# Planning Committee - March 18, 2008 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · March 18, 2008 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/425 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/425?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2008-03-18 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: February 2, 2026 - **Length**: 18,213 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Planning Committee convened on March 18, 2008, at 1:00 PM with CM Gorton presiding as the meeting chair. The committee addressed two agenda items during the session, both of which were informational in nature and did not require formal action. The meeting included presentations on Infill Redevelopment Committee Recommendations and Items Referred to Committee. Three members of the public provided comments during the meeting, and the committee took one formal vote on a motion during the proceedings. ## Attendance All committee members were present for the March 18, 2008 meeting. **Present:** • Gorton • Blues • Gray • Ellinger • James • Beard • Stevens • Stinnett • Crosbie • McChord • DeCamp **Absent:** None **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions No formal motions or votes were taken during the Committee meeting on March 18, 2008. The meeting consisted of items being referred to the committee for consideration, but no voting actions were required or conducted during this session. The committee reviewed various matters that had been referred for their consideration, but these items did not require immediate voting decisions. This type of meeting format is common when committees are receiving new business items or conducting preliminary reviews before formal action is taken in subsequent meetings. ## Public Comment Three members of the public addressed the Committee during the public comment period, focusing on housing and development issues. **Craig Hardin** spoke regarding student housing and rental licensing matters. Hardin expressed general support for the planning process under consideration but raised objections to specific recommendations related to rental licensing requirements and student housing policies. **Dawn Forey** addressed concerns about the regulation of apartment complexes. Forey emphasized the efforts made by responsible apartment owners and expressed opposition to what she characterized as mass regulation of apartment complexes, suggesting such broad regulatory approaches could negatively impact conscientious property owners. **Bill Lear** discussed infill and redevelopment incentives. Lear highlighted the importance of providing appropriate incentives to encourage infill development and redevelopment projects, with particular attention to issues involving height restrictions and structured parking requirements. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps were not available for the public comment speakers during this meeting.* ## Contested Items The Committee meeting on March 18, 2008, featured one primary area of contention regarding infill and redevelopment incentives. **Infill and Redevelopment Incentives** Community members raised significant concerns about the city's proposed focus on downtown development incentives and their potential impact on existing neighborhoods. The opposition centered on worries that prioritizing downtown redevelopment could negatively affect residential areas throughout the city. The nature of the disagreement involved community stakeholders expressing opposition to the incentive structure, though the specific details of their concerns and the exact participants in the debate were not fully detailed in the available meeting materials. The community opposition appeared to focus on how the proposed incentives might alter neighborhood character or redirect resources away from other areas of the city. The outcome of this contested item was not clearly resolved during this meeting, suggesting the issue may have required further discussion or consideration at subsequent meetings. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this contested item discussion.* ## Infill Redevelopment Committee Recommendations Chris King and Stan Harvey presented the recommendations of the Infill & Redevelopment Steering Committee during this agenda item. The presentation focused on two primary areas: urban service boundaries and the need for innovative urban planning approaches. The committee's recommendations addressed how the city should approach development within existing urban areas, emphasizing strategies for more efficient land use and development patterns. King and Harvey outlined the steering committee's findings regarding urban service boundaries, which define the areas where municipal services are provided and development is encouraged. The presentation highlighted the importance of innovative urban planning techniques to address infill and redevelopment challenges. The speakers emphasized that traditional development approaches may not be sufficient for addressing the complexities of developing within already established urban areas. This was an informational presentation, with no formal action taken by the committee. The recommendations were presented to inform the committee members about the steering committee's work and findings, providing a foundation for future discussions and potential policy decisions related to infill development and urban redevelopment strategies. The presentation served to update the committee on the progress of the Infill & Redevelopment Steering Committee's work and to share their analysis of current urban development challenges and potential solutions. The focus on urban service boundaries and innovative planning approaches suggests the steering committee identified these as key areas requiring attention in the city's approach to infill and redevelopment projects. ## Items Referred to Committee During the March 18, 2008 committee meeting, agenda item 2 addressed items that had been referred to the committee for consideration. This was designated as a discussion item rather than an action item. The committee reviewed the referred items during this portion of the meeting, though the discussion was informational in nature. No formal motions were presented or voted upon regarding any of the referred items. The outcome of this agenda item was purely informational, with the committee acknowledging receipt and review of the items that had been directed to them for consideration. No specific timeline or next steps were established during this discussion. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this agenda item.* --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — no motions (0-0): Items Referred to Committee --- ## Full transcript ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ...convene the planning committee meeting. And we have dedicated our entire meeting, if we need it, to the infill redevelopment recommendations. And I thought, council members, the format we might use, if it suits you, is to hear a report from planning, and they'll go through the reams of material they've sent us on the infill redevelopment. And their team will go about their work, and then we'll have questions from council members. And then there are a few people from the public who have signed up, and I'm hopeful that we'll have time to hear comments and questions from the public. Does that suit everyone? Seeing no disagreement, Council Member DeCamp moved this into planning commission. Thank you very much. And I think if it suits you, Council Member DeCamp, we'll go ahead and hear from Chris King. Does that suit you? Okay. All right. So Chris King, our director of planning. Thank you for being here. Thank you all. We're very excited to be here today to bring you up to date on the latest and most recent efforts in our infill and redevelopment. And really, before we start and get into that and get into the specifics of the recommendations made over the course of the last number of months with a very intensive task force process and public process and facilitated process with our consultants, I'd like to give you just a little bit of background. Most of you probably know a lot of this, but a little context and background for all of this certainly doesn't hurt, because this is something that we've been working on now for some time, but we're about to take it to new levels. So it's good to see why it's important and why we are doing this. So just first of all, bear with me for a minute while we think a little bit about why infill and redevelopment, why are we talking about it, and why is it important. The key element that goes along with all of this is, of course, the cornerstone of our community planning program, that being the urban service area and rural service area boundaries. We are officially designated as the community doing this kind of planning, which is still seen as cutting edge nationwide for 50 years now this year. The urban service and rural service area concept has been the cornerstone of our planning program, where we have designated the urban service area as the area which we grow and have our urban growth, and the rural service area as our rural area that we know so well that identifies our community. And at our current configuration, the urban service area is 30% of the county, and the rural service area is 70% of the county. Of course, our community will continue to experience growth. It has been a growing community and expected to continue, and these are population projections. I'm not going to read every slide. I know that you all can see this information and have had it, but, of course, we will continue to grow. And we're also, as a community, we have in the last few years really upped our commitment to long-term and permanent conservation of our rural service area through the creation of the 40-acre rule and the purchase of development rights program, which were begun in 1999, provide a permanent green space in our community that we are preserving. Our comprehensive plan was recently updated. As you know, we do this in every five years, and discussions of the urban service area and should it be expanded were key to that discussion. And the basic bottom line ideas that were being debated by the community is where and how will we accommodate our growth. First, we want to talk a little bit about the where. When you consider that 84% of the urban service area is presently developed, and based on the studies that were done and based on what at the time were 10-year projections of our growth absorption, we had approximately eight years of residential growth in the vacant land inside the urban service area. And as you all know, that's the most constrained the land has been. So that presents new challenges, particularly in light of the decision being made that the urban service area would not be expanded at this time. This map shows the results of a study that we did within the last year to show vacant and underutilized parcels. And, again, this helps you understand a little bit about the geography of where we think, and you'll hear more later, of where perhaps you would consider the low-hanging fruit for infill and redevelopment efforts. You can see the larger blocks of some still vacant land out towards the edge of the urban service area, which is getting, of course, more and more constrained. But also the smaller dots and areas show land that we have identified as being potentially underutilized and or vacant in the urban area that could be the focus of policies to try to accommodate more growth within our existing urban service area. We've looked at the where. Now let's talk a little bit about the how. And that is something that has been a concern for a number of years. Some of you councilmembers, like Councilmember DeCamp and Dr. Stephens, who have been around with this now for some years, will recall some of these pictures looking at the kinds of concerns we had about the type of infill we were experiencing in the community a few years back. New development, which was set back differently than the traditional development. Large additions being put on bungalows. This was considered a duplex at the time under the laws. We had a lot of issues related to student housing near the university area. You see another one here. You see the parking impacts. There were problems with gravel parking. And even in more upscale neighborhoods, you had concerns being expressed by compatibility. For instance, this is not a garage that is attached to this house. This is the front of a house, which many folks felt was out of character with the nature of those neighborhoods. So in 2001, the council created an infill and redevelopment steering committee chaired by Dr. Stephens. Councilmember DeCamp was also very much involved with this. We had planning commission members, neighborhood council, and the development industry, and others as we moved along that we needed to form a core group to look at these issues, vet ideas, and to create programs to try to improve our infill and redevelopment at that time. And we had a study for residential. We hired Norrie Winner, a consultant, who gave us a roadmap, and basically we took on four major character areas of trying to improve our areas. First of all, in regulation, to make regulation that was more responsive to the needs of infill and redevelopment, particularly in the residential area at that time. And as a result of these recommendations, we made the most extensive change to the zoning ordinance that had been done in over 20 years to provide more flexibility, more compatibility. We created mixed-use zoning categories, neighborhood character overlay districts, and we met on an ongoing basis with all those stakeholders in the development community and the neighborhood community to see how we were doing. We looked also at incentives and program facilitation. We created a website providing all kinds of resources to infill and redevelopment developers. We created a white paper to look at incentives. The council approved a facilitator position, which has been filled and operating in the Division of Planning to help in infill areas, and you looked at the infrastructure issues by beginning the Phase I of a downtown sanitary sewer capacity study. In the area of neighborhood planning, we did Newtown Pike Extension Corridor Plan, the South End Park Redevelopment Plan, College Town Study, Downtown Master Plan process, and we have provided direct assistance to numerous neighborhoods in MD1 and Charettes and things of that nature as well. And we also worked on education. A green development handbook was prepared utilizing our infill and redevelopment guidelines. We've done GTV. We've done education sessions with home builders and tried to get a lot of media interest in infill and redevelopment. And those were the four areas that were recommended that we needed to work on. And we think that we have really identified and made tremendous progress in infill and the different types of infill. I'm going to run quickly through some slides to show you how we've categorized on or capitalized, excuse me, on the opportunity that was available to us in the numerous small vacant lots that we had. In working with private builders, market builders, and also faith-based folks, we have provided a lot of units based upon the ordinance changes we made, even down to lots as narrow as 16 to 20 feet wide, having homes for families, oftentimes meeting affordable housing needs in our community. We looked at the conversion of surface parking lots. Here's a development on a former urban county government parking lot. Excuse me, back up one. That was a skip. We have more creative types of development you've seen. This one even in a historic district, the Artique Project. We have other combinations of old and new developments, such as the Nunn Building. We've taken advantage of the opportunities of redevelopment and vacant sites. This is a project that would not have been permitted under previous regulations. This is in a mixed-use zone, one of the new categories that was created as a result of the last effort. Other small infill types of projects, mixed-use, residential, near downtown, sites of former abandoned tobacco warehouses, residential and mixed-use in the core of downtown, and other opportunities still being worked on, such as the Manchester Street Corridor. We feel that what you're seeing with those kinds of projects is really the first fruits of success that go with the work that was done four and five years ago to change regulations and to more proactively work with infill and redevelopment. But we all agree that, most importantly, it's not time to sit back and look at those successes. While we have those successes, now is the time to press forward and further expand on those successes and see what do we need to do to give the next shot of adrenaline, as it were, to infill and redevelopment in our community. And so we have other things going on that we are looking at, very near-term future activities, such as round number three of our tweaks and regulations to make improvements. We've been holding them pending this task force process, but we have done a lot of work on that. We hope to be able to have a neighborhood planner conservator position to be the bookend to our development facilitation infill person. We have begun a non-residential infill and redevelopment study, thanks to budgeting that the council gave us last year. We are also looking at housing market information in a major study. The RFP is out on the street now for that project. Additional infrastructure support, because that's a critical part of infill and redevelopment. We have also completed the underutilized property survey, and you did see a summary map of that that will help both private and public sectors on finding good policies and the geography of infill and redevelopment. We have got upcoming small area plans, very intense comprehensive plan updates within specific neighborhoods, the central sector and east side. Those projects are either beginning or just about to begin, and that will encompass basically everything inside New Circle Road from the downtown area northward between the Georgetown Road Corridor and the Winchester Road Corridor, areas that vary right for the kind of small area planning studies that those processes will bring. And we are tracking and benchmarking with GIS coverage the residential permits that go along in those areas in our infill and redevelopment area. And most importantly, perhaps, in the last number of months, and what you're going to hear about now is the intensified steering committee process and task force process, whereby a lot of folks who had been involved in the past and a whole lot of folks that had not been involved in the past were brought together with the help of our consultants and with a lot of work by our staff to really brainstorm through a whole lot of ideas and present the report to the steering committee of the council that has been presented to you today. And at this point, I will turn the podium over, and we will have a presentation of the recommendations of the task force and where we are on that and what that process entails. Okay. Would you like to introduce your entourage? I certainly would be glad to. We have, first, Steve Kaye, who was the lead facilitator on this project for us. We have Stan Harvey from Urban Collage, who was a co-facilitator and also provided technical planning assistance. Unfortunately, absent today is Ed Holmes, who also served as that. He needs to be in Frankfurt today, but Ed sends his regrets very much a part of this. And also I have brought along our three staff members who were there at all the night meetings and working with all these task forces. That's Rachel Phillips, Barbara Rackers, and Jimmy Emmons. Thank you, Chris. Thank you all. Who would like to be next? Is that you, Mr. Kaye? That would be me. All righty. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to council this afternoon. A brief apology. I had a conflicting meeting that I was able to push back some, but I will have to leave at 2.30, and I regret that, but they were kind enough to give me an extra hour, so I thought I'd split the difference. What I'd like to do is provide an overview for the council on what the process has been like, and then Stan will talk more about the substantive content of the report. In your packet, there's an executive summary, and if you look on the first numbered page, acknowledgments, I want to use that as the basis for describing what we've done and what the intention was. On that page, there are a lot of folks listed, including an infill and redevelopment committee, a set of task forces, and staff. What that page indicates or stands for is about four months of pretty intensive work by a significant number of people, some of whom, as Chris said, had been involved over the long term with infill and redevelopment issues. Some of them were new to the process. And in addition to the people who are listed on this page, a significant number of people from the community came to task force meetings and to the three public meetings that we had to talk about the recommendations. The steering committee decided when they hired us as facilitators to set up three task forces, which would look at separate aspects of infill and redevelopment, produce individual reports, which would then be combined into a single report to be reviewed by the steering committee and then finally approved by the steering committee. You can see on that page and the slide that's up on the screen three task forces, quality of life task force, which looked primarily at questions of affordable housing, incentives for general infill and redevelopment and some issues of density, and the quality of process task force, which looked primarily at the ways in which present structures are used to actually implement the development process, especially as it applies to infill and redevelopment. And finally, quality of place task force, whose responsibility was to look at the more general design issues that affect infill and redevelopment. Those groups all met. Two of them met for six meetings and one met for a seventh meeting. They generated their individual reports, which are intact and available online or in hard copy if you prefer them. But those were the recommendations from those task forces. The three task force recommendations were then combined into one document, which was then reviewed over a series of meetings by the steering committee and then placed before the public for their comments and then re-revised until finally there is the document that's in your packet with one little tweak. There was a chart that failed to get in when we sent it to you that represents the entire permitting process and we will get that final version to you when it's completed. If you think about the overall intent of this process, one of the key parts of the charge was to develop a set of recommendations that would have broad-based support. So the task forces first and then the steering committee operated by consensus and only those recommendations that were approved by all those members were included in the task force recommendations and then were included finally by the steering committee in its recommendations. But if you look in the appendices of the full report, which I believe is the guiding document, in the appendices there is a section that I forget the exact wording, but it's something like things that didn't get into the main set of recommendations but we shouldn't forget about. So if there were ideas that came forward that did not make it into the set of recommendations, they nonetheless exist for reference in that appendices, in that set of appendices. I believe that what you have in front of you, the detailed set of recommendations, provides not only a broad overview of a range of activities and actions that would be beneficial to help infill and redevelopment, but you have a different way of thinking about infill and redevelopment. And we hope that it's consistent with your notions of what happens in the community and that the individual parts of it will be suitable for implementation. With that, I want to turn it over to Stan Harvey, who will tell you a little bit more about the actual contents. Thank you very much. Stan, would you like to go through your presentation and then have questions or what would suit you better? I guess at your all's discretion, that would be my advice, just because some things are interrelated. You may have a question that gets answered a little bit later in the presentation. Very good. Thank you. Good afternoon. As was mentioned, my name is Stan Harvey. I'm principal with a planning and urban design firm here in Lexington called Urban Collage, and it's been my pleasure to work alongside with all of these citizen participants and the council members over the last several months to come up with the recommendations I'm going to try to share. I guess I kind of feel like maybe there's a preface that's necessary, which is if ever there was a planning term thrown at you all, it's infill and redevelopment. And I think part of this process has been to try to define why is that important, and what I'll allude to in just a second that Steve and Chris alluded to is actually as the city's evolving, it's really evolving that infill and redevelopment is part and parcel about growth management in this city. And as increasing pressures have come on the city, and as increasing opportunities come with that, to really use infill and redevelopment to make the type of city that we all want to see. There's a lot of discussion that has kind of gone beyond maybe traditional, some of the initial notions of why infill and redevelopment got started. One of those which I'll come back to is kind of fundamentally that infill and redevelopment, over the last seven to eight years, has been very focused understandably on downtown and immediate environs. A lot of the citizen stakeholders, the public leadership, the development community has been united on pushing the modifications and improvements that Chris and his staff and others have carried out, which have made a tremendous difference already in downtown. One of the key strategic decisions and discussions of this steering committee has been that if we are to be really ambitious about growth management in the city, and we are to try to preserve our rural lands, we have to maybe think broadly about infill and redevelopment as applies to anywhere in the urban services boundary. But that's a different conversation, I would suggest, than has traditionally been there. It's a wider audience. It needs more education. It needs more discussion of you all. Each of you all have districts, obviously, with infill and redevelopment issues and objectives. One of the first starting points in this slide is just enunciating to the city at large, why is this important? Why are we talking about this? Why did we spend six months with all these people and all this volunteer time? The obvious question I think we all could unite around is encouraging more growth in the urban services boundary, directly and indirectly, allows us to preserve more of the distinctive bluegrass that is our cultural and physical identity. At the same time, the number one concern that I guarantee you would come from the community and the citizens are, we don't want growth and redevelopment to overwhelm what's good about what's here already. The historic structures and resources that we want reused or readapted, and the neighborhoods that are the backbone of the city. So when you're talking about smaller lots and infill and redevelopment, the land costs are more, the development review process is probably more complicated just by the nature, and it has issues physically of needing, in my mind, higher quality design, because you're putting it within sometimes constrained physical conditions where you need to think through all the transitions and ensure that there's high quality design. So all of these things, infrastructure, we're already investing and we're about to invest several hundred million dollars more in physical infrastructure that serves development. If we can use that infrastructure more wisely and use the capacity of that infrastructure without having to extend it, that's also an economic argument for infill and redevelopment. But as I mentioned, it's inherently more expensive, traditionally, than just going out in a greenfield, which is why it's not as, historically, there hasn't been as much, both for the regulatory reasons and the financial reasons. A lot of that's what's already started programs at the city are we have to even the playing field a little bit more in terms of financial incentives that make it more realistic for the private sector, which has to carry out most of this, to come in and want to invest and have a partnership. But at the same point, if we're successful, I keep saying, one of the side effects of success on infill and redevelopment will be that we will increase the value of land in the urban services boundary. It will be a very desirable place, lots of great neighborhoods and shopping, et cetera, which will raise the value of property. In general, that's good, but it has the side issue that we need to think up front about ensuring affordability. And so I'll talk a little bit about some of the recommendations that are related to how do we be preemptive and proactive about that affordability. And like I said, there's issues of it's also an opportunity to raise the bar of what our expectation is on development. We're going to offer a lot of carrots and incentives, but at the same time, we're going to ask for a higher standard of development in most cases, and we're going to establish standards and guidelines both in terms of environmental sustainability and in terms of general design quality. And the bottom bullet is probably the one that this is just the beginning of a set of recommendations for the administration of a series of studies and actions that will carry on over several years. But by broadening the scope and making this kind of interrelated to growth management within the city, there's going to be a need for ongoing community participation and education. These are tough subjects. They're complicated. Planners like to talk to them a lot, but they really affect everybody in this city. Chris mentioned this underutilized property survey that was done. He showed you that map that had a lot of the vacant and underutilized property, just property that's either vacant land, unoccupied structures, or surface parking lots today, the low-hanging fruit he described. That is probably an understatement of, of course, the infill and redevelopment opportunity, but it's not unoccupied. So it's probably an understatement, but even that low-hanging fruit we thought we would quantify. As you see, it's several thousand acres, mostly outside New Circle Road, but some significant property near downtown and near New Circle Road. But if you just look at what it's called for today under the land use plan, under the comp plan, we did a back of the napkin to figure out how many housing units and what would be called for, and you see up to 14,000 housing units could be accommodated on some of that land. And Chris gave you a frame of reference of 50,000 people by 2030. That's pretty significant, and that's just the low-hanging fruit. So it's not that simple and easy, but it gives you the idea of, I heard this described as the relief valve in one of our previous meetings, of ways and where we can grow within. This is the kind of opportunity we may have, and you see there also, I always point out, 100 million square feet of industrial warehouse and research. That's a changing market. I would hazard to state to you that that's way more than the city will accommodate in the next 50 to 100 years, mixed use. The so-called Easter egg map, I think you all have a copy of this. What this has really meant is just a framework to start the dialogue. This is hopefully a framework that the planning division and council and other policy makers will move forward with, but inherent in the question of are we going to grow more in the urban services boundary is where are the appropriate places to direct that growth. It's not everywhere if we want to protect neighborhoods. Most of that, it's hard to see on this because it's a little blurred out, but on your maps, a lot of the city is yellow. Not that there's no opportunities for infill and redevelopment, but they're very small scale. Some of those infill lots Chris showed pictures of, they're relatively small scale. Where we really will make a significant difference is if we create these dynamic mixed use centers in places like I mentioned, Beaumont, Turflin Mall, downtown, emerging really basically around Cold Stream and Newtown Pike. There are locations where the road infrastructure is there, interstate access is there in some cases, and that they are the appropriate places to direct new growth if we don't want it to overwhelm neighborhoods. So what this is is the starting point of saying what we could do proactively now is start identifying where those places are in the urban services boundary we want to see growth, and then let's do the next steps of planning and policy making. At some level, we ultimately need to get down to community-based planning efforts for all those areas. That's a lot. It'll keep the planners busy for many years, but at least at a policy level, we can start to set a framework for these types of similar types of areas. It may not be a local plan, but at least you could establish some design guidelines and transitional guidelines related to how these types of centers would work. The other thing is we talked a lot with the steering committee about just showing opportunities. This is not any specific development proposal that's out there today. It's really just to say when you look at areas, then this is outside New Circle Road, or reaching out towards New Circle Road, this is Versailles Road obviously before. At some level, pockets of success and occupied buildings, but yet I think you could say that there's probably some opportunity for improvement in the physical character of Versailles Road and in the development character and services and housing options that are provided there. We did some images to show how you can use infill and redevelopment to also improve the quality of place, but it's not just about wiping out things. Infill and redevelopment done right is not about wiping it out. It's about finding ways, which is why it's more difficult and therefore expensive, to integrate new development within places that could benefit from the increased economic push of new growth. Southland Drive I think could be a case study of this. A very successful, one of the most unique and economically successful I think in terms of the diversity of businesses that are there. Physically I hope most would say not the greatest corridor in Lexington and also still opportunities for new growth to come in and to help and for public space making and others to make a better place and a more sustainable place. The first set of things I'm going to go through, and I'll come back to any more detail because I really want to get through and make sure we have time for a discussion, but I'll just outline some of the considerations that were defined. The first five slides deal with general issues of place making and design and what kind of policies would we need to set up up front to make sure we're better prepared for growth that we hope comes. First and foremost are kind of setting the palette and expectation about urban design. This city is evolving to have a much higher standard and expectation about the quality of built environment, but there's good practices and principles about pedestrian oriented development, how you transition to neighborhoods, very pragmatic things like if we have new development and it's very close to a single family house, obviously a big concern is noise, light that could be shown, so we have to be more thoughtful and clear about those expectations. Billboards, back to that place making, clearly particularly in areas where we're really trying to concentrate some high quality development, reduction and elimination of billboards and utilities is an issue. Controlling signage in terms of some places actually need more controlled signage where it's not just basically 20 billboards for individual businesses. If there's some way to kind of set some unifying standard, but other places we heard in the steering committee process like downtown, actually some of the restrictions are felt to be too limiting where there's no identifiable signage that's allowed, for instance, on some of the downtown establishments, and they're feeling like that's a marketing loss. So there's a balance there that needs to be thought through, and there's an issue of historic resources. This has been in the news, it will continue to be an issue, and it has been in the past. I think the best strategy on historic preservation and historic resources is to identify them up front, and we're making an effort now to make sure that before we get into individual case-by-case discussions that we as a community have identified, both in downtown, which has been the focus to date, but outside New Circle Road and around New Circle Road as well, what are the historic resources worth preserving? The second general area is the environment. I think it's fair to say that I believe this city, and particularly the citizens of this city, have a greater expectation than any I've worked in on pushing the envelope about green building and sustainability. Chris mentioned there's already been a handbook put together. I think what came out of the process is really creating a first-class national model with the results of work that will be ongoing with consent decree outcome, et cetera. This is a real opportunity to set a real high standard for both how we spend public dollars sustainably, but more importantly, how we incentivize and encourage a high quality of environmental sustainability with the private sector. But that's going to require, same as infill and redevelopment in general, more incentives, both publicizing and administering state and federal standards, and maybe developing local incentives that could help that, particular cases like brownfields, which are old industrial sites. And grayfields, which is a term you may not have heard of, but it's really those surface parking lots, the gray asphalt, where you could have new development. And shared detention, I think, will become an increasing issue, because that's one of those financial partnerships that could be explored. Just like you share parking in urban conditions, it's going to be a real opportunity to set a real high standard for both how we spend public dollars sustainably, but more importantly, how we incentivize and encourage a high quality of environmental sustainability with the private sector. Infrastructure, it's the stuff, as this community has come to know, since below the ground it's hard to pay attention sometimes, but obviously a lot of focus is going on now and will continue in terms of overhead and what you do see in the utilities, the steering committee is the city really still has some steps to go through to make sure that it understands what's under the ground today. The capacity and quality of what's there today needs to be thoroughly documented so that as we test these models, and you went back to the Easter egg diagram and showed where growth could be, we could actually model, which is something that the city's not able to do very effectively, I don't think, right now. I think that as the city and the other studies that are underway already are going on, it's an opportunity to kind of assess what's out there, not all at once, but taking piece by piece like has already been done for downtown. We need to think about where are the locations for community and public facilities, fire stations, police stations, schools, and other types of public facilities. We need to think about service standards and possible locations and partnerships. Many cities have been very successful, and Lexington's no different, at finding public-private partnerships where land like at Liberty Road or other places where you're kind of looking at the location of where new facilities also need to be for new populations. And a recurring theme throughout the IR report is issues of making sure there's increased and sustainable maintenance funds in the capital improvements program to make sure we're investing more money, but it is going to cost more money to maintain that. Transportation is kind of difficult to decouple from the issues of land use and development. We need to be more proactive about just physical, functional operations, particularly in a city that has a very unique transportation network, the hub and spoke. Through the downtown, which leads to higher quality of place, but does pose challenges for traffic movement. And what we heard a lot about during the IR process is cross-artery traffic. If you're moving between one of the spokes, that is sometimes some of the most difficult movements that you make, just because the spokes are designed to get you in and out of downtown, parking is a big issue, having a high level of expectation about both surface parking lots and increasing amounts of parking decks. Access management, which is another planning term for minimizing curb cuts, encouraging inter-parcel access between adjacent retail buildings, so you don't have to go back out on Richmond Road just to go next door. Recent generations of development in Lexington, you see these already instituted, but some of the older portions still suffer from a lack of this. Establishing more standards for connectivity, and really that's about thinking holistically. It's not just about cars, it's about cars, bicyclists and pedestrians in transit and thinking of complete streets. Creating new street construction and connections up front. I used the example of Lexington Mall. If that were to redevelop, it would be a shame if there weren't some local streets put in as part of the development so that localized traffic who's moving back and forth doesn't have to come back out once again to Richmond Road. So those little steps can make a difference in the big picture. Current operations, bus shelters, signage, but also I think there's a clear expectation that as we become a denser and more transit supportive city, there will be increased opportunities for feasible service and transit service that don't exist today. A big part of this is creating a better public space. By that I mean parks, streetscapes, other types of improvements. In the downtown streetscape master plan, what would be inherent in the IR report is that that type of effort should be extended to other parts of the city. There needs to be comprehensive programs of parks and open space and greenways developed for particularly these major activity centers like Beaumont or other places that are going to accommodate a lot of growth but need, I would suggest, some taming in terms of thinking more in a multimodal sense. That's going to cost more money. We'll keep Don and others busy in terms of capital projects. There's a lot of implication of new capital projects, not all done by the city, but at least the city may have to fill in the T sometimes or launch some streetscape or corridor beautification programs. The maintenance fund issue continues. I think it would be fair to say the city and most city governments are not set up to build a lot of large-scale public improvement projects. If the city is going to be more proactive and aggressive with these, some type of structure or capital improvements organization is probably necessary to be able to be more proactive. As Chris and Ed mentioned, Ed Holmes was my compatriot and was working with the other two task forces dealing with so-called quality of life, which was issues of financial incentives and affordability and quality of process, which was, as its name would apply, looking at if we're going to encourage as much development, are there any regulatory and or process improvements we could make to make it easier but yet not lose the ship, so to speak, in terms of what we want to preserve? First off, in terms of affordability and density, one of the fundamental problems is I think we need to understand the scope of the problem. I think there's a lot of philosophical talk about affordability in Lexington. It's very related, in my mind, to student housing as well, but all of those issues kind of need to be understood as to what is the problem statement today. Then what are the strategies to move forward? Like a land bank authority, which can be very effective, one of the issues of affordability is land assemblage. That may be one of the primary issues, and so land bank authorities, the mayor's program to create an urban purchase of property, those can be really effective both in making new development, or requiring that as new development comes in. The other way is on the regulatory side, density bonuses and other incentives to encourage new development to have affordable units. There's an increasing amount of federal tax credits related to affordability that could be considered, and one of the things that had a lot of discussion and controversy, even in the steering committee, was the idea of inclusionary zoning. Well, that's a pretty aggressive step, but I think the report just says that this is something the city should look at in more detail. Not a formal recommendation, but just should they look at how do you use the regulatory environment and zoning to incentivize affordability? Lots of discussion on financial programs from so-called blight tax, which is something that I believe Louisville and other cities have used of trying to create an incentive for conversion of property that's either vacant or dilapidated. The partnership with UK, I believe most people in the committee felt that the Live Where You Work program was a very successful model, but wasn't as publicized and wasn't as accessible as perhaps it could be, and so we need to keep promoting that. Federal and state historic tax credits, the idea that particularly for affordability and for financial incentives, there's also tax abatement that could be considered locally in certain areas. You all have already seen the discussion that's been generated by the enabling laws in the legislature to look at tax increment financing. In terms of the regulatory environment, most cities are moving towards more of a so-called form-based code, which is less about the old traditional definition of zoning that gave rise to it, more to separate out everybody, and more looking at we don't care as much about the use as we care about how tall is it, how's it look at the sidewalk, where's the parking located, what's the transition to the neighborhood. And so there's actually, we want to encourage more of a mixed use where residential and retail services and other things may be mixed. And one way of getting at that is the idea of so-called form-based codes, issues of relocating industrial uses, particularly those within the heart of neighborhoods, incentivizing street-level retail and commercial, particularly to kind of create that attractive public space. The final task force was looking at administrative improvements. Chris alluded to the idea of this unified tracking program, which is still under development, but this idea, thank you, of making sure that there is a unified way to track any development permit through the whole process. There's been a need to make sure these are more complicated projects, infill and redevelopment, undeniably. So there's a need for more interdepartmental coordination within the city staff, but also, as you all have probably already dealt with, between the policymakers and those who are administering your policy, between the council, the administration, the planning commission, all of these bodies that have a role in here, this kind of raises the bar and expectation that there needs to be more coordination on maybe a more formalized basis. There is an update to the historic district overlay guidelines that is underway. That's a primary implementation recommendation that you'll see. We're also looking at increased staff in certain areas, or at least redefined staff, if nothing else, where there are, in general, we're talking about being more proactive. It's hard to do that, and I know this is a lean budget time, without more staff. Basically, this whole thing is raising the expectation, and back to your pillars and the mayor's pillar, the sixth pillar is innovative planning. We need more innovative efforts and staff to administer the recommendations that we're talking about. There has been discussion about looking at the H1 overlay and just the process and requirements for that. That's obviously generated a lot of discussion in the last 12 months, but I think we want to encourage neighborhood conservation as much as possible, but if it's perceived as being either something the neighborhoods don't want and there needs to be another option, as one example, I think there's an interest in exploring further what are the various options that neighborhoods could pursue, be it H1 or other options. Code enforcement is a big issue, and related to that, we heard a lot from the public about construction activity, and I heard six horror stories at the first public meeting about issues of, you know, a job is going in, and it's going near my house, or it's going near my business, but I feel like the city kind of dropped the ball, and there wasn't a place at least for me to call to coordinate complaints. And I know that that's a difficult issue, because sometimes it's a criminal issue and not a code issue, but just some way of better addressing citizen concerns as there's increase in construction activity. I say what's a study if it can't recommend some more studies, but there are several follow-ups. We couldn't resolve all this, obviously, and that wouldn't be responsible in six months. Some of the major ones are, obviously, what you already have before you to implement the implementation of the downtown master plan to look at the code of ordinances and maybe create mixed-use zoning classification, which came out of recent work but is limited now traditionally to being in the kind of downtown environments. Obviously, there's classifications that now, if you accept the premise of IR, maybe need to be outside New Circle Road. There's the zoning text amendments Chris mentioned, just cleaning up what we already have. The idea of neighborhood conservation districts or some variation there, be it the specifics to be worked out. More staff and professional development. This implementation plan that defines staff responsibility at a macro level you will get in the final IR report in terms of, at this point, 98 and counting specific activities, approximate cost, the lead agency within the government, and sometimes, by the way, that's council, to implement those recommendations. This idea of that Easter egg map of looking at these growth areas or so-called character areas, going ahead and trying to start establishing policy as soon as possible for those types of areas where similar policies apply to multiple places. Updating the comprehensive plan is ultimately where I think this is going, which is in the next comprehensive plan update, which won't be for four more years. It's going to be the implementation steps and current and future small area plans into the comp plan. A real focus, in my mind, increased focus on what's in the boundary, more than just kind of traditional notion. It's much more proactive about growth planning in these small areas. Related to that, of course, is the transportation and transit infrastructure. The city is a great example of the recognition that these corridors are both functionally and visually very important to the city, so maybe they're worthy of kind of their own kind of master plans for transportation, land use, and beautification. That was a lot. I apologize, and I'd be happy to kind of go back, or Chris and Steve could go back to any of them, but that will at least give you a flavor of some of the discussions. As I mentioned, we're not done with the report. The Steering Committee has one more meeting to look at the implementation plan that I described before it will be considered by the Administration, by Council, but we at least really appreciate this opportunity to come in at a relatively early date and at least answer questions and get some feedback. Members, if you, let's see, I'll look at our staffer over there. Is our electronic working? Some folks have not been able to log in as wanting to speak, so I'll just start calling on you if you'll let me know or log in. So we do have some questions, and we'll have Vice Mayor Gray and then Dr. Stevens. Thank you, Chairperson Gordon. First, I'd like to acknowledge, as Steve did, as Chris did, as Stan did, everyone who participated in this exercise. It has been underway a little bit over a year, and some who will often despair over the time that it takes government and consensus to make moves will find it convenient to challenge the time that's been taken on this project. But it was inspiring for me, and it was remarkable for me, to see how much interest there was in this project, the touchstones to the six pillars that Stan mentioned, especially our pillar regarding the commitment to innovative and imaginative urban planning, which has a direct correlation to and a direct impact on our commitment to sustaining the rural landscape and the brand that it represents to Lexington. Dr. Stevens was relentless and supportive all the way through in his efforts, and so were many people who were involved in the project. In my view, the biggest opportunity Stan mentioned is expanding the way of thinking, our way of thinking about infill and redevelopment. In the past, infill and redevelopment has largely been viewed as a downtown thing, a downtown initiative, and this project expands our thinking, expands our vision, expands the strategy, and the imperatives associated with doing stuff related to it. There's also often a lot of dissent and a lot of disparaging about studies. In the absence of studies, we usually don't do anything, and that level of sclerosis and that level of calcification and that level of constipation usually moves us nowhere, and it gets us stuck right where we are. So, yes, this project does examine a lot of the, or at least some of the past. There's always a resistance to examine ourselves, and that existed here as well. But I'm reminded a lot of the, in a campaign a year or so and a half ago, Nick Nicholson, who's the president of Keeneland, said this. Urbanization has not been as special as the place is special, and this project examines that. It examines the extent to which we need to do more to stimulate our urban core, the needs for our operational processes to function more effectively. I appreciated, Chris, your illustration of a couple of the projects that have been involved, underway in the downtown, and when Joe Kelly called a meeting of developers, there were a couple of those developers who expressed the pain and the distress that they experienced in working through our processes. And that's one of the reasons that the project or the report illustrates the current process and how many steps there are in the current process that we really need to be working on. And that's why the report also suggests process changes. Some things as simple as actually having the Tuesday morning meeting at which all the agencies and those in authority are present in order to make decisions. So I realize I'm taking more time, Madam Chairman, but after a year of going to the meetings along with others, I feel like at least I have some privilege to do that. I also want to say in closing that the piece that a very important piece in this report that will be helpful to counsel, and I think for those of you who have been on this council for a long time or a short time will recognize this, the implementation checklist that the report has, is creating, I think, is that the way you all are describing it, an implementation checklist? It includes how many over 100 recommendations. Now, some of these are simple, you know, low hanging fruit. They're the sort of things that administratively can be enacted, just like, for example, the meeting, the Tuesday morning meeting that I was just describing. And I believe strongly for the council in terms of reviewing, seeing our progress to date as we go forward, and seeing opportunities where, for example, ordinances need to be adjusted or created for us to work on. So in closing, I want to thank you all again very much, everyone who participated in this. There were lots of good opinions, good thoughts all along the way, and we collected all of those, I believe, in the report. Whether or not there was consensus. Steve, you mentioned that. So this is a document that collects a whole lot of good thinking throughout this community. Thank you, Madam Chairman. You're welcome. I also wanted to thank you as well as Dr. Stevens, Mr. DeCamp, Mr. Blues, and Ms. James. I think all of you actually served on the steering committee, so I appreciate your work also. Dr. Stevens. The steering committee isn't done yet either, I would say, because we have a large body of work ahead of us as we get our final report and meet with the facilitators and others. We've had some public meetings, some of which were well attended. Particularly when there's snow or ice, it seems like people really turn out. But our final meeting wasn't quite as many people there, and I don't think UK was on TV either. I'm a big believer in planning. I think if we have a vision of what we want our city to be and our community to be in the years ahead, if we don't plan for it, it's not going to happen. I just recently had a chance to tour a country where it kind of developed by helter-skelter, except when the Romans were in there, and they seemed to be great planners. Their facilities are still there, whereas the other parts have kind of gathered dust and fallen down. So I'm a great believer in planning. I think everything that's in the report, which I know some people have read because I've gotten a lot of emails about it and concerns about certain things, these things haven't been as yet decided about how they will be implemented. So nothing is set in stone today. It will have to be worked out as we go along. I do think the work the planning division did was admirable, and we look forward to continuing that. Thanks. Thank you. Mr. Sennett. Thank you, Chair. You know, when you talk about infill redevelopment, it kind of reminds me of Mark Twain's quote about the weather. A lot of people seem to talk about it, but very few can do anything about it. And I think this is a great start to trying to do something about a problem that a lot of us have talked about. I know some of you have been around a long time, have tried a lot of different things, but I think this gives us a good blueprint, and with the implementation checklist gives us an opportunity to take advantage of our talent we have here now. So thank you, everyone, for serving on it for those 830 meetings and really contributing to a well-presented document. A couple questions, though, and I don't know, Chris, if you're the appropriate person to answer a couple of these, or Steve, but a couple items that we talked about during the presentation a second ago about the comprehensive plan. How much was talked about about possibly changing even the comprehensive plan process to shorten it and start reviewing it every three years or four years in lieu of five years? I know it made reference to doing more area plans in that five-year period rather than did you all talk about that as shortening that process? Not really to my knowledge, but I think you did hit on the key thing. In between the big community-wide updates, which do take two to three years every five years, we have a couple of years we have a window of opportunity to do these very intense kind of programs, small area plans, corridor studies, studies like this, when we can turn our attention to those areas. And I think that's really working well for us as long as we do that in a consistent manner. We recalibrate the community every five years and in between. We focus in on the areas where we really know we need some special attention, like the central sector, like East End, like the near South Limestone Corridor, areas like that. And that's what we're doing. So I guess, you know, in the five-year process before we update our comprehensive plan, to do more small area studies costs dollars. And in our upcoming budget, obviously dollars are going to be critical. So I guess I'm trying to weigh out how much money are we going to spend, rather than updating our comprehensive plan sooner, because it probably doesn't take as many dollars to update our plan versus doing some of these small area studies. Have you put a price tag on doing those small area studies and what we could look to be paying on some of those? Certainly. You know, we've been running, just depending on the size of the area, $100,000 to $200,000, you know, for consultant studies. But we do have our in-house resources. And two of the corridor studies that we're going to do, we're going to do with in-house resources. So to the extent that we can do that, we will do that. And what we're able to do, you know, you saw the planning framework. That will be a blueprint that we will start using immediately while we're looking at the central sector, looking at East End, looking at these. We can start to apply those principles immediately and integrate it into those small area plans, which really are amendments to the comprehensive plan. And a part of our total comprehensive plan. Right. So speaking of doing things in-house, as a result of this infill and redevelopment report, how many positions do you feel like your department needs or will we need to create in order to fulfill this implement, the infill and redevelopment implementation? You know, I don't think of it in those terms. I think once we sort out the tasks and we look at where we are, we look at the impact of management partner changes and other things like that, what we will try to do is, of course, calibrate our staff resources to doable projects. And that's something that, you know, again, I'm not ready to really talk about today, but I suspect over the next few months or so, there will be a lot of conversation. Well, and that brings me to my next question. What's the overall price tag to fulfill this infill and redevelopment report? I mean, is there a price tag on it? No. If you look at when you get the implementation table, we used a fairly simple system of a number of dollar signs to give a general sense. Of what we think that might cost. And as far as coming up with any total price tag, no. Okay. And not that I'm against spending the dollars. What I'd like to ultimately see is, we're going to spend this amount, but in the future, here's what it means to Lexus in terms of economic development or better planning, et cetera. But we should get a return on the dollars we put in. Absolutely. And to demonstrate that we are. Right. Absolutely. We've got at least this infill redevelopment chart. Yes. How did the numbers and the different circles, how do those come about? Because I see, especially in my district, a couple areas left out that weren't identified as a town center that probably should be. What was the criteria? You know, we could have Stan talk about that a little more. Okay. But I think he was generally showing a concept. Oh, okay. I thought this was something we were going to focus on. We are, I think, is the concept. And we'll be able to take those ideas and apply them as we look at specific areas, or as we'll be able to fine-tune those concepts. Like I said, we're going to get to start to test some of these concepts, you know, on the ground and in specific neighborhoods before too long. And we're real excited about doing that. Stan, did you want to answer that? Yeah. I think those are both really good questions, the last two. I think on the implementation checklist, my expectation is you'll have a lot more clarity on the first five years, which is what we can be a little bit more sure of. And a lot of it is actually the lower relative dollar amounts because there's a lot of studies or refinements or frameworks that need to, where the big dollars come about are doing capital improvement parks and streetscapes and other things, which are probably not the immediate actions just because they take time to define. And on the growth framework or the character area map, it's, you know, the Quality of Place Task Force talked a lot about that that map is supposed to be a representation of that. And it's, I heard it described as the layperson's comp plan. It's just a representation of what we're doing. It's just a more understandable way to understand where we're directing growth. It's not meant, as Chris said, to be all-inclusive. There are probably other areas. It's just meant to show the idea that there's areas of conservation and there's areas where we want to direct growth. And those areas that we want to direct growth are at varying scales. The appropriate level of density and transition for, you know, something out at Maple Leaf, off Man O' War, there's a scale issue there that also needs to be addressed in policy. All right. Thank you for clarifying that. And one last thing. On the problem statement on page three of the report, you know, when we talked about infill initially, it was considered this old 1936, I believe, line that excluded eight of our districts, the council members that don't have anything in downtown or anything to do with downtown in terms of geography. And I see in the third paragraph it talks about, you know, we should be included when considering new regulations, but there's always a but. But it says that when considering incentives of any kind, the primary focus would be downtown. Can you shed more light on that? Because to me, that's problematic for my district, being that we're out of New Circle Road. Certainly. So we should get incentives too. If we try to back up and think about how we're looking at this, one of the key recommendations of this is that we take the kind of proactive, more intensification, more intensification that we had been focusing on traditionally in and near the downtown area in infill and redevelopment and expand that to all the urban service area and all the land resources that we have. Even as we do that, though, we know that the playing field is still not level between the areas in and near downtown and the costs involved and the land costs and the fact that that's developed land versus the greenfield development. So in terms of the ideas of incentives, the consensus of the group was we're still going to have to pay special attention on the downtown and near downtown areas, particularly in the area of incentives to help level that playing field. And that's what I was hoping you'd say because you're right. There is a big difference in land costs, but also I can tell you the Brown Station corridor that has been there since the 60s, their land costs and redoing things in there are also approaching some of the price tags of downtown and they could also use some of those incentives. At the corner of New Stoker Road and Winchester Road is a major area that can be changed and there's a lot of opportunity there and I just don't want to exclude any of those areas, but I do thank you for bringing that up because I think the idea is to be more inclusive rather than exclusive. Thank you. And that's what I wanted to hear too. Thank you. That's all, Chair. Council Member James. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to ask Steve Kaye a question and as he comes forward to the podium, I just want to say that I was very engaged in this process, very interested initially for the purpose of really focusing in on the First District, but as I kind of going to Council Member Stenitz questions and where that ended up is I really became very sensitive towards the entire urban service area and how Lexington as a whole, when we think of development, we need to think of it holistically and what can be in the expansion area, the urban service, near the urban service boundary. What does it need to look like? What does our entire city need to look like? And it really did broaden my horizon, so I hope as you look at the recommendation and think about infill that you can think outside of your district, if you have a particular district, and think of Lexington holistically and it really does give you a whole other perspective. So I really do appreciate the involvement and appreciate all the work of Steve and Stan and Ed and planning staff. I was very engaged at the public meetings, sometimes off to the side to not be as involved, but really enjoyed watching the residents come out and participate in the process and being vocal. Steve, my question for you is a procedural question, something that I'm not sure that's been talked about and maybe we're going to discuss this in the steering committee. Since the recommendations have been made public, council members' emails have been flooding with citizens, I know Linda's laughing because she knows this, with citizens who have particular concerns and want to be heard by email. Not everybody comes to meetings and not everybody calls their council members, but some people only use email to correspond. Do you have any suggestions or recommendations of how we as council members can implement the specific considerations or concerns or recommendations from our citizens that are now emailing us now that they've seen what's been going on and haven't had the opportunity to be involved? Well, I guess I'd start with a general statement, which is I presume that, as always, urban county government wants to be responsive to its constituents. This is just another opportunity. Now, the process for the infill and redevelopment steering committee and the task forces had a beginning and an end date, which we've extended, and the steering committee, as it's been alluded to, has one more meeting. When that's completed, a part of that, in my mind anyway, a part of the agenda for the final meeting is, okay, so now what? How do we continue to work on these issues in a way that's going to be in the best interest of the community? So I would say that the question you've raised is a really good question for the steering committee to deal with and to bring back to council. And there are, you know, a range of mechanisms that could be set up, including more public meetings. There could be, you know, people don't want to come to meetings, responses to emails, online chats, a variety of things. The good news, I think, is that the community has become engaged in this issue. We've raised the visibility of it. They care about it. We want to make sure that all of that information gets integrated. And so, I guess my answer is there's lots of ways to handle that. I presume that that will be a part of what is included in the next steps for implementation. Great. Thank you. And if you, one last question, if you can clarify the significance of the appendices, again, because many of the emails I'm receiving that, which aren't all First District, just people emailing council members in general, have to do with recommendations in the appendices. And how can we, well, first of all, what's the role of that and of the appendices? Like, what's it intended to do? And how tangible or how concerned should citizens be about the language and the appendices whereas it was not included within the recommendation coming forward from the Infill and Redevelopment Steering Committee? Okay. So, let me kind of reiterate. If something was raised as a suggestion and was in the drafting process at some point, but one or more people on the task forces, at the task force level, objected, those things were put, were held and included in the appendices that was going to the Steering Committee. In the same way, at the Steering Committee level, at a Steering Committee meeting, if there was one or more elements that one or more persons basically said, I don't believe this is appropriate, at this level, it was also held for the appendices. And the intention was to make sure that as this report went forward, that counsel had the full set of considerations that had happened in those meetings. And just as the Steering Committee took the information from the task forces, and its responsibility was to integrate those reports and to make decisions about what was in and what was out. So there were some things the task forces recommended that got moved to appendices. In the same way, at least in my mind, counsel now takes this on and says, okay, now we have a full report, here's what the recommendations are, and by the way, there may be one or more things in the appendices which many citizens are either, are concerned about. They would like to raise it up in significance. Counsel has its, you know, full range of authority to take those issues and to continue considering them. So, again, the intention was to have no specific recommendations get lost. But also, because it was a consensus process, based on the assumption that there were many things that there could be consensus about and would be more easy to implement than things that were potentially divisive. So that's, does that help? It does help. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. And so, before you sit down totally, just to tag onto that, then, so one would presume that any, once the Steering Committee has finalized its work, any changes in ordinance, those sorts of recommendations that require counsel approval would then come back to us. Is that how this is going to work? Everybody's shaking their heads yes. Well, that was, I mean, what I was saying was that this entire structure was set up to inform counsel in its deliberations. It was not to mandate. Right. It was not, I don't believe anyway, it was not empowered to say, you know, you will do this and you won't do that. It was meant to say, here's a process for considering these issues in a way that will move it forward in a way, again, to remind people. Counsel has been discussing this set of issues not for a year and not for two years, but for a long time. Right. And has made some progress on some issues and it was felt that this structure would accelerate that process. But it's not, again, from my perspective, the task forces did not have decision-making responsibility except for their report. Okay. The same thing is true of the steering committee. Counsel has the ultimate authority. Thank you. Counsel Member McCord. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all for all your hard work on this and in a very lengthy process. And I think at the core of this, it goes back to economic development and economic development in a 21st century economy is all about place. It's being an attractive place for people who want to live and jobs follow people in the 21st century. And I think that this gives an interesting road map towards that end. And so that's, again, my appreciation because that is obviously one of the most important issues to me and critical for our city. A couple of things. I agree with Counsel Member Stinnett. I think I'd like to see some sort of incentive package for other areas that don't necessarily touch downtown. I don't have any problem with there being more incentives for downtown because it is the only common space. Those folks that live out in my neck of the woods very seldomly will go all the way over to Hamburg for something and vice versa. And so downtown is the common area. So I don't, again, have any problems with adding extra incentives to that. But certainly would like to see consideration for those pockets around the town outside New Circle Road. The other part is I think we have a huge opportunity with a lot of old strip malls and places like that. That really is, I think, the low fruit gold mine of the next decade. This council approved a zone change in my opinion over by Winthrop and Man o' War. They'll be the first mixed-use development outside of New Circle Road. And citizens there are very excited about the opportunity to bike and walk to this and so forth. And I think that there's a number of dead or dying shopping centers that we can look at in a whole new light now, especially once the viability of this project kind of comes online and others see what's happening. Another area that when you think about it up there that really has my attention is Southland Drive Corridor. I grew up playing in that area. That's where home is for me. And I love the small area plan that Steve Austin had done a number of years ago. He and Sandy Schaefer had done. And I honestly believe that area could be the next Chevy Chase or even something more spectacular than that. And I would ask that as we go further that the more we can do that, there would be huge viability in those areas or in that area. One thing that I would ask of you all and I don't know who necessarily is the one to bring it, but from the list of action steps that we can do that you put up there, I would ask that you give us some sense of priority of those. What's first? What's second? What's third? Logically. And I think that one of the things that we see in the World Equestrian Games is people saying, well, we need this and we need this and we need this. And I think it helps if we understand that if we just do this one, these five other ones kind of follow that. So as an action step, and I know Vice Mayor Gray had said, sometimes we study things and then nothing happens. I would ask for that. Chris, if you'd like to speak to that, please. I'd just like to comment that we're doing that along with input from others. So when it comes back to you, you will see what the priority recommendations are. That'd be great. And I think that that's, you know, to move this from just being another study that this government has done to actually seeing some of these things happen, I think that's the key thing for us because oftentimes I may have an idea that this is the most important thing, but it may not lead to these other things. So if you don't have that to us soon, that would be what I would ask for. But I really do appreciate your work and I think that there are many areas of this town that really could see so much excitement and viability and neighborhoods really come alive by doing some of these things that we're talking about in here and it's high time we did it. Thank you all. At this time, I'd like to ask my vice chair, Mr. Blues, if he would take the chair. I have questions and you never know when an opinion might slip out. So would you take the chair, Mr. Blues? Do you wish to speak? I do. Permission granted. Thank you. I just had a couple of questions and again, I do want to thank all of you who worked so hard on this. I think this is really exciting for the future of our city. And with that said, one of my questions, under transportation, I think that, Stan, you mentioned we're so unique because we have the hub and spoke system with no interstate going through downtown and then, of course, we have our tight urban service boundary. Is there the broad question is, did you look at what other cities do? And then the focused question is, what is the hub and spoke, no interstate and an urban service boundary? Or is this extremely, should we go on Google and see if there's anybody else? Are we one of a kind in that regard? I won't claim to be exhaustive, but inherently it's a relatively unique condition. But I think what's more important about transportation is that we're not necessarily successful in similar cities, whether they have exactly our conditions. And I think some of the priorities that you'll see are this focus of particularly from a transportation perspective, the Easter egg map, once again, at least, is also a roadmap of transportation investment. If you know how to think about well, we have an opportunity, and if Waller may see some redevelopment, for instance, we have an opportunity to think holistically about that road. But I think the key to all of these is going to be an increased focus on transit, pedestrian, and bicycle use. Because if we're not going to create inherently, there's going to be conflicts with that agenda and the agenda to make place. And so part of it is looking at those connections between those major centers, but a lot of it is within a center making the decision to invest in those centers. But we sure could prioritize in those big centers where we anticipate a tremendous amount of growth. And most of those centers today, Nicholsville Road or others, have some work to be done in terms of being humane and having the problem statement, the part where it says when considering incentives of any kind, the primary focus should be on the area in and near downtown. One of the concerns that I have heard from neighborhoods is about this. It's about density in the neighborhood and the sensitivity to how that will be implemented. And so I was happy to hear, I think, both you and Mr. Kaye address that, that every neighborhood will be unique. And when these are implemented, just because we're wanting more density doesn't mean that every single neighborhood will get more density. So I'm nervous about this. They're built out, but there might be some extra space that could be squeezed out. But the nervousness comes from what would be the impact of these implementations on the neighborhood. So I don't know if you have any more comment in regard to that, but I think I mean, the concerns, we've heard those concerns throughout the process. I think one part of that answer is being more proactive about neighborhood conservation. So more efforts and more options for neighborhoods to self-initiate some level of conservation in the areas that even the Easter Egg map acknowledges are not going to be the areas of concern. We are the Easter Egg circles, making sure we have sub-area plans and policies that address what the transitions are. I mean, that is oftentimes the issue, both in terms of height and density, but also in terms of traffic, noise, light, all those considerations that raise the ire. I would argue that in a big-picture sense, the idea of expanding the opportunity to other areas of the city will actually lessen the pressure individually on downtown. It does offer more relief valves, so downtown doesn't take everything. I think that's one of the things that we need to do to do some really great projects further out. I had one final question, and I'm not sure if it's for you or for Mr. King. On page 10 of our packet, which is page 8 of the executive summary, it's the part that deals with public input on parks on the steering committee because your statement says the LFUCG should update and implement quantifiable standards, and the parks division is getting ready to update its master plan. So it seems to me these things ought to be coordinated right now. I'm not sure when that will come. And who will coordinate working with parks since they're already talking about updating the master plan, the parks master plan? We feel as we do the implementation chart, we hit each of those what the lead agency is. We have already sent out to all the parks divisions and welcome any and all of those conversations. I'm sure that will be coordinated all the way through the top of the administration and back on down. To the extent we can serve as the hub of that wheel to spread that information, we are doing that. We're doing code enforcement. The code enforcement piece mentioned it back in some of the attachments. I'll kind of direct this to Dr. Stevens. Is this an issue Dr. Stevens that will be discussed in the housing task force or where is that coming in? The student home ordinance which was put into the planning committee some months ago was provocative to bring up the subject and it certainly has resulted in that. We'll be directed to the task force which the Vice Mayor is going to announce next week. We'll review that situation and report back to the council. Okay. So the rental licensing issue, where is that? That's something we'll have to determine after we receive this report. Okay. So it's not really anywhere right now. Is that right? It may come up and it may not. We have one more council member. Council member Crosby. Linda, you just touched on something and maybe Chris, if you could just follow up with us. Underneath the organizational flowchart you have LFCG staff listed from different departments that leads to believe that quality of place task force and under LFCG staff parks and rec is listed. Can you just let us know, you don't have to do it now, but can you just send us a memo or something and let us know which departments or staff, not even the people, but just within these departments that participated in the task force meetings? Because I think that might help us know with some of these recommendations where they're coming from. We can go back to the documentation from the meeting. And maybe it might be helpful, too, to know if somebody might have been asked to be represented. Because that's not necessarily on the task force from these different areas. So it would be nice to know exactly. Thank you. Now, there are no other council members who have questions, but we do have a number of public. And so the process here will be each person will be given three minutes to ask a question. And Mr. Kay, thank you very much. I know you have to leave. Thank you so much for your participation. And after Craig Harden, we'll kind of queue this up. Don Forey and then Rick Bryant. We will have a three-minute clock. I think it shows. Does it show on the screen? There you go. All right. All right. All right. All right. Well, I'm started already. I've got to go. I'm Craig Harden. I'm representing the University Area Housing Association address 228 Lexington Avenue. And I wanted to first comment quickly that the University Area Housing Association has been a big supporter of this planning, this strategic planning process since 2001 when all the initial meetings came up. And I just think that our planning team has done a fantastic job. And we're generally very supportive of everything going on here. It's terrific for our community. We are very engaged in this issue. As it relates to the student housing and or rental licensing, however, there are a couple of things that have found their way integrated into this proposal that cause us great stress. The first paragraph in the infill and redevelopment steering committee recommendations February 2008, we reviewed that document earlier on and then just last week under the item that you mentioned under code enforcement, item B, code enforcement page 22, then the third paragraph appeared and got us worked up, I guess you'd say. LFUCG should establish a set of standards and a process for inspection and a certificate of occupancy to be issued each time a property is rented to ensure that the property is still fit for human habitation. Obviously, we have an objection to that and we'd like to see that. That is in the recommendations as we understand it and not just in an appendix. So that's what our major objection is. There's some mention of inappropriate density in a number of areas and the negative impact in neighborhoods. We feel this statement is prejudicial to the vast number of UK students who make a positive contribution to the community. We feel it's important that as many students as possible live within walking distance and biking distance of the campus. There's also a reference in here about the land bank in the draft of the executive summary. We noticed that on page 8 or 10 of the packet. This is a proposal from the Penn State document and we studied some other things and we'll discuss those in the task force from Ohio State University. I'm happy to bring this discussion to the task force and support that. Thank you for your time. I know several of the planners are taking notes so I'm sure your opinions will be relayed on. Next, if you'll go ahead and come on up, Dawn Forey and Rick Bryant. We have a 3 p.m. council meeting in here, work room. I'm going to start my clock. Hi. I'm Dawn Forey. I moved here within the last year. I'm Dawn Forey. I came from a community where the biggest thing to happen was a Walmart in 20 years. Could you say your name and address for the record? Dawn Forey, 476 Lenoxshire Place, Virginia. And I am excited about all of the development and planning that you've introduced. And I'm not trying to be at cross purposes with this committee. I believe that one of the things that our complex is trying to do is to provide a nice environment for medium to low income families. And I believe that we're a small complex of only 78, but we have worked very hard to make it very nice for these families and very affordable. It's within walking distance. It's inside the circle. We've experienced a benefit of Appleby Stadium, which is one of the planned developments that's across the street from our large or student or working class or luxury apartments. What I am trying to introduce is that there are a lot of responsible apartment owners. And we do not feel that there is a reason for mass regulation for people who try to have a quality apartment for other people. And we also know that there are also people studying this student housing task force, Town and Gown, GLAA, who have yet to input their findings and their studies for this task force. And we would like it to be acknowledged that between 9,000 and 15,000 units turn over every year and to try to monitor and provide certificates to the community. It will be daunting and expensive. And we're already talking about projects that are extremely expensive and beneficial to the community. And we need to also figure out if this is going to be a great return on investment or a hampering for that investment. And I appreciate you listening to my concerns today. Rick Bryant and then Dick Murphy and then Winn Meeker. Madam Chairperson, I want to defer my minutes to Mr. Lear, please. All right. Then Dick Murphy. Mr. Lear, did you want to split your minutes? No, I'm just going to speak instead of Rick if that's all right. Oh, okay. For three minutes? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Here in Lexington. A couple of, it is a good body of work. I don't want to take anything away from the people that have worked hard on it. It is a lot longer on should studies and should investigates than it is on specifics. And I think the challenge is going to be to find somebody's figure. The first specific is height. I said this in a letter. We need to look at issues of height. If we're going to grow up and not out, we've got to deal with height. Right now there are some height restrictions that are lower in the infill area than they are in the root. When we did the ribbon cutting at center court, I said the first piece of property was bought five years before the ribbon cutting. Incentives are important. We have TIF districts now. There's an effort to dismantle the barriers that say we're going to raise the bar but we're going to give you this and that and so forth. In our development projects, we have raised the bar, I think, and I would hope that the things that are supposed to be provided to create incentives are hand in hand with notions of structural parking. A surface parking space costs about $1,000 to make and a structured parking space costs about $15,000 to make. If you're going to direct some of these incentives, my view is direct incentives would be the best way to get the benefit of what you would be taking on. First of all, it's not needed. There is a small percentage that need to be addressed. There are probably 70,000 rental units in America. I have a knife. Did you hear that, Mr. Lear? Dr. Stevens can do a total hip. I thought you were retired from the practice of medicine. I still have a knife. I've felt it many times. Humor is the best way to get the benefit of what you would be taking on. 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And the best way to get the benefit of what you would be taking on. You'll remember this, I think. I was asked about it. The recommendation to provide staff support for the courthouse overlay was made yesterday. Perhaps one of the other staff members may recall the conversation. If it's in here, it's because the task force had a consensus that they felt that expertise needed to be brought into play. Can one of you email me the reasoning and the discussion around that? Last question from council members. I want to thank our planning staff and consultants. We have several neighborhood people here who came to hear the presentation and consider the questions. I want to thank our landlords and the different folks who came to express their opinions. I'm presuming that they will be here tomorrow morning. We wish you well at your last meeting. Thank you very much. Council members, do you have any issue with the back page items in committee? Anything that needs discussed? If not, do I hear a motion to adjourn? Second? All those in favor say aye. Thank you very much. Meeting is adjourned.