Ain't it a shame? Oh, give me the beat, boy, to free my soul. I'm gonna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away. We're going to start the October 27, 2017 Board of Adjustment Meeting. first we will go through the approval of the minutes as everyone had an opportunity to read those they were sent out by staff does anyone have any issues or revisions okay hearing none then i'll entertain a motion i move to approve the minutes i've got a first by mr glover second by mr clark all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed none opposed thank you um the next item is going to do some house cleaning type items number one if you have a cell phone please turn that on silent for me um if you plan on speaking today for any of the uh items on the agenda please stand at this time and raise your right hand so I can square you in. Okay, do you promise to tell the truth, do you promise to affirm and tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Thank you. What we'll do is we're going to, I'm going to go through the agenda in a second. Items that are unopposed, we'll have you after I announce the case, have you stand. If the applicant's here, if it's not opposed have you sit down we'll have your case heard in the beginning after we go through everyone else's cases if it is an opposed case i will ask if you think talking in the hallway is any good um if not then we will bring you back and have um and more of an extended hearing for your case so um what else we got here okay if it is a contested case or a case in which the staff has asked for disapproval the order will go staff applicant opposition and then chance for rebuttal and then we'll have our vote i do have the ability to put time limits on any of the cases before us i will likely do that some today to keep the meeting in a more efficient and use of everyone's time and lastly do not approach or speak unless the chair recognizes you if you need to speak and I'll raise your hand and I will recognize you as I deem appropriate so with that being said I will call the agenda first item is PLN BOA 17-72 Bruce Koontz and it is regarding 2508 Windsor Court is the applicant present thank you sir is anyone here in opposition of this okay Okay, so we'll have you call that first once we go through the docket. The next item is PLN BOA 17-73, the hub at Lexington. The applicant present? Sir? Opposition? Okay. And any reason for you guys to discuss this in the hallway? Okay. Not a problem to me. the next item is PLN BOA 17-74 South Elkhorn Village Shopping Center is the applicant present sir any opposition I will actually be recusing myself from the hearing on this item on the next item is PLN BOA 17-75 Christine Westover is the applicant present thank you miss Westover didn't come okay is there any opposition to that item okay the next item on the agenda is for conditional use permits and we have PLN VOA 17-71 Center Point Church is the applicant present thank you gentlemen Is anyone here opposed to that? Okay. And that is, I believe, everything on our agenda today. So the first item that I will call will be PLM VOA 17-72 Bruce Kuntz. Request a variance to reduce the required side yard from 8 feet to 0 feet in order to expand an existing accessory garage in a single-family residential zone at 2508 Windsor Court. The applicant, please come forward and come up to the podium for me. Support. Support. Okay. Support. Okay. Thank you, sir. Please say your name for the record. Bruce Kuntz. Okay, sir. And it looks like the staff has recommended approval, but it has recommended approval to allow your variance to reduce from the required start yard from 8 feet to 18 inches rather than the 0 feet you requested. And they have recommended two conditions. I'm fine. You're fine with that? Yes. Okay. And you agree to abide by the two conditions? Yes. Thank you, sir. In that case, I will entertain a motion. Unless the board has any questions. Sorry. Mr. Chair, I recommend approval of PLNBOA 17-72 Bruce Kuntz, Recursive Variance, Reduce the Required Side Yard with the staff's recommendation of from 8 feet to 18 inches and with the staff recommendations and the conditions that have been listed. Second. I have a first by Mr. Clark, a second by Mr. Glover. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? There are none opposed. Thank you, sir. Good luck with your project. Thank you. The next item is PLN BOA 17-74 South Elkhorn Village Shopping Center. This is the one I will be recusing myself from, so Mr. Glover, would you mind taking the gavel? Be glad to. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Please state your name for us. Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Jacob Walburn, attorney on behalf of the applicant, South Elkhorn Village. Mr. Walburn, have you read the staff report? Yes, sir, I have. And hold on a second. Let me get to that. Do you agree with the conditions that the staff has recommended? We do, yes, sir. Do the board members have any questions about this application? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion. I move that we approve PLN VOA 17-74 South Elkhorn Village Shopping Center request for a variance to increase the height of the shopping center identification sign from 20 feet to 40 feet in the planned shopping center B6P zone at 4379 Old Carradrochebrook Road. for the reasons outlined by staff and subject to the two conditions. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Needham. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye as well. The motion carries. Good luck with the project. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Glover. the next case is PLN BOA 17-75 Christine Westover's request for a variance to reduce the minimum side yard from 20 feet to zero feet in order to create an off-street parking area at 527 Goodloe Street on the applicant please come forward put your name on the record good afternoon again mr. chair Jacob Walburn on behalf of the applicant Christine Westover thank you sir and have you reviewed the staffs recommended approval and the two conditions yes sir we have And your client is in agreement with the due conditions? 100%. Thank you, sir. In that instance, does the board have any questions for the applicant? Okay, hearing none, the chair will entertain a motion. I move that we approve PLNBOA 17-75, Christine Westover's request for variance to reduce the minimum side street yard from 20 feet to 0 feet in order to create an off-street parking area within the defined infill and redevelopment area. area in a planned neighborhood residential R3 zone at 527 Goodloe Street based on three reasons staffs recommended and subject to the two conditions second the motion I have a first from mr. Needham a second for Miss Whitman all those in favor please say aye aye are there any opposed hearing none thank you and tell the applicant congratulations certainly will thank you all the next item is a conditional use appeal for PLN BOA 17-71 Center Point Church a request a conditional use permit to establish a church and existing building at 163 old Todd's Road with the applicant please come forward and please Please state your name for the record. Mr. Chair, Todd Thomas from Center Point Church. Mr. Thomas, have you reviewed the staff report? Yes, sir. And have you seen the two conditions? Yes, sir. And are you in agreement with those two conditions? Yes, sir. Okay. Does anyone on the board have any questions for the applicant? All right, hearing none, the chair will entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move we approve PLN BOA 17-71 Centerpoint Church's request for a conditional use permit to establish a church in an existing building in a highway services business zone at 163 Old Todd's Road for the reasons recommended by staff in its report and subject to the two conditions therein. Second. I have a first by Mr. Glover, a second by Ms. Meyer. Anyone? Sorry. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, it's granted. Good luck with your project. Thank you so much. Okay, so I guess that presumes everyone here is for the hub case for the rest of the day? Okay. What I would like to do is for, I would like to keep each sign to 45 minutes. I know everyone here probably has letters and memos and other things they have brought with them. And what I would recommend, to the extent that you do, I'll call the case. And if you have any of those materials, have you come up, introduce yourself, tell us what you have. let us look at them for 10 minutes and recess before we start so we can kind of catch up with everybody else in the room. If that is okay with everybody. So with that being said, I will call PLNBOA 17-73, the hub at Lexington. Would the applicant please come forward and put your name on the record for us? Mr. Chairman, I'm Dick Murphy representing Core Spaces, which is the developer of the hub at Lexington. Thank you, sir. And the staff has circulated to the members of the board a memorandum you have submitted to the staff. Is there anything else that you will want, other than your slideshow, I'm sure you have, anything else you will want us to have? I have a few slides. I do have a set of exhibits to hand out. Okay, that'd be great. And while Mr. Murphy is doing that, do we have any emails or letters that the staff has that we need to pass? Those are being circulated. Thank you. Thank you. make sure that Dick has an information and you get a copy to him. Actually what I'll do is have you take a seat and then if anyone else has any records, any documents they want to put in the record, that way like I said we'll have 10 minute recess let's get a chance to look at it before we start mr chairman i do have i didn't bring for everybody just copies of the goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan for 2013 and the draft ones for 2018. will you be planning handing those to put on the overhead uh yeah we may put them on the overhead or just i may discuss them and put them in the record yeah i think that would be fine i think we're looking at more the these type of items that have a little bit more detail in the comprehensive plan thank you sir mr billings thank you mr chairman nathan billings with billings law firm 111 church street i represent historic south hill neighborhood association center court condominiums south hill station lofts and a large number of individual owners both in the historic south hill area as well as other property owners in the south hill area and lexington generally i have several things to introduce that we will rely upon in our opposition today. The first thing is there's a copy of our PowerPoint presentation for every member of the commission, if I may approach to distribute. Yes, please. And just make sure you give a copy to the staff. Thank you. second mr. chairman we have several other additional exhibits that we will introduce into the record today the first is a packet that we introduced originally at the october 12th planning commission hearing we're going to introduce a second copy of that today with relevant data i will circulate these in a second to the commission second is we have conducted two separate student parking surveys one was done originally for the october 12th hearing that Mr. Murphy took exception to, so we have done a statistical analysis based upon an economics professor recommendation as surveys. We have not only the summary data, but also every copy of the survey is actually completed to tender into the record today. And then finally, we have copies of multiple development plans and board of adjustment records in minutes from the past eight years regarding prior variances granted for parking. Some of that is electronically because they're so voluminous, you probably wouldn't look them but we've got them here as well as paper copies further there are some individual records and letters that i was copied on there are additional records that have already been submitted in the records is my understanding um sometimes people don't always you know opposition doesn't necessarily send them to me but with that i'll send them to the record mr chairman thank you sir and is that everything you have mr billings all right thank you mr bryce please come forward to put your name on the record John Bryce I'm a homeowner at 340 South Mill Street I just had a series of photographs parking photographs that I took last night that I was I've got a little slideshow thank you sir is there anyone else who will have materials handouts today to hand to the board okay hearing nothing okay gotcha I think we all had the same idea my name is Brenda Stewart I'm the owner of property at 345 South Limestone parking is a huge problem so what I did this week is every day I went down there at different times and took pictures four different shots in the same parking lot at multiple different times late at night early in the morning to show you how many people are actually going to be affected if you change if you give them this variance thank you ma'am um and what you would want to do if you have copy you have copies or just one set i have three sets if you'd like to have all three of them no ma'am well actually what we'll do is if you don't mind hand one set to the staff they'll put that in the record you keep it set for you and then we'll pass your set down and we'll look at it okay so um what we'll do is i'm going to go into recess for the next uh 10 minutes while we look at this materials at least i plan on 10 minutes but we have a lot of stuff to look at so well everyone sit tight and we'll call uh call us back in thank you so what i will do is i will have the applicant come forward once again and is there anyone else who's going to speak in favor today We may have needed some people. Okay, but it'll be part of, all right, 45 minutes, is that plenty? Well, yeah, there may be rebuttal or additional information. I understand. Yeah, no, I'm talking about just for the presentation. Yeah. Okay. So please begin, and we will accept less than 45. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Dick Murphy. I'm pleased today to be representing Core Spaces. Core Spaces is the developer of this project. With me today is Chad Mattese from CORE. CORE is in Chicago. He's with us today. Lily Guerrero is our project architect from Antinovich Architects in Chicago. We have a very good local team here, too. We have landscape architects, our Carmen associates. Kevin Warner is here from Carmen, our landscape architect. Integrated engineering did our traffic and some parking studies. Breton Malloy is here from Integrated Engineering. Kevin Phillips of Endris Engineering here in Lexington is our surveyor. He's not with us today, but he does our survey work. Chaz Height is a planner who works with me as well. I want to tell you a little bit about Core Spaces. Core specializes in constructing, maintaining, and upgrading high-quality, student-oriented residential properties in university towns across America. They have 22 projects at the present time. They have them in cities such as Madison, Wisconsin, West Lafayette, Indiana near Purdue University, Tucson and Tempe, Arizona, Oxford, Mississippi, Columbia, South Carolina, and many other cities. Their goal is to be close to campus because they supply high-quality residences oriented to students. It's not limited to students, but obviously oriented to students because they're proximity to campus, and they have a high level of amenities. For instance, our building has a rooftop swimming pool, as does our companion building, which is going to be developed at the corner of Virginia Avenue and South Limestone here in Lexington. That's been approved by the Planning Commission on a zone change, and that will have a rooftop swimming pool as well. I want to give you a little background in my packet. I handed out to you, page 1 and 1A is the Herald-Leader article about the land swap that occurred here. That's from a June 17th Herald-Leader article. What happened was Core Spaces obtained a contract to purchase Kennedy Bookstore and Fazoli's on UK campus. When UK learned of that, they had contact with CORE and said that that property was the, they had planned on that being the keystone of future development of the campus, the Kennedy Bookstore property. So they're entered into negotiations with the two parties and CORE wanted to accommodate that but still wanted to be near campus. So it resulted in a land swap where the Kennedy Bookstore and the Fazoli's property and a a lot of the lots around there would be swapped to UK. In turn, UK would give back this property, which has been known as the Good Samaritan parking lot or Jersey Street parking lot for many years, and the property at the corner of South Limestone and Virginia Avenue. This will be a development, as I said, which is oriented toward people who walk, people who bike, and transit oriented, as well as automobile oriented. But we're trying to get away from total dependence on the automobile. And that agrees with the comprehensive plans that I'll discuss in a couple minutes that emphasize infill, and especially now infill near corridors and infill where there's transit available. this property is a form-based development in the b1 area this has been through two planning commission hearings because we had to submit as a form-based project that looks at the form of the building we had to get an architectural review of our project in addition to the standard development plan review of this so before the architects put pencil to paper we arranged to meet with with the planning staff to get their ideas on what they wanted in a form-based project. And as you all know, there is now a design planner position in the Division of Planning. At the time we started this, it was filled by Brandy Peacher, who's a graduate architect. She has now moved on to another job in the mayor's office. She's coordinator of the town branch project here in Lexington. But Brandy was involved in this. Brandy Peacher was involved before we started, We met with our architectural team and our developers, and the plans that resulted from this include the input from Ms. Peacher and the planning staff and our architects as well. We also met with the Historic South Hill Neighborhood Association prior to meeting. We've got a couple meetings with them, and as a result of this, there have been a number of changes to this plan. You can look up there on the screen and see the different iterations of this. This was our original concept of a six-story building. This was a second concept with a step back. The front was five-story. We're looking at Pine Street here, set back to six. And the final one, which was approved by the Planning Commission, was a step back from four to five to six along Pine Street. If you go forward a little bit in our packet there, I'm not going to look at every one here. The key you can keep going. The one on the right, go ahead, keep going. That's the second one. And here comes the, if you go one more, the current iteration of this. We've changed the brick. We've changed the materials. We've changed the orientation of the windows. And that resulted from our discussions with the Neighborhood Association, although obviously we didn't satisfy everybody because there are people here objecting to us but this was presented to the planning commission and this was the version that was approved by the planning commission two weeks ago today planning commission had two hearings on this one in september went about four hours we started in this room and had to go to the phoenix building because the council had to come in here and two weeks ago in here we had another two or three hours so the planning commission has been through about six or seven hours of hearings on this one of the reasons they paused after september was they wanted more data on parking they wanted our history of parking even though they knew we had to come to you for a parking variance that they wanted to be comfortable with parking before they would pass upon it so our as as our development has changed our parking has increased if we could keep going through those slides real quick we'll show you the this was the how it fits in the neighborhood this was the first version of the development right here here's the this was under construction the new holmes hall which is taller than we are seven stories this is the boyd hall which is also seven stories here to the south we have the uk seven-story parking garage on south limestone street right here is the four to five story center court development and up here is the Good Samaritan parking garage which is owned by UK here is the two keys here's the tin roof and here's McDonald's back here this is the first iteration if you go to the second slide that's how we presented it to the Planning Commission after discussions with the five-story, six-story setback. And if you could go to the final one, this is the final iteration where we had the four-, five-, six-story setback. Now if we could go through the, well, keep on going through there. We'll get through this before we go on to the next thing. That's keep going. That's the first version, second version, third version. We have interior courtyards going down for light inside the building. Keep going on down if you would. that's a cut through of the building keep going on here keep going on if you would go on one more or is that the end of it that's the end of it if we could put up my exhibits this handout do you have a copy of that okay the the copy of the the views here now you use my copy This first slide shows the changes to the plan we've done since we originally filed it. We had started in July with, I'll go bedrooms because that's what everybody's going to be talking about today, 169 units, 507 bedrooms. In September, we reduced that to 489, and our final version, which was heard in October, 473 bedrooms. Stories, as I said, went 6 to 5 and 6 to 4, 5 and 6. And here's the key, parking. When we submitted in July, we had 135 spaces. In September, we have 148. Now we have 166 spaces plus 12 tandem spaces, and tandem spaces are front and back parking where there's one way in and one way out. So those are rented to people in the same room, roommates, so that they have access to keys, so that if one person parks behind the other one, they can coordinate who has to move the cars when. Generally in CORS developments like this, they find that cars are moved one to three times per week, not per day, one to three times per week, and on these tandem spaces, and we're not counting the 12 tandem spaces in our total because they are not qualified as legal parking spaces under our ordinance, but they're parking spaces nonetheless. We have 12 of those, so now we have 166 spaces plus 12 of the tandem spaces. So we've decreased our bedrooms by about 6% since we first filed, and we've increased our parking about 22%, not counting the tandem. We've increased it about 31%, counting the tandem spaces. If you could go to the next slide there. Mr. Murphy, can I interrupt you for just a second? the the uh looking at this this graph right here the 166 bases is that the total for the for the project that's the total for the project and i'll give you a breakdown between the retail and the residential on the next slide here this is the parking for the residential portion of this this compares with a few of our other developments this is south upward this is our development 159 units 473 bedrooms we have 145 parking spaces devoted to residential that's because our retailer which were very close to signing a lease with says they want no more than 33 parking spaces even though the ordinance would require 75 normally they want no more than 33 because they're experienced in urban type grocery and retail facilities in other cities, and they know they want 33, but no more than 33. So that leaves 145 spaces, now it's counting our tandem spaces, available for residential parking, which gives us a parking ratio of 31%. What that means is 31% of the people living here can bring a car and park here in the spaces. They are designated spaces. When you rent, you say, do we want a parking space or not? You pay extra to have a parking space. You have a designated parking space. So 31% of the people here will have parking spaces. This compares to our development at Limestone at Virginia, which the Planning Commission heard is a zone change. They granted a parking variance on that one because they have the power to do that. When there's a zone change involved, this property doesn't need a zone change. It's already B1. That parking ratio is 23%, just to compare Tucson, Arizona, 16%, 21%, and the other Tucson and Madison, Wisconsin is 17%. Now, if we could pull that up just a little bit, that slide, so we see the bottom part of it. We wanted to compare this with UK, and I know Mr. Billings is going to be discussing UK, but I checked with George Ward, vice president of the University of Kentucky, who has responsibility for this sort of thing. He gave me these numbers. UK has 6,712 undergraduate resident hall beds which are occupied. Of those, 12%, 12% have a parking pass, parking within easy walking distance of the dormitory, 12%. That's their parking ratio. If I was going to put this in this chart, UK's on-campus dormitories have a parking ratio of 12%. 12 out of every 100 people in a dorm get to park within easy walking distance of their dormitory. We have 31% on site here. Now the figure, as you know, UK parks a lot of people. That's a UK dedicated parking space that the university provides, like at the stadium or something like that. No, the stadium, 30% of those residents, another 30% have a pass to park at the stadium, at the K lot. Those residents being all the remaining? Well, 30 plus 12 would be 42% of their students have a car on campus. Okay. And 12% get to park nearby, another 30% park at the stadium. Now, last thing I've said, our residents are also eligible for stadium parking. So if they aren't one of the 31% who park in our building, they can get a stadium parking pass as well and park at the stadium and take the shuttle service up here wherever they want to be. So we exceed what UK's parking ratios are. I want to next discuss the well let me go on through my exhibits here and just point out a few other things if you go to the next slide on here this is the there's been a lot of discussion and I'm sure we will have today about issues with parking in South Hill and other places I just need to point out to you some of the facts about it and this is this is the map. Here's our property right here. Here's Jersey Street. Here's Upper Street. Here is Pine Street right here. The blue is taken off the Lex Park website. This is the blue area which has permit parking for residences. In this area in South Hill, if you want to park on the street during the day, you have to have a parking permit to park on the street. And the way to get a parking permit, you have to live there to park on the street. Now that system is good from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Now theoretically people could park in this area who don't live here in the evenings. This is our property right there. But I wanted to point out to you next or in this that the Lexington's ordinance provides that the council upon request of a neighborhood can set the hours of a parking system. So if this system of 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. prohibiting everybody else, unless they have a house in South Hill from parking there, if that's not working out, they can ask the council to go 24-7, 24-hour prohibition on anybody parking on those streets, public streets, unless they have a parking sticker. Next slide I want to show you. it goes to what the city's policy on parking in this area is. And that is the, we go to the next slide, but there we go. And this is the limestone pedestrian oriented business district, which was adopted by the city council in 2013. these yellow properties which face South Limestone are in the special pedestrian business district of South Limestone, two blocks. Here is McDonald's. We are right behind McDonald's. The X marks our spot here. We're behind McDonald's. This is McDonald's. This is the two keys. This is a tin roof up here. Now, what's the significance of that yellow parking district? Under that ordinance, which was passed in 2013, the businesses in that district are required to provide 20 percent 20 percent of the otherwise required parking for other businesses in b1 in other words if mcdonald's was required 50 parking spaces under this ordinance they're only required to provide 10 parking spaces and that is because the city wants to encourage pedestrian bicycle oriented development and not penalize businesses for going in high-density areas where parking is at a premium, but at the same time where they know there may be many walk-in customers. So they're required to provide 20% of the required parking. Now, we're asking for a variance of 21% in our parking. That means if you grant our variance, we will be providing 79% of the required parking. we're allowed to ask for a 50% reduction but we're asking for a 21% reduction which means we'll be supplying 79% of our required parking. The next slide I want to show you is the study which Mr. Malloy did of the on-street parking. I just wanted to point out to you again this is our property right here. This is Oriental, a little different. This is Pine Street. Here's the Good Samaritan parking lot. Here is Jersey Street. Here's McDonald's. Here's Upper Street. The blue shows where there is on-street parking available. And I just did that to show that after we build our project, there will still be on-street parking available available on those streets on the three sides of this development, on Jersey, on Pine, and on Upper Street. Under this map, you can see if you have the one I handed out to you, you can see that there's 14 on Jersey, 14 on Upper, and 5 on Pine, which is a total of 33 spaces. We're going to lose probably three of those, two to four spaces, because we will have openings in our parking garage emptying out onto the street. So we will have probably 30 parking spaces still on street which are not restricted in the permit parking. The permit parking is across the street from us, so those will still be available. I just wanted to point that out to you as well. We did a study, and I'll go to the handout I did for you of the parking demand study that Andrew Widner did of core spaces and Mr. Mattessi here is who can speak about that as well. We handed out that to each one of you and I'll just hit the highlights of that But we did this because the Planning Commission, after its September hearing, said, well, I've seen, Mr. Murphy, what you've done with four of the other properties. I'd like to see overall what CORE's parking experience is and its other developments. So we did up this memo, which we've handed out to you, and each of you have that. And what that says is this, and I'll just summarize real quick. and that is that he analyzes nationwide trends, for instance, that transit-oriented development, TOD, is now something which is being promoted by governmental units. We're going to have lesser reliance on personal vehicles, more reliance on Uber, and we won't even get into the discussion of self-driving vehicles, which may mean 20 years from now none of us will own cars. We'll just have the right to use a fleet of cars. And he mentions the Federal Highway Administration Right-Sized Parking Project of 2011 and the right-sized parking program they're doing, and which he said the federal government has determined that overbuilding of parking leads to increased automobile ownership, vehicle miles traveled, congestion, and housing costs. Now, our property, studied our property at 500 South Upper Street, And you can see, going to his study on the biker's score and the walker's score, we have a bike score of 92 at this property right now, which is called biker's paradise. Anything over 90 is biker's paradise. We have a walk score of 84, which is considered very walkable. And the only reason we didn't score better on the walking score, as you can see on page 5, exhibit 1 of this discussion, is that we scored low on grocery availability within walking distance. Now, we're going to take care of that because we plan on having groceries in the first floor of this building. So once we get the groceries in, our walk score will go to Walker's Paradise, over 90 as well. So we score very high on bike score and walk score, and this is a method of measuring which I checked with the planning division. It's the same organization which they refer to, the planning division refers to when determining walk scores or bike scores. Now, the key thing was the chart at the end. I think we had three pages showing CORE's other developments. and we have, as I said, a parking ratio of 30.7. We've rounded that to 31%. In all of CORE's urban developments, the average score is 26.2 net of retail spaces, and we're doing this not counting retail spaces, just residential spaces. Now there's one outlier, which is a project in Tuscaloosa, which has a score of about 85%, and the reason that has a much higher parking ratio is because of the location of that property and because of Tuscaloosa's zoning laws, which put a floor on how much you can reduce the parking. But when we take out that outlier, the average for Corps' portfolio is 20% parking ratio, 20.5% parking ratio. Again, we have a parking ratio of 31 percent, 31 point, excuse me, 30.6 percent. So we are, this property is 50 percent above the amount of parking that CORE normally provides in its urban university area parking projects. we have the third highest parking ratio of all the ones you can see in the memorandum which mr. Widner prepared so we're on the upper end the higher end of providing parking for this and in in my earlier chart you saw we are providing a higher ratio than we are down at limestone Street at Virginia Avenue which the Planning Commission has already approved and the Planning Commission has already granted a variance for. The memo indicates we're a super infill location and that's because we're within two blocks of the prime part of campus. We're transit friendly. We have six bus stops within two blocks of this property and they serve both the UK routes, they call those the blue-white routes that circulate around campus, lextran contracts to do those and it serves also the lextran routes that serve all of the city so they have both the lexington lexington routes and the uk routes within two two blocks of this property and uh... the we are attracting a student when they want to lease here this is a higher end property They're leasing here because they want to be close to campus, because they want to walk to campus. This property is closer to the core of campus than are most of those dormitories. They built out Sports Center Drive, going out toward the football practice field and the tennis facilities. If you've been out there, there's a massive development there. We are closer to campus here than we are at the Sports Center Drive dormitories. and CORE attracts a student that wants to use their bicycle. They have three types of bicycle storage even. They have units where you can store your bicycle in the unit with you. They have a large room, enclosed room, secure room in the building for bicycles for people who live in the building. And then they have a third way of bicycles and that's having the bicycle racks in the garage for people who want to come visit or want to go to the store in the first floor so they cater and promote that obviously they promote walking as well so of their location and they obviously they promote transit transit use the um as i said our retail tenant is where very aware of this too and experienced in this as well and wants no more than 33 spaces devoted to them i want to I want to mention you'll be hearing discussion about the fact that there is parking on this property now. What's going to happen to the parking that's there now? Right now this is a parking lot for UK. It's designated as an E parking lot, which means employees. When there's 150 spaces here, we are building 178 spaces, but obviously that's a different group of people. the people who park here now will no longer be able to park there. So I asked UK about that. I asked Mr. George Ward, the person we're consulting with on this, where are those people going to go? And he said, well, there's 150 spaces here. We have replaced those. We have either built new parking, purchased parking, or freed up parking spaces for 215 spaces in the immediate area. They have bought a property on Scott Street around the corner, and they have freed up spaces and created more spaces at Martin Luther King and Maxwell Street on down there. So they have actually more spaces that they've created to replace this than there are spaces that they are replacing. I want to take a moment just to well I want to mention the comprehensive plan oh I wanted to mention too I want to put this in the record this is a you don't have a handout on this but I saw this in the objectors exhibit it's coming up about the concern about what's going to happen to this parking if it goes away I want to mention to you that this is a request for proposals that UK had put out prior to Corps becoming involved in this. This is a request for proposals for use of this property. As you can see, public-private partnership put it out just under a year ago. Public-Private Partnership Mixed-Use Parking Garage Project. If you go to the next page, what this proposal was was a request for private developers to come in and present a proposal to UK for reuse of this property. Down here you can see it says the university requires a commercial in their office use on the first floor with four or more levels of supported parking above, or UK will consider a mixed-use development that supports the overall objectives of the university. So this property is in the path of UK development. It will be used for some kind of building by UK. It might be a parking garage for UK people, but it might not be. It might be a mixed-use development of a minimum of five stories was required by this request for proposals. So I just wanted to point that out, that this lot has been a lot for about 50 years, but it's not going to remain as a parking lot. I wanted to also mention to you the comprehensive plan of this community. I've been going to many of the comprehensive plan discussions that have been held in the community, and I'm not going to go through all these to you, but I just wanted to put the Comprehensive Plan into the record here because this is exactly the type of development that the Comprehensive Plan in 2013 and especially the 2018 plan, which the Planning Commission has already approved the goals and objectives for, it's exactly the type of plan that has been envisioned to put greater density along corridors, make better use of mass transit, place uses so that people can use their bicycles and walk to employment sectors and educational centers. As you all know, UK is the largest employment center in central Kentucky, and it's the largest educational center in central Kentucky. And if you could go to page two on that, I'm not going to read all these because there are many, many goals on this. I've starred some of them about expanding housing choices here on page two. And go on to the next page there, if you would. It's two-sided, so it's going to be in the back of that page. There we go. expanding housing choices, pursuing regulatory approaches, that's A, that encourage creativity and sustainability, plan for safe, affordable, and accessible housing, create incentives and give the opportunity for economic development, new business and jobs, including higher density in housing. Going to the next page, we have goals that stress in theme A, goal 2, supporting infill and redevelopment throughout the urban service area, identifying areas of opportunity for infill and redevelopment, objectives of minimizing disruption of natural features, allowed for expanding options for mixed use and mixed type housing throughout lexington and fayette county if we could go on through page four which is the only one on the one on there i wanted to point out on page four was the ability to reduce the carbon footprint and we do that by reducing the use of automobiles reduce lexington fayette county's carbon footprint if we could go on page six which is provide quality of life opportunities to attract young professionals and other young people of the workforce of all ages to Lexington. If we could go on to page nine of this is the keystone of the comprehensive plan, which is uphold the urban service area concept by encouraging compact, contiguous, and mixed use sustainable development within the urban county area and maintaining the urban service area boundaries. This is what this is all about. I want to show you one thing off of the draft goals that were approved by the Planning Commission last month. Mr. Murphy, the applicant has ten minutes. Pardon me? Ten more minutes. Thank you. And on this one, these are based upon the 2013 goals, but they've been more specific about it here. As you can theme E, goal 1, emphasize intense redevelopment of underdeveloped corridors and maximize development on vacant land within the urban service area and promote redevelopment of underutilized land in a manner that enhances existing urban form and or historic features. Now this ties in to the fact that we had to go through an architectural review through the design planner here. This doesn't mean build exactly what's in the neighborhood. This means build something that's appropriate for the neighborhood. We are between, as you saw from our cross-sections, seven-story dormitories one block away, a McDonald's across Jersey Street from us. We have a seven-story parking garage one block away down behind the Fazolis. We have a three or four story parking garage at Good Samaritan Hospital. And we have very fine historic residential houses in the South Hill neighborhood as well. This is a transition down from one height to another, one type of use to another. And as the planning commission and as your planners looked at it, this is an appropriate use for the property. I know there's a lot of people who don't want this use in here. But to do this, we have to understand the needs of the people who are going to be living here. And we are not here to push our parking onto anybody else. We're here because the experience of CORE, through operating 17 or 18, very similar to this, they know that they only need this amount of parking. And no more. That is the demand for it because the type of student they're getting here or anybody else is coming here because of two things. The quality of the development and the amenities they have and probably more than anything because it's so close to campus. Because they can roll out of bed and be to their class before anybody can go park at the stadium and take the bus down and all that sort of thing. They want to be right here. and they know from their experience how many people are going to be wanting to have cars. They do not have large waiting lists at their other facilities. They make every effort to accommodate people who want parking. But based on their experience, this is the amount of parking they need. There is no need for people to buy or pay for or build parking spaces that aren't needed. CORE knows what it needs. Our retailer knows what it needs as well. This is going to be an urban type store which is going to rely upon walk up from UK, from residents. It's going to rely on people who bike in as well as some people who drive in. That's why they have 33 parking spaces. We're trying as a community to be less dependent upon the automobile, and that is the policy of this government, not only through the comprehensive plan that I showed you, but through the South Limestone Business District, which reduced the required parking by 80%. 80%. That's a message from this city that we're trying to attract development that doesn't rely upon the automobile as much as past development has. We have to recognize it's still here, but we have to recognize what the future brings too. The developer here and the city shares a common goal of developing housing options that are not entirely dependent upon the automobile. And I think we've shown you based upon our experience, based upon the community's desires, that this variance we're requesting is entirely justified. In the last page of my handout, I do have some proposed findings that hopefully you will be making a motion to approve this later on this afternoon. I would ask that you adopt these. I know the staff has some findings too, but it's likely that whatever the result is today, it will be appealed, and we have to make findings on all the required findings to sustain judicial review. and don't take my advice on it. Take your attorney's advice. Do whatever you want to do on the findings, but I think we need to adopt some additional findings if you make a motion to approve this. So we thank you very much. I'm sure I've missed some things that I had planned to talk to you about. I may bring those up in rebuttal if those issues come up. I'm taking a quick read through my outline to make sure I didn't forget to present anything to you. I think I've done about what I wanted to present to you. We have a lot of data, and we appreciate your listening to the data here, and that's because that's what we rely upon. We data. I mean, we think now that, oh, everybody's going to have a car. Everybody who comes to the U.K. has a car. Well, it's not the fact for U.K. students who live in dorms. It's not the fact for CORE's residents in many cities, for many universities as well. Thank you very much for hearing us. We have Brett Malloy here who's with Integrated Engineering. We have Lily Guerrero from our architect. We have Chad Mattese from CORE. We have Kevin Warner and Chaz, and we'd be happy to answer any questions you all may have about this. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Does anyone have questions for the applicant and counsel and their professionals? Okay. So what we'll do is we'll let the board ask you some questions and then we'll go. Mr. Murphy, what's the downside of building 100% capacity as the zoning requirements require? The downside of building 100% of the parking spaces? Well, I mean, you're here asking for a variance from the ordinances. What's the downside from following the ordinances to build it as the ordinance requires? The downside is the limited amount of space here. The construction from a developer's standpoint is extremely expensive to build parking garages and dig underneath the surface of the land to build parking. I guess the thought is why build parking if it's not needed here? And I think the city is encouraging people to build less parking because in the Highway Transportation Board study, which Mr. Widner cited in his outline, says that when you build extra parking, you encourage more people bringing cars and you encourage more use of cars, and that's something that the government is trying to get away from encouraging that. Yeah, and I took one of the classes that LFUCG offers to us as Board of Adjustment members on the future of public transportation, private transportation, and parking, and it does suggest that very thing. It's all a projection, of course. Let me ask you another question, if you don't mind, about the, I think it's page four of the picture with the blue shaded areas that are on the east, northeast side of... Would you mind putting that on projector for the audience to see? Thank you, sir. You went over a lot of material pretty quickly, and I appreciate your detail, but some of it, of course, I absorbed it a little bit. I'd like to absorb it a little bit more. Thank you. I thought I understood you to say when you first mentioned this page that this was permit parking that's near the site. Did I hear that correctly? Yes. The blue is the area which is of South Hill, which is protected by the permit parking program. which means that you can only get a permit if you live there. So if you live in the blue shaded spaces, you are eligible for a permit to park on the street. Yes. Is that correct? Yes. And if you don't have a permit, you cannot park on the street. Is that right? That's correct. Okay. All right. That's – thank you. I think that's only – what are the time limits on that? The time on this – The signs in the neighborhood which mark these say it's 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday when the restrictions apply. And as I mentioned to you, the neighborhoods can petition the council to alter those hours. They could reduce the hours or they could increase the hours up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Mr. Murphy, the percentage of students who live on campus who own cars, according to your figures, was what, 42 percent? Well, it's about 42 percent that bring a car to campus, yes. So why would that figure not apply to this particular building and the residents in that hall, in that building? Why would that be any different than the figure that we're assuming is correct on campus? The reason is that just the nature of the building and the attractiveness of the building. They attract a resident who realizes this is so close to campus that they don't need a car. They may own a car and not bring it, not choose to bring it here. I want to point out to you too that 42% of the people bring a car to campus under UK's figures in dormitories, but of that group, three quarters of that group parks them at the stadium. Only a quarter of them get to park within walking distance. As I mentioned, our residents are eligible for that as well. If they want to bring a car and know they're only going to be using it once a week, they can park at the stadium, get a pass to do that, and live here if they want to do that. Ironically, most of our students, as Mr. Mattesi has told me, only move their car a couple times a week. but they find when they get here they don't really need the car as much as they thought they would because they can get around and everything's within walking distance. I can certainly understand that. And I'm still not sure that we're not talking about driving. We're not talking about traffic. We're talking about spaces for cars to park, cars that are owned by residents in the building. And if it's anywhere like the data for UK students on campus, then it would be considerably more than the 31% that you're suggesting. Well, the 41 percent of the people living on campus bring a car. Like I said, only 10 percent of them can park close by. 31 percent of our students can park in the building, and we could have another 30 percent parking at the stadium if they wanted to. Yeah, I understand. We have the same option other students do. It seems like to me that would be an even greater reason to have a car in this facility because it is close, it is convenient. They don't have to park in the stadium. They can park right where they live. It might even be more of an incentive to have a car. I'm playing devil's advocate here, so I just want to get all these figures down in my own head about what we're doing here. But if I'm a student and I want to rent and I go to the manager's office at this facility, I will know before I sign a lease whether I have a space for a car or not. And if that is an overriding factor, say they've reached the last space that's already been assigned and there's no space available, just nothing around. I mean, CORE will discuss options with them, but they can decide not to rent there. I mean, they are fully informed before they make that leasing decision about whether they're going to have a parking space in this facility or not. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you. Mr. Murphy, one more thing. You mentioned in your presentation that the property at Virginia Avenue, which is also proposed, had already been approved by the Planning Commission. Tell me that again, because I'm sure I understood that. Virginia Avenue was a little different circumstance. That property needed a zone change to go to the B1 zone, because we're doing a mixed-use development there, too. We're having retail on the first floor of that as well as residential above. That's a larger residential component, about 100 more bedrooms than this one is. So we had to get a zone change for that to the B1 zone from, I think it was R3 or R4 to B1. That has gone through the Planning Commission. And under the ordinance and under the statute, when you file a zone change, change, the Planning Commission has authority to act upon any variances you have at the same time as the zone change. So we presented our parking variance request to the Planning Commission for the one at Virginia Lime, and as I mentioned to you, the parking ratio there is a lesser one than we have here, our parking ratio at Virginia Avenue was 23% as opposed to 31%, which we're asking you for. They approved that after our presentation to them and discussion of the parking situation there. They approved that variance. So they've recommended approval of the zone change and voted to approve the variance out there. Now, the difference we had on this property was that this property is already zoned B1. I mean, you could build another McDonald's on there tomorrow if you wanted to because it's already zoned for it. And ironically, we had to go through a very similar process with the planning. We had to submit our architectural plans as well as our development plan to the planning commission, but they do not have authority under the ordinance or under state law to vote on a variance when they just have a development plan or a context study in front of them. They can only do that when they have a zone change in front of them. So when they voted, they had a great deal of discussion about parking. They had at least two hours of parking discussion because they wanted to get comfortable with it, but they could not vote to approve the parking. And when they approved our development plan, it was approved with a condition that before it's certified, we have to obtain a parking variance from you all. What's the zoning for the Virginia Avenue project? It will be B-1 once the zone change finishes its way through the council. The council has voted to, has already given first reading to the ordinance granting the zone change and it should be approved in the next two weeks. What is it now? I think it's R3 right now. Kevin Warner, who did our work on the zone change, is nodding his head that it is R3 right now. Which of these projects is closer to the UK campus? Well, they're both close to the campus. campus. The one at South Lyman, Virginia, is close to the law school and the business school and those portions of the campus and the medical facilities, the new big medical buildings. We are closer to the traditional core of campus. We're much, much closer to the office tower and the classroom building and most of the academic departments are closer to this project. We were looking at it before the meeting started. This property is 1.8 miles from the stadium. I mean the UK has a big campus and we're close to the most of the classes, the classrooms, the faculty, the academic departments and the only people who are closer to us are Holmes Hall and Boyd Hall and those dormitories that built just a block away from us at the corner of Avenue of Champions and Limestone Street. Thank you. Mr. Murphy, I had a question. Since this development is proposed to be built on a parking lot, just briefly maybe discuss what's obviously the parking lot is full at the moment now. Is most of that U.K. though that redistributed? I know there's some retail. What issues does that create? Well, talking to Mr. Ward, he said that this has 150 spaces, and he thought I think 38 or 40 of them are leased out to other users in the area. So about 110 are used for U.K. employees, and it's patrolled seven days a week. I mean, they send their people who ticket year, boot year, or whatever they do, seven days a week. But they do have about 38 spaces that are leased to businesses in the area. and they had made plans. UK, as I said, had acquired other parking lots around here or converted open space to parking lots to supply 215 spaces to replace the 150 spaces that are in this lot. And the question is, well, what will the businesses do? Well, the parking is used. I'm not sure. I think to some extent it is used. I don't know what extent it's used. They would have the option of talking to UK about seeing if UK would enter into a similar arrangement to lease them space in some of these new lots they have. As I said, the parking restrictions have been lowered from four years ago. They were lowered from what they originally were. I'm aware of this because 30 years ago when I first went into private practice, I had a client who came to me and said, well, I want you to write me a lease for phantom parking spaces. And that was in this lot. And I said, okay, what are phantom parking spaces? And they said, well, it's parking that I am required to have under the zoning ordinance because my parking requirement is based on the square footage of my building. he said I don't need it because people walk to me from UK I don't need the spaces for allow to allow people to park in but I need the spaces to show the city that I have required parking under the zoning ordinance so you I'm gonna pay a lease I'm gonna take good spirit and hospital certain number of dollars per month I'm gonna get spaces in that lot and I'll meet my zoning requirement I won't always need them I might use them sometimes I won't need them so So people do lease space. There are other, they will be able to talk to UK about replacing those. Those spaces will probably not be required spaces anymore due to the South Limestone Business District, which reduced those requirements by 80%. And maybe there's a question for the staff. What happens if, I'm just using an example here, say Chipotle has. state spaces they lose it and UK obviously UK spaces will be taken care of they deem that they're not needed at that point or they still have to go out and find them they would be required to come up with another solution for leasing however many parking spaces they were required to have somewhere else Okay. Thank you. Mr. Murphy, I do have – sorry I'm taking up so much time, but what will this project look like if this request is not granted? Well, if it's not granted, the Corps will have to decide whether they can do the project or not, whether it's still a viable project. is that all well i can chad did you want to respond to that that's it was okay he he agrees they would they would have to go back and see if the project is viable if if additional parking is required okay thank you mr murphy does core currently own this property or is that under contract under contract okay and to your knowledge is uk employees are they the only parties who you there's no phantom leases on this property currently no there are leases but there are leases other businesses do have parking spaces as i said there's 38 or 40 spaces out of the 150 that uk does lease to businesses in the area uh maybe chipotle and others there's there's signs on some of them but they are under under leased to other businesses there i think staff getting to mr needham's point would be if this stopped being a parking lot with that effect these other businesses if they were to lose because sometimes their approvals are based upon leasing spaces in other areas do we know if I know mr. marx is a little bit rolling his eyes because he doesn't know the answer but is that an issue that we have to worry about I guess that's a yes. It hasn't been an issue yet. I mean, there's great awareness among those businesses as to what's going on, and we haven't been contacted by them expressing concern about where they're going to find alternative spaces if they need them. As Mr. Murphy pointed out, some of them don't need as much as they originally did because of the pedestrian oriented district that was approved after they started some of the leases so but none of those owners or tenants have contacted staff to raise that as a possible issue okay thank you and i might point out too there is there's space available in the good samaritan parking garage i don't know if uk wants to make that available but from my office for instance i see that every day and every day there are no days when that's but that garage is is full there are no days there uk has the garage a block south they have a new parking lot down on scott street so there's there are other options i mean they'd have to talk to uk i can't commit uk to a thing but there is vacancy in parking in that area. And U.K. will be doing something with this property anyway, so whether we take this property or not, that's going to be something that the businesses will have to address, whether it's us or whether it's U.K. that builds on this property. Thank you. Anyone else from the board have any comments, questions for the applicant? Okay, thank you, Mr. Murphy. Thank you. Okay, so with everyone that is remaining, who would like to speak? One, two, three, four, five, six, oh, seven, eight. They're popping up like we're out of woodwork. Okay, and of those, we have, I guess, Mr. Billings, are you the lead speaker and everyone else is with the neighborhood? it or are there other attorneys who are representing other interests? Mr. Chairman, I have a formal presentation that I scheduled to be about 30 minutes, and I wasn't exactly sure how the chair would go with timing today. It may run a little bit longer, a little bit short. I've advised some of these people out here are direct clients, some of them are not, and I've told them that if there's time available, please keep comments between two and three minutes, which is typically what the Planning Commission allows. Don't have any more. I don't know how you want to proceed as if we have 45 minutes total or if I could have 30 minutes for my presentation and then turn the floor over to public comments for two minutes per person or something like that. I mean, Mr. Murphy's had an hour and seven minutes at this point. Okay. I think that's fair, 30 minutes for your presentation and then several minutes for each speaker. And then what we'll do is after Mr. Billings finishes up, if we have any questions, and then normally what we'll have you do is everyone who wants to speak line up on the wall. We'll come up one at a time. And then all I say is what Nathan said is don't repeat the same issue over and over again. Let's keep the germane items to what we're discussing today, and we may have questions as you go along. Thank you, sir. Please proceed. That's the same thing I prepped them for is trying not to be duplicative. May I begin, Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman, members of the Board of Adjustment, staff, Ms. Jones, Mr. Murphy, and representatives of CORE, and ladies and gentlemen of the public. My name is Nathan Billings. I'm an attorney at Billings Law Firm here in Lexington, and it is my pleasure today, as I said earlier, to represent Historic South Hill Neighborhood Association, the Center Court Condominiums Council of Co-owners, South Hill Station Lofts, and a multitude of other individual owners, both of residential and of business properties in this area. If you would have listened to the last hour and ten minutes of comments and of questions and answers, you might be of an opinion that we're here today to oppose the core hub project. Candidly, and probably converse of what some of the insinuations were, is we actually recommended approval of the Planning Commission. After much debate and working with the applicant, we came before the Planning Commission two weeks ago and recommended approval of the project subject to two conditions. Basically, number one, that it be limited to a four-story in a five-story building, which is not before you all today. And the second is simply that they'd be able to meet all required parking under the ordinance. And the reason is because there's very good statistical and other data evidence from Lexington and UK students, not elsewhere, that's relevant to this. Further, if you listened to a significant number of the comments made earlier, you'd think we were here on a zone change today. We're not. We're here on a hearing for a variance. What you did not hear in any of the comments earlier is simply this. What is the legal standard for a variance? Very simply, the zoning ordinance section 76B1 says before any variance is granted, the board must find that the granting of the variance will not, number one, adversely affect the public health, safety, or welfare, number two, alter the essential character of the general vicinity, number three, cause a hazard or nuisances to the public, or for allow an unreasonable circumvention of the requirements of the zoning regulations. Although you heard significant discussion for the last hour or so, you didn't hear any of these addressed in detail or even mentioned by the applicant. Further, if you look inside of this, in making this determination, the zoning ordinance provides that the board shall consider whether, number one, the variance arises from special circumstances that do not generally apply to the land, and you've heard of none today, and two, that the application of the provisions of the regulation would deprive the applicant of a reasonable use of land, which you, again, didn't hear any evidence on that today either. So we are going to suggest to the board that you should deny the variance today, not because the project should be denied, but because the variance should be denied, because they can't establish or meet the legal elements required under our zoning ordinance. So Mr. Murphy gave you a very quick overview, and I did forget to mention that each of you has a copy of the PowerPoint in front of you, and specifically it's because we're going to reference some data and statistics later on that will be important for perhaps you to reference back during the discussions or questions. As Mr. Murphy said, this is a B1 property. It's already zoned this way. UK did submit a request for proposal last year what mr. Murphy omitted to tell you all is that in the spring of this year UK reached an agreement with the historic South Hill neighborhood association to put a four-story building on this property with first floor of offices and a three-story parking garage above it he's known that his client knows that but they continue to ignore that before the land swap deal was announced in June that's what UK had agreed to do after talking with and meeting with the neighborhood association it would have not only limited the height the four story which is not before this board today but it would have provided three levels of parking more than satisfying the conditions and issues that we're going to raise their proposal is 20,000 square foot of retail space I'm going to talk about one of the myths associated with that in a minute 159 apartments 473 bedrooms we do not know who the lessee is in fact we've been told that they don't have a lease so it on one hand we're being told that the lessee only wants so many spots but when we ask for details about the lease they say no lease has actually been signed yet but which one is it and then the apartments of course are UK centric under zoning 816 real quickly and I apologize for interrupting you I meant to ask mr. Murphy this when the development plan was approved was there a distinction between which spaces had to be residential and which ones have to be retail, because I was concerned that even though the, we've been told that the lessee only wants 33, it's unclear whether or not a future lessee would then gobble up the other 32 that it's allowed to have. Well, that's actually one of the points I have later on in my presentation, is that- Please continue then. Is that number one, with respect to this specific question, number one, they are not indicating if they're designated. Number two, how do you deal with future tenants or multiple tenants? Because it's supposed to be a single-use tenant, but the property could ultimately be used by multiple tenants. Also, today is the first time we've heard, after I don't know how many dozen meetings and two full planning commission hearings and workshops, that they are only going to assign parking passes to students to assign spots. I don't know if that's true or not, but today is the first time we've sort of heard that. I want to interrupt you one more time. Ms. Jones, is that something on conditions that was within our purview and power to be able to implement that if we were to approve this so many spaces had to be for the residential occupants of the building versus retail um i'm not sure you can do that in terms of a variance that's the only thing that is before you today i think that's going to come up maybe potentially in the development final development plan stage. So far the preliminary development plan has been approved, conditioned upon us approving the variance. They'll go back and get the final development plan? That's correct. You can't pull building permits off of a preliminary development plan. And at that point the planning and zoning could address the distinction between the retail versus residential? They may. They could, not that they would. Right. But that's within their purview, not ours. I believe that's correct because the only thing you're considering today is a parking variance to reduce the overall amount of parking on an infill project. And I'll let you go over a couple minutes for stealing your time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, although Mr. Murphy didn't quite talk about them, what this would require is that the ordinance requires 75 spaces for retail use based upon the square footage of the building. it requires 159 spaces, which is the lowest parking requirement in the city of all the zones, one spot per unit, not per bedroom, which is 0.9 for most zoning areas. It's only one per unit. So if they have a four or a five-bedroom unit, there's only one spot that's required for that. So the total parking would be 234. Our zoning ordinance allows for 5% reductions automatically, which means that the total spaces are 210. Ironically, under the proposal that we had suggested and recommended approval of two weeks ago, it would have almost exactly satisfied the required parking. It was off about three spots, which in our opinion would have been an insignificant variance request in that event. So let's look at some statistics before or if a variance would not be granted. basically they would only have one in four tenants if you look at the 135 for the residential parking spaces 473 bedrooms would give about one in four tenants 28% having access to a parking space. What you're going to see from very clear data that is statistically valid is that on UK's campus that is insignificant compared to the number of students who have parking. If you look at it on a post-variance, you would see that they would have 75 for the retail, 91 for the bedrooms would be 1 in 5 tenants or 19.2% with access to a parking space. So again, on a pre-variance, which if they didn't seek the variance, that's what they're allowed under the code today, would still only be 28%. We believe this is what should be required. only one in four bedrooms will have a parking space if there is no variance if you grant a variance it goes down to 19 percent in other words it just adds insults to injury and we can't request for more parking we know what the ordinance says but we're pointing out the punitive nature of allowing a variance here so the applicants justification I call them myths because because I think they're things that may appear to have facial appeal, but when you really look at what they are, they fall apart. I have a couple of these I'm gonna talk about, but in Mr. Murphy's presentation, he talked about a couple others, so I do want to go briefly through those before I deal with the slides. Number one is, he had a slide that showed how they had increased parking from the original proposal in July. Well, candidly, an unreasonably low number of parking spaces to begin with, no matter how they increase it to a similarly unreasonable low number of parking spaces, doesn't make it a better proposal. It's just they started low to try to get higher. Second is that they made some references to UK and to UK parking students. The developer is not University of Kentucky. The University of Kentucky is exempt from our zoning and land use regulations. In other words, UK gets to do what UK wants to do. Don't have a fight with that. It's what it is. My concern is, though, is that a developer tries to do a sleight of hand where they get to claim because UK gets to do something, they should also get to do it. That is not true. They also today introduced the pedestrian-oriented business district. Yes, it is on limestone, but this is not in that district. Council could have approved this project in this district. They could have gone to council and asked for approval for that district, but they didn't. What you're also going to see is there actually are comments from business owners on Limestone who came to the Planning Commission. Somebody's here today to speak on that, a U.K. landlord whose tenant is Chipotle. I think somebody asked a question about that earlier. Who's expressed concern over what happens when they're, I believe it's eight, but it might be ten spots on this parking lot is eradicated. What they're going to do. It's just an anecdotal example. I went over there one night after work about 7.30 to go find parking to go to Chipotle and get dinner. I have an F-150 so like I recognize that's not the easiest car in the world to park anywhere near UK I drove the block three times trying to find a parking spot just to figure out to understand how bad is parking over there I did ultimately find a spot that was double parked Basically, I was halfway on a yellow line in order to run into Chipotle and get my dinner Again, it's just an anecdotal story, but it is to show while there may be on-street parking over there Even in the evening hours, it is congested and it clearly does not have sufficient parking for customers today to walk in without any problems or confusion. There's also a discussion about the current parking permit area in South Hill. There is a parking permit area. It is from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. That might need to be adjusted based upon what the outcome of this is or for other reasons. But that alone is not reason to grant them a variance. In other words, which you'll see in my statistics in a minute, they are under parked in regards of whether the people in the neighborhood can go get a parking permit. It shouldn't be allowed to push that problem from the core development out into the neighborhood. The final one I want to talk briefly before I continue on is that UK is going to replenish all of their spots. UK has built new spots. What they didn't tell you is that UK's employment this year has also gone up. I found varying statistics on how much, especially on the health care side, and that our numbers were about 35 spots that were leased to outside businesses on this lot. Maybe it's 38 to 40. Needless to say, what is clear is of 150 spaces on this parking lot, not all 150 are UK. Whether it's 35 or 40 is probably irrelevant. The point is this parking lot serves a public purpose, not just a UK purpose. and removing the parking number one adds congestion and problems for local businesses and owners but number two not requiring enough parking for the building that will occupy the space only doubles the problem so additional myths that you may have seen in their in their presentation there will not be enough demand for the required 210 parking spaces we believe very clearly there is more than enough demand for 210 parking spaces second that the potential reach wants less parking spaces well I would suggest that that data needs to be made from actual facts and not from possibilities not potential lessees we've never heard from that lessee or tenant we have no letters of intent we have nothing that shows what they actually want or that they have even agreed to lease the space number three on that the hub products and other markets use less parking well I'll deal with that in a second but one none of those are here in Lexington and what we have shown is and we will show in a second is that as the hub products have continued to come online they actually added more and more parking and there are at least two different locations in Arizona and Indianapolis that have considerable parking problems as we've talked to those neighborhoods that were impacted by what the hub did there and then fourth one is it on-street parking is available and as I sort of illustrated a minute ago the on-street parking is already congested so each of these alleged justifications we don't believe are factually supported and what we think is they show that the applicant cannot meet the legal standard under zoning ordinance 76 B1 so the first big myth is that parking isn't in demand and therefore that they they will need significantly less than 210 parking spaces which again is what's required under the ordinance they have no data for this, for Lexington. What the data they do show is that Mr. Murphy says, he talked to George Ward, who said that there was a certain number of students on UK's campus. In the packet that I submitted to you with the tabs on it, tab number five is an email from the University of Kentucky Assistant General Counsel Shannon Stamper, and we asked her this question in an open records request. Her numbers are a little different than Mr. Murphy's, but not significantly. the basic answer is 43.8% of undergraduates have a parking permit of some kind. That's on campus. And it is true. Some of them are close to the dorms, which is 12.11%. Some of them are what are called stadium parking, which is 30%, and 1% had remote parking. But what is clear, though, is even on campus, on campus students, 43% have cars. If you look at the hubs proposal, they don't come anywhere close to requiring 43% of their students to have parking there. In another statistic, UK reports on their website that 30% of their students have a car. That, have a parking permit. So of 30% of the overall population of UK, both on-campus students and off-campus students, have a parking permit. which means that once you include the on-campus permits and you include off-campus, you have a statistically significant number of students who are going to need parking. So here's some of the other, I'll just summarize that data. Quickly, the hub would need 203 spots if it was UK's 43%, which is almost exactly what zoning ordinance requires. It cannot provide that, assuming that number would be somewhat consistent if they were an on campus entity, and again they're not on campus. It can't clearly meet 203 if it only has the variance of 166. Again, that email is in the record. This is the data I talked about. Again, it said 30% of students have a parking print on campus, which includes both on-campus and off-campus population so even if you look at the 30% of everybody is 144 parking spaces that's 53 more than it's proposing to provide to the residents again that's and that's everybody if every UK student was used just for on-campus parking so we've conducted two parking surveys of students in preparation for the October 12th hearing we surveyed 117 students and at that hearing mr. Murphy didn't like that my statistical analysis for 117 students and commented that in a statistics class he took some time ago it wasn't statistically valid so I went and got an economics professor at transi to say how many do we need to have and the number was at least 400 so we went and did a second parking survey and you have in the binder there tapped one and to all of those individual parking surveys that we did. In addition, we then had the economists look at the survey numbers and perform a statistical analysis and the probability of error so that we could have a very good confidence interval to know what is the parking required for the hub project. That's the background of what we're gonna talk about. So the overall number of responses on survey one was 117. Of that, 53 lived on campus, 64 lived off. The number of students who have cars overall was 98, which is 84%, so the entire population, 84% had cars. The percentage of students living on campus that do have cars was 70%, and this is on campus, the percentage of students living on campus that do not have cars was 30%. So this was higher than what UK's percentage was, but it shows what the 117 showed in the first sample. This is what we thought was really important. The percentage of students living off campus, this is an off-campus property, as much as they wanna say, it's close to campus, whatever, it's off campus. That do have cars, 95% of students who live off campus have cars. If you come back to our number here, the number of students who lived off campus, there were two out of 117 who lived off campus who didn't have a car. And the number of students who lived off campus that did not have cars, less than 5%. We thought this alone was pretty good data, but because they didn't like the statistical analysis, we went ahead and had a second survey done. So this one we surveyed 421 students. Now, this is an important part, at least for me, from our data analysis. What we did is we took two different days, a Tuesday and a Wednesday, so we could make sure we got different student population samples because of the class rotation. We took a morning and an afternoon session, so we would, again, get different student samples. And we took two different places on campus, again, making sure that we were trying to capture as wide a variety of students. In other words, we essentially have eight samples between 50 and 60 students in each sample so eight total samples which gets us to the 421. What did that one show us? 217 of the students lived on campus, 204 lived off campus. The number who had cars overall was 338 or 80 percent. Before it was 83.8 percent so confidence interval there within three percent. Second, students living on campus that do have cars 68 percent students living on campus that do not have cars 31 percent which if you look here is pretty close to what our prior survey said which was 69 percent to 30 percent 68 percent to 31 percent again here is the really critical point percentage of students living off campus that do have cars 93 percent percentage of students living living off campus that do not have cars. Again, 93% off campus have cars. We were 95% under the 117. So I asked him, I said, well, and looking at this, help me understand the statistical analysis, because although I was an econ major, I studied like macroeconomics and not statistics. So what we have here is the number of, the percentage of students living on campus that have cars is 68% as an average. This is of the second. The number of spaces that would be required for student tenants if hub were on campus is 324. I'm not telling you they need 324 because they're not required in the zoning ordinance. I'm telling you that using the UK student survey data, if they were to provide the number of cars based upon student responses, that's how many they would need. Second, the comparison of off-campus, which this is, 94%, which would mean they'd have to have 443 parking spaces. Again, I'm not telling you they need, I'm not asking you all to do something to make them have that many. I'm using this data to show that their variance request is unreasonable. The clear takeaway from this is that there will be insufficient parking at the hub. So here's the quantitative analysis by Jeff Williams, the assistant professor at Transitive Economics, who's also the program director. Here's what he did. He said with a 95% confidence interval that the proportion of students who had cars for all students just living on campus and students living off campus, he then used that to come up with basic figures for the likely number of parking spots needed for the hub. And there's a confidence interval in here. So here's his response. Of the hub population would be 473 bedrooms, one bedroom equals one tenant. 533 was our sample size. So 538 is our total sample size. the numbers of cars, the number of no cars. The proportion with the car was 81%. SE is standard error. So he said using the entire population, the low percentage with a 95% confidence interval is that they will need 368 spaces for student parking. With at the high end, would be 399. That's using all students. If you just use the on-campus student response, they would still need using the same analysis within a 95% confidence interval, even if they were on campus, they would still need 298, or at the low end, 350 at the high. This is the best case scenario for the Corps. If they were on campus, which they're not, the number of parking spaces they would need to meet student demand is 298. That's not required by ordinance. I'm not telling you it is. What I'm saying is they shouldn't be given a variance if this is their best case scenario. Next, we looked at off campus, which is practically what they are. Again, the total off campus was 268. The number with the car was 251. So the portion of the car was right about 93 and a half, 94%. Standard of error is 1.5. So again, a 95% confidence interval. At the low end is 429 spaces, which is almost double what the zoning ordinance requires. And 457 at the high. As an off campus property with a 95% degree of confidence, they need at least 429 to 457 car parks. The ordinance requires them to have 210. There is no way a variance should be granted for anything less than what the ordinance requires. Mr. Billings, you have eight minutes remaining. So within the analysis that you also didn't hear is all of the other area mixed use high density projects. Because my time is running short, I'm going to make this a little bit quicker, although you have copies of all this in your packet. we analyzed every other local project that is a high density residential project, which includes Center Court, which is here, the Lex, which is across Broadway, JDI Block, which is where the JDI is that closed down, Newtown Crossing, which is up a bit, Kimball House Square, which is down Limestone Block, Main and Rose, which is a couple blocks away, but it's one of the only mixed use retail projects that's made it, so we thought we should include it. Angliana, the Wyatt, and what this shows is the green is mixed use, meaning residential and retail, the blue is residential what i'm going to do is quickly through these slides for every one of these projects every one of them no variance has ever been given in the last fifteen years the first project ever get a variance with the one that mr murphy's talked about virginia avenue all of the other currently existing projects in lexington have had one hundred percent of the required parking by the zone What is also significant is we did an analysis based upon the number of bedrooms. I'm gonna flip through quickly to get to a summary slide, but if you look through each of these, please look through the data, you will see the parking required and the parking per bedrooms. And what you're going to see is there's an exception for one of them, which we couldn't get the data from, Center City, which is on Broadway, it's a condo complex there. We couldn't get the required data. No one knows what it is. We know that they have 96%, 48 units, so they have more than 100% because it's two per bedroom. Here's the bottom line. The average parking as a percentage to required is 167.7%. Every one of them is 100% of what the zoning ordinance requires. Second, the minimum, I mean the project that had the lowest per bedroom ratio was 67%, while the average parking per bedroom is still over 100%. Again, that relates to our parking ordinance that requires 0.9 parking spaces per unit, except in the B1. Again, the B-1 already grants a generous, a generous reduction in the number of parking because it's in the B-1. A variance is not contemplated or needed here because the reduction is already provided for by the ordinance. That's why the B-1 was created with such minimum parking requirements. So we believe that that parking requirement requires denial. I talked briefly about the retailer, so I'm going to speed along here. We don't have any real facts. course basis experience in other markets frankly is irrelevant to what UK student population data shows further what they didn't tell you is what is the minimum required in those areas and if they had to get variances in those we tried to find that data we were lucky to get development plans we were not what we would suggest is whatever is required in another city might sound great might be great that might be their experience but that's not what UK students do further if you look at the UK projects that have come online they're actually increasing parking on their units. There was a question asked earlier by somebody, what happens if the variance isn't granted? And I think respectfully, the answer is, they're gonna make an economic decision. The hub announced during this process that they were selling seven of their projects, two of which are already built, three of which are coming online this year, and two of which are coming online next year. So five projects that haven't been completed for a total of, I'm gonna forget the number, but it's in this tab, at tab, 17, they're selling them for an average of $153,000 per bedroom. They're going to make an economic analysis to say, can we dig down and extract limestone and build another level of parking? That's the simple answer. They'll know whether they can do it or not. We talked about plenty of on-street parking is available. It's not. So this would be an unprecedented variance. We asked staff to identify parking where there had been a reduction of this percentage or greater, and they identified five projects for us, none of which were residential in nature. We then went back, not satisfied with that data, and actually looked at all of the Board of Adjustment minutes since 2010, figuring that since the downside of the crash, all new projects that come online would tell us that answer. We already had all the other projects we already talked about. here's what we have every one of these is every one of these is either a low density project where you're reducing things like from four to three or their business or six plex that was the closest one we could find where they went from 1.5 to one again it's only six plex but everything else everything else was business the one exception to this is a proposal that came to you all a couple months ago for the Lex the Lex had a specific number of parking required and they sought a reduction of 50 parking spaces i don't want to ignore that because it's important here's why the lex the number of parking spaces they had required is is several hundred i can go back to the slide but it's in your presentation but this is it even after they sought the new reduction they still had 75 ratio ours is 25 if you grant the variant i mean it's 20 if you grant the variance here it's only it's 28 if you don't grant the variance the reason i I say that is there has been a variance before you to reduce it by 50 spots but that project has like 670 parking spaces and the number of parking spaces is still significantly higher than what this project would have even under the current zoning ordinance so we believe this is an attempt to circumvent what the ordinance requires it already gives a generous reduction and no further variance is required I know my time is up so I simply suggest to the Board of adjustment that if you look at the standards in the ordinance which the applicant did not address at all in their initial presentation and you look at the statistics that we have presented which are based on real data with real students in real Lexington not hypothetical Milwaukee or Columbia or Arizona what you're gonna find is that their projections or what they want to have for student parking is not realistic it's not supported by the facts and therefore we respect the request that you all deny the variance requested today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You're welcome. Real quickly, I looked through your materials. I did not find any proposed alternative findings of facts. I have not because we have suggested that it's denial and so there's no finding of facts. As a conclusory matter, you can just, I believe, state that they have not met their burden of proof and that the findings are required when you're going to grant the variance. Findings aren't required when you're going to deny a variance. Ms. Jones? I think you're going to have to have findings either way. Because we have to create the record, and you have to, you're basing your decision, which is in a factual nature, on what you've heard at this hearing today, and we have to be able to adequately address for the record, in case it's needed, which it may be, what you're basing. For example, if you find something, we know what the requirements are to grant a variance. If you say that you believe it is going to create a public health or safety hazard, we need to more definitively define based on what that is. So I think we have to do them either way, in my experience, particularly if we end up going forward. so mr. chairman we don't have proposed findings I might I might slightly disagree but that's okay I think that if the board is looking for findings if you look inside of our presentation materials that there is sufficient data from both parking surveys and the statistical analysis that would show that the applicant cannot meet each of the four tests based upon the actual parking required prepared pursuant to that data and therefore a variance is not justified under the ordinance. Okay, we'll cross that bridge if we have to. I'm going to open up the discussion and questions for the board for Mr. Billings. Mr. Billings, you said that the B1 zoning is generous on reduced parking. Generous compared to what other zoning? So most typical zonings require .9 per bedroom. And so that if this were to require .9 per bedroom, and then there's certain credits for a certain retailer you get to double count, what you would have to do is start with 473, multiply that by .9, which would get you into the 460 range. And then you might get a credit based upon other retail space. For example, Kimball House Square, which is a block and a half from here, is a mixed-use project that has condos and retail office space, the parking on that is you get to double count certain numbers of parking. If this was not a B-1 zone, they would not even come close to 210 as a minimum. It would be in the three or four hundreds, depending on how many bedrooms they actually had on their development plan. But you're comparing that to a residential zone, right? Well, it's not just a residential. there's also mu zones that are the same way i mean essentially the b1 and the mu zones allow very similar uses of properties meaning they're different zoning classifications but you could have two projects that are literally exactly the same that could be on both pieces of property so what's on kimball house could be on this property but isn't that the whole purpose of zones absolutely and i'm not disputing that um that there's only 210 that would be required for this project what i'm indicating is that the b1 zone in order to induce projects in the b1 area already has a significant decreased parking requirement that none of the other zones allow and that's the incentive for a b1 and therefore a variance it should not be granted except in exceptional circumstances which this doesn't mean well but but i think isn't this in the isn't this in the infill and redevelopment area it is yes it is isn't it the purpose of that the allow up to another 50 percent reduction to encourage it is allowed to you're allowed to request a variance up to 50 percent in the infill yes mr. Belling you represent the South Hill neighborhood association have you all in your discussions with the applicant have you discussed a compromise number like 188 parking spaces we have discussed a lot of stuff mr. Glover and I'm hesitant to go into a lot of the settlement discussions because one of the conditions I had with mr. Murphy is that I wouldn't use those against them and he likewise wouldn't use them against me I mean I think this would be the thing the fair way to say is to their credit they came about with the neighborhood association in July they had one plan it has changed over a time the neighborhood has always maintained that the parking requirements are already minimal and be one and they should meet those the miss may be a question for for staff or for legal we are not we as a board are not restricted to either an up or down vote on the application as I understand it we can't we could in our own discretion permit a reducing the number of parking spaces from 210 and set it to 166 we could reduce it to 188 as I suggested don't we have that authority I think we have we have made compromises before we've We've encouraged compromises. In fact, we did in this case, as a matter of fact. If the applicant agreed to the compromise, then you would have to you'd take that route. If they didn't, you'd still have to come up with findings for disapproving the full variance that they asked for. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Billings, I think where I'm challenged is to determine—and this maybe is not so much for you we have a 210 spots needed 159 I assume apartments and if I'm mass correct that only leaves 51 for commercial that's what B one allows is that correct that's if there's 210 if there's 210 right but I think that's right I'm not good at math yeah no I think that's 210 minus 75 whatever that right and we don't know the retail demands because retail changes I mean there's a lot of different retail and I think that would help make these decisions for granting parking I think the tandem spaces are unique and I think it's also unique to figure out a development that maybe markets to those students that don't want to have a car however maybe I don't have a question for you but I think is I just wanted to understand there's one other question I had South Hill neighborhood just so I'm correct just because this development this development is not in the South Hill neighborhood so they wouldn't be able to apply for any parking on street parking there is that correct well I've try to clarify that answer and what I've been told is there's a list of addresses that can qualify for parking that this isn't on that list today okay but what it doesn't clarify is for example where one of these students has you know there's a bunch of townhouses and other things that are close to this is that one of those students goes to somebody else has two bedrooms they say can I get can I apply because you're a tenant there with your parking permit that's the kind of that's an example of something that we have a concern with and South Hill witness that or I think that they have seen a significant increase in student parking on their streets in the last 10 years and in fact if it weren't for the these owners investing millions and millions of dollars to make the South Hill neighborhood a respectful place again core wouldn't even be coming to put their development on this property absent of them rehabilitating that area but they have definitely seen an increase in student population what is unique about this project that South station developer center court South Mill townhomes the JDI Kimball House Square the Lex all of those which are there's probably six or seven either in South Hill on the boarding every one of those went to the neighborhood associations worked with them and none of them required a variance for parking mr. Needham I believe staff has a list of those streets would you throw those up on the board well I think my answer my question was answered I don't need to see the streets my question is just if could that be a circumvention that would ultimately fill the streets of South Hill district if they were in that district the answer is there could be I mean what's the likelihood I don't want to get false information i'm telling you a hypothetical how it could be done the other one is even if they don't permit they still park there they may get towed but the parking enforcement in south hill is not the same as parking enforcement on main street or church street or short street or limestone or second street the downtown core parking enforcement is much different than in south hill and maybe that could be changed i'm not here to argue about those things what i'm just simply the suggestion is that the variance isn't needed for this project. I will say I drive through South Hill every morning, go to work, and I see their ambassadors floating around in the little go-karts. So I have seen them out there. Thank you. I'd like to ask a question in particular. Your characterization of off-campus and on-campus, is that based strictly on whether UK owned it or not? That's correct. So the survey responses that you actually have there simply ask the student, do you live on campus, which is UK owned, which could be one of their P3s that they have, or do you live off campus, a non-UK property? Okay, and based on those surveys, I think, I was a little confused, actually, but when we get to the percentage of students that had cars, I think we were still somewhere around 93%, 95% to 93%, but UK is saying they're only issuing parking permits for a total of 42% of their students? Of their on-campus undergraduate beds, 43.8% have an on-campus parking permit. Okay. So even on your survey, based on your survey, the on-campus was still considerably higher than the 42%, correct? That's correct. So I think if you're asking is there a discrepancy between the UK's number for the undergraduate beds and the 44% that had on-campus parking and our number of students who said they had on-campus parking, what's the discrepancy? The only thing that we surmise, and I don't know because I didn't do a follow-up survey, is that the UK student, the UK data doesn't include graduate students and that therefore there is a, we think a likelihood that graduate students having a four-year degree are more likely than undergraduates to have a car at that time and when you include them in the sampling. At the same time there could just be a deviation in the sampling. What I know absolutely is that UK responded at a minimum 44% of its on-campus students have a parking permit. Okay, and of those 42 or 44%, we are agreeing that 30% of those are in the stadium. Their permits are for stadium parking. That's correct. That's what their data was. Okay, okay. The other question has to do with, and maybe it's a question for Mr. Murphy, but with the lease for the hub, if a student is agreeing to a lease that doesn't have a parking space, well, what would be the issue with that? if they're agreeing to not have a car well that's not what they're agreeing or agree to not have a parking space well so again number one this is what I pointed earlier that was the first time we've heard that today so I don't want to misrepresent what facts are because I don't have a fact what I can tell you is when we looked at other projects in our surveys some of the information we gathered which was inconsistent is that they don't assign parking spots to students so that if there's a hundred and sixty spots they issue a hundred and ninety or two hundred or three hundred parking permits they don't have designated spots for each of their tenants which is what was sort of implied earlier somebody said was implied if that's true that's different than what we've heard before but I don't want you to also think that every student gets there's one in other words if they have a hundred and sixty six spots they get a hundred and sixty six permits out and 167 students out of luck that may be so that's just never been told to us before or any of the research we've done. Mr. Billings, I know you can't survey everything, can't ask every question, but your survey didn't say how far off campus the students that were off campus were living of course. Yeah we debated about that Mr. Glover and the problem was when you start doing that you you know what what you with yes one student what is one block you have two different roommates who say well I'm on Virginia I'm one block away you have another student who is at the Lex who says no I'm not even we're near campus I'm three blocks away it becomes this very subjective thing so we didn't survey that right yeah and so you can't for example say how far off campus the average student lives and compares comparison to this particular project that's off campus and so what what we did with that mindset is to know that because sometimes you know I do this in the HOA side so I don't have unlimited budgets for resources and surveys and stuff but what what I did do is with that is that's one of the reasons why we went and looked at all the other area projects that are on campus right or near campus and that's why the data we found which is in our presentation whether you go from the one of Martin Luther King to Center Court to South Hill Station to South Mill townhomes or to the Lex or even the Newtown Crossing farther up every one of those complies with the zoning ordinance the minimum of those has has two parking spots for every three bedrooms that's the least while the average has a almost one-to-one ratio that was the only way we could collate that data back thank you other questions mr. chairman yes ma'am there is still parking available at the stadium is that correct yes ma'am any additional questions for mr. Billings from the board okay here enough thank you mr. Billings so what I would like to do is for each other person who would like to speak if you would just line up on the short wall over here each Each person will have three minutes. Come up one at a time, introduce yourself for the records for me, and then you'll proceed. And of course, once you're done, if we have questions, that's not going to count towards your three minutes. So ma'am, you've already introduced yourself once, but please do it again for the record. My name's Brenda Stewart, and I'm here to represent the businesses on Limestone. I own 345 South Limestone. It's a home of Chipolis. There seems some discussion, and I read in the newspaper that our mayor said that there's 150 parking places there. Fifty of them are leased to the businesses. I've talked this week. I've beat the streets, I guess you'd say. and I've gone up and down talking to the different owners, and we only had three to show up today, but they all told me the same thing. We don't mind having something nice like that, but please, please, they've got to take care of the parking. These businesses do not have enough space for their customers, and if we do away with this, they're liable to lose. not everybody is a walking customer believe me just like Nathan mentioned he drove down there he's probably been there before I have I'm a realtor I know several bankers and different ones that like to go to Chipolis and eat this I've been involved in this area since 1965 in 1965 it was a very vibrant area and it's also always had a parking problem So I'm not here against this. I just want them to provide enough space that it won't take away and close these businesses because part of your all's decision is public health. Well, you've got to think about the health of these businesses if there's 473 bedrooms and 145 parking places. That's not counting the grocery store they're talking about. That's not counting all the retail space, 20,000 square feet of retail space. Well, these people are going to have employees, and these employees aren't going to walk from Andover down there. So you've got to be reasonable on what actually is going to happen here. So I went out and I gave you all copies of pictures. I didn't have any drone to do any aerial shots, but I went at all different times in that parking lot and tried to take the same pictures of the same area so that you would have ones to compare, and then I counted each car, and I counted the cars around that lot. And I would say on the average, except the nighttime that I went, there was 60 cars in the parking lot, and I think something like 17 cars around it. And all the other time, it was basically full. And while I was there, there were people coming and going all the time, and I never saw anybody patrolling it. Nobody asked me what I was doing. So my concern is for the businesses and what's going to happen to their customers and what's going to happen when the health department comes in and says, you've got to have so many parking places per table what's going to happen to those people they all going to be closed down Amy three minutes is up thank you can we make sure the timer is up on the screen Is that not? Okay. Well, what I'll do then is because we were having technical difficulties at this time, when you have 30 seconds, one minute, 30 seconds, that way you have an idea of when your time's coming down. Good afternoon. My name is Louis Wolfe. I am not an attorney, nor do I do surveys. but I believe Mr. Billings made a very compelling argument today. I, myself, own eight historic properties, renovate them, to tell you a little bit about myself, residential properties and commercial, do it as a hobby and for investments. I'm very appreciative of the historic properties, developments, and the need for proper infrastructure and parking. My family owns a condominium at 535 South Upper Street, which is the Center Court Condominiums. The lady before me spoke about the commercial properties. I want to speak to the residential problems. I believe our center court project has one parking spot for each bedroom. This plan, as I understand, calls for 473 bedrooms with 166 residential parking spots are between 28 to 31%, which I believe is inconceivable to even consider. We have invested in this neighborhood because of its proximity to UK grad schools for our daughter and our family and the parking that is provided by and in our property. We believe in the appropriate use and the proper parking accommodations. It is an appropriate use. I would agree with that if this project had proper parking accommodations. My study, and I'm not doing studies, but my study is driving and looking for a parking spot in this area, and it is very, very difficult and can only get worse if you all would even consider this, which I can't believe it would even be considered. If this reduction in parking space requirement is allowed, our South Hill area will be negatively impacted, I believe, as hub occupants try to find parking that is not available to them within their own residence. The idea that student occupants of the hub will rent the apartments and, for the most part, not have a vehicle, I believe is inconceivable and crazy. I can't believe it. It's uncomprehensible and should not even be considered. I believe this variance to reduce the number of required parking spaces should be denied, and in reality, believe the required parking spaces to be much more than the 210 noted in the agenda for the meeting. I understand that cannot be raised, but I would hope that you all would deny this request for a variance to lower it any more than what is already on the books. Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Wolfe. Next. And just please state your name for the record. My name is Mary Morgan. I own a business on South Limestone Street, Schedule Media, and I also own property on South Upper Street, so I'm on each side of this project, one as a resident, one as a business owner. My business, there's 10 parking spaces in my lot. I never have enough parking. It's like 3,000 square foot of retail restaurant space. My customers always complain they don't have parking, so they don't come down. I would not be in business were I to rely strictly on walk-in customers. Steve Barron from CD Central asked me to say that for him as well. As far as a resident on South Upper Street, I'm in the part where there's not, right across the street, it's not parking permit for residents because there are businesses on that block, so the residents there don't get the parking permits for being a neighbor. Next door to me, the house used to be a single family, now it's apartments, four bedrooms, five cars in the lot, constantly. and this has been that way for years and I can't believe that across the street it's going to be a lot different that they won't have cars because much as I'd like to say we were in Madison Wisconsin we aren't thank you next good afternoon I'm Tim Kondo on behalf of the Bluegrass Trust for historic preservation. The trust was founded in 1955 to protect Lexington's distinct historic character and we value the quality of place and quality of life of our city's neighborhoods. Our membership over 1,000 strong is represented across the city. The trust shares the concerns of the residents and business owners of the South Hill Neighborhood Association and we're opposed to the variance request to reduce the number of required parking spaces from 210 to 166 for the proposed project. We fail to see how this application meets the variance test, despite the property's eligibility for a reduction in the required minimum parking. Providing the full 210 parking spaces, thereby conforming to the requirements of the zoning ordinance, would in no way deprive the applicant of the reasonable use of the land or create an unnecessary hardship for the applicant. Additionally, there's nothing special about this lot when compared to lots in the general vicinity that would warrant a variance. It is a sizable rectangular lot on which a project can be constructed and still easily meet the minimum parking requirements of the B1 zone. The trust respectfully disagrees with the planning staff's argument that special circumstances arise from the property's location and expected users. There are dozens of parcels in the vicinity close to University of Kentucky's campus that must adhere to minimum parking requirements. As to the expected user, there is nothing guaranteeing that tenants of the future will be students. These apartments could house retirees, young professionals, or senior citizens, all of whom have different lifestyles and mobility needs than students. Supposing that the inhabitants remain students, roughly 42% of the university undergraduates on campus have a car. What of those living off campus, as is the case with this development, or of graduate students? It stands to reason that the 42% figure would be higher with these groups, and I think Mr. Billings' statistical analysis can answer that question. Finally, we assert that the granting of this parking variance would enable a project that would alter the essential character of the area, as well as pose potential nuisances to the public, particularly the adjacent historic South Hill neighborhood. The trust supports sensible development that complies with the zoning ordinance so that adverse impacts on neighborhoods from higher density projects are minimized. This application fails to meet the variance test and we respectfully ask that you deny the request. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kondo. Mr. Bryce, please introduce yourself for the record. I'm not going to put this in now. This is John Bryce. live at 340 south mill a house i bought almost a year ago today actually the original part of the house was constructed in 1812 there is an addition on the back that was done in the 70s i believe if you've got the photographs that i handed out earlier in front of you you can save me from popping in my flash drive and putting things up on the screen last night i decided i would walk over to this property knowing that thursday night is typically a big bar night for uk students One thing hasn't been pointed out about this lot. It is an E-lot until 3.30, but it's just any permit lot after that time period. So a number of students appeared to be pulling into the parking lot as I was getting there. So your first shot is a shot of parking in the lot. These are those phantom cars. Second shot as well, more phantom cars, more phantom cars, and the third. This is a shot from the lot to Jersey Avenue, and you'll notice that all the off-street parking has a car in it. The next shot is also looking down Jersey the other direction. Again, every off-street parking spot has a car in it. The next shot, I believe, is looking down Upper Street. upper street well no it's not it's it's toward the center corn project again every every spot filled with a car this is about 8 30 at night the next shot is looking down jersey or jersey street toward joe balonas which is on the left at the end again every off street parking spot has a car in it it. The next shot is on Upper Street. Again, every off-street parking spot has a car in it. The next shot is looking toward Two Keys, I believe. But again, every off-street parking spot has a car in it the next shot is the raising canes lot it was completely full people were waiting for people to pull out i assume that people parked there that that you don't necessarily it's a pay lot so you can pay you can pay to park there if you want to the next shot is also another shot of the raising canes there was one spot available there the next shot is looking down i believe jersey street again a little further up every spot full walking down pine street on my way home there you might have been able to squeeze a car in by that driveway but i'm not sure that would be a really smart idea the next shot is the mellow mushroom parking lot every spot full we get to mill street and here's a spot but it is it is a permit parking area you can see the sign the fuzzy little sign but at this time of the night the permit wouldn't have done you any good and the last spot is another the other side of mill street between this is between pine and cedar and again every spot full so I don't know where this parking is going to go if if they don't have to meet their parking requirements I don't know where the parking is going to go anyway if the surface lot gets closed for the neighborhood businesses and that people have expressed that on behalf of businesses I just I'm urging that you deny the variance requests and at least require them to have as much parking as the zoning ordinance requires them to have. Thank you. My name is Jean Scott. I'm the current president of the Historic South Hill Neighborhood Association. I also bring to my views or information I've gathered through a 40-plus year career in planning in community building so I have a lot of applied knowledge that informs what I want to say today. My main response to be limited is rises from a comment by representatives of CORE the cavalier suggestion that to solve the parking problem created by their development residents of South Hill can buy an extended 7 to 5 or 24 hour residential parking permit. My response to that is, so since you're not providing adequate parking, we as residents of the South Hill Neighborhood Association, one, we get to buy, purchase, spend money to get a residential parking permit, and two, even though we then have to get that permit, If we want to have several people over at one time, they can't park on our street or any nearby street. I don't think any of you would want to live where you can't even have some guests over and they can't park. In short, this is to me after 40 years plus in public policy and planning. It's a classic example of what public policy and planning should never do. And that is to create windfalls for one party. in this case core spaces because they save a lot of money by not providing the adequate parking spaces and two, placing all the burdens, the wipeouts, on the existing neighborhood literally across the street from the hub development. You're placing those problems on a neighborhood that is already stressed on parking because of the downtown and downtown people wanting to park there. So, again, Corps is getting all the windfalls and the neighborhood across the street is getting all the wipeouts, the negatives, if you grant a variance to the required parking. In this comprehensive plans call for infill and redevelopment that we heard about earlier from the Corps representatives, it doesn't say that that goal is a license to damage the quality of life of existing neighborhoods. So again, that's just not a license to let them damage our neighborhood. And we do support infill and redevelopment. So we urge you not to approve this variance. If we've already heard the bar for parking required in a B1 is already reduced. To reduce that further and put all those burdens on the neighborhood should not be allowed. And we therefore request you to not approve this variance. Thank you, Ms. Scott. Next. Hi, I'm Mary Campbell, and I live at 328 South Mill Street, and I'm the current board of the Historic South Hill Neighborhood. And I have to say this, you all have heard a lot of data today, and it's been important, and I hope you pay close attention to it. But I have a much simpler point, and that is, whatever happened to Lexington's neighborhood first motto. Whatever happened to the respect for the millions of dollars that Lexington's permanent residents, not temporary students, have invested in their property and their neighborhoods? At a time when buzzwords in every American city are, quote, community building, unquote, whatever happened to the tens of thousands of us who have been doing that all these years, sponsoring house tours of our historic homes, putting on street fairs, being a good neighbor to UK, and welcoming residents and visitors of every race and color. To grant a variance of this magnitude would be a great injustice to the very people and neighborhoods that created a community safe enough, diverse enough, and well-maintained enough to attract any developer. So we urge you not to approve this variance. Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Well, Ms. Clark, I didn't think we were going to see you today. you came in so late I was watching at home I couldn't leave well you know the routine please introduce yourself for the record my name is Amy Clark I live at 628 Castle Road many here live much closer and they know what it's like to live really really downtown and they fight this parking daily you will recall recently perhaps within two years you who granted a different sort of variance to residents on Maryland Avenue who had to sacrifice their own front yard to put a parking space in it because of condo and restaurant developments nearby that had squeezed them out and street side permit parking was not enough. I think that every student in this development will need a car to pay the rent. And they'll need the car to drive to a job, to work, to pay the rent. In my experience, many, many, many, most of the students work. At the top of your handout, you'll see that UK's rents for the dorms, the commercial EDR dorms and their newer dorms as well, are up over $1,000 a month. to say they're over $1,000 a month for a single, and $925 to $940 each. This is a monthly rate. To share a double, that's your half of the double. So those rents are very, very high right across the street on campus. I can't really imagine that this development, brand-new building costs and so on, will be on a very low-end rent. I think it will be less than UK. hey, that's good business, but I invite you to ask about the costs. I think high-density housing is very important in Lexington. It's become a real priority for us, but let's leave in the word affordable high-density housing. And I would mention that there is one zone that an applicant can seek, a mixed-use two zone, and it does give a zero parking requirement for affordable units, which is a great idea. If someone could live there affordably and not take their car and drive to work and so on, that would be a wonderful thing to have downtown. Not all our students are wealthy. Some of them live a great distance to get affordable rents. I've put some data on Lexington median income, which in 2015, that's a little out of date, ran under $50,000 for a household of one, but not by much. 80% of that is $40,000. One suggestion for the mixed use rental is 1% of that $40,000 as a monthly rent. That would be $400. So I urge you to consider whether they could afford to live here without a car to drive to work. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Clark. Mr. Bartley, please come up. Introduce yourself for the record. Yes, hello, my name is Alan Bartley and I live at 353 South Mill Street. It's been a long day. So I appreciate your efforts in listening here today. I'm a professional economist, so I won't try to repeat everything I'll say to everything else that was already said. To me, there's two main points here that really need to be considered. First, I'd like to say to Mr. Murphy and his clients, and to you, I hope you don't think that this is all about we don't want it. if you have a grocery i'll be there every single weekend i promise you i love a grocery being downtown i will be there i promise you however this is about parking and the parking issue and as mr billings said there's some good statistics that this won't be the case i'm sure mr murphy's going to argue our people are different and i'm sure they are they always are mine are going to be different what i'd like to say to you though is that right now the the zoning ordinance only requires about 40% parking because they already get a 50% reduction. They're going to have 473 bedrooms and only 210 spots if you don't give a variance. They're already very low. I have lived there downtown for nearly 20 years, 10 years on South Hill. It seems to me that economists focus a lot on efficiency and equity. Mr. Glover, I appreciate your question. I think it was very direct. In Tuscaloosa, hub had 85% parking because some city required it and they required it and they made it and they made money and people live there this is all about in my opinion someone wanting to get out of something as they said there's no engineering this is a clear lot they can build anything they need to if they need more parking they can create it this is not a variant saying this will be way too difficult with the current building structure to move things around this is an empty lot that they can build anything that they want on what they want is to collect extra money from extra apartments and hope that extra people don't take up spots in the neighborhood but somebody's going to be wrong either their numbers are going to be wrong or mr. billings are going to be wrong but somebody's going to be wrong because both of them are way far off on how many parking spots are going to need. And what I'd like to ask you is from an economist's point of view, there's the efficiency, which is let them build it, but let them build it so that everyone else has a level playing field. All the other places nearby, the center court and everything else, have students and others that park there. They all have parking spots. They can build the same. They don't want to, I understand that, but to me, not being a legal attorney, that does not meet the variance guidelines to grant a guidance, to grant a variance, to be I don't want to and I don't think I need it. Because if they are wrong, all those students will be on our streets. So I think the variance is there, even a minimum of the 50% to protect the community. It's a minimum. That's all we're asking for. I will be at your grocery store, I promise, but I would rather your tenants not be parked in front of my house every single day. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bartley. Now it's time for the rebuttal. Mr. Murphy, would five minutes be sufficient? No. Sir, what would you propose be sufficient? this in. Fifteen minutes? Okay. Let's put on the clock. And that's going to be with questions too. First, Chas Hite is here who knows about statistics just wanted to make a couple comments about the statistical validity of the surveys which mr. Billings gave you hi everyone my name is Charles Hyde I live at 929 Aurora I need to be sworn in I missed the swearing-in ceremony sorry mr. chairman Yes, sir, I do. I have a Master's of Science in Planning, and as part of that planning degree, we were required to take statistics. I've also tutored statistics at the college level for six years and was a part-time supervisor at the UK Survey Research Center, a very famous survey entity on campus. Every UK student knows that that takes Statistics 210, which is basic first line statistics, that for a survey sample to be valid, every member of the population must have an equal chance, an equal opportunity to be surveyed. This would need to be done by taking an entire list of the university students and randomly selecting students from that list, either through a random number generator number generator or by putting them in alphabetical order and just picking every eighth name something along those lines the no matter what locations they chose to survey students and no matter what days they chose to survey students their survey technique is completely invalid it does not give every UK student an equal chance of being surveyed whatever locations they chose for instance professional students, law students, med students, pharmacy students, rarely get out of their own building. I mean they are very very isolated. All their classes are in the same building, their labs, everything. There are a lot of students that had no chance to be surveyed by this technique and therefore all the statistics he prevented I'm afraid are invalid. This is like what we call a voluntary survey. If you're watching CNN or Fox or whatever, and they say, well, do you agree with this or disagree with this? Please call in or please go on the internet. Those statistics are very interesting, but they have no statistical basis. I also want to note that the analyses that he got were from economics professors. They were not from statistics professors who would have told him that his methodology was invalid. And the other question I would have is why are we doing surveys for information that the UK already has information for? You don't generally take surveys on information you already know. Any questions? Thank you. Next is Chad Mattese of Corp Spaces who will talk about the lease situation with you and other matters. Just to clarify a few questions that were raised. our parking leases are leased to the individual and they are annual leases so if we have x number of parking spaces in our building there's only x number of parking spaces leased out on an annual basis they are leased first come first serve so to you know some of the questions that were raised if a tenant does come and they're kind of late in the leasing season and we have leased 100% of our parking spaces and they ask for a parking space we tell them we do not have a parking space and they have the option to find another place to rent that has a parking space will the rent be different for the renters that have a parking space other than the ones that don't get one yeah so there's there's separate leases so you sign lease a for your residential bedroom and you sign a second separate lease for your parking space. One other clarification I wanted to mention regarding the retail lease. We still are not able to disclose the name of the tenant, but we do have an executed LOI with the tenant. We have received the initial draft lease from the tenant and are in the process of providing our comments to the tenant. So we expect to have an executed lease with that retail tenant probably within the next 30 to 60 days. Do we know what type of tenant? It is a national retailer that has a urban retail platform that they have put in place in multiple other similar locations across the nation, so it's a proven model and it would be a great addition to the neighborhood. Student oriented? The concept is somewhat student-oriented, yes. Mr. Billings identified our potential tenant in the earlier hearings. We're not allowed to because we have a non-disclosure agreement with that tenant. He identified it in the newspaper and in earlier hearings, so everybody knows who it's going to be. I want to add a couple other items that sort of some individual items to rebut. I asked after the Planning Commission hearing if the UK had an agreement to limit this to four stories. They said no. They said you can ask for an open records request to see if we've got one. I did. I'll put in the record that they responded that there is no such agreement. THE AS FAR AS THE AS FAR AS THE AS FAR AS THE WE DO NOT PLAN ON HAVING OUR TENANTS PARK IN SOUTH HILL. The whole point of our variance is that we know from experience how many people are going to be wanting to bring cars here and park here. We know how much parking we need. We come here because we do not want to park, to construct parking spaces that are not needed. The whole point of TOD, which is Transit Oriented Development, which most all cities are going to, is that we cannot let planning for cars dominate all other kinds of planning and all other kinds of transportation. They have realized that in planning for cars, we have failed to plan for walking, bicycles, and especially mass transit. We had a ballot initiative, if you will, a few years ago where we voted here in Fayette County. We voted ourselves a tax to strengthen mass transit. The city is trying to strengthen it as well, not only through the tax, but promoting TOD, transit-oriented development, and lessening parking requirements. And part of that is to discourage use of cars. Why does UK not have enough parking spaces on its campus? Part of it is they want to discourage automobile use on campus. There's a method to what they do. It's not just that they don't want to build enough parking spaces. It's because they want to discourage automobile use on campus. We have a campus which discourages it. We have our own experience from what we need and what we want. every tenant comes in here with their eyes wide open and is told exactly whether you have a space or not but that's not the point they only have a substantial waiting list and I think one of their properties here of people wanting to get parking spaces that's because they know their market this is high end market probably mother and daddy are going to be paying for a lot of this it is situations in which people come here one of the reasons they come here is because it's across the street from campus. They don't need it. It's across the street from McDonald's. We're going to have a grocery store on the first floor. They can walk two blocks to campus. My goodness, you don't need a car. That's what they find is that cars are not needed more than two or three times per week. These developments I was talking to Chad while we were listening to the testimony these these developments have a substantial amount of foreign students who often don't bring cars here as well the the we know we're displacing parking here we know there are businesses that have parking places here however as I pointed out to you UK has plans for this property and those parking spaces are going to be displaced one way or the other I would would point out that UK has provided this out of the civic spirit to businesses around here. They have other parking garages. The parking garage a block south closes up at 5 o'clock. They don't open it up to outside use at 5 o'clock. They could if they wanted to. That's always something UK can choose to do to open that available. And I'll ask this question. Do we want to preserve this lot so people have a place to park, to go to the bars. Now, maybe we want to give them a place to go to the bars, but we sure don't want to give them a place to drive home from the bars. I mean, I don't think that's a sufficient reason to preserve this as parking. I know there are other reasons, too, but that was one of the reasons that was presented to us. Mr. Hyde has talked about the survey they had. We have our own experience. We presented to you 17 other places in the United States where we have a lower amount of parking. Mr. Billings figures also used us having 166 spaces, which is what we're asking for technically, and that's what we have to ask for when we say we want a 21% reduction. But we actually have 178 because we have 12 additional tandem parking spaces here on the property. I want you to look at Mr. Billings' page 7 of Mr. Billings' handout. and I'm trying to find his handout here and I'm not sure what happened to you. There it is. On page seven of Mr. Billings' handout, he says at the bottom in there that he said we need 144 parking spaces. 30% of 473 bedrooms is 144 parking spaces, 53 more than the hub is proposing to provide to its residents. Actually, no, because we have 178 total spaces, counting our tandem spaces. We're subtracting the 33 that our retail customer wants, which leaves us with 145 parking spaces for our residents, one more than the number Mr. Billings said we need in his handout here. We have 145 spaces available to our residential tenants here on here, based upon that he seemed to agree with us. Then later on he didn't agree with us. He mentioned CORE has sold some of their projects. Mr. Mattese pointed out to me they were recapitalizing most of those where a partner was buying in and they were retaining, the Corps was retaining control of the property. I guess getting down to it, the question to me, and there's a lot of things in here that I want to rebut, but I can't because I don't have time, but I think the overall issue is this. The statement has been made that a lot of people didn't get variances. variances nobody has gotten variances before well it's only been in the last ten years or so that the city has had the ability to get a variance in the infill and redevelopment area and as I pointed out to you it was only four years ago when the city adopted the business district they allow alongside excuse me South Limestone Street where they are only required to have 20% of the otherwise required parking we're having 79% of our otherwise required parking as I pointed out to you. Times are changing. We don't want to build this development like it's 1995. We want to build this development as it's 2017 and 2027. And the trend is clear that Lexington wants and Lexington is pointing to. And that is that they want to discourage use of cars, and they want to encourage these other ways. As I said, people have realized that we've been discouraging walking and discouraging bicycling through our policy, and they're trying to even that out. Yes, certainly people who live here are going to bring their cars, and we have the figures to know how much that is. We've calculated what that is, and we've provided the parking that we need here. But the city is now changing its policies, and it's changing it to meet the times we are in where people realize they don't need a car all the time and we should build buildings like this in locations where they don't need a car and we don't want to build it like everybody's going to have a car that's just going to encourage more people to bring cars but we know what we need and we're not putting an oversupply out on the streets of south hill my point about the permit parking the system is most of the time our residents will not be able to park on south hill anyway i mean you wouldn't want to be hunting for a parking space through there so we feel very strongly we've made the case for a variance it's important to this development and i think it's important for the city as well this is the place to do this and we've done our homework and this variance will work and will work for this project and will work for this area thank you very much and we're here if you have any questions on this thank you Does the board have any questions for the applicant? I see Mr. Billings is standing up. Technically, that concluded the item. The discussion portion, it looks like you want to speak some more. You don't have to come up, just nod yes or no. Yes. Mr. Murphy, would you, I'm assuming your client would consent to a three-minute wrap-up of Mr. Billings. All right, thank you, sir. Please proceed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Respectfully, what you've just heard of the last 15 minutes and 10 seconds was an argument that public policy should justify a variance in this case, that parking trends are changing all across the country, and in the last 10 years, specifically in Lexington, even more importantly in the last four years, the ordinance has been changed to allow for more parking. That's right, they have. And that's why they're allowed to have 210 spots on here. That's why they shouldn't be allowed to have a variance from that today. What Mr. Murphy is arguing to you is a public policy argument. He's not arguing the variant standard. While they can attack my statistics, what is clear is they haven't introduced any. They didn't do any of their own surveys. It's not even clear they talked to a UK student at this point. The only person that this referenced is Mr. Ward. On page 7, Mr. Murphy respectfully intentionally misrepresents what that slide shows. What that slide shows is what the applicant relied upon on a website that UK has that shows 30.4% of its entire student population reports having a car, which includes on-campus and off-campus. So that's 30.4% for an on-campus parking permit of its entire population. The subset of that population is on-campus students who have cars, which is 43%. Our statistical analysis then goes on to show what is off-campus. There are a lot of data you've heard, a lot of argument, a lot of conjecture I think at times. What is clear is this. The applicant, even in his rebuttal, didn't even argue the variant standard to the board. We would respectfully submit that for the reasons I presented that are factual in nature, that are based upon real data in Lexington, based upon student surveys and other projects in Lexington that have been approved. Not what their experience has been in other places, not what they hope to be, or not what happens when the 167th student shows up with a car. We submit that the variance should be denied. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Billings. Okay, right now we have, currently the staff has recommended findings for approval Mr. Murphy has submitted alternative findings for approval. Ms. Jones has reviewed those and she finds those are in compliance. Not knowing, of course, how a vote would occur, I have had Ms. Jones prepare findings of facts for us to review in case we decide not to approve the application. So what I would like to do is take 10-minute recess, allow the board time to look at Mr. Murphy's alternative findings, the staff's findings, and the findings of disapproval, use the restroom, and then we'll come back in the recess, and then we'll have a vote. Sir. Before you do, since we're talking about the proposed findings, can I ask Mr. Murphy, it appears to me that the two additional findings and conclusions that you are proposing that are different from the staff's reasons are your number two and four. Is that correct? and I'm just I know they're all worded differently but it appears to me that that's the difference I think so I just went through the requirements in the statute for granting findings and trying to be careful because as I mentioned there's been some indication there might be an appeal of this and the courts want to make sure you have findings on all the statutorily required items i have tried in these findings to incorporate all of the staff findings in here that they made plus some additional and some of it is repetitive because the same facts can support more than one finding or not and some of it's just repetitive of some of the findings the staff made on other ones but but to include all the statutorily required findings that we have Okay, thank you. Any other comments before we go into recess? And I would recommend that Mr. Murphy and Mr. Billings see Ms. Jones during the recess to look at her alternative findings if we disapprove. We're in recess. we are back in session and the chair unless there's any discussion from the board the chair is ready to entertain a motion I'd like to express my thoughts about this before we have a break. Is that possible? Yeah, that's what I said. If anyone wants to have a discussion, please proceed. I do have some points I'd like to make. In the first place, the point that I made earlier about the data that says there's 42% the students on campus that have cars. And that was pretty much my understanding before I came here today. But nevertheless, this has been a good presentation. But I cannot in good conscience accept variants like this because I don't think it serves the neighborhood, the campus, the development, the students in a way that is appropriate. And as a matter of fact, I think that we're still talking about a lot of transportation and cutting down on cars and all that. This is not about that. This is about parking in a development like this. I also wanna say, now this is important to me, this is a very good development. I've been following it since it came up to the Planning Commission, and I've been very impressed with the development itself, but this development needs to provide the parking spaces that are required by law, and I feel that very strongly, and I would certainly vote against any variance. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Clark. Any additional comments? Anybody have comments? I can make a comment. sure you could you don't have to but you could well I'd like to say this is a challenge as we move forward in development and growing up parking is going to be an issue and you know I feel a little bit different than mr. Clark is I feel like they obviously there is an a major parking issue I feel like this development could go forward the 50% reduction is what can happen now and I think this transit oriented development is something that I'd like to see more of and you know if it takes the development before to make to make it more walking and biking friendly then then maybe that's what's gonna gonna it's gonna take but I would I would be for this type of development and I do do think that the parking although they there will there are issues and it just so happens to be in a very hot button area of parking anyway that I think this will be one of those pains that can be can be a growing pain but yet it grows and it can grow Lexington into more of an infill type of development city. Thank you, Mr. Needham. Anybody else want to make a comment? Okay. Hearing none, the chair needs a motion for either approval or disapproval at this time. I make a motion that we approve the hub PLNDOA 17-73 as a request for a variance to reduce the number of required parking spaces by 21%. from 210 to 166 spaces within the defined infill and redevelopment area in a neighborhood B1 zone at 500 South Upper Street and 519 Jersey Street. Based on staff's... Yes. Mr. May, if you may pause. The two options would be staff's finding effects or the finding effects by the applicant, proposed by the applicant. Just want to make sure. And those differences where we discussed those. Yeah, the applicant has supplemented the staff's findings. So I just want to make sure you're putting on the motion that you want to put on. I think you could just adopt the alternative findings proposed by the applicant rather than distinguish what's been supplemented and what's not been supplemented. So rather than saying based upon the staff's finding facts, you would say based upon the proposed alternative findings of facts of the applicant? And I'm just trying to determine the difference. two and four right mr. Needham if it helps you at all two and four are basically different one three and five incorporate the staff's findings fully with a little more detail so if that is the system to you at all I think I would adopt the proposed findings that were presented by by mr. Murphy would you restate your motion then yeah I move that we approve the hub at Lexington based on the proposed findings of adopted from mr. Murphy's evidence and exhibits that were presented to this board and there's one two three four five five recommendations and based on the two conditions outlined by staff three conditions outlined by staff thank you mr. Needham and real quickly for housekeeping mr. Murphy I don't recall that I ask you whether that your client had read the conditions and was in favor? Please step forward and get on the record so we need to make sure that's in the record. Yes, we are in agreement with those conditions. Okay, thank you, Mr. Murphy. There is a motion on the floor. Do I have a second? Thank you, I have a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Three eyes? Four eyes? We have four eyes. All those opposed? Opposed. Opposed. Three, so the motion carries and the application has been approved. Thank you very much. Good luck with your project. Okay, next on the agenda would be, this is the Board of Education. Okay, next on the agenda would be, this is the board, any board member wish to bring anything to our attention at this time? okay the staff items does the staff have anything other than us trying to figure out the dates okay so we have been in discussions about the dates and I guess the discussions will continue because I don't think we have one does it is that the consensus right now on the of the board that we do not have a finalized I think we don't have consensus yet. Okay. So when is the last time we can give you consensus? If we do it next month, could we have time to adopt it by December and be in compliance? December is absolutely the last date. Well, if we can't change it by next month, then we're just going to have to stick with Friday. So, go ahead. What are the options? I know we've thrown a lot of options around. have been Wednesday afternoons the chambers are free Monday afternoons the chambers are free I think Wednesday mornings chambers are free what time would that start the third Wednesday chambers are free and on on the mornings I think the consensus was 930 in the afternoons right now our meetings are 130 but I believe that was due to at the time maybe mr. but Glover could get here from frankfurt something like that yeah something like that and so we could move it to one depending on the schedule while in the room so that's kind of where we are what i guess i would i would suggest mr marks for you guys just to send us another email confirming third wednesday these two these times are available when we have to be out and then we'll just try again to circle around and come up with if you want well I think all the times are difficult for one or more of the board members was a proposal for the changing it to the third is it the third Monday something or the fourth which Monday is available I'm not sure we were there probably aren't any restrictions for Mondays in terms of which Monday of the week we could do the second Monday of the month if we wanted to which money has more holidays see that's a problem with Mondays the I don't know of any second Monday holidays I mean they're with their their presidential the president's day and Martin Luther King day and several days several federal holidays that fall on a Monday that's my problem with Monday I think they're usually the third and fourth Mondays I don't think there any second Monday holidays that I can I don't know I can't recall any that's that sounds like a project for the staff and Wednesday would work better for you and Wednesday's Wednesday's a possibility Jan has a problem Wednesday afternoon Wednesday morning was suggested I like any time except for Friday afternoons. Other than that, I'm completely flexible. Are we talking about the third Wednesday? Because the fourth Wednesday of the month, Ms. Cocker, and neither one will be here because we're in a planning. well we're thinking about this maybe the second Monday but on the Wednesdays the third they're talking third Wednesdays you guys have something we're concerned about the holiday okay yes i think we want to get away we just want to say let's get a date that the second monday there are no holidays it's always the second Monday there's no issues well the staff can the staff can confirm and tell us next month staff sent us an email we got an email a month ago or so about about the available times for this room and if you if you could send us another email about that that'd be helpful because I don't think that I don't think Wednesday morning for example was under consideration when we when we got that email I think the second Monday is there no federal or state holidays that I'm aware of and personally I don't like Monday but it's better than Friday in my opinion so you do you guys have any comment difficulties yeah the second monday mr marks on on mondays are we looking at mornings or afternoons or either afternoons okay so at this point are we at monday afternoons most likely the second monday of the month still considering wednesday mornings the third wednesday of the month well i think they did you guys say wednesday mornings on the third the third wednesday of the month is that okay no in the morning you guys have tech committee well there's only two of the 12 tech committee meetings what i'm saying is i looked at all of the technical committee meeting dates on the recently adopted schedule and there's if we went with the third Wednesday mornings for BOA there would be two conflicts for the whole year so I think that's manageable the okay so if there's only two conflicts we'll figure we can figure that out that turns out to be the best day okay well Columbus Day for example was on the second Monday of this month just to is that still a holiday I don't okay that's right yeah but it's really would help everything quite a bit if we could get something adopted at the next hearing so well if you all could discuss this we'll send out a memo just explaining that I guess at this point the two options well Miss Whitman with would you be able to do 9 a.m. on or Would that be cutting it too close? 930 would be the earliest. 930 is better for me. Mr. Clerk? Ms. Whitman, would that be? I'm sorry, Ms. Meyer, would that be? 930 on Wednesdays? Well, if I have to leave, I have to leave. It wouldn't be like 1230 to be where I need to be as long. Okay. Well, I'll just keep trying to keep the meeting short. Well, that's sometimes out of your power. Yeah, yes. Yes. well there's nothing in chambers on Wednesdays the only issue would be would be Miss Meyer would may need to leave to make it to her is that not mistaken okay Miss Meyer may need to leave to make it to her standing appointment on Wednesdays so it she's got something on one o'clock yeah one to two thirty so That's the reason we can't do Wednesday afternoons. Well, today... But if I leave, you know, and you don't have a forum, that seems to be involved. It always does. If anybody leaves, you're... I mean, it hasn't. I don't know if it's possible, but it's good. And what do you have to do with the holidays? Not on the second Monday, but Mr. Glover has something in the evenings. So there's a second Monday holiday in October, Columbus Day. Are you guys closed for Columbus Day? They work on Columbus Day, so that won't be an issue. And the second Monday, I usually don't have an issue with the second Monday. Okay. It's usually later. or do we want to do one one one Mondays at one Chad okay second Mondays at one p.m. we'll research that out to every detail and draft something up I appreciate it and let us know if there's issues that pop up week and all for sure be indecisive again next month and we'll just be Fridays at 1 30 like we've always been we're on Friday this year is already set all the dates are set we just have to set the 2018 dates so that essentially they get dispersed everyone everyone has noticed and we don't move our meetings after they've been set more or less okay so that takes care of that item any other staff business okay next month I want to get us on these voting machines so that Tammy can see how we vote mr. Clark you have experience with them you can confess they're not terribly difficult yeah so next month we'll hopefully have the clerk come in so if we could maybe what how much time do you think we need for a refresher before the meeting 15 minutes okay so we could try to shoot to get here at 1 15 next month and then we'll have one of the clerks show us how to do it we'll practice and hopefully you guys will give us the easy docket and we won't have as many votes and what okay well we tried to do it last year and there was a complete revolt amongst the board members who didn't want to touch the screens or something I don't know yeah okay yeah so with that being said our next meeting is November 17 2017 and if there's no further business I am we are adjourned