, for instance, dead ends. But as I stated, in those design elements, there's quite a bit of detail about how the buildings should be presented to the street. Again, that is a typical final development plan condition. But we wanted to discuss it with you today and get it out there on the table. note number 20 the final discussion item the staff was concerned with is a note that says that hollow creek connection right here and as you all are very aware this has been shown for years but it is a connection that has been much discussed and there's been a lot of concern expressed you all know staff we support connections and interconnectivity strongly That note states that this will be built when citation is completed. Staff would prefer that it be built at the time of the final development plan and barricaded or have a gate. That would be our preferred solution to that situation. We don't want to wait on citation. Again, although we've stated that it's going to be moved up on the state's list, those things are subject to change and money availability. And again, this won't be opened up until it's completed. But we do believe it ought to be constructed and on the ground. We've had areas where there's been gaps in the past and there was some difficulty in making that physical connection. So that is staff's concern and why we want to discuss note 20. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Any questions for Mr. Martin? Yes, sir, Mr. Owens. Tom, you mentioned that there's been a reduction in the number of units in the bedrooms. The report that's in this booklet dated January 2016 says 246 dwellings, 492 bedrooms. Now you're reporting 252 and 504. That seems like that's an increase instead of a reduction. I was going on plan numbers. I looked at the original plan that had a larger number and looked at this one, and that was the basis of my statement. The one that I have before you today has lesser units on it than the original submission. So how many are we talking about then? Based on the plan? Yeah. Based on this plan, there are 252 units. Okay. With two better units. Where is the reduction coming from? That's my question, I guess. It's coming from the original plan. It had more units on it. So the staff report was wrong, I guess? The zoning staff report? I can't speak to that. Okay. It might have been a – I just looked at the plan. Okay. Yes, ma'am? I was just going to clarify that on the original plan, the area where the private club is proposed was eight single-family homes, eight single-family lots. So there were fewer apartment numbers, but there were eight single-family lots, so it had an overall larger number. And they moved the, since last year, they moved the amenity package onto the R1D land, and so that shifted out the eight single-family homes, and now they're all in multifamilies. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Martin? Oh, wait a minute, Mr. Martin, I do. Just a couple of clarifications. For number 15, it says discuss note 20. Do we need to have this on? Do we need to, is this resolved? We need to resolve note 20. Resolve all those that have discussed. Yes, sir. Staff's, again, preference is that it actually be built and barricaded, not left to be built at the time citation is constructed. Thank you. All right. The requested conditional. Okay. Mr. Salley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the Commission, good afternoon. This item is on page 3, item B of your meeting agenda. This is the conditional use request that is associated with MARC 2015-7. We are mindful of your time limits, and in the next eight minutes, I will present this report to you, and Mr. Emmons will cover the transportation planning staff's review of the submitted traffic impact study for this development. This is associated with the zone change, although, as Ms. Wade said, the area proposed for this conditional use is not part of the actual zone change. It is immediately adjacent across what is planned as an extension of Silver Springs Drive. It is directly across the street from the subject property. The proposal is for a clubhouse building of just over 3,700 square feet, a pool house building of about 930 square feet, an outdoor swimming pool, and associated off-street parking. This preliminary plan shows 30 parking spaces being proposed initially. Of course, the final development plan the staff would expect will have a little bit more detail about this proposed use. The club will be open to members of the residents, I should say, of the proposed apartment complex. Memberships will also be made available to residents of Newtown Springs, Hollow Creek, Green Acres, and presumably other areas as well. So it will not just be for the exclusive use of the development that's before you this afternoon. The membership is anticipated to be even larger. The applicant is proposing this conditional use in lieu of about seven or eight residential lots, viewing this as a land-use intensity step-down from the apartments back in the direction of the single-family homes in Newtown Springs. The staff in our report, at the same tab in your notebook, believes that this will not harm the public health, safety, or welfare of the area, and this is ensured by the fact that we will have all pedestrian facilities available to the construction to this location from both the new development that's proposed and the existing residential development in the area. As is shown on the staff report and on your agenda, the staff is recommending approval of this requested conditional use. For purposes of time constraints, I will not go into those two reasons. I would like to touch quickly on the five recommended conditions the staff has. First, that the subject property be developed according to this or an amended development plan. Secondly, that the use be conducted in accordance with the application that has been submitted. Thirdly, all necessary permits be issued for this use. Fourthly, that the Fayette County Health Department shall inspect and approve of this facility, both indoors and out. And that finally, off-street parking be provided at a ratio of one space per four members of this club. That is the minimum requirement of the zone. Before you hear from Mr. Emmons, I'd be glad to answer any questions about our report on the conditional use permit portion of this request. Any questions from Mrs. Salley? Yes, sir, Mr. Berkeley. Just a clarification on this parking. You're saying four members. Is that in addition to the residents of the apartments? That is an excellent question. Mr. Murphy and the staff have discussed this. And it was always the staff's belief that the parking that is in the apartment complex that's before you today is going to be located close enough to this facility to meet the zoning ordinance requirements. So the parking that the staff is expecting on this R1 site that is not part of the zone change would be for those members that do not reside in this multifamily area. So the concept being, if you live in the apartment complex, your parking is already there. You can walk across the street to the facility. If you do not live there, then the parking would need to be provided a ratio of 1 to 4. That's how we believe we're all in agreement today with how the parking will be met in the future for this. That seems very reasonable to staff. Plus, we do expect that there will be the ability of on-street parking as well should there be events or something that would actually overflow the parking lot. Any other questions for Mr. Saleh? Okay, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Emmons. Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, I'm very briefly going to present the staff report on the traffic impact study that was performed by Integrated Engineering for the subject property. Our summary report is already in your place. The location of the property has been talked about well. I know that you're aware of that. It's also been talked about that there's been a change in the plan since this traffic study was originally done in April of 2015. The staff recalculated the trip generation, and indeed there are less trips. It does still meet under the current proposal, though, it does still meet our thresholds for a traffic impact study with 100 directional trips in the peak hour on this. The applicant has asked that since the numbers went down, and you'll see in the next slide, that even though the numbers went down, the traffic study is still valid, and asked that we go ahead and accept the 2015 study. The staff agrees with that logic. There were three primary intersections that were looked at, Silver Springs Drive at Citation, Citation in Newtown Springs, and Newtown Springs in Saunders Drive, using the familiar color coding of green, yellow, and red. All of these vehicular levels of service were all in the A's and B's, and that is exceptional. With and without the proposed development, it looks like that the existing infrastructure is going to be able to handle the proposed development. Looking at the transit, pedestrians, and bicycles, the staff would like to point out that there is, of course, the Legacy Trail along Newtown Pike is an important community feature. There will be plenty of access via the local streets and sidewalks to get to the Legacy Trail. Also, there's a bus route on Newtown Pike that will be accessible also. There's also a bus route on Russell Cave Road. Those two bus routes do not connect, but the staff does feel that it's important. the Hollow Creek connection that even if there is a vehicular control device there, that it be designed in the future so that pedestrians and bicycles can get forward. That way the people from Hollow Creek and Breckenridge can get to the Legacy Trail and people on this side can get to the Russell Cave bus routes. That interconnectivity for pedestrians and bicycles is very, very important. We do understand the concept of controlling the vehicular access of Hollow Creek so that Hollow Creek does not take the brunt of the traffic that Citation is intended to do. And as Tom mentioned, Citation Boulevard, the good news is that in the recently approved traffic impact, I can't remember, there's a term for it. But in the recently approved plans, the money was approved for the design for Citation Boulevard to be completed over to Russell Cave Road. It's not great news also because I did want to just let you know that Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has a program called Pause 50, where they're putting a pause on new projects starting until they are able to get $50 million back into the budget. So the good news is that the money is there. It's a state priority project. The design is going forward. It's just a matter of when that occurs, as Tom mentioned. So the timing becomes very, very important as you're looking at this development. The consultants' recommendations are that the analysis showed that there was very little deviation in the levels of service with or without the proposed development and suggest that the existing infrastructure can handle it. The staff agrees. With that, the staff has one single recommendation for you, and that's that with whatever vehicular control devices are devised for Hollow Creek Road at the time of the final development plan, that you at least take into consideration the pedestrian and bicycle movement through that area. Also, as it comes about, if there's a need for it for emergency vehicles to traverse that. This is just a using the applicant's development plan over the late of Google Earth. That concludes my presentation. And if you have any questions for me or any other staff members, we're available. Any questions for Ms. Plumlee? Yes, just an estimated guess. If you're going to catch a bus on Newtown, how far, how long would a walk would that be? It's only about a half a mile, and that's generally considered an easy 10, 15-minute walk. Any other questions for Mr. Emmons? Okay, thank you. Thank you. It's now for the applicant. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Dick Murphy. I'm very pleased today to be representing Palumbo Properties, Incorporated, which is the owner and the applicant on this development. Joe Palumbo is with us today in the second row. Joe is the president of Palumbo Properties. Bill McAlpin from Eagle Engineering is here. Tom Smith, our architect from Sherman Carter Barnhart Architects, is on the second row. Eddie Mesta of Integrated Engineering on the third row is our traffic consultant and prepared a traffic report. Chaz Heitz on the second row. He is in my office, as you know. And just to give you some background on this, we're asking for an R3 zone change for the part that will be developed as apartments. As the staff has mentioned, we are not asking for a zone change on the part where we have the conditional use permit request for the private club over here. That will remain in the R1D zone. The R3 is for the apartment development on the east side of Silver Spring Drive. That's about 13.8 acres. we're asking for the conditional use permit for the club over on this side all those buildings in the club are going to be one-story buildings the club will have a clubhouse social spaces swimming pool indoor out to our recreational areas and that sort of thing which will be open to members not only of the apartment development but to members of the subdivisions in this area as well, as the staff has mentioned to you. That's why we had to classify it as a private club, because it was not inside the apartment complex. It's across the street and will be open to others, not just apartment members. So that's why we have to ask for the private club, because even though it's private, it's open to others who do not live in the development as well. As the staff has mentioned, we filed this about a year ago, and we postponed it pending the outcome of the Winburn-Russell Cave small area plan. There's been some questions about the density. One of our plans showed 324 units on this property and nine single-family houses, and that's what our traffic study was based upon, 324 units plus nine single-family houses. It's been decreased. our traffic study indicated that it worked for that number but of course this number is 252 two-bedroom apartment units plus the club no single family houses so from what it was when we did our traffic study it's decreased about 25 but that's there's been some questions about the number of units we had a i think a couple plans earlier and those all those plans have been gone by the wayside because we started anew with this plan about five months ago to present to you, but our traffic study was still valid because we were decreasing the number of units. As I said, we did wait for the passage of the Windburn-Russell Cave small area plan, and we are pleased to be presenting a plan to you today which we feel is in full agreement with that small area plan. There are seven guiding principles of that plan, which Ms. Wade mentioned to you, but distilled down to the most important points for this property, there's two main points, and that is design guidelines and connectivity. And I want you to know that we basically threw out our original plans that we filed and started anew. As you all know, you have a design planner on staff right now, and Mr. Palumbo hired Sherman Carter Barnhart to come on board to design this. And before we had the architects set pencil to paper and start designing this, we set up a meeting between us and the staff to make sure we were on the same page about the design guidelines and to make sure we understood what the design guidelines called for. So we had a meeting with about seven staff members, five people from us, law department, and we went over to the design guidelines so everybody had a clear understanding before we started. So I want to make sure you understand we designed this with the small area plan in mind. It's not a plan we had before, and we've somehow retrofitted it to meet some of the design guidelines. We started this with the design guidelines in mind before the architects started designing this. Then, during the process, the architects had communication back and forth with Brandy Peacher, your design planner. We had two other meetings with the staff to go over things. We'd say, okay, we can go this way or this way, which works better with the design guidelines. Staff would tell us, well, go this way. So we went that way with the design guidelines. We're mindful of the importance of this plan because, as you all know, this is probably the first plan in this community where we've had design guidelines for residential buildings outside of the downtown area. So we're sort of setting a precedent here as we come through with this, And we're mindful of that. We're trying to do this right, and that's why we had the consultations with the staff on it, because the first plan coming through sort of sets the tone for what follows on this, and we're pleased to be fully participating in this process. I want to talk about connectivity a little bit, because that's one of the important parts of the Winburn-Russell Cave small area plan. The initial plans we filed a year and a half ago did not have connectivity. We did not connect the streets. These connect the streets as called for in the comprehensive plan. The Hollow Creek connection is shown coming up to Silver Spring Drive. And we had an issue about putting the traffic from Green Acres, Hollow Creek, through this subdivision and putting this subdivision's traffic through Green Acres and Hollow Creek. and in discussions with the staff we presented that to staff and in discussions with the staff they came up with a simple idea but what really was an inspired idea I think and that is that this connection would be made but that in order to prevent traffic patterns from being established before citation is put through it would remain barricaded until citation is completed over to Russell Cave Road That way, we won't establish people establishing mental traffic patterns through these subdivisions until after citation is built. Hopefully, the main traffic patterns will be on citation at that point. Once that's built and once that traffic pattern is established on citation, then we'll open up the gate on Russell Cave and make sure that connection is made. the staff we agree with Mr. Martin's comments and Mr. Emmons comments that this section would be built concurrently with the development. We would have a gate or a barricade there. We agree with Mr. Emmons suggestion that we would have pedestrian and bicycle connectivity through there. We agree with Mr. Emmons suggestion that we have emergency access through there as well. and we can work out the details of what kind of gate that is on the development plan and the final development plan, but I want to make sure you knew we are agreeing to build that section of Hollow Creek, and we are agreeing with the conditions proposed by the staff on that. We are also showing the connection of Silver Spring Drive down to the Lexmark property, which is the park on the Lexmark property, and that is so under the comprehensive under the small area plan so that if the city ever acquires this park and we can use it as a public park we've got a connection from these neighborhoods directly into that park on there i mean we don't know whether that'll occur or not but we're making that connection so that the connection can be there if the park is made There was discussion about the connections out to the trails, and obviously that will have to be resolved at the final development plan, but we're showing sidewalks throughout so that you can have pedestrian access out to the Legacy Trail, whether it be out here, which it's along Newtown Pike, or down here in the Lexmark property. So we fully feel we're having pedestrian connectivity as well. So we've heard the guidelines of the small area plan, and we're meeting them on connectivity. The other really important part was design guidelines, design and connectivity. There's seven overriding principles, and really those two are entwined in all of the seven principles in the Winburn-Russell Cave small area plan. The design guidelines, we're complying with those. As the staff mentioned, we have two-story buildings where we're adjacent or across the street from mainly two-story buildings in the subdivision or on the other side. There are a few three-story buildings right there in the middle, there, there in the middle of the property. The number of units in each building has varied in order to vary the mass of the building, and we're avoiding large blank walls. I have a little bit more to say but at this point I'd like to get Mr. Smith up here, our architect, who can discuss those design guidelines a little bit more. We have a couple boards for you. Again, this is Mr. Tom Smith, who's with Sherman Carter Bernhard Architects, a senior architect for them. Thank you, Dick. Good afternoon. I appreciate you all having us here today. And Dick hasn't left me much to talk about, but I'll try to address some of the architectural concerns. I think he hit upon a great deal of what our efforts have been with connectivity, both physical and aesthetic architectural. Not to belabor some of the vehicular and pedestrian connectivity and the connectivity of amenities through the clubhouse, but to speak a little bit more directly of the architectural address or connection to the neighborhood, we've deliberately tried to reduce the scale of the buildings. It's no longer a monoblock of facades. It's broken down into component pieces such that it appears almost as a townhouse and a lot less as an apartment. You'll notice that there's a lot of articulation of the openings. There are some porches and some fenestration. There's also a great deal of variety. You won't see a cookie-cutter approach. You'll have a difference of vents, of dormers, and of roofline to try to give a sympathetic expression of the residences that are across the street. Dick was furthermore correct in the fact that we made an earnest effort to keep everything on the perimeter as a two-story, to keep the scale down, to keep it in context and sympathetic. There are only three-story structures here. If memory serves, I believe in an earlier rendition there were perhaps ten. so after we've looked at the Winburn small area plan there was indeed a conscientious effort to try to break things up and to avoid monotony and repetition you'll note that that as is common in a lot of apartments all of the access is through a common breezeway here at the first floor that's different. We have addressed those entries to those ground floor units occur facing the street. So it also gives a presence on the street of the residents, which helps enliven the facade and engage the street. The materials will also be varied as well with both brick siding, trim, and a variety of, like I said, you won't find repetitive things like louvers that run constantly. The idea is variety and interest. Thank you, Tom. I wanted to emphasize also that these are market rate apartments. The rents for these will be in the $1,200 to $1,300 per month range. We view a typical user as somebody who may work in the Coldstream Park or some of the other businesses in the area. And I think the Windburn Small Area Plan identified a need for variety in housing styles, variety in price ranges, and we feel a particular need for a market-based apartment community in this area. We also have requested the conditional use, which Mr. Selle has reported to you on. We put this in this location for two reasons. One, it gave a transition between the single-family and the R3. This will remain single-family. These will be one-story buildings here on this. And secondly, that it is more inviting to neighbors outside the apartment community if it's over here. There's a psychological barrier if you're living outside the apartment complex, if you have to drive into the complex, try to find a place to park, and use what appears to be the community room for an apartment complex. This way, it is in the neighborhood. It is more accessible, both psychologically and physically accessible, to people who are outside the neighborhood who can utilize it as well. I wanted to go over a couple of these conditions of approval with you. We have, as the staff has mentioned, we have a couple proposed revisions. I'm going to pass out a sheet to you. It's on the screen right now. with regard to the conditional zoning restrictions the which are under three under the zoning report 3a is the 20-foot tree preservation area which we are fully in agreement with along the eastern boundary of the property that is an existing tree line it's very thick and we want to keep it so we're fully in agreement with condition 3a condition 3b in the discussing with our architects we do have a need to make sure that the parking lots are safe and we've discussed this with the staff and discussed that pole lighting might be an option if it's limited to what they call pedestrian scale which is 12 feet or under so I've simply proposed a modification to conditional zoning restriction 3b which will is basically which limits pole lighting to 12 feet in height and then the second sentence basically picks up the rest of the staff proposal on that on condition development plan condition 11 i think that's relates to the this is the development plan condition 11 relates to the landscaping i think mr martin said that could be stricken because we deal with that in the conditional zoning restriction 12 i think he said that could be stricken as well which we agreed to 13 trail linkage for the greenway plan we feel we do link with it but would agree to a condition that that be resolved at the final development plan stage we have full sidewalk and pedestrian access out to it and we we want that as part of this development with regard to condition 14 on there that is the condition relating to compliance with the small area plan we feel we totally do comply i think the staff has found that the zone changes in agreement we agree that we've still got to work through the design guidelines with the staff and we will continue to do that up to the final development plan stage so we're not trying to shirk our responsibility for the design guidelines on that but we feel we are in compliance with the design criteria at this point. If you want to add that that final resolution be a final development plan stage that is fine with us. Condition 15 which is discussed note 20 that's the Hollow Creek connection which Mr. Emmons discussed. We're in agreement with the what their proposal is is that we will construct Hollow Creek Drive as part of the final development plan as we do the other construction, that it will remain gated or barricaded until the time that Citation Boulevard is completed through to Russell Cave, but that we will have pedestrian access and bicycle access at the time we construct it, and we'll resolve the emergency vehicle access through their type of that at the final development stage. We agree to that as well. I did want to discuss also the conditional zoning restriction, excuse me, the conditional, I said conditional up there, but it's conditional use restriction five, and that is the one that Mr. Selle had mentioned about the parking on there. We just wanted to clarify that the one space per four applies to members of the club who do not reside in the parking in the department development. I've added those words in this wording of conditional use restriction number five on there. And I think the staff's in agreement with that as well because our apartment dwellers should be walking over to the pool, not getting in any. We don't want them moving their car and going over there to the pool. That would not be good. in conclusion we do have I won't ask Mr. Mesta to come up our traffic engineer unless you all have questions Mr. Smith is here from Sherman Carter who can answer any further questions about the architecture Bill McAlpin is here our engineer and Mr. Joe Palumbo is here as well and we can answer any questions you all have but I hope you've seen that we've been a very willing participant in the design guidelines in the windburn green acres small area plan we we held this back until it was done before we started we got our architects in to meet with the staff and the planning designer to make sure we were designing this in agreement with the design guidelines we know we're the first one through and we are fully aware of that and and fully want to to comply with the design guidelines in the small area plan. We're very pleased to have a plan we think works for this property and is in fully agreement with the small area plan. So we thank you very much, and we'd be happy to answer any questions you all might have. Any commission member have any questions of either Mr. Murphy or his colleagues? Oh, first of all, Ms. Mundy, then Mr. Owens. Oh, okay, Mr. Owens. Okay. One question. Your proposal for the pole lighting, you're saying 12 feet in height, will that illuminate 360 degrees or box lighting going downward or what? Well, that's something that the architects will need to work with Ms. Peacher on. We talk to the architects a lot that we have no desire. We don't want the lighting element to be visible from any area around us. We want it to be downward lighting without light trespass over our property lines. So that is our goal. And they've actually looked at a number of light fixtures which accomplish that. And we'll want to work with Ms. Peacher to come up with a final design on that. But that is our goal. Okay, thank you. Anyone else? Okay, thank you, Mr. Murphy. Thank you. At this time, we'll allow people from the community who would like to speak to this particular issue. First of all, just by a show of hands, how many would like to speak to this issue? Okay. I'm going to badge you into two sections. First of all, are there proponents here who are in favor of this particular issue? Okay. Ma'am, you may come forward first. You are far and against? Well, I am most interested in your comments. Which way are you speaking first? For the development. Would you give us your name and address, please? Yes, my name is Sheila Coles. I am at 649 Hall Creek, which is adjacent to the tree line. Okay. So I'm at the opening of Hollow Creek to the last house. I'm for the development, but I'm just opposed of them opening that street up at some point. I'm at the dead end. We've owned the property since 73, and it's in a quiet neighborhood and the traffic. That's my concern. Okay. I'm the last house on the street, right there at that tree line. We hear you. Thank you. I'm for and against. Okay. I'm glad you clarified that. Anyone else here for and against on this? I'm Lewis Brown. I'm president of the Green Acres Hollow Creek Breckenridge Association. and our September the 12th meeting, we talked about this. We are neither for or for against. We still want our five-minute roadway open, but we're in agreement that we can wait until the Citation Boulevard comes through there. And I did like their presentation that we're going to be able to walk and bike until that time comes. So we're okay either way we go. Okay, thank you. Thank you. This is very interesting. Anyone else for and against on the same motion? Okay, now for those who are against. With those who are against, would you please raise your hands again? Okay, first of all, let me ask you this. Do you have a representative from the community who would like to speak on your behalf? That is not to deny anyone an opportunity, but I'd like to hear from the representative from the community. If there is no representative, no problem. You sort of. Okay. I'm the gentleman who has petitions that have been signed by the residents of Newtown Springside and some residents. Please come to the microphone to identify yourself. Hi. My name is Virgil Jones, and I live at 729 Dawson Springs Way, which would be on the little loop here. and I have petitions signed from residents of both the Newtown Springs side and some residents from the Hollow Creek side and stuff. So I kind of speak for them, but I'm not a neighborhood association member or president or anything. I'm just an individual homeowner. We'll take your position as an individual who has some petitions to share with us. All right. And you can just pass those along. Now, are those petitions against what's going on? Okay. Yes, just start with them. Anyone else like to come forward and speak in opposition? Yes, sir. I appreciate you all. Your name and address. My name's Lyle. Coming from the Pinnacle, I used to live in the Pinnacle. I'm pretty blessed I had over a 4,200-square-foot house. And even in that area, as blessed as that area is, you had South Point to come through there, just one road. They now, and I don't know if you guys are familiar with that area, they're going 55, 60 miles an hour through there. They even have little solar-powered signs to tell you how fast you're going. The city's made a ton of money off pulling people over left and right, OT after OT. And that's what will happen in that area. I used to build real estate, and, you know, I'm not, you know, this is all fluff. None of these guys would spend over a quarter million dollars and live across the street from an apartment complex. They wouldn't. I guarantee you all these guys, granite, stainless, Beaumont Center, whatever, but they would never live in this proposed that they're proposing here. Never. And none of you all would want that. None of you all would want, and I'm on Silver Springs right directly across from here. just moved there, just downsized, and took a risk on this because I think in the current state of this area, I think that this area, in the current state it is, has a huge opportunity to be what the other part, let's be honest, the other part of the north end isn't. And I think this has a huge potential here. And that's why I took a chance on it. But once you start bringing all this influx, they try to fluff it up and say there's, what is that, 420? So you've got 21 buildings. That's 420 rooms. If you just had one occupant, which is they're going to have boyfriends and girlfriends and stuff like that, that could be a potential of 820 people. Pretty much everybody drives. So there's a potential of 820 people. Plus you're going to have all this influx of people coming to the pool. and they say one in four that's not i mean it doesn't take rocket science to realize those numbers don't work and i'm telling you once you connect all those roads a citation because they're already doing that now you're going to have people already clutter in the streets if you go over on citation now all those townhomes they all park on the street even though they have you know places they can park behind they park on the street and that's what's going to happen here and you're gonna have people just flying down through there you're gonna have a minimum 45 miles an hour and there and they always talk about well we're gonna barricade this off to keep the let citation but once they once they unbarricade it you're gonna have they're gonna be flying right past that lady's house and it'd be different if I didn't have an 11 year old boy I lived in the pinnacle I would not let my boy go out and play with by himself in the pinnacle because of the way they drove up and down the street. And he shouldn't have that. His first 11 years, the boy couldn't go outside and play because I was worried unless I was with him. And the pool, I spent in the Pinnacle, where you guys know Veterans Park and all that stuff, I spent, I think it was like 350 bucks a year. Never went to the pool once. The only time I ever went there was the vote. So you're going to have all this influx of all these people that are going to come in there. I'm telling you, it's going to be way overloaded with traffic. And plus, none of you guys would spend over a quarter of a million dollars and live across the street from an aesthetic two-story building apartment. It just wouldn't happen. Okay, thank you. I didn't mean to cut you off. That's okay, that's okay. As I stated before, my name is Virgil Jones, and I live at 729 Dawson Springs. Take your mic if you're going to. Right there. I moved in approximately about 14 months ago and found out that there was a zone change request that was pending basically three days after I moved my furniture in. So since then, we've gone through the postponements, and finally we've reached today. I am here to oppose. I've given the petitions that I have personally gone to every door in the Newtown Springside. I've personally knocked on every single door. There is a colored map that represents a large portion of the Newtown Springside showing the people who are opposed and who have signed the petition. Those are listed as a pink color. anything that is yellow in color on that one map indicates either a vacant piece of property that is just land or a structure that is currently under construction there is one house that the new residents moved into two days ago and i've been unable to meet them and that is indicated with a yellow mark, so that is a two-day-old house that is now lived in. But we have approximately, if I tallied right, 111 people who have signed the petition in opposition to the zoning change from the current residential zone that it is now to a R3 zone, which would allow for the apartment building construction. The residents that I personally talk to on the Newtown Springside are all opposed to any change from the current R1D zone. They do not want an apartment complex of any size in that area. The variance that is now being asked for in addition to with the swimming pool, the clubhouse, and the parking lot is a relatively new amendment that I did not have an opportunity to go door to door to feel out my neighbors in their opposition to that. But I would contend that, since they are opposed to the apartment building complex, which I believe in its original configuration, also had a swimming pool, but I would think that they are opposed to it, as am I. But that part I do not know for sure. but I can attest that every person that signed the petition from the Newtown Springside was opposed to the apartment complex in total, period. As to Palumbo's stated principles that they answered, principle number one was to increase the connectivity by improving and expanding the street network to be safe and designed for all modes of transportation. very succinctly the connection between Hollow Creek and new Tara Dawson Springs way is my understanding that that connection should and will be built no matter what is built whether it is residential homes or an apartment complex it was part of the initial guidelines when the entire tract or acreage of land was bought and the subdivision process started it's my understanding that it was intended that a connecting road would eventually be built, regardless of what structures were built. I don't see that changing if homes are to be built in that same area. That was principle number one for them. Number two for them was increase the equity for neighborhood residents by providing improved access to jobs, community resources, education, recreation and entertainment, and other services. Again, the connection between Hollow Creek and Dawson Springs Way should be built, would be built, regardless of any structures that are built, whether they be homes or apartments. So I say that by building homes, we are going to be opening up that street network eventually after the citation extension has been completed in the future, and that that will be accomplished if we do not put in the apartment complex, as the rezoning request has asked for. Number three, promote strategies to increase home ownership opportunities and to improve existing housing conditions. Building apartments in no way increases home ownership. It is a de facto statement. Renting is not home ownership. Only by producing and building houses can we ever envision that people will be able to buy the home, live in the home, build a neighborhood that they are happy and proud to live in. I contend that an apartment complex cannot do that and cannot build a neighborhood like individual homes can. We have children on our street. I do not have any children myself. It is just my wife and I. but I have children on the street that I see playing every day. My next-door neighbor has four. They're homeschooled. They play on the sidewalks. They play on the streets. They play in my yard. I have them running across my front porch. That is the kind of neighborhood that we have and the kind of neighborhood that we wish exists today and in the future. I do not envision that kind of a neighborhood existing if and when an apartment complex with 250 apartments is built. Sir, I would like to encourage you to move along. I should have indicated earlier that we usually try to get a three-minute time frame so that everyone can have an opportunity. The last thing I will say is they have indicated that a going rate of $1,300 will be the going rate for the apartment complex. If my facts are right, and this comes from the census.gov, the American Community Survey of 2014, the average rent in Lexington was $755. They're almost twice the rent for the average Lexington apartment. The average for Kentucky was $678, and the average for the United States of America was $934. They are not market-rate apartments. These are above market-rate apartments. I have a copy of my rebuttal that I will pass out, and you may take that into account. Thank you very much. Anyone else like to speak? Yes. I'm Joe Reister, 608 Saunders Springs Way. If you look on the map, Saunders Springs Way will go right into the apartments if the apartments are built. I have two major objections to having apartments there. One is a safety issue. You're going to have at least 400 or 500 cars extra in that Souther division. And I live where kids are playing in the front yard, where kids, I've seen them throw football on the blacktop. I've seen them throw Frisbee. And you're going to have all those cars coming down through there, and they're not going to be going slow. And it's a safety issue with kids and adults out there. Adults are going to be walking their dogs, walking on the sidewalk. I walk in the Souther division myself up near Willows and come up towards the stoplight in the morning. And it's a big safety issue if you're living in that subdivision, if all of a sudden you have 400 or 500 more cars that are going to have to go through that subdivision. The second one is traffic on Newtown Pike. Anybody that's traveled on Newtown Pike recently knows it's a nightmare. Guys, right now there's only one way to get out of this subdivision with a stoplight. There's two ways to get out, but one way, and if you turn left to go towards U.K., that light is 15 seconds. I've timed it. You've got 15 seconds to get out on that road. There's trucks galore on that road, Newtown Pike. Many times, if I go to the stoplight and try to turn right, the trucks will stop and block the traffic, so it's really difficult to get out there. My daughter is a nurse at UK. She works from 7 at night to 7 in the morning. She has to leave at 6 an hour ahead of time to get to UK, which is a joke. You should be able to get to UK in 15 minutes easily, but she's got to fight the traffic. And then when she gets off work at like 7.30 in the morning, she still fights traffic. So my two main issues are the safety issue for people living in that Southern Division with all the traffic, and also all those cars are going to eventually have to get out on Newtown Pike. Newtown Pike is just a mess with the cars and the trucks. All the trucks are going towards the interstate, and they're going towards the U.K. Any questions for me? Not right now, but we reserve the right to come back to you later if we need to. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak on this particular issue? Okay, then we're going to move to the rebuttal aspect of this. The petitioner has an opportunity to make some comments, additional comments. Thank you very much. Just a few comments in response here. I know we've had conflicting comments about the connection of Hollow Creek Drive, and I know that's one of the ones we were concerned about from the beginning and other people are concerned about from the beginning. We're convinced of what the staff found through the small area plan process that that needs to be connected, and I want to point out to you about discussions about speed and that sort of thing. Hollow Creek tees into Silver Spring Drive. it's not going to be a straight shot through there it's it terminates right here at the end of mr palumbo's property and it will tee into here requiring a stop and requiring a choice to make a turn one way or the other it's not going to be 55 miles an hour coming through here also want to mention that our traffic study counted on 25 percent more units than we actually have here but even with a with 25 percent more units than we're showing every action in this area remained level of service a or b which you all know is a under mr emmons system that's that's a green light that's an outstanding level of service with the number of units that we have here. The cost of these, from my experience in Lexington, what's going to be asked here, $1,200 or $1,300 a month, is exactly market-based for the level of amenities and the quality of the apartment community that will be here. The principle five of the Windberg and Russell Cave Small Area plan is to ensure infill development is well designed and sensitive to existing neighborhoods or surrounding areas. And the fourth principle is to optimize the use of land to promote mixed housing types and options to accommodate diverse needs and affordability levels. Now, we feel here we have a level which is needed, which is unique for this area, which is needed. We'll supply a needed market niche for this area in quality apartment housing community. I haven't seen the petitions that went through, but the person that put them in indicated that they had not seen our plan for the private club before those petitions were done. That plan was on the plan that we presented, that we filed a month ago to get back on your agenda here. so I think some of those petitions and some of the reaction we had was to our original plan which we filed 16 months ago with you and I heard calls about that objecting to it too I think our plan we have here has answered a lot of those concerns the the last thing is that the small area plan process which recently went through was a process the staff initiated in order to initiate the small area plan and invited people in the community to come to a series of community meetings to express their input about what this area should be. Not only our area, the area between Newtown Pike and Russell Cave Road including Winburn and this area. and they took that input from community leaders and any resident who was concerned about it and came up with this plan it includes the connection with hollow creek which we've tried to accommodate with the keeping it barricaded until citation is through the conclusion was that design guidelines were essential they removed the traditional colors we had on the old map of the comprehensive plan low medium high density and said that residential mixed different types of residential are appropriate but the key thing is the design guidelines that's why we were so careful with the design guidelines and that's why we met with the staff before we started this so that we would meet the design guidelines not as an afterthought thought, but as a part of our process. I think you can envision the difference as if we were dragging Mr. Palumbo through this process, kicking and screaming about the design guidelines, we're not. He is a willing, fully committed participant in the design guideline process to make sure that this agrees with the recommendations of the Windburn-Russell Cave small area plan. So with that, we again, we're very pleased to present this plan to you. We think it's a plan that agrees with the plan process. We've had very productive meetings with the staff on this to ensure that we, as the first plan, set the tone for people who do agree with the design guidelines and as the process outlined in that plan. So thank you very much. We're hoping you'll vote in favor of this with those two modifications to the notes that I presented to you earlier. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Now, we allow the citizens also to have a chance. Now, Mr. Jones, since I think you're the one who presented this paper, if you'd like another shot at this for another minute or two, feel free. This is another opportunity to come for. I'm going to give anybody else a first opportunity to speak, and then I'll take up whatever. As long as you limit your comments to about a minute or so. Once again, I mean, he's going to come up here and fluff him, but nobody would want to have a house. and I'm on Silver Springs right 1345. I'm literally right directly across the street from where that. So nobody on this panel, nobody in this room would want to spend over a quarter of a million dollars and be right across the street from a townhome or an apartment when we already got townhomes right up the road on Citation. So if they're building them to look like townhomes, and it flies right in directly in the face of home ownership, What it is is they're too lazy to build that out after the 08, after all that debacle, build that out and make it a nice community. That way they can get in there, get that $1,300 a month rent. Okay. That's, you know, let's just call it what it is. And there will be speeding. It might not be 55, but there will be speeding and the people will roll and go at that tee. Okay. We all live in Lexington. We know how it is. We know how people drive. I mean, I already almost get hit people trying to pull in that Willows on Citation because it comes down to one lane. Okay, thank you. I've been a couple times in there as well. But once again, nobody on this board and nobody in this room would want to buy a quarter of a million dollar house directly across from the private complex. Thank you. You've got another minute or two. Okay. Generally speaking, we've heard notes that we will have a clubhouse and a pool, and that it will be a private member's type of a clubhouse. I have yet to hear a dollar figure. I, for one, am not interested in joining. If the rest of my neighborhood is not interested in joining, who is going to fund this entity? Is this a pool that's going to require a lifeguard? Who's going to pay that lifeguard? If you have no members joining, if that happens, and I will contend that that's a big if, if that happens and nobody joins, how are you going to pay for this? Will it become a derelict in the middle of our neighborhood? That's what I worry about as a homeowner. I have equity. I have a stake in my neighborhood growing and not diminishing in some respect and stuff. Now I refer back to the 2013 Comprehensive Plan, Theme A, Goal 3. enable existing and new neighborhoods to flourish through improved regulation, expanded opportunities for new neighborhood character preservation. My neighborhood is new. It is almost eight years old. The map that was shown, the aerial map that was shown, must be three or four years old, because I'm telling you that half those vacant lots now have home structures on them and stuff. We would like to see and encourage more homes to be built, And my estimate is that there's probably 70 or 80 more homes that could be subdivided into the acreage that is vacant now and stuff. The theme A, or theme A, goal two, is support infill and redevelopment. I contend that this is vacant property that has never been developed. How can we redevelop it? Allow it to develop as it was originally intended, which was based on a 300-page document, which was the previous comprehensive plan, which had some very specific goals in mind when they were trying to establish how Lexington was going to grow for the future. Theme B, goal two, reduce Lexington Fayette County's carbon footprint. All I see, housing structures and concrete and asphalt. If we have more houses there, the 70 or 80 houses that would be proposed to be developed, I contend that there would be more green space with grass and trees than a large apartment complex that will be towering over the existing homes. All the homes in my neighborhood are not two-story homes. We have some single-story homes. The pool, the clubhouse, and the parking lot are going to abut directly onto new homes. And I know for a fact that one of those individuals works a second and midnight shift, and he's going to have to sleep through all of the people at the pool during the daytime. He is not here because he's a Lexington police officer that just moved in two months ago. When I told him this was happening, he just about collapsed. He just could not believe it. he had no idea that this was happening and he's working an off tour shift so i contend that a pool structure abutting directly against one two three four five six seven eight homes with two vacant lots currently under three vacant lots with one of those currently halfway through a construction phase will mean that people will have to be living next door to a pool complex and clubhouse that will be open from, I'm going to expect, 9 o'clock in the morning to 9 p.m. And that means that residents are supposed to enjoy their neighborhood and their outdoor activities, barbecuing, sitting on their porch. My neighborhood is in the wilds. I see deer, I see coyote, groundhogs, skunks, raccoons. I see those almost on a weekly basis. I do not want an apartment complex near my house that will interrupt that type of a nature that I have become accustomed to. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Jones. I appreciate it. At this time, the staff gets a chance to, and I have a couple of questions related for the staff, but I'll let you make your comments first. Ms. Wade. Thank you. I would just reiterate that the small area plan did focus on access, which Mr. Murphy mentioned, and the connections to the adjoining subdivision, but it also focused on promoting and increasing home ownership. and the second half of that statement was, and to improve existing housing conditions. So the application today will provide different and perhaps safer and more up-to-date housing conditions than might be available in the area. So the staff looked at that half of that goal, not so much the home ownership piece, but the improving housing conditions in the area. In addition, planning principle number four calls to optimize and optimize the use of land to promote mixed housing types, which allows for the accommodation of diverse needs and affordability of different levels. So again, apartments provide for, generally, provide for the accommodation of different needs. Not everyone needs or wants to live in a single-family home. Perhaps they move for their job or travel for their job quite a bit, and apartments provide the flexibility necessary for lots of different households. So I think that addresses my comments. I have a question, but I guess Mr. Sally might be going to address it, and I don't want to presuppose my question. It has to do with, oh, okay. That was going to be my one rebuttal comment, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to inform the commission the staff has no objection to adopting these restrictions, either the change to the conditional zoning or that for the conditional use. And the answer that I gave to Mr. Berkeley's question earlier in the hearing, I believe this change to number five is spot on with what the staff had mentioned was our presumption on the parking situation. Thank you. Mr. Salley, I missed something about the pole lighting limited to 12 feet. This is a conditional zoning restriction that the staff had offered three weeks ago. And we're okay with this proposed change to that restriction. Okay. Item B on Mr. Murphy's handout, and then in considering the conditional use, also the change to condition number five that's been recorded. Okay. Thank you. Bill, sorry, before you leave, just for that light, do you want any limitations on the number of 12-foot lights? Are you uncomfortable dealing with that later? I think it is an issue that's best addressed with the final development plan, just because we all know that there can be changes from a preliminary development plan to a final. Thanks. Okay, at this time we'll close this part of the yes, sir. Sure can. Thank you. Tracy, come back here. Yes, sir. Questions for density on this issue. Two questions. One, I know it's not shown on any maps. Everything surrounding this is pretty much R1D right now. There's apartments on Hollow Creek Road. How far away are those? Okay. You're showing me where it is. About 1,500 feet. Yeah. That's not R1D zoning, though, is it? Those apartments are R3. R3. Okay. And real quick, if you could, maybe you touched on it when you mentioned optimizing land use. Anything else as far as supporting going from R1D to R3, especially going from 0 to 5 an acre to 18 or 19 units per acre? The staff's objection early on had a lot to do with the scale of the buildings and having three-story buildings very near single-family homes. Single-family residential zone allows the same height as an R3 zone does, which is 35 feet. So it wasn't necessarily the height limit that was an issue. The single-family homes on both sides could be 35 feet, and so could the apartment buildings. obviously the likelihood of that occurring is much less, but what we saw in visiting the site were more so two-story homes and some one-story homes. So we want to make sure that the scale of the proposed development was more appropriate. It's not necessarily that a land use isn't appropriate. It's how you can step it down to the single family and still make it work with single family and multifamily next to each other. Obviously, that situation, that land use relationship occurs all over Lexington. And in my opinion, it's just how you treat that adjoining land use, the single family to the multifamily. Do you keep the landscape buffer there that's already there? Yes, that's optimal. Do you step the buildings up higher towards the middle of the development? That's also optimal rather than three-story right adjacent to a single-family home. So that's really the staff's, was one of the staff's major considerations in changing our recommendation. Thank you. Okay, no problem. It's now back to the commission. You have a couple of choices. Of course, you can have a discussion. If there are any other persons that you want to bring to the microphone for clarification, you can do it at this time. If not, we can go to the motion route. Yes, sir, Mr. Drake. Mr. Chairman, this is, in my opinion, not an unusual degree of tension that we have seen here today between the proponents of development and those opposed to it. I'd say this surrounds virtually every proposal for new growth and development, and we're caught in the middle of it, virtually every zoning decision that we make. The fact is, from my perspective, that growth is not without cost. and that cost has been expressed today. It's been expressed by those opposed to it. And there are a lot of costs that weren't even mentioned today, but certainly traffic is a huge cost. There's a cost that has been mentioned that's associated with changing the character of the area. There are also increased burdens on school systems, on medical facilities, on police and fire protection, on insurance. And those are the costs we have to face if we want growth and development. And so I see it as that fundamental question. Are we willing to pay those costs or not? there has been a suggestion that there is an alternate alternative development of single family homes but the fact is the market has brought forth this development if we're we live in a a demand-based economy a capitalist economy and if the demand had not told the developer that this is what he should do, he would have done something else because he would invest millions of dollars for no reason without the prospect of recovery. And I apologize for a lengthy dissertation, but I think those are the realities that we face. and if we want growth, we've got to be prepared to pay the cost. Thank you, Mr. Drake. Anyone else? Ms. Plumlee? Yes, thank you. I appreciate my colleagues' comments and I would add that the Comprehensive Plan Mission Statement notes that we are to protect the environment and promoting successful, accessible neighborhoods. And the opposition has told us that they have a successful neighborhood. They like the way they like the single-family houses. So I think we need to listen to what the neighbors state also. And even though this might be a more economical development with the apartments, We have to think future use and the success of the neighborhood as it is now and what it might be 10 years from now with this type of growth of the apartments versus R1D as it is now. So we have careful consideration here. Thank you. Mr. Cravens? I'm ready to make a motion. Well, hang on just one minute. Anyone else want to say anything related to this issue? Okay, just a minute. If everyone couldn't guess, I've been talking density on this all afternoon, and that's what I am struggling with, this step up in density on it. it's a difficult situation. We hear that this is the type of housing that the market is demanding these days. So I'm trying to adjust, and I still don't know. I guess in five minutes or less, I'm going to figure it out. But, you know, I can appreciate where the applicant is coming from and their efforts in this, in the orientation, what they've tried to accomplish in the elevation drawings did bring into focus for me a little bit more as to what they're wanting and wishing to do. if this goes forward, I think that would be a good type of development in that area, simply put. But like I said, I'm still struggling right now. Mr. Barrow? Yeah, just a quick view on this. I think that both staff and the applicants should be applauded for working together after the small area plan came out. I think you struck a balance with a very difficult situation. As far as existing neighbors, I can certainly understand your concerns. This is a classic not-in-my-backyard view, which is one that, like David said, we struggle with every day, or every Thursday anyway. and I think this the plan that I see right now is it's got a nice transition between the single family homes existing and the multi-family development so I think this is probably as good as you're going to get in compliance with the small area plan's conclusions which are sort of our guiding bible on this Thank you Mr. Baroque Anyone else? On that commission? If not, then I'm going to go back to Mr. Cravens. Mr. Cravens, do you want to make a motion? Yes, sir. I don't really want to, but it's got to be done, I guess. I'm going to move approval of MARC 2015-7 for the reasons provided by staff and under the conditional zoning restriction, amend it to the amend B-3B to the wording provided by Mr. Murphy. Okay. It's been properly moved by Mr. Cravens and seconded by Mr. Berkeley that we approve MARC 2015-7 Palumbo properties with a couple of revisions. 3B that has been presented by Mr. Murphy, also number 5. You didn't mention that. Well, I didn't know if you wanted another motion for the condition of this or not. We will. Well, then number 5 is conditional. No, that's okay. I think you're absolutely right on that. We'll hold it to that revision for number 3. We have a second for Mr. Berkeley. Any other discussion on the motion? Hearing none, please vote when it comes up on your monitors. The motion. She can vote. She can't vote. I don't. Okay. Nine to one in favor. The motion passes. Can we go to the second part? Mr. Chairman, I'm going to move the approval of the conditional use. Changing number five to the amendment proposed by Mr. Murphy. Okay, it's been properly moved by Mr. Cravens that we approve the requested conditional use with the proposed revision as offered by Mr. Murphy, and it's been seconded by Ms. Carolyn Richardson. Any other discussion on that motion? Hearing none, would you please vote when it comes up on your monitors? Okay, the motion carries. Okay, and Mr. Chairman, I move approval of the ZDP 2015-33, and I'm going to try to eliminate number 11 and 12 and change 13, 14, and 15 to resolve at final development plan. I have a second on that. Well, which one was it? Oh, Mr. Burke. Okay, I'll take Mr. Berkley on that. It's been properly moved by Mr. Craven and seconded by showing on my monitor Ms. Richardson. But if that's okay, Mr. Berkley, well, Mr. Berkley is now the seconder on that. And the motion is to approve EDP 2015-33 Newtown Springs, removing number 11 and 12, putting resolve for 13, 14, and 15. Any other discussion? Please vote when it comes on you. Well, you're voting ahead of me. That's fine. Okay, that takes care of that. Ladies and gentlemen, again, for those of you who have come down, we do appreciate it, and I understand that when you do live in a neighborhood, and believe me, we all live in neighborhoods, and when things like this happen, we have to take in the best consideration for the community as a whole. I feel comfortable, I think, in the long range that this project will be a good project for the neighborhood, but especially in line with the small development plan that we've spent a considerable amount of time. Thank you. With that, I'm going to declare a five-minute recess and then give everyone a chance to. Come back to order, please. Okay, Ms. Waite, proceed. Just ignore them. Okay. The next item on our agenda is PLNMAR 16-7, which is a request by Community Ventures Properties, LLC. This is a request to rezone nine parcels, generally in the area of Midland and East 3rd Street. Six of the parcels are requested to be rezoned to a B2A zone, which is our downtown frame business, and the other three parcels are proposed to be rezoned to a B1, which is our neighborhood business zone. All of the parcels are currently zoned I1. The subject properties are located generally at the intersection of Midland Avenue and East 3rd Street at the east end of downtown Lexington. Also in this general vicinity is Lewis Street, which provides a border on the west, northwest side of the subject property. And Winthrow Way and Nelson Avenue provide frontage for a piece of the subject property on the north side of East 3rd Street. This area has a mixture of zoning categories, single-family residential development, but that development is located within the R3 zone on our maps, which is the brown color shown. Along East 3rd Street, you'll see mostly B1 zoning because this was the historic commercial corridor for the East End. And then along Midland and Winchester Road, you see there's B1, I1, and also some B4 zoning. uses within this general vicinity are the Jiff Smucker's Plant, the Herald Leader Building, Lexington Cutstone, and then the large parcel adjacent to the subject property in the B3 zone is the Charles Young Center and Park. That helps orient you to our sites. The three parcels that are proposed for B1 are located on the north side of East 3rd Street. And then the six parcels within what I would call the larger triangular site are requested for B2A zoning. Just an aerial view of the area. Let's just stay there. This is a ground-level view of the B1 site looking to the east on 3rd Street. And then from a slightly different vantage point, looking back towards town or Ray Street along East 3rd Street, and it is, again, a vacant, those three lots are vacant in this general vicinity, and that's between Winthrow and Nelson Avenue. This is the intersection of Midland and East 3rd Street, directly across from what is currently the Community Ventures Corporation building. That is primarily the only structure left on the subject properties, and I believe it's proposed to remain, and the proposed structures built on the property will sort of surround it. This area has been improved recently with the improvements of the Isaac Murphy Garden and then crosswalks in this vicinity as well. Just a slightly different vantage point, the Isaac Murphy Garden is on the right-hand side of this photograph, and again the Community Ventures Corporation building. This is looking towards East 3rd Street with Midland Avenue in the foreground. And this is a view of the opposite corner of the subject property at Lewis Street along Midland Avenue. And from this vantage point, the subject property looks vacant for the most part. And then from the corner of East 3rd and Lewis looking back towards Midland Avenue. and the site is on the left-hand side with the Charles Young Center and Park on the right-hand side of the photograph. And then again looking down East 3rd Street towards Winchester Road with an existing structure that was recently built at the corner of Winthrow and East 3rd and the subject property being just beyond that where the gray vehicles parked and on the opposite side of East 3rd in this area. The applicant is proposing to redevelop these sites to build three multi-use buildings. One building would be located on the B1 site and two larger structures located in the B2A zone, with a total of 272,000 square feet of building within the three buildings. The project is planned to include retail space, a greenhouse, apartment and condominium dwelling units, senior living dwelling units, a senior community space, professional offices, and then the associated off-street parking with that as well. There are some dimensional variances that have been requested with the zone change, and there's also a traffic study that was provided with this request. The applicant contends that it is in agreement with the 2013 Comprehensive Plan and also the East End Small Area Plan. In addition to the subject property being located within the East End Small Area Plan boundaries, it does also fall within the Downtown Master Plan boundary from 2007, which really predates that East End plan. So the applicant identified both the 2013 Comprehensive Plan and the East End Small Area Plan as sort of the underlying plans that would be adhered to with their proposal. The relevant goals and objectives that they mentioned in their justification had to do with providing for expanded housing choices, supporting infill and redevelopment that's context sensitive, providing for well-designed neighborhoods and communities, including mixed use and mixed type housing, supporting and showcasing local assets and creating a variety of jobs, attracting jobs and encouraging entrepreneurial spirit, providing for accessible community services, and then upholding the urban service area concept. In terms of the East End Small Area Plan, that was adopted in 2009, and the relevant goal statements from that plan are there are six, creating housing that's affordable, accessible, and attractive, promote new commercial development to create a mix of uses that respects and enhances the East End, create a neighborhood where daily needs are met by walking, cycling, and transit, ensure compatibility and encourage complementary relationships between uses, protect and enhance personal health and the environment, and then grow locally-based economy that offers opportunities to all residents. As I mentioned, this is also located within the downtown master plan area. In both the downtown master plan and the east end small area plan, there's a preferred land use, and in this case, the preferred land use for the site, is that purple shading, which is mixed use and infill. So the triangle as well as the property on East 3rd Street is recommended for a mixture of uses. And the applicant is providing with their plan three mixed use structures. In addition, there are some preferred alternative language from that smaller area plan for 3rd Street about providing a mix of commercial development that supports the neighborhood, and then also along Midland Avenue, providing for infill development. The staff agrees that the proposed development is in agreement with the 2013 Comprehensive Plan and the East End Small Area Plan specifically. First, because it does provide for a mixture of uses, which is recommended by the Small Area Plan and the Downtown Plan. The plan encourages a diversity of housing that is affordable and accessible because the applicant is proposing not just market rate housing but also senior living units. The comprehensive plan calls for accessible community facilities and employment opportunities. The applicant's providing a community space for area senior citizens, a greenhouse, as well as multiple business opportunities that can provide a good fit in the East End neighborhood. And then lastly, the proposed mixed-use project will help improve the gateway into the East End and to Lexington's downtown. town. Since the site is not contiguous to another B2 zone, the staff would recommend that there be some conditional zoning restrictions for the large triangle site to restrict some of the more intense uses that you might be able to locate in a B2 zone. In addition, this site is adjacent to a community center, and so we felt that those uses were not necessarily appropriate next to the community center. Those suggested conditional use restrictions, that is prohibiting uses, would be prohibit basically the display, sale, or auto display, rental, or sale of automobiles and other vehicles, prohibit minor automobile and truck repair, prohibit pawn shops and wholesale establishments, prohibit the adult entertainment uses, prohibit passenger transportation terminals, and drive-through facilities. On the B1 site across the street, there are other B1 sites in the neighborhood or in the area that do have conditional zoning restrictions, and the staff felt it was appropriate that those same or similar conditions be placed on this property since it is adjacent to the single-family neighborhood, and that would be to restrict automobile service stations and the like, repair of household appliances, outdoor miniature golf or putting courses, circuses and carnivals, indoor theaters and arcades, prohibit drive-thrus, and then lastly, prohibit establishments for retail sale or package sale of alcohol, like liquor, beer, or wine. The staff believes these are appropriate to ensure compliance with the 2013 Comprehensive Plan and East End Small Area Plan, as well as to protect the surrounding neighborhood and the community center from the most intense uses that could be located in these zones. The staff is recommending approval, as did the zoning committee three weeks ago, of the proposed rezoning because they found that it is also in agreement with the comprehensive plan and the small area plan. Our recommendation is, of course, contingent on the approval and certification of the associated development plan. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Any questions for Ms. Wade? Ms. Mundy? Well, Tracy, I kind of had this, I jotted it down as you were going through things, and then I read a little further, so we may get this in a minute, and if that's so, just tell me that. But how does this hit with the town branch project that is out there? The town branch project is intended to run along Midland Avenue, along the front of this site. The property has a larger setback than you might imagine in terms of where's the property line compared to the traveling, I guess, the lanes of traffic on Midland Avenue. So I think Tom will hit that with his conditions. And it was addressed also with our variances. There was one variance requested for Midland Avenue that the staff was not comfortable recommending approval of because we weren't sure about the Town Branch Trail and whether they might need a construction easement. Okay, thank you. I do have a letter of support from the East End Community Development Corporation that I want to distribute as well. Any other questions for Ms. Wade? Okay, who's handling the variances this time? Mr. Martin handling the variances? I'm handling the development plan, and Mr. Selle will address the availability. Okay. Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, the preliminary development plan is on page six of your agenda. However, hopefully you have found this lovely lavender sheet that we passed out to you with revised conditions, because we have a revised plan to present to you today. The development proposal that you see before you, here is the plan again. And here's Midland Avenue. Here's 3rd Street, again, where they merge and become Winchester Road. This is Lewis Street with the park in this location. This is the area of B2B, or A, pardon me, and this is the other area of the zone change for the B1. The Building A in this location also has the existing building where Community Ventures has offices and facilities, in this location. It is going to be four stories. There will be 19,000 square feet of retail, over 11,000 square feet of office, primarily, I would say, with community ventures. And then they're proposing 30 one-bedroom senior apartments in this location as well. Building B, also four stories in height. You can see in this location, they are proposing 38,000 plus square feet of retail in this location with a greenhouse being proposed, which I'm sure they'll elaborate on in terms of their goals with community gardening and that sort of thing. And then 61 one-bedroom apartments and 11 two-bedroom apartments, again, in this four-story building. You can see an upper plaza located here and a lower plaza as well are being proposed. And that shows access also bluest street and you can see underground parking this is crucial to the development and we're going to get to that in a minute this underground parking here with building c and the b1 this actually extends over this lot this parking that you see here is under the building and with Building C, they are proposing a 5,500 square feet of retail and then 16 apartments, 10 one-bedroom and six two-bedrooms in the upper stories here. The parking is key to this development in several ways. The requested zone gives them a big break. It really gives them a very big break, that zone does on parking. They are requesting a variance for parking here on this building because, again, parking is very important for this to work well and to meet the needs of the development. The variances besides parking are also front yard and height variances that Mr. Salley is going to go over with you. And, again, you can see by the site and the redevelopment of the site, it is an intense development. With the handout that you have, there are just a few cleanup items, and they really are just minor at this point. They cleaned up some of our other conditions very well. There are a considerable number of issues that were raised on this plan, and I know you, as you said through the committee, became aware of these. And these issues go directly to the Legacy Trail, the right-of-way, and along Midland. And again, because the final design of that is still unknown, the applicants are aware they have to work with the government and work on that design. And so that's impacting what they're going to do in this location. It impacts, and they have dropped, I believe, the variance along this location because there are unknowns. And with that, we are recommending that that be deferred to the final development plan, which by then a lot more should be known, and the actual physical layout and this relationship can be determined at the final development plan. The construction of the B-1 and B-2A properties, we're recommending that they be resolved. as well. It's time of the final development plan. This comes back to this being connected to this. Now URIs own this. They come in with a final development plan. It's anticipated they can move fairly quickly on this particular building. The rest of this, depending on their priorities, their funding, what kind of challenges they run into, will have to be built but of course the park has got to be coordinated with that. So we would like to have that phasing and timing well understood. Again, a final development plan condition. Lewis Street, with their access here, and you can see it going into the garage, they're predicating this on a two-way movement. Now, Lewis Street is currently signed and functions as a one-way street. So that's one issue, along with the need to do improvements, if any, on Lewis Street to make it safer, because we're anticipating there will be a lot of pedestrian movement, increased traffic movement. The need for improvements on Lewis Street is something, again, that we would like to have resolved at the time of the final development plan, as well as two-way movement. Again, due to the park development, the council has had this change to a one-way movement, so that will have to be addressed. And again, it's an appropriate final development plan issue. stormwater and water quality you staff always brings these issues up make sure they're on the table that things like this have to be addressed this is a redevelopment project they're given a certain amount of credit for that when it comes to detention to quantity controls they will have to address quality controls at a minimum in this development and as you all may recall there's been some development over in this area there's large detention you may recall there was some discussion about some flooding issues. So, again, that is something, when it gets down to it, they're going to have to design for and address. And there's some interesting little notes and things on here, like former location of the creek downtown branch and things like that. So this is an interesting area, and there could be some interesting challenges when they actually go to develop this site. There is a sanitary sewer easement that goes under B. This is going to have to be dealt with. Again, that's a construction issue, a final development plan issue. They're going to have to relocate that. That's the bottom line there. We're not going to have public sewer going under a building, obviously. That's a conflict that we cannot allow. So that will have to be addressed. They're aware of that, aware that they're going to have to relocate that sewer. And then last and not least, on your revised conditions, You all have heard a lot of discussion today already about design and about presentation to the street and orientation to the street. We have those conditions in your mixed-use zones, your Newtown Pike overlay, those types. We've had these discussions, and you heard one today about neighborhoods. Well, the same concern exists with this development with how it's going to fit in, how it's going to be, and we do believe it's going to be quite an asset to the redevelopment of this area. But staff wants to be sure that, again, the presentation to the street is architecturally interesting, that it fits. It's not monolithic and that sort of thing. So, again, that's the type of thing that we would like to discuss and resolve at the final development plan and have elements stated on the plan this is the type of thing they intend to do. Those were the issues that were laid out early on in the review of this project. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have for me. Any questions? Ms. Mundy? I'm being a pain on this one. I'm sorry. What guarantees do we have that this won't end up being, since we're going to have underground parking, another big hole? I can't speak to any of those. The applicant will have to speak to those guarantees. And, you know, obviously development faces challenges. There's always funding challenges, that sort of thing. But, again, that's why we're concerned about the timing. Yes. Because that parking is absolutely vital, in our staff's opinion, to this development. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Martin. Thank you. Now we're going to discuss the requested variances. Yes, Mr. Chairman, thank you. This item is on page 5, item B of your meeting agenda. Again, these are the four requested dimensional variances to MAR16-7, the zone change by Community Ventures properties. Three of the variances relate to the smaller building that is proposed, the B1 building on the north side of East 3rd Street. One of the variances is directed at the larger combination of the two buildings and the parking garage that is proposed for the development. The first variance is to increase the allowable height of this B-1 building from 35 feet to 50 feet. They are proposing a three-story structure, so they are not proposing any additional residential density or additional floor area from what would ordinarily be allowed in a B1 zone, and that is significant because a variance cannot be granted that would increase allowable residential density. The development plan depicts a height of 44 feet for this building, and the staff believes that is a superior dimension to this building than the requested 50-foot height. A 44-foot building here would allow for two 12-foot residential floors and then a very tall first floor commercial area. We think that's very reasonable. And a nine-foot dimensional variance to that height, in the staff's view, as we stated in our report, would not result in an unreasonable circumvention of the zoning ordinance requirements for this particular part of the application. The second variance is to reduce the required setback along Withrow Way from 10 feet to 5 feet. The B-1 zone has a minimum setback of 10 feet from all public streets, and since there are three streets surrounding this portion of the property, it is to be setback 10 feet from all three sides. That is being met along Nelson Avenue and along East 3rd Street, but they are requesting the ability to locate this only 5 feet from Withrow Way. You may recall the one photograph Ms. Wade showed of the building on the opposite corner of East 3rd and Withrow. That property also received a similar dimensional variance from the Board of Adjustment two or three years ago prior to its construction. That does not automatically mean that this variance has to be granted. But it is appropriate in the staff's view, since we will have new pedestrian facilities between the wall of that building and the street for pedestrians to travel. and we do not believe that that is an unreasonable circumvention of the ordinance to decrease it by half along that one street frontage. The third requested variance is to reduce the required minimum off-street parking for this B1 part of the development from 28 spaces to only 16 spaces. The applicant has stated in their justification that the additional spaces for this development will be provided across the street in the parking area in the B2A area. However, this is the result of a timing issue. It is anticipated because it's so much smaller that the B1 building will be constructed first in the development and that this will take a much longer time to see through successfully. So in order to not affect the occupancy of this building, there is a need for dimensional variance to the parking. In the staff's review, we have noted in our report that there are ample locations along Nelson and along Midland Place and even along 3rd Street in some areas for on-street parking, should the demand for parking for these uses exceed the 16 spaces that are being proposed on the development plan. Also, the strict application of the ordinance in the staff's view would propose an unnecessary hardship to the applicant, given the timing of the two parking areas that are proposed. The final dimensional variance that is proposed is to the B2A area, Ms. Wade alluded to it in her remarks. It is for the new building along Midland Avenue. The B2A zone also requires a 10-foot yard. There is more than a 10-foot setback proposed along Lewis Street and an average setback of just over 10 feet along East 3rd Street. And that is not counting the existing building that you saw in the photographs that is to be retained. The staff is viewing that as an existing condition. However, the new construction, the staff believes, although it is as close as about 7 3⁄4 feet at the closest point, will average 10 feet, which we believe will meet the ordinance. The staff in our report did recommend postponement of this just because there are no construction plans yet for the town branch commons improvement in this area. There may be a need for construction easements, temporary construction easements, or access to the utilities that may be in this right-of-way. So in our report, we recommended postponement of consideration of that variance, again, on a timing basis. In speaking with the applicant just before your hearing began, we understand that they will request that that one variance of the four be withdrawn. In our staff report, at the conclusion as it appears on the variance, you'll see that the staff is recommending approval of a height variance from 35 feet to 44 feet, not the 50 feet requested, and approval of the other two variances requested in a B1 zone for the five reasons listed. I'll not go into those, just in the interest of time. We do have a recommendation of postponement on the other. Again, the applicant, we understand, will withdraw that. Our recommendation of approval of the B-1 variances is subject to six conditions, again listed in our report on the agenda. First, provided that the rezoning to B-1 is approved by the Urban County Council, otherwise approval of these variances should be considered null and void. Secondly, should the property be rezoned, it should be developed in accordance with either this development plan or a future development plan approved by this commission. Thirdly, a note shall be placed on the development plan that these variances have been granted by the Commission, if you're so inclined to do that today. Fourthly, prior to obtaining an occupancy permit, the applicant is to obtain a zoning compliance permit from the Division of Planning. Fifth, the parking lot shall be screened and landscaped as required by Article 18 of the zoning ordinance, as may be required. And finally, a condition that a pedestrian crosswalk be installed by the applicant at the corner of Withrow Way and East 3rd Street to the approval of the Division of Traffic Engineering. That is this intersection right here. Again, this is opposite the building you saw in the photo. It is adjacent to our new sidewalks in this area. We think that's a safety improvement that will help since the proposal is to reduce this building setback along Withrow. Prior to hearing from Mr. Emmons on the traffic study, I'd be glad to answer any questions from Commission members about our staff report on the requested variances. Any questions? Okay, thank you. Thank you. So, Mr. Emmons. Oh, there you are. Mr. Emmons. I'm like a ninja. I was hiding. I noticed that. I'm pleased to present the summary of the traffic impact study. This traffic impact study was done by the developer. It was done by Adam Kirk Engineering. I did highlight this for both the subdivision and zoning committee, so I plan to go through this report fairly quickly. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. To start with the first page of your traffic summary report, which you should have at your state, we've talked about this location a lot. I don't need to go back over that. I would like to clarify on East 3rd Street, that's where Phase 3 of the Legacy Trail is going to come, and on Midland Avenue, that's where the Town Branch Commons. So you've got two community pedestrian and bicycle facilities. This is one of the points where they are going to come together at the Isaac Murphy Garden, a very important site for pedestrians and bicycles. The staff agrees with the applicant's overall trip generation. this is going to generate a fair amount of traffic. The staff would note, the one thing that we did note is that one of their uses that they looked at was a senior apartment building that is a very low traffic generator. We have no reason to think that it would be otherwise, but if it does come in at the final development plan with a higher traffic generation, Just keep that in mind that it could generate more traffic than what was studied at this time. Looking at the vehicular levels of service, using our red, green, and yellow kind of looking at that, the applicants looked at several intersections, all the way from where Main Street, Bind Street, and Midland Avenue come together up to the corner of the subject property in Shropshire Avenue along 3rd Street. All of the intersections fill in the acceptable levels for vehicular use area, except for the only one that was in the red, if you will, is the existing intersection of Main Street, Vine Street, and Midland Avenue. I would note that if you looked at the details of that, that intersection is already bad. And actually, if you follow the applicant's recommendations, most of the turning movements will actually get a little bit better, but still fall in that low-end category. There is one intersection that we're concerned about. I'll end the report on that one and go into that in more detail. As I mentioned earlier, this site has excellent both internal and external transit and pedestrian bicycle facilities. The consultants' recommendations primarily stem from two things. The first one is that they are proposing that Lewis Street, which currently operates as a one-way street, become a two-way street. And then there are some other recommendations that stem from that. And also that the signal timing at the signalized intersections be optimized. As far as the staff recommendations go, the staff does not dispute anything that's in the applicant's traffic impact study. We do have one area that we're concerned about, and that would be Lewis Street as it connects into Midland Avenue. As that becomes a one-way exit on to Midland Avenue, with the Town Branch Commons Trail such an important pedestrian facility, we know that the Shropshire Avenue and Lewis Street intersections are actually too close to meet our subdivision regulations today. The current plan does recommend that it be moved a little bit, but it's still not going to meet our spacing requirements. This is one of those situations where there's not really a right or a wrong decision. There's just different things that have to be looked at as you go forward with the plans in this. And the staff just cautions at the time of the final development plan, we want to make sure that safety is definitely looked at for those street intersections whenever it comes in. And overall, I do want to end this on a good note. One of the things that we, if you're familiar with the area, one of the kind of concerns that we have is as people are coming from Winchester Road onto Midland, heading towards Main Street and downtown, in that area you kind of get some higher speeds and a lot of weaving movement as people are jockeying for position. We think that this development, with its proposed kind of very urban feel to it, and with the town branch commons and all of those things, we think that will have an inherent traffic calming effect as the motorist gets more visual clues that this is a dense urban environment. And so we think that that will actually help slow down people as they come in there. Hopefully, as the overall corridor and as our downtown becomes more dense, that will help with that. I was talking to Max Conyers, our manager of transportation planning, and even though the levels of service, that hasn't technically changed as far as engineering guidance, there is becoming much more of an acceptance that as you're getting vehicles to slow down, yes, their level of service goes down, but you're increasing essentially the level of service for pedestrians and bicycles, especially in downtown areas. So there's a little bit more flexibility given and thoughts on that whenever you get into those dense urban and active environments. All in all, the staff is pleased with the traffic impact study, and if you have any questions for me, I believe this concludes all of the staff presentations. Any questions for Mr. Emmons? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The applicant. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the Commission. My name is Jacob Walburn, and I'm always privileged to appear in front of the Planning Commission, but I'm especially privileged to appear in front of you today for what I believe is a very important and significant proposal that could have very serious positive consequences for the East End and for downtown generally. But who are we talking about? This is a cooperative project, a joint venture. Community Ventures, an organization that I know that this body is familiar with, owns the property. They've partnered with Phil Hollebeck, who you remember from other developments downtown. He was the president of Lexington's real estate company. Community Ventures has been around since 1982. They're a nonprofit, and they're dedicated to making people's lives better, which I think is a pretty awesome mission statement. They want to provide individuals and their families with the skills that they need to achieve financial independence. Some of the things that they do, just to tell you a little about them, they helped 416 Kentucky families purchase a home. They've helped over 2,100 avoid foreclosure. But they also try to provide educational programs so folks don't get into that situation. Relevant to this proposal is their small business generator. They've created over 10,000 jobs with their small business incubator. They've helped 4,700 businesses start or expand, again, not only through direct financial aid, but through education programs as well. Mr. Holabek's company you may be familiar with. He's done developments here in town, including Main and Rose and the Nun Lofts. They've been very highly awarded developments, receiving architectural awards, historic preservation awards. and voted the best lofts in Lexington by Ace Weekly readers. But LRC is also very civically involved, has been involved in pretty much every significant proposal impacting downtown, and I think that's something to keep in mind as well. But maybe most important is Mr. Hollebeck and LRC's experience with downtown development. I mentioned the developments that he's already done, but mixed-use residential and retail combination developments in an urban environment is frankly probably LRC's specialty. These are entities that have been invested in the East End for some time. They're not new to the area. I pulled these two articles from the Herald-Leader. One is an op-ed from Mr. Smith, who is a community ventures president. Another is an article talking about Mr. Holabek's involvement in the Midland-Tiff area. I bring these up because these articles are dated in 2013 and 2014. This is not a proposal that was thought up on the back of a napkin a couple of weeks ago. This has been a long time coming. I want to throw out some terminology that you may hear me use, you may hear Mr. Hollebeck use, just for ease of understanding what we're talking about. We call the Midland site the triangle, the Midland Triangle, and we call the other one the Third Street site, but sometimes you may hear us refer to it as Building G. It's actually Building C on your development plan, but on a prior version it was designated Building G. So just if anyone hears those terms, that's what we're talking about. These are both currently zoned I-1 sites. We are requesting B-2A for the Midland Triangle and B-1 for the 3rd Street site. You may ask what the difference is or why we're requesting different zones. We had a number of meetings with staff before filing this application, actually, and discussed with them the goals of our project and what they thought might be appropriate zoning categories to select. And we all agreed that B2A provided a lot of flexibility, but there was a concern or a desire expressed to keep downtown zones inside 3rd Street. So that's why you see that difference there. The Midland Triangle side is inside 3rd Street, B2A. The B1 site would be just outside 3rd Street at Front's 3rd Street. That's why we went B1. Tracy did a very good job orienting you to the area, but as you can see, got some mixed zoning here, but the development has not always matched the zoning that's in the area. These are both zoned industrial sites. The 3rd Street site is and has been vacant for some time. The Triangle site has had a multitude of businesses. The only structure that remains at present is the Community Ventures building and pavilion. Tracy did a good job with photos, so I'll just breeze through these very quickly. These are some photos from the Midland site looking both up and down Midland Avenue. That's the 3rd Street site as it existed when Google drove through in late 2015. And these are other things that you might see in the area, just nearby adjacent properties. this is the environment that we're building into. How did we come up with our plan? Well, we looked at a lot of things. The East End has actually been a focus of comprehensive plans going back as early as 1936. But the first significant study done on the East End was actually done in 1983. It was called the East End Neighborhood Development Plan. It was ultimately supplanted by the East End Small Area Plan that we've already discussed some today. And then, of course, we're always required to look at the comprehensive plan. also took note of the downtown streetscape master plan and the downtown master plan. Some things to know about the East End that I think are very relevant to why this proposal is so significant and so potentially important is median household income in the East End is about half of what it runs anywhere else in Lexington. It has the highest unemployment rates in the city. It's lost over 600 units of housing inventory in the last decade. We have a home ownership rate of approaching about 21%. But this is an area that's been extensively focused and, frankly, targeted for revitalization, and we think that our proposal will really help advance those goals. Right now, you have very low density, a lot of underutilized land, vacant structures, deteriorating structures, and we've already touched on the significant traffic problems on Midland Avenue, a pretty wide-open straight shot where speeds get pretty high. But we're going to see big changes in this area, Town Branch Commons, Town Branch Trail coming through, the Isaac Murphick Memorial Garden already constructed. We think this is really a once-in-a-generation or maybe even less-than-once-in-a-generation opportunity to define not only the East End neighborhood, but one of your primary gateways to downtown. If you're approaching Lexington from eastern Kentucky or southern Kentucky, chances are you're going to come in Winchester Road. If you're going downtown, you'll pass by this site. It's a significant urban gateway. Mr. Martin did a good job explaining our statistics, so I won't rehash them again. His numbers should match my own. I did want to add that in addition to the senior apartments, when we refer to these standard apartments, that only denotes that they are not designated for senior living. I would want to share with you that 30% of those units are earmarked to be affordable housing. So this will be, you'll really have a three-way mix of tenants, senior, market rate, and affordable housing units. Went over the Third Street site, so you all are familiar with that. We did think it was very important. We understand the concerns about parking. We'll touch on that some more in a minute. But we wanted to ensure that there was at least one space per unit in that building. And we have achieved that even with the variance. So there are 16 units. there will be 16 spaces. We thought that was very important. Talk through the variances briefly. We had initially requested a 50-foot variance. We had received staff's recommendation that 44 was probably as high as they were willing to go that was appropriate. So I had the always uncomfortable conversation as a lawyer calling an architect and asking, will that work? And the great news is, yes, it will work. So we're more than happy to go with staff's recommendation of 44 feet in height. Again, as Mr. Salee mentioned, this isn't an effort to increase density. We're only looking at three floors. Commercial spaces typically need a little higher ceilings. That's part of it. And then additionally, we wanted to put in a pitched roof feature on this building. We wanted to make it resemble some of the buildings that are already in the area and not have a flat roof. Because of the way we calculate roofs, we have to accommodate for part of that, not all of that's what necessitated the variance. 44 feet will suffice. The yardage variance for Withrow Way, I thought Mr. Slee did a good job with that. I would just say that functionally that's a side yard. The building will present towards 3rd Street. And Withrow Way is not a significant roadway. It's a relatively minor, maybe a little heftier than an alley, but not as robust as, say, 3rd Street. And then the parking variance. This is a very constrained site. This project really has all of your challenges of downtown development, infill development, redevelopment, easement conflicts. We've been through the ringer on this. We really have. We think this is a reasonable parking variance, and we think it becomes even more reasonable when you consider the parking that's going to be at the Triangle site. There's 248 spaces depicted on that plan. That's far in excess of our legal minimum, but you all have heard me say it before, and I'll say it again. There's a difference between legally required parking and commercially necessary parking. We think between the two sites we'll have sufficient parking. I also want to point out that we do think that a significant portion, if not a majority, of the business that we're going to get are going to come from neighborhood residents who can presumably walk or bike to this place, as well as the residents that are going to be living above these businesses. Anyone who's listened to Mr. Hollaback talk for an appreciable amount of time understands he is not in favor of vehicular transportation. He's really a big proponent of bicycling and pedestrian facilities. That's a focus of this development, and we think another reason that the parking variance is appropriate. You all know I pick at staff a lot when I think they're wrong, so I have to concede to them when I think they're right. The front yard setback variance for Midland Avenue, while I ultimately think it will be appropriate, is a little premature at this juncture. And we have no problem withdrawing that request at this time because we think that the Town Branch Commons and Town Branch Tale project will be a significant asset to our project. So we have worked with the city in the past on this. We've had several meetings to try to understand the limits of their construction and what they're going to want to build there. They haven't made up their mind just yet, and so we're happy to wait on them to figure out what they want, and then we'll work with them to achieve our goals as well. May ultimately pursue some level of variance at a future date, but happy to withdraw that request today. Mr. Martin did notice several issues were going to be deferred to the time of final development plan. That's not an uncommon thing you all see on lots of developments, particularly true in these fairly substantial and complex downtown redevelopments. We have a number of issues that we're going to have to deal with. We're cognizant of all of them, and we think that they can be adequately addressed at the time of final development plan. Community Ventures has met with the neighborhood. We understand the concerns of the neighborhood. Actually met with the neighborhood before this application was even filed. We're committed to working with the neighborhood to make sure that we're not burdening the neighbors with these issues. We're going to make sure these things are addressed when we bring them for a final development plan, and you'll get to see this again. You'll have an opportunity to make sure that we're living up to our word. Comprehensive plan, I think this hits on a number of points in the comprehensive plan. I put them pretty exhaustively in my application, so I'm not going to read these to you again, but I think this hits several significant points in the comprehensive plan. This is the kind of infill redevelopment we ask for. Underutilized land, finding a new purpose, revitalizing an area of town, significantly improving one of the major gateways to the downtown of our city. I think this hits a lot of notes on the comprehensive plan. Now, Mr. Hollebeck's a big fan of the East End plan, so I'm going to let him talk to you about it, but I couldn't pass this over. Tracy Wade frankly stole my thunder a little bit because this was in her handout, but I'm always very excited when I can bring you a plan that says, this is what you asked us to do, and this is exactly what we're doing. This is the Triangle site. Third Street side is right up there. Both call for mixed-use buildings. That's what was asked for in the Easton small area plan. That's what we've brought forward. Frankly, the Easton small area plan was a great deal of inspiration for this project. But I won't go too far into that because I know Mr. Hollebeck wants to address you on those points. So please let me introduce Phil Hollebeck. Thank you very much. My name is Phil Hollibeck. I'm a private sector developer here in town. I think it's important to mention I don't have any ownership in this project. In this case, Community Ventures is my client. The nonprofit is the owner, and I'm their fee-based developer. Kevin Smith is the CEO. He begged me to say, please, please, please tell him I apologize for not being here. His son is having knee surgery today, and he's down in Knoxville for that. I want to mention Community Ventures is a statewide organization. Their focus is improving Kentucky's neighborhoods, and they really do that in two ways, increasing business ownership and increasing home ownership. And when Jacob mentions that this ties in with the East End small area plan, it doesn't just tie in with it. It was built based on it. Kevin had me sit down with the plan and literally pick piece by piece from the plan and build the development based on that. I mean, it couldn't be more tied in with it. So the objectives of this project are to provide access to affordable food for the East End. The East End is defined as a food desert. So you'll hear about a rooftop garden, about a grocery, about restaurants that are coming to town. One of the restaurants is called Redemption Pizza, and this is one of the coolest things you guys will ever hear. Redemption Pizza is a guy who owns multiple restaurants in Lexington already. His way of pastoring and giving back to the community is through food. So he and his wife go to areas of town where they have an undercover police officer with them for protection, but they deliver food to the homeless. Redemption Pizza will be in the Building G or Building C. Every person hired will come from the East End. It's a chance to have redemption in life. People have been jailed for drug abuse or whatever or not who are down on their luck. And if people don't show up for work, he's got three other restaurants in town nearby where he can pull people from to keep that restaurant open on a daily basis. So there's all sorts of stories like this with this project that are really neat. We want to provide access to missing convenience-oriented retail. The East End Small Area Plan identified three areas, food, finance, and health care. So those are the three areas we're focused on. And to create jobs opportunities, I just mentioned the Redemption Pizza example. Anything we do is trying to create jobs and train people for new jobs. We want to create improved housing opportunities. There's three main areas, affordable housing, market rate housing, and senior housing. 30% market rate or 70% market rate, 30% affordable housing. When you look at the different units, you should not tell anything different between the affordable housing unit and the market rate unit. The amount of subsidy that's given to those affordable market rate units is going to be dependent upon how much funding Community Ventures can attract for this project. And help create outdoor gathering spaces. One of the things, Community Ventures has had three or four community engagement meetings. A lot of the architecture and designs for this came directly out of those meetings. One of the reasons that the variance for 44 feet is asked for is because if you drive through the east end, so many of the houses have peaked roofs. That was one of the things coming out of these community engagement meetings. So our buildings will have peaked roofs that represent those single-family homes. We also heard about front porches being very, very important to the neighborhood. So the front porch is literal and figurative. Our sidewalks have enough room for sidewalk cafes, so you've got a front porch meeting area there. We've got balconies and outdoor rooms tied into the apartments and condos that create that feel overlooking 3rd Street. And then we've got rooftop gathering spaces as well. Another really cool story is the Rooftop Greenhouse will be a non-profit entity, raise locally raised food, lettuce and that sort of thing, hydroponically raised, and will be sold to the restaurants that are right there in the development. I think many of you know that my involvement with Legacy Trail, I feel like I dedicated two years of my life to that when we were trying to get it up and running. So we are huge fans of Town Branch Commons. It's important to note that our property line is already 21 feet away from Midland Avenue. And now we're setting it back another 10 feet. So there's at least 31 feet for Town Branch Commons to go in there. We're willing to do that, and we're already working hand-in-hand with the city on preliminary conversations about how Town Branch Commons can interact with our building. We see it as a huge positive amenity. Keep in mind, Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden is the trailhead for Legacy Trail. So that's where Town Branch Commons and Legacy Trail will intersect. I would love my kids to ride all the way out to the horse park from downtown. Right now I won't let them because it's so dangerous on the downtown streets. Once Town Branch Commons is done, it takes you 14 miles all the way out there. So we're hugely supportive of that. Midland Avenue is a drag strip mentality. We were lucky to get the state when they repaved Midland Avenue earlier this year to reduce the travel lanes from 13 feet wide to 11. That was a big first step. But we would love to see those lanes get even narrower. We would love to see slower travel speeds, on-street parking, pedestrian-friendly crossings, all of those things. Keep in mind that East End-Small Area Plan calls for 3rd Street to be a commercial corridor. Right now on Midland Avenue, you can't even turn left onto 3rd Street to spend your dollars in that neighborhood. So there's a lot of things we're working with the state on that's out of all of our control, and we're trying to get them to understand what our objectives are. The programming, housing, retail, office, green space, and right-of-way. Those are our five areas and defenses. And that's important when you see these next slides, because for over 30 years, small area plans have been done in the East End. And when you see the 1983 plan here, and I'll show you the 2009 plan in a minute, It's amazing how these same bullet points have been consistent over 30 years. 1983, provide decent housing, expand affordable housing, improve the character of the commercial areas, bring local retail to the neighborhood, and make transportation improvements. Fast forward 25 years to 2009, maintain affordable housing. But some of the residences could be higher value construction. strong urban design and a mix of uses complete the legacy trail and add bike lanes you're starting to see how we pick stuff right from this plan encourage vertically mixed use developments housing above retail rezone properties along 3rd and Midland which is why we're here today and implement complete street improvements you can see that the goals and objectives were similar in 83 and 2009 we've been talking about it for 30 years Now because Community Ventures has been working for 15 years to buy this land, we're finally at the point where we can implement some of these objectives. The next question is, okay, it's consistent with the East End Small Area Plan. Is it consistent with the downtown master plan? I was intimately involved with this project. What are the key recommendations? Infill redevelopment, increase residential development, maximize density, and celebrate our urban entrances. This is one of the most critically important gateways to our downtown, not just our historically significant East End, but also to downtown. And you saw the current pictures of what it looks like. I think the summary is we want to see these plans implemented. Now is the time, as Jacob mentioned, we feel like it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for several reasons. One, the entire corridor is owned by only three or four different entities. Two, we've successfully gotten a TIF district approved. And three, Community Ventures is able to do what the for-profit sector can't do. And I can promise you that because I'm a for-profit developer. There's a reason that has sat empty for 30 years. Community Ventures for 15 years has been buying this land, acquiring federal funding sources to make this happen. I promise you it won't be a hole in the ground because of Community Ventures and their funding sources. As I wrap up, I want to address a couple of things that were brought up briefly. We're on board with no gas stations. Community Ventures bought an empty lot because we heard the property owner was going to put a gas station there. We removed an auto sales business from the Triangle. We're more of looking at a Norton Commons type of approach in East Louisville, a new urbanist type approach. Parking has the funding. The Triangle has about 250 parking spaces. We're not just sufficiently parked. We are significantly over-parked. We don't want to take parking away from neighbors on Nelson Street. We don't want to take parking away from Charles Young Park. These are all issues that we heard over and over with neighborhood meetings, amazing neighbors there, and we're so thankful for their support. I know many of them are here tonight. Mr. Hollenbeck, could you kind of wrap up? Yep. I think we got the message, Cheryl. I will leave you with this. The importance of mixed use is an economic development tool, and I promise you I'm done. There are all sorts of studies that show the importance of infill development over other types of development. If a city has acreage and land as its inventory, one of the goals would be to maximize the amount of revenue you can generate per acre per year. there's no type of development that's going to generate more property taxes and overall taxes and infill mixed-use development. Main and Rose is an example of that. It's the number one property tax generator in downtown Lexington. So in addition to everything else, this will add to our tax base. So thank you guys for being patient. I appreciate it. Thank you. Mr. Walburn, are you finished? You're not? Only to say that we'd be happy to entertain any questions. Oh, I get what I say. Thank you. I appreciate that. I was beginning to worry a little bit. Any questions for Mr. Walburn? Fine. Anyone in the audience like to have anything to say about this? Okay. Yes, sir. Come forward, please. Is this for comments? Yes, this is for comments. Either for or against or whatever. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Commission. My name is Thomas Tolliver. I live at 335 East 3rd Street, and I've been on East 3rd Street for 22 years. When I moved into the East End, we still had the crime-written Bluegrass Aspendale housing project. The Lyric Theater said, empty and deteriorating. Much has happened in the East End in the last 10 years. Government has poured a lot of money into improving the East End, for which I'm thankful. What has been missing in the East End for years has been private development. And here is an opportunity for private development to come into the East End, and I think it is so sorely needed. I welcome this development. I think it will bring new blood, new energy, new everything to the East End. And I hope it brings change because I think the East End needs to change. It needs more diversity. It needs people to come from the other side of Man of War Boulevard to come to something in the Triangle, a restaurant or an event at the Lyric or what have you. I think this will be exactly what the East End needs. And as the gentleman said from the commission earlier, there's a price to be paid for progress and growth. And though there might be some disadvantages somewhere down the road to somebody, overall, this is a great project for the East End, for my neighborhood, for me as a property owner on East 3rd Street. And I ask your support of this endeavor. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tolerant. Anyone else? Yes, sir. My name is Alvin Seals. I am a member of the board of Charles Young Community Center. served three years as its chairman in its recent reorganization. I have some concerns, but I think some of my colleagues in the back have better information than I do. I must admit that I had contact with persons of the Community Ventures Program as early as June, No, June, and I was learning about this whole process, yet I'm not quite happy. I'd like to say to you, hold it off for another month while I get more information for a rebuttal, but I can't do that, I suppose, but I'm asking you. But these are several things. We must be very careful about the fact that the Charles Young Board, with the support of the people in the neighborhood, has set up a very good organizational setting for the Charles Young Center and its recreation program and its other related programs. I would like to be sure that you watch closely the Lewis Street parking, because it has been one way and it's functional for us, as well as additional parking that's going to come in the whole plan, be sure that it's related. In other words, my question is, I don't think enough consideration has been taken, though there have been efforts by Community Adventures and others, but enough consideration and attention has been given to making sure that Charles Young is continually supported by the surrounding movements. And when I say that, let's say, for example, I hear nothing said about youth and young people. Suppose we have 500 youth in the park one day and they want to get ice cream in this new place that you're building. Will they be welcomed over there? Are there places for young people to go in this new structure in the afternoon? For example, I had two sons who graduated 02 and 04. after playing sports, they had no place to go to relax except maybe one of the restaurants I know about. And because so many of them gathered there, they were soon pushed out. What is in this plan to consider youth and children in relationship to the Child's Young Center, which provides some of that? I don't see a working relationship here. Should it not be? Is economics more important than humans? No, you know better, but you've got to check it out, please. One or two other things. I hope I don't go over my time. Oh, don't worry. One minute. Okay, one more minute. Concerning job possibilities that may come up, what assurance do our East End residents have that they will really get job possibilities here? I've heard this organization, I'm pretty old now, It may not look like it, but I've heard in our redevelopment across the whole area of Fayette County, you will have jobs and job opportunities. But when the situation occurs, many people in the black community and the lower socioeconomic, may I call it, European-American community do not get a thing. In other words, the human dimension is almost out of this program. please consider it seriously and please put it off another month so I can get more information. Thank you. Anyone else like that? Yes, ma'am. Good evening and please excuse me. This is my first time so I'm like, my name is Anita Franklin and I am the president of the William Wells Brown Neighborhood Association and I'm also a member of the board of the Charles Young Center. I live at 14 East 6th Street, so I'm right in the heart of everything. I do welcome community ventures and the promises and the vision that they have bestowed on us. My sacrifice is I lost a son to Gun Balance two years ago in Duncan Park. So am I very involved and very invested in the East End? I am. I want the young adults in the East End to have jobs. One thing that I mentioned to Mr. Kevin Smith is that you're bringing jobs in, you promise that you'll give some of our youth jobs, but the people that live in the East End that are poor, can we afford to shop at that coffee shop or that ice cream parlor? Can we afford that? Because that's why you're bringing it in, to make a difference. So I believe in the vision. I'm kind of like the young lady earlier. She said she was for it and she was against it. But I'm not really against it. I just have concerns. The other concern is Nelson Street. A lot of those residents on that street, where will they park? I hear them say that some of their parking spaces will be gone. They don't have driveways. I'm concerned about Lewis Street. You know, will they take away from the Charles Young Center? So, again, I'm not really against it. I just want to make you aware that our youth in the community do need jobs, yes. But we want to also remember that East End is very historical. And even though it might be the poorest dynamics in Lexington, they are the most respected and they love their neighborhood. And they don't financially have the means to make it better. But we don't need people to take advantage of us because we can't. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, according to our process is there a need for a rebuttal? If not, we can I would only say briefly that I feel like the comments we've heard while we're cognizant of concerns, we don't have any ambition of doing anything to the Charles Young Center the parking on Lewis Street is public right of way so we can't unilaterally decide to change that and I think that this will be an asset to the Charles Young Center. You can't be all things to all people, but what I can tell you is this is a vacant site that is proposed for mixed income, mixed use, the kind of things that you've asked developers to bring forward. We know that there are concerns. We're mindful of those concerns. We have been engaged with the neighborhood. We will remain engaged with the neighborhood. We think this is a great proposal. We'd ask your approval. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments from the citizens? Okay. What, the staff? Okay. Everybody's... Then in that case, I will close this part of the hearing and then turn it back to the commission for discussion. Yes, sir. I think this is a great plan. They've done the due diligence. They've done the work based on the documents at hand. They've worked with neighborhoods. but the concerns that I think have been brought by the neighbors are duly noted. And in my personal opinion, I believe they'll be addressed better by this type of development than certainly sitting vacant will or some other type of development. So as much discussion as you guys want to have, but I'll make a motion whenever you're ready. Any other comments? Do you want to speak into that? Okay, then I think we are ready for a motion. All right. Let's see. So we've got... Well, first of all, let's take the zone shift first. Then we'll go to the requested variances. You want to keep the variances separate? And then that will be second. And then the third thing will be the preliminary development plan. All right. Mr. Chairman, which... It will be the PLN MAR 16. Okay. So, Mr. Chairman, I move for approval of what looks to me as PLN MAR 16. Dash 15 dash. It's 16. 16, yes. I don't have my glasses on. Dash 07. Okay. Do we have a second on it? It has been a second by Mr. Mike Owens. Okay. It's been a properly move that we approve PLN MAR 16 double, let's see, 00007 Community Ventures Property Incorporated. It has been a second by Mr. Mike Owens. Any other discussion on the motion? Hearing none, would you please vote when it comes up on your monitors? Okay, now the second part would be the requested variances with the adjustments that have been made. Remember that they have withdrawn variance 4, and number 1 has 35 to 44 feet instead of 35 to 50. Move for approval of the requested variances as noted by the chairman's changes. Second. Okay, it's been properly moved by Mr. Patrick Brewer and seconded by, well, it says here Mr. Mike Owens, that we approve the requested variances of one increased maximum height from 35 to 44 feet and to reduce the minimum front yards from 10 to 5 along with row way and reduce the minimum of all street parking from 28 spaces to 16 spaces in the B1 zone only. One second, Mr. Chairman. Looks like we have some question marks over here. I just wanted to make sure, did they withdraw the entire variance 4 for all three setbacks? They withdrew. Yes, they withdrew as honest. From just Midland. Yeah, it was all of them because we meet them on the other two, so Midland's the only one that really applied, but yeah. Are we clear? Okay. I think it stands as stated. Okay. It's been properly moved and seconded that we approve the requested variances 1, 2, and 3, and I've indicated what they were. Any other discussion on the motion? please vote when it comes up on your monitors. And finally, the preliminary development plan. Yes, so the third motion would be for approval of the revised statement as provided by the staff concerning PLN, MJDP, et cetera. Okay. Okay. It's been properly moved again by Mr. Brewer and seconded by Ms. Carolyn Richardson that we approve the preliminary development plan at 16-0-0-0-15 Community Ventures property with the 15 conditions as outlined by staff. Any other discussion on the motion? Hearing none, would you please vote as it comes up on your screen? Okay, thank you very, very much. Let me say one other thing to the people from the Charles Young Community Center, and I know you've got a lot of concerns connected with that. And I think that some of the issues that you're concerned, since we're concerned primarily with zone changes and things of that nature, some of the sociological issues are important, but quite frankly it's something that I think you're going to have to continue to work on. I think this plan is one of the better things that I've heard from that East End Corridor. But, you know, as my favorite cartoon character Charlie Brown said about potential, there's no greater burden than a great potential. And so it's up to us now to make sure that what happens in that particular area is the kind of thing that will benefit the community as a whole as we move forward on it. So we've got a lot of work to do, but at least I think we've got a good foundation. And to the developers here, let me say I applaud you all for this because this is really something that I think we should be doing along that card, and I think it has a lot of potential as well along those lines. With that said, thank you, and we'll move on to the next one. We have staff items coming up. I know. That's why I have to fill in. You know, you've got to restate it for me. I understand. Okay, we've got, this is the, yeah, we've got two, this is two, this is re-approval. Okay, Mr. Salley, please. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Again, this is a staff item that you will find on page 7 of your agenda. The staff has placed this for a subdivision plan, a final record plat, known as Plan 2013-122F, South End Park, Unit 1, Section 1. This plat involves property with an address in the 700 and 800 blocks of DeRudy Street. This is a plat that has been approved by the Planning Commission in 2013, and extensions of that approval were granted in 2014 and 2015. You may recall a few days ago the staff circulated to you a letter from Mr. Andrew Grunwald from our Division of Engineering asking for another extension of your prior approval of the subdivision plat. What is on the overhead is the portion of the plat that has not yet been recorded, and this has been handed out to you. On the other side of that handout, you'll see the other portion that has been recorded. Six lots of this development have been recorded, and this is for land that is on DeRudy Street immediately to the south of the Vercels Road or East High Street viaduct. And as you know from the development plans that we have reviewed over the past few years, this is an area that's been very active in redevelopment, and it is now just about completed as the road project is in its early formation and early stages. The staff has asked that this be considered today by the Commission due to a quirk in our calendar. Most years, and in the month that you have your subdivision meeting, the day you hold that meeting is one day earlier than the prior year when a plan is approved. However, this year, that is not the case. You approved, or rather granted, an approval extension of this plan on October 8th of 2015. your subdivision meeting won't be until October 13th of this year. Thus, this plan will expire if it is not considered today. There were extensive variances associated with this development at the time, and in an attempt to save you some time in considering those items, we asked that you reconsider granting another approval extension to this plan today rather than allowing this plan to expire and having to re-present all of that information that we did previously. That's why the staff has accepted this and put it on for your consideration today as a staff item. I would be glad to answer any questions of this unusual circumstance, but again, it's all due to the calendar. Okay, any other questions connected with this? If that's the case, anyone in the audience want to talk? Mr. Grunwald may have an item to share with you or be able to answer any questions that you have. Okay. Good afternoon. I won't take up too much time. I would just like to explain the reason that we're having to ask for this postponement again. There's some property involved in a legal dispute. we the state do have control of it but we have right of entry we don't necessarily have the ability to transfer it to the land trust and to finalize the process hopefully this will be cleared up in the next year or so and I won't be back here again next year doing the same thing but I can't control the courts so we would appreciate your consideration to extend this for another year thank you With that said, Ms. Richardson? Yes, I'd like to move for re-approval of the unrecorded section of this plat for Plan 2013-122F South End Park, Unit 1, Section 1. Second. Okay, it's been probably moved and seconded by Ms. Mundy that we approve the re-approval of Plan 2-20-13-122 South in Park Unit 1, Section 1, for the unrecorded section of that plan. Any other discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those, well, please vote when it comes upon your mind. I almost went back and reverted. Okay, the motion carries and it's approved. Thank you. I think there's one other staff item, isn't there? Wasn't there one more item from the staff? Mr. Chair, I wanted to remind everyone about the work session. That was the other thing we wanted to say. We have a robust agenda for you all next Thursday, the 29th. We'll have some guest speakers here. We'll also be previewing the comprehensive plan and laying out that early schedule for you. We have a couple of text amendments to talk about, so we hope everyone can be here at 1.30. We also have confirmation. We don't. The Council has confirmation hearings for three of the Planning Commission members at 4.30 next Thursday afternoon, so we will for certain be finished before then. But say to any of the members who need to leave to prep themselves, they would certainly be welcome to do so, and we'll try to get through the meaty part of the agenda first on so that you all don't miss anything. Ms. Plumlee? Yeah, I have a question for staff. In our handout this time, we didn't get the zoning enforcement activity report, so I wonder if we will be having that in the future and when we can expect that. Well, first of all, let me say I'm heartened that you all look at that. Of course. We put a lot of work into that each month, so thank you all for noticing when something's not there. In the case of the zoning compliance report, you all may recall that in the summer we switched our monitoring systems from one program to another. and some of those cases that we might report on are sort of started under an old system and we're putting new things in under a new system. It's a convoluted answer to say we're still trying to figure out the best way to pull the information from that and report that back to you. We also did a bit of a reorganization this summer where we moved the Board of Adjustments to the compliance section as well. So I think in very short order we'll have all that worked out and be getting back to ordinary with you with our reports. Thank you. Any other business to come before this body? If not, without objection, the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.