municipal or more than the council municipal to take decisions and plan the city's things. So it's very important that we have all the community to participate in these groups. What you can do is come to this this contract for the council and commissions here in Lexington Senior Center, which is located behind the church of Southern Christian Church on Richmond Road. It will be on April 13, at 9am. adjustment meeting for April 8th, 2019. I see we have quite a full crowd, which is always nice for when the public participates. Before we start, I'm going to go over some ground rules. Number one, make sure your cell phones are turned off so they don't ring during the hearing. You can put them on silent or vibrate, but we don't want to hear the ring. For those of you who will plan on speaking today before we start the hearings. I will swear everybody in on generally the order will be if there is a disapproval recommendation then we'll have the staff go first otherwise the normally is the applicant and then the opposition and then the applicant gets a chance to rebuttal the opposition's testimony. I reserve the right to put time limits depending on how many speakers we have, but sometimes if we have quite a few number, we'll usually try to limit the public speaking portion to three minutes per person in the citizenry, and then we ask that you don't repeat items that have already been discussed by people who had prior spoken to the hearing. Do not approach the bench unless you've been asked to. Do not speak unless you've been recognized. What we'll do is if you're here to speak, you'll come up to the podium, you'll say your name for the record, and then we'll give you an opportunity. Do we have today, Autumn, letters in opposition or support for any of these cases that we have to review? We do have for, let's see, for item number three, under conditional use appeals. Or no, I'm sorry. For item number two, under conditional use appeals, we do have a letter. And then we also have a letter for item number two under administrative reviews. Okay, so moving on, we have letter, singular. I believe there are two for Arbor Drive and then one for Northwood Drive. All right, thank you. So for those items that have letter of support or opposition, we'll take a couple minutes. Let us review those letters before we start the testimony. And other than that, what I'll do is I'll start calling, I'll call the order and everything. So the first item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from the last meeting on March 11th. Those have been passed out by staff. I'm assuming everyone on the board has had an opportunity to review. I move to approve. Thank you, sir. Second. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, I'll call it to a vote. Okay, those were adopted. The next item is I'm going to call the agenda regarding any postponements, withdrawals, or items that have no discussion today. Please come forward, sir. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board. Jacob Walburn. I'm here. Administrative review, this would be page 3, item 1, BOA 19-17, Athens property. I was actually just recently retained by this applicant after they'd received their recommendation of disapproval. I'd like a month to prepare a case for that and maybe work with the staff as well. So request a one-month postponement to your May meeting. So that would be, this is item E1 on page 3, PLM BOA 19-17 Athens property, which is in reference to 6251 and 6270 Athens-Walnut Hill Pike, to be postponed to our May 13, 2019 time. Is anyone here in the audience on behalf of this matter? My clients are here. Yeah, I understand, Ms. Walburn. Anyone else? Oh. Okay. All right. So anyone from the board have any items or discussion points? If not, I'd like to hear a motion. A move we postponed for one month. So move. Do we have a second? Second. Any discussion? Hearing none, I'll put it to a vote. Okay. Motion passes. We'll see you on May 13th. Thank you very much. So if you were here for the Athens property case, that one's been postponed until next month. And we'll have the hearing on May 13th, 2019, on 1-30 in these chambers. Thank you. I am Jake Michael. I'm here on behalf of the applicant Arbor Drive LLC on item D2 on page two, that's PLN BOA 19-20. On this one, I'm going to be recusing myself, so I will hand the gavel over to Mr. Glover, and I promise I will return. Tell me your name again. Jake Michael. Mr. Michael, what do you request? But we're requesting a one month postponement consistent with the staff's recommendation so that we can continue to work through any remaining questions and hopefully streamline things a bit next month. We'd want a one month postponement to May 13th. That's PLNBOA 19-20, is that right? Yes. Is anyone here concerning the application of Arbor Drive LLC? Anyone in the audience? One, two, three, four. It has been suggested that this be postponed for, you said one month? One month, yes, to May. Okay. What say the board? I just have a question. Do you have meetings planned with the neighbors, or have you had those? I've noticed that there is one person in the audience who's here to speak, and we hope to talk with him after this meeting and anyone else who might be interested, yes. Anyone else on the board? Care to voice an opinion? Thank you. That was a good suggestion. I will entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move to postpone for one month the PLNBOA 19-15 James Johnson at 2820 R-Tibs Trail. I'm sorry, that's the wrong one. I'm sorry, POA 19-20 Arbor Drive, 3500 Arbor Drive. So moved. Thank you, Mr. Clark. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. All those in favor, please register your vote. Motion passes. We'll see you in a month. Thank you. Thank you. I'm returning the gavel. Any other postponements or withdrawals today before we start sounding the remainder of the agenda? Okay. So hearing none, what I will do next is I will call each case in order. um ask you whether or not there is anyone here in opposition if there is or if there's disapproval that case will be heard at the tail end and we'll just call each case to make sure everyone's here to be heard so the first item is plmboa 19-12 justin denton regarding 536 south mill street is the applicant present sir you don't get up yet yeah um is anyone here that wants to speak on this this matter related to 356 South Mill Street? All right. So sir, you'll be the first case called. The next item is PLN BOA 19-15 James Johnson at 2820R Tibbs Trail. Is the applicant present? Sir? Is there anyone here in opposition to this matter wants to be heard today? Okay. Then we have PLM BOA 19-16. Oh, I'm sorry, sir, Mr. Johnson. Staff has recommended this approval, so we will have you heard. So you'll be the first heard case. You'll be the first heard after we get through the end of the docket. The next item is PLM BOA 19-16, Baron Gibson, 559 Maryland Avenue. Applicant present? Thank you, sir. If there's anyone here that wants to speak on this application. Next item is PLN BOA 19-21 City Center at 100 West Main Street. The applicant present? Okay, thank you. Is there anyone here to speak on this matter? Yes, you? Anyone else? Mr. Simpson, are you waving? Yes, hello, or raise your hand? I say hello, but I'm waving. Okay, just wanted to make sure. So we'll have that on the unopposed items. The next is our conditional use appeals. The first one is PLMBOA 19-19 Bluegrass Green Source, Inc. Is applicant present? Thank you, sir. Is anyone here to speak on behalf of this matter? the next item is plmboa 19-22 roman catholic bishop diocese of lexington is the applicant present thank you sir is there one here that wants to speak on the case regarding clays mill road and stratford drive okay we have a handful um is there you guys think uh meeting with mr simpson out in the hallway before the hearing may be fruitful does not look that way. That's no problem. So we'll have this one to be heard. Uh, the next item is our administrative reviews and that is peel in B O a 19 dash 18 Allen Chow regarding Northwood drives that could present. Thank you, sir. There's anyone here on regarding this one. Okay, so you guys will be the last case heard today but you will be heard and then before that is there any reason for you guys to meet with the applicant out in the hallway to resolve your differences before the hearing okay that happens quite a bit so with that being said anyone today in the crowd who wants to speak I'd like you to stand right now raise your right hand so I can swear you in you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you ladies and gentlemen so the next items i will bring up is i'll bring all the items of which the staff has recommended approval and there's no one here uh in opposition so the first case is PLM BOA 19-12 Justin Denton at 356 South Mill Street. Come up sir. Good afternoon if you can state your name for the record. Justin Denton 356 South Mill Street. Thank you. Staff has recommended approval today. That approval is based upon or subject to conditions. Have you read those conditions? I have. And you are agreeable to abide by those conditions? I am. Okay. Is there any questions regarding this application from anyone from the board? All right. Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move we approve PLN BOA 19-12 Justin Denton's request for a variance to increase the allowable floor area ratio from point 35 to point 59 in order to enclose existing patios within the defined infill and redevelopment area in the two family residential and historic district overlay zones at 356 south mill street for the reasons uh explained by staff in the staff report and subject to the two conditions in the report. Thank you, Mr. Glover, and just for the record, it's 0.5, in case it sounded like 0.59. Any, do I have a second? Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, I'll put it to a vote. Motion carries. Your application has been approved. Good luck with your project, sir. Thank you. We're going to skip over James Johnson. The next unopposed matter is PLMBOA 19-16, Baron Gibson at 559 Maryland Avenue. Applicant present? Come on up, sir. Please state your name for the record. Baron Gibson. Mr. Gibson, the staff has recommended approval of your application. That approval is subject to two conditions. Have you read those? I have. And you're agreeable to abide by those? We're agreeable. Thank you, sir. Does anyone from the board have any questions for staff or the applicant at this time? Hearing none, I will entertain a motion. I move we approve PLNBOA 19-16, Baron Gibson's request for a variance to reduce the required side yard setback from 3 feet to 0 feet in order to construct an addition at an existing house in a defined infill and redevelopment area in a single family residential R1 E zone at 55 Maryland Avenue. based on staff's recommendations and subject to the two conditions outlined by staff. Thank you, sir. Do I have a second? Second. We'll go with Mr. Clark. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, we'll call to a vote. All right. Passes. Good luck with your project. Thank you. You're welcome. The next item that had no opposition is PLN BOA 19-21 City Center. Good afternoon. Please state your name for the record. Christine Oberst. And you represent the owner? The sign company, Integrated Sign and Graphic. Okay, so you're the agent of the owner and you have authority to speak on that today? Yes, sir. Thank you. Ma'am, the staff has recommended approval. The recommendations may be subject to two conditions. Have you and your client reviewed those? We have. You are agreeing with those? We are. Okay. In that instance, anyone have any questions for the applicant or the staff today? All right, hearing none, then we will, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move approval of BLN BOA 19-21 City Center. Request for variances to reduce the minimum required height of two wall mounted signs from 10 feet to 8 feet to two tenants within the defined infill and redevelopment area and the courthouse area design overlay in a lexington city business zone at 100 west main street based on the recommendation of of the staff and subject to the of the conditions so stated thank you sir is there a second okay mr glover has requested some discussion um so i'm going to yield to him for a second i just had one question is city center a a corporation um i assume so i mean the applicant is the applicants are it's through city center it's starbucks and keeneland mercantile okay i just i was just curious city center didn't say llc or didn't say ink or anything like that i didn't know what entity it was that made the application i would honestly have to look back city center owns the building and then the two tenants that the actual signage would be for um are two tenants but the application is through city center since they are technically the landlord on the building okay thank you Any further discussion? Questions? All right, hearing none, I will put it to a vote. Thank you. Good luck. You're welcome. And just to remind me, on PLMBOA 19-19 Bluegrass Greenhouse, Inc., there is no one here wants to speak on opposition to that okay that's how I marked it I just wanted to make sure so that's next case I'll call come on up Mr. Walburn good afternoon again Mr. Chair members of the board Jacob Walburn here both in my capacity as attorney and as vice chairman of the board of Bluegrass Green Source well the Mr. Walburn the staff has recommended approval subject to the two conditions I'm assuming you guys have read those and agreeable to buy by those we have and we are thank you sir at this time does anyone from the board have questions for staff or for the applicant hearing none then i'll ask for a motion mr chair i move that we approve plnboa 19-19 bluegrass green source inc's request for a conditional use permit for ecotourism activities involving an outdoor classroom and associated parking lot in a light industrial i1 zone at 650 setzer way for reasons recommended by the staff and subject to the two conditions outlined by staff thank you do i have a second mr glover seconds any discussion on the motion hearing that i'll put to the vote It's been approved. Good luck. Thank you very much. See you guys later. Okay, that, I believe, finishes the docket for the unopposed items. So now I have listed here for us to be heard will be first the PLNBOA 1915, James Johnson, the second PLNBOA 1922, Roman Catholic Bishop, Diocese of Lexington, and number three, PLNBOA 19-18, Alan Chow. If you're not here for any of those cases, that means you're not still on the docket. So first one I'm going to call up is PLNBOA 19-15, James Johnson, regarding 2820R Tibbs Trail. Staff has recommended, if you want to have a seat, sir. Yeah, sit right there. I'm going to have staff come up first since they recommended a disapproval. Is there anyone in the audience who wants to speak on this matter? Okay. So what we'll do is we'll have staff go, and then you can then give your presentation. Whenever you want to proceed, Autumn. All right. We've got a site plan coming up here. This application is a request for a variance to bring a recently constructed fence into compliance. this is a similar request to one we had last month but the circumstances are substantially different in this case a fence permit was acquired in September at that time there was discussion between the contractor and the building inspector describing the issue at hand and and the contractor confirmed that they understood that the fence could not be in the three-foot side yard and that the fence would not be located in that area. We have confirmation of that. However, the fence that was constructed is located within the three-foot side yard. This is in a newly developing portion of the Masters and Station neighborhood. You may have looked at aerials and not found this house at all because it was recently constructed last year. So the circumstances here to allow this type of fence to be approved in a forgiveness case could set a precedent for this neighborhood that we have concerns about. In this situation, we do believe that the fence could be made to be compliant. The applicant said that they have oil tanks in their side yard that they wish to cover up, and that's part of why they extended the side yard fence. They could still cover that up with a compliant fence. they have a six-foot side yard so they could fence at the three-foot line and have a compliant fence to cover up their oil tanks. Otherwise the issue was with the gate which could perhaps be moved behind the house. Those are our major concerns with this application so we have recommended disapproval. so is the issue that the fence is on the property line or yes there's a required three foot setback for a fence in this zone for in this in a side yard Autumn, do you have a recommendation or a suggestion about how this applicant could put up a fence or something that would hide his, whatever he wants to hide here, I can't remember what it was without being a violation of the ordinances so long as the defense were set back three feet from the property line so he has six feet between his house and in the property line so the fence could just go around the tanks it would be somewhat limiting to you know a usable space in that fenced area perhaps but it could be used to cover the the oil tanks, which I believe are an issue with his HOA, that those tanks have to be covered from view. I would expect there are other means of covering tanks as well. So am I correct in saying that you said they're six feet between houses, though? In this situation, he has a six-foot side yard. Okay, so yes, he has six foot clearance between his house and the property line. Okay, thank you. And are we only concerned with the portion of the fence that is adjacent to the house, or is it the complete boundary fence? the to the rear of the house is is fine it's just the the portion that is in the side yard between the house and the property line okay so how many feet is that you think um it extends into the side yard um let's see on one side it's nine feet and then on the other side it's 55 inches okay the staff report says that the building inspector made revisions to the site plan do we have those if so i'd like to see them i believe i do and i presume that those revisions to the site plan would give some guidance to the homeowner on what he could build and the ordinances give him guidance on what he cannot i believe that the the drawing um just showed the fence ending at the rear of the house and just not extending into the site plant or into the side yard um let's see i do not have a copy of the drawing i have a copy of the email that discussed it but looks like i don't have the drawing um i think at that point in time the the applicant had perhaps not conveyed to his contractor that he wanted the fence to be there to cover the tanks. So I think that the fence that was shown at that point in time was along the boundary of the house and back into the rear yard. The drawing that shows the fence, I think, is indicated by the X's that surround three sides of the property, and I presume that's the backyard, basically. Yes. Is all of the fence in noncompliance? No, only the portion between the house and the side lot line. Everything behind the house is considered rear yard at that point. That was my confusion at first. It's only dealing with a few feet, not the whole fence. Okay, that's what I want to get clear. Yeah. All right, thank you. So it looks like you said, what is it, two feet on one side, two or three feet, nine feet on the other side? It extends nine feet forward towards the street on one side and 55 inches on the other side. And goes across the full six-foot side yard. So we're looking at nine feet, five feet? Yes. And Autumn, where are the tanks on this? The tanks are, see, I don't think they're shown on the drawing, but I do have some images that the applicant had submitted. Let's show that. Let's see. It's on the right-hand side of the house. Here's a photo from the inside of the fence showing the oil tanks as they are enclosed. And then we've also got an image from the exterior of the fence that we can show. Now, Adam, I just want to be sure I understand the communication with the building inspector. So it does look like that the contractor originally sent a request to have it in the side yard. Yes. The building inspector sent it back and said, no, it could not be in the side yard, and asked them to approve that, and they did. Yes. Okay, so it's not that it was an afterthought. They requested it, and it was rejected. Yes. Right? Yes, that is correct. Well, it appears here that the original plan shows the fence coming into the side yard at the left side of the house. is the how was this brought to you guys attention um this was brought to our attention through building inspection okay they inspect with the fence and discovered that it was not in compliance with what they had approved so the order is a plan comes in it was not in compliance they were told to amend it they amend the plan they get the permit then the fence gets built in violation okay so the presumably the fence contractor had already been told once presumably yes i think that the right well not presumably he actually did the fence yes i mean there was the document in an email. He said he approved it. Yes. And to put this in compliance, the three feet that we see extending off the side here that's hiding the Herbie Kirby and the tanks, if that were just extended back to the back face of the house, that would be in compliance? If it were at the back face of the house, it would be in compliance. And that's a six-foot section. gotcha okay if it were a three-foot section it would also be acceptable any more questions for autumn at this time all right hearing none then I'll ask the applicant to come forward Yes, if you have items, come on up. Thank you, sir. Well, I'm James Johnson, and I have to tell you I'm embarrassed to be here. I'm a guy that's never even got a parking ticket, and I've lived in restricted communities my whole life and never had a complaint. I do admit this is out of its, it was in violation. I hate to, I really didn't know it. The way I understand what happened was I finally got a contractor, the fourth person I tried to get to do the job, and he agreed to do it, and I gave him a plan to just do the back part the way it would have been in compliance. In the meantime, I found out that I'm supposed to hide all that according to HOA rules. And I know that the vision of planning rules supersede anything from HOA. I understand that. But I thought, well, while we were at it, we just do that. And, I mean, I didn't know I wasn't allowed to do it. So I submitted my plans to HOA, and they approved them. And I assumed that he got the permit, that it was okay. And so he built the fence. Two months later, I mean, I thought everything was all right. I saw somebody out in my yard, and it was a building inspector. And he told me that I'm in trouble, that the fence was built there, and it wasn't supposed to be built there. And so, again, I know ignorance, the rules are no excuse. I'm the homeowner. It falls on me. But that's how we did it. I didn't set out to flaunt the rules. I didn't set out to do it the wrong way. All right, after they sent me the notice that, you know, I could either tear down all that or I could file for a variance. So I did that, and all this time I was assuming that the contractor had just not even, had not sent in the second plan, that he submitted the first request that I had, that he didn't submit it. Then last week I read the staff notes from them, and I think what it said was that whenever they got it, they emailed it to the contractor and they put it in the way it's supposed to be and that if he agreed with that he's supposed to click approved and send it back and according to them that's what he did. Again I didn't know but I mean I have to be responsible but so that's how we got there. The way I understand it, you know, you could go out three feet, but you couldn't go out six. And so on the right side, well, let me tell you this. I'm outside on two of them. On the left side of my house, unlike the right, I didn't sit out to do that the way I did it. What we did was we started the fence on the right side of the property, went to the back corner, across the back, and up to the front. And when we got up to the front, the next to last section, there was only 17 inches left. So that section had to hold a gate, a heavy gate so what we would have had to have done was to cut vinyl and which really makes makes it weak it's hard to deal with I wish I'd have built a wood fence and make all this thing easier but and be not cheaper too but anyway it would have been 12 inches of vinyl a 5 inch post and then a gate on it so again I didn't know what the rule was so we put just put a full six foot section there. So on that side what it amounts to is going out this goes out 58 inches which is 22 inches farther than it's supposed to go and then and it went in front of the house 55 inches past the corner and if you'll look at photograph FL1, you see what's involved there, how much space. And L2, that's the left side, that's all there is that's out of compliance on that side. And truthfully, when this happened, I went around to look at other people's fences, and almost everybody has started there. I sound like a kid. Everybody's doing it. Everybody had to start it up a little bit because almost every house has a downspout on the corner, and you couldn't put a post there. if you put the post behind there that leaves a gap for pets to get out and that's the reason i built mine was to keep my little dog in and anyhow so everybody most people have it moved up a little bit granted not quite as much as me but as you can see it's not a i don't think it's a major imposition on somebody. All right, on the right side, I went up. I had to go up nine feet, and again, I understand now that I wasn't supposed to. I didn't know it. My contractor's from out of the county. I was lucky to get him, and if I have to tear it down, I'll have to get him to come back and do that, But it goes out, it comes forward nine feet, and it goes out six feet. And it makes an enclave there to hide my gas tank. And you can see the pictures of it there. It's R1 and R2. and on the left side by the way you can see that you can see on L3 you can see how it looks like from the outside all right so the impact what they're asking me to do is to take down that enclave and take down the part where the gate is and that's going to require me to those posts those vinyl posts are in concrete so i'm going to have to tear the post out of the concrete which destroys them then i have to worry about getting the concrete out or try to figure a way to get soil over it so i can get the grass started and then i have those sections of fence that are in there. I probably won't be able to save those trying to get them out. And then so, so I'll have all that expense and I'll have the expense of labor. And then where these things are, where they don't come out even six foot, they all have to be cut. And when you cut the vinyl, it's made, they've got clips in there where it goes into the post. And when you cut that, they have to kind of jerry-rig the other side of it. And we had to do two of them when we turned the corners, and one of them already came loose twice. He's come back and fixed it. So it's going to be a major impact, major expense. I know that that's probably not anything that you're all, I know it's not your problem. And I know it's my fault. I should have paid more detail at what's going on. So what I'm asking, I know the staff recommended against me, I'm asking that for the best scenario that you let it stand the way it is. And at the worst part, at least let the left side stay where it's just barely out of whack, where I don't have to take down a gate. I don't know what I'll do if I have to move it back, it's going to leave a gap. And so I don't know if you're allowed to do that or not. Got any questions? Mr. Johnson, have you talked to the contractor who built this and said he agreed with what the recommendation was? Well, I'll tell you what. I'm just going to sound wimpy, but I have not. I didn't want to ask him because I didn't want to have a confrontation because if I have to tear this down, I've got no way to do it. I can't. I'm not physically capable of doing it. You couldn't get somebody to come in behind somebody else's work and try to fix it. And the inspector said I was going to have minimal time, and then it could be $500 a day after that. So I couldn't afford to make the guy mad because he's going to have to do the work. So I'll take them at their word that he clicked approved and sent it back. And, again, I don't know why. I don't know. Maybe he didn't read it. Maybe he was in a hurry. Maybe he thought he could fudge a little bit. I really don't know, and I haven't asked him, and I didn't want to know right now. But it just seems like to me that he's as responsible as you are in this case. Well, that's true, but I'm going to bear the expense because I know, I mean, he's just going to deny it all, and then I'll never see him again. And I'll be stuck trying to fix this with nobody to fix it. And he's got a full-time job. He works out of the county. He's working 70 or 80 hours a week, he says, so his wife doesn't have to work and stay home with the kids. I don't want to get him in trouble anyway. So if it's to bear the brunt, I'll do it. But I hope that if you can't approve the whole thing, at least let me keep the gate. Any additional questions? All right, sir, can you have a seat? Done. And I'll entertain a motion. I move that we disapprove PLNBOA-19-15 James Johnson's request for variance to reduce the required side yard setbacks from 3 feet to 0 feet in order to allow a fence to remain as constructed within the required side yard in the planned neighborhood residential zone at 2820 hour tips based on the staff's recommendation. Thank you. Do I have a second? I'll second. We have a first and a second. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, then I'll call a vote. Sorry, sir. you don't have to and i recommend that you uh that you talk to your contractor even though it's going to be an uncomfortable conversation sure The next item we have on the docket to be heard is PLN BOA 19-22 Roman Catholic Bishop Diocese of Lexington regarding 2236, 2240, and 2250 Closemill Road and five nine eight Stratford Drive and the staff has recommended approval so that who wants to come forward stay his name for the record thank you mr. chairman members of the board I'm Bruce Simpson I'm here on behalf of the diocese of Lexington more particular in this case Lexington Catholic high school we're certainly appreciative of the staff's recommendation of approval. We have a couple of folks that will be speaking with you very briefly this afternoon. Yes sir. One quick question. Have you seen the conditions? Yes. Are you agreeable to all those conditions? We do. Okay perfect. Yes. Sure. Absolutely. Steve Angelucci who's the president of Laxin and Catholic is here. You'll be hearing briefly from him about the proposed addition to Laxin and Catholic and the need for it. We also have Jeff Pearson and Maureen Peters who are the architects that are available for any questions that you have might have about the architectural features of the property. We also have Tom Hatfield who's an engineer with EA Partners to discuss our proposed stormwater, the treatment of the proposed stormwater on the site in coordination with the expected widening of Claes Mill Road that's going to take place sometime relatively soon. I've got a few slides that I will share with you. The first one is just like the general overview of the property. Lexington Catholic High School has been on the site since 1951. The houses that surround Lexington Catholic on Holly Hill and Southgate and Stratford Drive. Those houses have been constructed about the same time, 49, 53, 54, and along that line. So this neighborhood has evolved together in terms of Lexington Catholic as well as the homes around it. Prior to filing the application, Steve Angelucci, the president of Lexington Catholic wanted us to reach out to the neighbors and explain to them what we were going to be requesting from this board in terms of this building expansion. The building expansion, the primary focus is to really update the science and technology provision services that are currently on site. and also more importantly to address the needs of some students that need special educational attention with respect to their learning needs. Steve will share more with you about the need in just a few moments. But we had a meeting with the neighbors before we filed the application to educate them about the project and respond to questions. I would say to categorize the concerns that the neighborhoods raised, several, if not most, had concerns about existing conditions. Not surprisingly, when you have an institutional user that's been on site and a neighbor for almost 70 years, if you want to do something different, there may be questions that arise about current circumstances. circumstances. Although I will tell you and I thank the neighbors who are here to express their concerns about our proposal. I think most of them will share with you that Lexington Catholic has been responsive to their request for to respond any given sort of problem. Some of these issues that were raised are beyond Lexington Catholic's ability to control but I think as a general rule the response that you'll hear from from those people who are not necessarily in favor of our request will say that the folks that have administered Lexington Catholic over the years have been responsive or legitimately responsive to any concerns raised by the neighbors. So there were four general categories that we heard we had probably approximately about 45 people from the neighborhood attend the first meeting before we filed the application and the four concerns were number one some existing stormwater problems that we have that mobile microphone the four basic concerns were some existing stormwater which I'll show you in just a moment. Actually, I guess I could lean against this. From the street back here, this is Southgate. The issues about stormwater flooding on Southgate in the street, it ponds up when it rains significantly. The great problem with that is there's no storm sewers in that street or on that street under the street or close to that neighborhood never have been any now the urban county government has got a proposed storm sewer improvement plan it's a little over ten million dollars that's being looked at and designed Josh can illuminate on more of the details if need be we met with Josh Friday along with Greg Lubeck to get more insight in terms of things that might be done in the interim. But the flooding that's existing on Southgate comes primarily from this portion of the property. This is the football field, this is the baseball field, and it drains this way. And there's a drainage pipe that goes out to South Gate which goes into the street. There's no sewer, there hasn't been ever a sewer there since those houses were built in the early 50s. But that's where the water from this area drains to previously before the baseball field and the football field were constructed, Lexington Catholic put in special drain pipes and retaining walls to direct all of the water away from the backyards and put it into a storm sewer pipe located about in here, and then it goes out to Southgate, and if there's a significant amount of rushing water in a certain event, it'll spill over into the street. But the remediation efforts were designed several years ago to take it as much as possible out of the backyards of those folks. That's been an existing infrastructure problem for 70 years. But our proposal. Mr. Simpson, before you get into that, we're just oriented on this map. Generally, the top of that photograph is looking east. Is that right? That's correct. That's east. That's east. This is Clay's Mill Road. This is Stratford. This is Holly Hill Drive. So our drainage that we're talking about, and I'll show you the slide in a moment, is located in here. And all of this water actually drains towards Clay's Mill Road. Now, they don't have any storm sewers either, but Clay's Mill Road is being widened and storm sewers are coming. Tom Hadfield explained to you about how we're going to install pervious pavers to deal with our stormwater issues on this site. But the point I want to make is that nothing we're doing here with respect to this new addition is draining here. This problem is being addressed by the urban county government presently in terms of designing the sanitary sewer system so that this water on the street problem is taken care of. So water in the street was a problem. The second problem was parking. As you might guess, I grew up on Woodbine right between Picadome and Lafayette and trying to find a place to park. During school hours with kids driving has always been a problem. Some of the neighborhoods, including those on Stratford Drive right here, have got permit parking so that on one side of the street you have to have a permit to be able to park there. There are other neighborhoods currently looking at this petition to get permit parking, to limit parking on our streets. Of course, that's a problem for us. And one of the reasons for this application is that we would, if it gets approved, be able to add 36 parking spaces on our property. Towards an effort of addressing the problem of parking cars on the streets during the daytime. On the weekends, obviously, unless there's some kind of activity, that doesn't seem to be a major concern. It's during the day, during the 7.30 to 4.05, thereabouts, is the concern that the neighbors expressed relative to parking. The third concern had to do with they wanted to make sure that our lighting was going to be directed down and away from the property. we undertook a lighting study with an engineer to assess what the current lighting situation was, and we found out we were well below standards and within the zoning ordinance all the way around the property, except for over in this area right here, that Kentucky Utilities has a couple of lights that shine too brightly that have to be changed out. And we're working with Kentucky Utilities to get that changed, regardless of what your decision is today. But we responded to the concern about lighting, and that area will be remediated based on our work with Kentucky Utilities. The fourth area had to do with the removal of actually one current residence, one house that's been served as an office of the president and his staff that's located on Clay's Mill, which is right here, and the house next to it, which has been a daycare center for many, many years, not a residential. use but conditional use in a residential zone and then there's one house here that the school bought last year those three structures would be removed and there would be 36 parking spaces adding all that parking would be internal to lexington catholic there would be no access point to stratford all the traffic would come in and exit would enter and exit in the same direct same access points on Clay's Mill Road there wouldn't be any motor vehicle traffic going on to Stradford that's something that the neighbors wanted so those were the four areas of concern we had a second neighborhood meeting after we filed the application to respond to those concerns and to listen to any new ones that people raised and again we probably had not quite as many I I would say about 30 people attended the second neighborhood meeting, and they really didn't attend the first neighborhood meeting, so we had the same concerns revisited. The parking issue, within our ability to try to manage that, we're trying to do that with the addition of the new spaces. The stormwater issue, it was suggested that maybe there's something that can be done until the government puts in storm sewers back here on Southgate that maybe could direct the water away and stop the ponding impact on Southgate. We met with Josh and Greg Luback Friday to look at that. Tom Hatfield was there. I would say the consensus, and I'll let Josh respond should he desire to do so. So the concern was, well, we may just be moving the water downstream to somebody else's street or somebody else's yard. The streets aren't set up to do some channeling of water, and it may just create another problem for someone else. It is standing water in the street, so it's not standing water that's flooding somebody's house. But if you're driving through it, particularly in the wintertime, you want to address that. Not all of the water that comes into the street comes from Lexington Catholic. There's another area on Southgate up around in here that has water even today. It had it Thursday and Friday because I was out there and looked at it. It's a puddle. You can get by it, but it's water standing in the street. But a lot of this is when the urban county government approved all these houses, they never required storm sewers to be put in. And in some instances, sanitary sewers weren't put in. Now, that's been remediated, but the storm sewers is something that's coming. As I said, the traffic, parking is an issue we're trying to remediate with adding 36 spaces. The height of the building will be actually smaller than what the existing buildings are, so we're not adding any new height. We're not adding on any grass area. this existing area is impervious surface that's asphalt or another building so we're not adding any new storm water there we will be adding some storm water from the removal of the three residential structures again only one of those has been used for actual residents but we have looked at that in terms of designing our storm water management to have what are called pervious papers pavers where the water drains down into the ground and then it's channeled over to a senate or to the storm sewer system when that comes online prior to that it'll be kept in a detention basin or allowed to just filter out into the ground tom tom hadfield can explain more of the details with respect to that the um this is just our this is the current conditions of the property. This is the proposed site plan. This is the building that we're talking about that's being proposed. This is where the parking would be. There's two buildings facing Clay's Mill, as I mentioned. One is the office of the president and his staff. One's a daycare center. and then there's an existing single-family house that the church owns here. And the next slide gets into the need, and I'm going to have Mr. Angelusi, President Angelusi, explain very briefly about the need for this, the type of students that it's designed to serve, and he can also share with you the amount of research and study and fundraising that's been undertaken by Lexington Catholics. so steve if you'll come up and share very briefly with the board about the need and also just review the exterior and interior shots they'll have an appreciation of what we're talking about with respect to this new building good afternoon we appreciate the chance to be here today okay this will never work for me Good afternoon. We appreciate the chance to talk about what we have been planning actually for decades at our school. We finally get a chance to do it. I will also say in the process, I want to thank our neighbors who, despite all of them not being in favor of some of what we're doing, I think the process itself has generated very healthy and productive relationship building and collaboration and discussing issues in the neighborhood. So, you know, we're a school. We should teach, but we should also keep learning. What I'd like to share with you is in 1967, when I was a freshman at Lexington Catholic, I walked in my first science class in a lab that was already 16 years old. Today, those exact same science classes are used at our school. So this is 52 years later. So clearly, we're overdue in need to provide updated, comparable resources for our students that other schools have. The three primary things we're hoping to accomplish with our renovation is a new science center that does just that, that provides new updated resources for learning, teaching, and being prepared for college and life through the sciences. Secondly, seven years ago, we started a program for kids in our school. They're in all schools, but kids who are dyslexic, kids who are on the low spectrum of autism, kids who are dealing with attention deficit issues. By percentages, there's probably a fair amount of people in this room who might fit in those categories or have family that do. So it's a fairly considerable challenge for young people to learn in today's very competitive environment. So we were intent on trying to create resources for those kids with assessed learning differences. So we began what was called the Highmark Center. And frankly, I don't know what slide is next, so I'll, well, this talks about the Highmark Center. This year, out of our 840 students, 253 of them have assessed learning differences in just those three categories that I told you about. So we have now five full-time teachers. We started with one part-time teacher. Seven years later, we're five full-time teachers. 253 kids who utilize the the learning differences resources of the high mark center we also provide free tutoring for all of our students in that center of which a hundred percent of our students used it last year so it's right now we're using an adapted library for a facility that 840 kids are using so we part of our renovation will include a new two-story addition the first floor will be a new Highmark Center. The second floor will be a new Science Center. In some space in between, we will build a student commons area, which if you've ever been at our school at the end of the day when kids are waiting for their parents to pick them up, they have to sit in the hallway on marble floors. So we're gonna finally try to give them a place they can sit, be prepared, do a little homework, be ready for the rides home. So everything that we're addressing on our campus is student oriented for for educating and learning the third need that we're trying and this is the two-story structure that will be added to the back of our school the first floor being high marks the second floor being part of our our Sciences Center third part would be from day one since I've been a Catholic and I've been there now 10 years parking has been a considerable issue and it is in our neighborhoods and we're learning more and more about the issues that that are caused by it we spent a good bit of time in the last few months uh surveying our students surveying our families to find out what what what we're doing what what our uses are i've spent 10 mornings and 10 afternoons myself arriving before 7 o'clock to find out how many cars parked there in the day before we come to school and then how many park after we arrive we put a lot of cars on the streets there's no doubt about it i'm not sure how readily i would want to live in some of the areas where parking is allowed on both sides so So we're going to do the best we can within available resources to try to add parking as well. So this isn't about wishes and wants. It's about us trying to meet the needs of our science program, our learning differences for kids, and parking. So it's long overdue. It's something that we'll be proud to have on our school, but we have tried to take each step along the way with consideration of others. We realize all won't agree, but we have been doing our best to listen and learn from them. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Andrew Lucy? I've got one question, and I'm somewhat familiar with the campus. My son went there. You can drive all the way around in a car. Yes. All the way around the structures. Is there a speed limit on campus? On campus? Yeah. We don't have a posted sign that I know. Yeah. Slow. Now, is there an official one? No. Sure. Yeah. Slow was a good thing. We have speed bumps and speed things to slow down. And fortunately, there are very few long stretches. You know, I'm not naive. I know what teenage drivers can do when they want to try to do it. But it's broken up enough that fortunately it's not a major issue. Okay. I just wanted to raise that concern. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Angelucci? Thank you, sir. Thank you. Mr. Simpson, you want to give us a quick wrap-up? Sure. Just to go through, these are some of the interior shots of the Highmark Center to give you an appreciation of what the interior looks like. University of Kentucky, the Gatton Center has a similar feature as this. This final shot is the proposed architectural design of the parking area where the three units currently exist. This is only a partial view because this would be Clay's Mill, this would be Stratford. Down here would be, and I'll back up and show the site plan, a house that's owned by Ed Dove, who's sitting to my right, down here, and talked to Ed about his concerns, listened to his concerns about the parking lot, and of course he'll be here in a moment to express those concerns as well, that the school would be willing to work with him on any kind of meaningful screening fence, combination of brick columns or brick fence along with landscaping and vegetation to screen the parking lot from from his home he backs up to Catholic that and if we go back there's about 15 or 20 houses that back up to Catholic there's about eight or nine that back up to the current parking there would only to be one house, it would be Ed's house, that would have to be backed up to the proposed parking area. But again, we're trying to, and we've talked to Ed about meeting, should this be approved to work out appropriate screening and buffering so that he can't see it. Obviously this will be a much quieter neighborhood. It'll be well maintained. Two other concerns that were expressed by the neighbors one was the there was lacrosse balls that were going through the netting and it was actually we found out a gap we fixed that and then there were concerns expressed about one neighbor who's here today relative to trash and debris that actually got in between two fences but we've in response to that concern the school is instituted through its in school detention program to have students regularly monitor that area and pick up anything as well as pick up anything on the streets around it that may come about after a football game. Again, as you might imagine when you have a change then people come up and raise concerns and that's appropriate and we've done our Catholic has done its best to deal with those. Also in response the school set up a direct communication email through the neighborhood Association so if anybody in the neighborhood has any complaints like these to make them immediately so that the school can respond to them in a timely manner. I'm going to hold off on the stormwater that gets in the weeds but I want to represent to you that we have engaged engineers we have met with the urban county government engineering department to deal with stormwater runoff we believe that we've come up with specific solutions to address and it's just again these three lots here all this one will go into the drain in this area to deal with stormwater impacts so no one has any adverse impact from stormwater there's no traffic going to be generated directly on the Stratford Drive the height of the building is going to be less than what the current structures are so we believe we have addressed all that we can up to this point but i think the neighborhood people will say to the extent there are any issues that do need to be addressed catholic has demonstrated in its history uh responsiveness to deal with those and so uh amanda bledsoe is the council member that's um for this area and i know she's been involved in uh examining all of the land use issues and the impact that this may have or not have which we believe we've addressed i know she wanted to share her thoughts she's a council member for this district and so i'd ask amanda to come and speak at this time mr simpson before you leave go back to that uh that rendering of the showing the corner of clay's mill and uh stratford sorry right uh right there yeah are there sidewalks on strat yes Yes. And are there sidewalks on Clay's Mill? No. There will be sidewalks with the new proposal. Okay. And that image or that rendering shows landscaping and fencing and looks like a brick wall. Is that going to be, is that part of the plan as well? Yes. Okay. And I just got Ed just informing that there is a sidewalk on Clay's Mill right now that may have to be moved because there's going to be a widening of clays mill when they put in their new road and they put in the new storm sewer but yeah what we're representing here is what we're committed to uh to putting in and then whatever we can work out with mr dove on effective screening for him yeah the uh between the sidewalk and the street shows a a substantial apron or or or collar or whatever you call that. I haven't been by there recently, but I don't recall that it's that generous. Between the sidewalk and the street on Clay's Mill side. This side here? Yeah. I'll let Maureen or Jeff come up and address, I don't know, specifically the feet, how far it is from the street. You can pull up the aerial. Sorry? Go back to the aerial. Ariel. There you go. Right there. Yeah. Because those houses have front yards. They face on Clay's Mill right now. Thank you. Yes, sir. Welcome, Ms. Bledsoe. Greetings. Thank you for having me. I'm here on every issue and every side of this particular request. I represent a number of people, obviously, around Lexington Catholic and Lexington Catholic itself. So one of the things we started doing a year ago was start having regular meetings between, I see myself as kind of an intermediary, between the neighborhood concerns, administration concerns, and trying to make sure those bridges are gapped as much as possible. And I will say Lexington Catholic has done a number of initiatives, the email. They've made their dean of students available. They have had kids go out and move their cars. We have called on behalf of them, had cars towed ourselves. I feel like the relationship between the two organizations is much better, much healthier, and very transparent. As you can see from this particular side, we have Lexington Catholic, Clay's Mill Elementary, and Mary Queen, which you cannot see, all in this area at one time. That's three schools in about a block and a half. So traffic, congestion, kid safety is really, really important to everyone there. So a year ago, we started looking at how can we make this, we're going to expand Clayton's Mill Road. How do we make this as safe as we possibly can? In doing so, we engage Lexington Catholic with asking them to redo their traffic plans, look at what they can do to make it safer for kids crossing back and forth. They actually have started paying for a crossing guard last year to help it be safer for everyone in the area, which has been very, very, very helpful. So the road will change substantially once Clay's Mill is expanded, and that will cut into a lot of that gap, as you were noticing earlier. The stormwater issue has been around for 30, some 40 years. And there's a reason that's a $10 million. It's the largest stormwater project Lexington has ever had, actually. And there's a reason it's taken so long time. It's very complicated. You can't just tear up people's homes, tear up the streets, and put in stormwaters. It's extensive. It's intense. It's going to take us a while. I wish it were done yesterday. Unfortunately, it's not. I'm just here to say that we're working on it, and our plan is now in the development stages, design phases, and we hope in the next two, three years to have construction on those roads to improve the stormwater project in the entire area, which is desperately needed. The last thing I'll just say is I really appreciate the neighborhood has been working very diligently to share their concerns, very proud to be with Lexington Catholic, and they've been very proud to be trying to be responsive. So I appreciate both sides working together. parking is the number one thing that we have complained about a number of times. Mary Queen has really eliminated a lot of the parking that students used to use. They are separate from Lexington Catholic. That was not their decision. And now we have more cars on the side streets. As you can imagine, there are roads, two sides, very complicated. And if we went to one side parking, while that might be helpful to a certain extent, it pushes those same cars to the next road. So putting cars on that property is very, very important. One, it reduces the safety issues and it allows people to be more careful on the road. We've looked at a number of traffic calming issues we'd still like to do to try to slow people down. As people know, they run to school late, and as a parent, I am just as guilty as running my kids to school late. Parents are just as much of a problem, honestly, as the student drivers, maybe even more so after some of the, I'll say, visual work we've done to try to figure out what's going on. So they're working very hard to help make this a safer environment, And if we can have some parking for students, that would be very, very helpful. And the second thing, obviously, making that entranceway very pretty. When you're coming down Clay's Mill, you're going to walk straight into that. And for the neighborhood's sake, it needs to be a gateway that's presentable, that's lovely. They've been working very diligently to make sure it looks as an asset to the neighborhood and doesn't look like a bunch of parking. So I appreciate Lexington Catholic's efforts on that behalf. That's all I'll say. Good luck in your decision. Best wishes. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair, members of the board, that concludes our presentation. I don't know if there's anybody here that wants to speak in favor. We didn't ask people to come down, but if not, then obviously the people that have concerns, it'll be their turn to speak. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Any questions for Mr. Simpson before he sits? Thank you. Okay, at this time, who here would like to speak today on this matter so I can just get a count? Raise your hand up high. Don't be bashful. one two three four five that's not bad so I'd like to go ahead and have people come up usually like to limit discussions to about three minutes I'd like to keep repetitiveness down so if someone's already mentioned a point I'd like to avoid duplication that way we get all the issues out rather than hearing the same issue three times I'd rather hear three separate issues and so So whoever wants to come up first, all I need is come on up and then state your name for the record for me for the minutes. My name is Frances Stokes. I live at 590 Stratford, which happens to be two doors down from the proposed parking lot at the corner of Stratford and Clay's Mill. I started out with much fewer notes, but I've been jotting since I've gotten here. first of all mr. Simpson stated that it was a daycare center at the corner of Clay's Mill and Stratford but in fact it is a family who lives there and does in-home care childcare so it's not one of these big formal ones that has kids there all the time the second comment that I wrote and Amanda Bledsoe addressed this somewhat is that there is a huge problem with student drop-off at the corner of stratford and clay's mill they're also holly hill and fairfield the parents tend to be quite rude they you know they're just rude anyway um so i have a couple of questions i have to apologize because i did not make the second meeting at lexington catholic because i had the flu and they didn't want me there so um one of the questions i have you all ready because i know they get a rebuttal right okay so i would like to know the timeline for constructing the parking lot when do they plan to take down the houses when will parking lot be completed because i have heard through the grapevine that it's going to be a construction staging area for the construction of their addition so please address that when you come back up with your rebuttal i would also like to know how many net parking lots parking spots will be gained because how many will you lose with the addition and how many total will be in the new parking lot they say 36 are added i want to know if that's net or gross okay um next that question um okay so the timeline the parking spaces okay Okay, so my next question, and I am not familiar with this process. I've never been to one of these meetings before. But as of this morning, the house on the corner of Clay's Mill in Stratford, which is 2236 Clay's Mill Road, is still owned by DMCGL LLC, Care of Charlotte Lundegren. Is it common for an entity to ask for a conditional use permit for a property that they do not own? Okay, so you all can address that. Okay, so my general comment then, this is kind of my sum, is I have lived in the shadow of Lexington Catholic for 14 and a half years, and they have been less than ideal neighbors. Now that they want to expand, they have poured honey into the neighborhood and the neighborhood association, including giving the Rosemill Neighbors Association a generous $1,000 check. While I appreciate their efforts to become better neighbors, I do not want to live near a parking lot and a construction zone. And I am extremely concerned about student safety in the area. Not only the Lexington Catholic students, but the Clay's Mill Elementary and the Mary Queen students as well. as their proposed construction coincides with the widening of Clay's Mill Road and the storm sewer construction on Stratford and Southview. Thank you for your time. Thank you, ma'am. Who'd like to speak next? My name is John Cobfleisch. I remember going to a community college in Louisville, Kentucky in the late 60s, and they asked the director to describe his students, and he said they all have two legs and four wheels. I went to a Catholic high school in St. Matthews, Kentucky, and I'm familiar with parking or the problems. I live at 593 Stratford Drive, right two houses down from Clay's Mill. I've lived there since 1979. I've seen the growth of Lexington Catholic High School. They keep adding things. In the main, they're a good neighbor. Don't have a problem with them. First, they were parking on both sides of Stratford, which created a real problem. You couldn't get emergency vehicles down the road. With the help of the council person and people from Lexington Catholic, we got where we had parking on one side of the street. In many ways that solved it. Then somebody who lived on the side of the street where they parked the cars got a petition to put permit parking. I wasn't in favor of that, but I bought a permit. And now the only real problem I have is at drop off time, if I happen to be trying to come in and going at one of those times. Other than that, and for the most part, it's an inconvenience. But my bigger concern is the fact that it's going to change the character of the neighborhood. We had houses on two sides of the street. The house that's, the 598 house has recently been renovated, is in good shape. It's the character of the neighborhood that I'm more concerned with. Right now, I don't live across the street from the school. I live across the street from Mr. Dove. I see his house. I don't see the school. It looks like, and I believe, they wanted to buy his house. I believe they want to buy all the houses on that side of the street. They seem to be landlocked, and that's one way to expand the size of their campus by purchasing those houses. And it's like the camel under the tent, got his nose under the tent. And I'm thinking that's what's happening here, and for that reason, I wish to oppose it. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Who'd like to speak next? Come on up. Hello. My name is Rebecca Kuntz. I'm the president of the Rosemill Neighbors Association since January. I live at 2508 Windsor Court. I've lived in Lexington 23 years. Love my street, love my neighborhood. Since becoming the highest paid volunteer, our neighborhood association has since January grown by 60 members and more are on the way. We just did our first Rosemill Buzz newsletter and that went door to door because a lot of people don't want to be on Facebook and online. and there's a lot of older neighbors in in rosemill that uh had not been privy to the fact that there's a new strong neighborhood association that is on it and kind of killing it right now so one of the first things that i did was meet with mr angelusi in december before i officially came became, you know, King Dingaling of a neighborhood association, and I met with him, and I said, listen, I know there's been some beef before. I know that the whole Stratford thing was a hot mess, and it was before my time. I was raising kids. I was not paying attention to the neighborhood. I was too busy, and so now I've got all this time, and now I've jumped in with both feet, and it's very enjoyable and it's noble work you know making our name i love my neighborhood i love this town so uh you know i'm not gonna mr angelucci has been totally decent and totally um receptive and we clocked each other right away i feel i think he's a genuine guy and i think he thinks i'm a genuine person so that's good we've had really good dialogue we talked to amanda bledzo on occasion there's you know general peace in the valley so they had this meeting to show uh to show us um this upcoming plan which you know i mean we're sitting on somebody's farm right now i mean change is happening you can't stop progress that's the way it is um personally i you know i have i'll I'll keep my thoughts out of that. I mean, whatever. So one of the things that I'm hearing, first of all, when we passed out these flyers, because we hand deliver them, we knock on doors and hand deliver them, and that brought a lot of people out of the woodwork who didn't understand that they have a neighborhood association now who is active and interested and is starting to get influential and being heard and listened to. So I hear a lot of people talking about Lexington Catholic, and the parking is a drag. And it has escalated this year. And Dr. Angelucci and I, as well as a lot of his staff and a lot of our people, have been talking about it and trying things. And now we have a special e-mail, and we told them, and they told us, have them towed. If they're parking jive, have them towed, which we're all about it. We're getting, you know, neighbors have currently put in some petitions to change the parking rules on Holly Hill. And a lot of people, you know, we're trying to figure out, you know, what the heck, Mary Queen, you got all those empty parking spots during the day. And some of the students paid X amount to park there last year, and now they're being charged a lot more because that's a nice income generator. So there's all kinds of stuff with parking. And it's kind of like, you know, I don't want to talk too much about that. What I'm here primarily for is since I've lived here, there is a swamp on Southgate, and it is a mosquito haven. People that live in certain houses cannot park in front of their house because from here to here is a puddle. And so you can't get out of your car, and it's a mess. When it's freezing, forget about it. And my husband's in excavation, and I know all kinds of guys that do that kind of stuff. So I've always known it's there, but it wasn't my concern, and now it's my concern. And I learned what went down with why that street is a swamp, and it was kind of jive. It was like, I know that when we built the garage, we had to jump hoop, hoop, hoop, hoop. Inspectors coming all the time, and that's, I get that. But I've had several engineers say, that's bogus on Southland Drive. I don't know how that got passed, but basically you've got your football field, and it's got all this appropriate stuff at the bottom, and you don't want your football field to be a drain. So this pipe is going from the football field down to Southgate. Ma'am? Yes. That's not 100% germane to what we're talking about today. Well, it is when you're talking about adding another potential flooding situation to now the top of Stratford, because Lexington Catholic has gotten this, those neighbors have had it. I understand, but. It's flooding, and now you want to put more, they want to put another potential thing that might not get fixed. So one of the things that we brought up with them was, can you fix this? Chronic problem before you make another potential problem. Well, I think Ms. Bledsoe has discussed the city is working on trying to fix Southgate. I understand, but my understanding- But they're not going to get a permit from the city today unless they do not increase the water going other directions. It's an easy fix, number one, from what I understand. But that's not what we're here about today. We're not here to discuss- My neighbor's causing flooding and my neighbor wants to get bigger. That's what I think we're talking about. That's why they pay me the big bucks. Yeah, but that's not particularly what today's issue is. Today's issue is putting in a potential parking lot in a building on the other side of the property. Right. Does not appear to increase any water going to Southgate. Well, it doesn't appear to. that's the thing you know this this due attention being paid to this well i'm paying due attention to it too i want to hear like in legit thing that they're going to address this before they potentially have another clays what i'll do is we've got people from the city here they can discuss how it works with getting a permit for this new addition to control the water from what is being created by the new application but from my understanding when you have a structure or a business or something and you're going to do some remodeling and you're going to update if you've got existing problems the right thing to do is to fix those before you potentially add more i can tell you right now the city is not going to look at the southgate problem water issue when looking at this they'll look at the new application they will look at the waters being created by the new application it costs like 200 bucks to to shoot grade on that street it could be a the the easiest cure would be to lower a couple of curbs and grade on that street that it's not you know building a piano and okay i know that that never would have gotten passed if it hadn't been for the weight and the pull that Lexington Catholic has. We love them. That's one of the reasons, that's one of the many reasons we all bought there is because the schools, and they're good neighbors, and we want to be too. But we've got a health thing. Every year it's a swamp. And now the folks are thinking it's going to be another one with this parking lot, and we want to be assured that it's not. We have taken note of your concern on Southgate. If you could, we can move on to the next issue. As your three minutes has gone up, I would like you to summarize and bring up your other points. Well, at least I'm on record because for years we've been trying to get this fixed. And now we're getting another potential problem. So, boo. I mean, they're cool, but that situation is jive. Thanks. Next. Hard act to follow. Mr. Chair, Board, Bruce, I'm Ed Dove and as was mentioned, I live at 594 Stratford right next to where the proposed parking lot will be. However, I'm also, I mean, yeah, do I have a vested interest? Yes. Do I want a parking lot next to my house? No. But neither does my neighbor at 509. Neither does my neighbor at 593. Neither does my neighbor at 597. Neither does my neighbor at 593 if I said 509. If you look at the recommendation for approval, the second sentence says, affects public health, safety, welfare, or the character of the general vicinity. John addressed the general vicinity. Last Saturday was a beautiful day. And I went outside. I recently had surgery. Couldn't go outside much, but I went outside. Went outside my front yard. And what did I see? I saw people mulching their yard. I heard kids screaming and playing in their yard. I saw people walking up and down the street with their dogs. I saw a neighborhood. A neighborhood of people who some have lived there for more than 40 years. That is going to be destroyed because of expansion of a parking lot. Is it admirable that a Catholic wants to expand their program? Yes, it's very admirable. Very admirable. But what they did tell you in their presentation is they explored other options before deciding to tear down 598 to the corner of Clay's Mill. I did not hear Mr. Simpson, Mr. Angelucci, once say we explored other options before destroying the neighborhood. The other thing is, they mentioned comparable resources. We want to have comparable resources. So does Dunbar. So does Lafayette. So does Henry Clay. So does every high school in this city want comparable resources. But they don't take people's property to get comparable resources. They increase tuition. We get taxes increased. We get punished because they want comparable resources. This is a neighborhood. Parking lots destroy neighborhoods. Yes, they're going to make it look pretty. Yes, they're going to make it lighting so it doesn't bother us. But what about the tranquility of the neighborhood? What about during the day when 36 cars come in and out of that parking lot? About the slamming of the doors, the kids playing, I mean drivers playing their music while they get in and out of their cars. Does that not bother the tranquility of our neighborhood? What about, you know, I normally have three minutes, but they mentioned the parking. Yes, Holly Hill, some of those other streets have parking issues. I totally agree with that. Stratford doesn't have a parking issue. We may have drop-off and pick-up issues, but we don't have parking issues because we took the step to get the permit. Maybe that was a little bit of an intrusion, but we don't have that problem. Stratford is a quiet street. Stratford is a street that doesn't bother anybody. Why did he pick Stratford? Because they didn't think they would scream, didn't think people would holler, didn't think we were the neighborhood that would sit by and let them destroy. No, we're not. There was a famous philosopher, a famous singer that once said, they tore down paradise and put up a parking lot. That's what Catholic wants to do. Our homes are our paradise. Our neighbors are our paradise. And they want to tear it down and put up a parking lot without any other option being considered. So I would ask you at least to consider at least the welfare, the general welfare, the character of the vicinity. And whether it's a beautiful parking lot or an ugly parking lot, a parking lot by any other name is a parking lot. And it destroys the vicinity. It destroys the tranquility. It destroys the neighborhood. So I would ask you to disapprove the application. Thank you. Mr. Dove, before you leave the podium, I've got a question. You said explore other options. What other options would- Well, if we could put the sign back up or put the overlay back up, I don't have the campus, if you could put that overlay back up, I could show you. I mean, I'm not sure if it's a viable option or not, but we haven't even heard. Can we do that? Look in the back. There's a baseball stadium. There's a football stadium. Did they even consider taking some of that area and making it a parking, 36 parking spots? You didn't hear it. Mr. Glover, you mentioned that you can drive all the way around there. What about off-campus facilities? Have they ever explored off-campus facilities? They want to inconvenience us by making a parking lot when look how much acreage they have in the back. That baseball field, I mean, come on. I don't know how, I mean, we see the infield, we don't see the outfield. I mean, it can't be more than 350 feet, 400 feet from home plate. That's behind it. Why don't they put 36 parking spots right there? That's never been mentioned. Why do you take people's homes and destroy a neighborhood to keep your baseball field or your football field? Because it brings in revenue. They don't want to hurt their revenue source, but they want to hurt us. I applaud having special needs issues for the kids. I applaud it. But not at the expense of a neighborhood. Thank you. Any more questions? Thank you, sir. Thank you. Who's up next? I think that's it for us. Oh, I'm Noah's house. I'm sorry. Please state your name for the record. Mr. Chairman, my name is Chatham Talalkar. I live at 581 Stratford Drive. I've submitted written comments and my slideshow that I'm going to present and a draft plan about the that shows the plants for clays mill road in this area it's a little busy but you'll get there are a couple of important things that you might want to take note of in that plant so as you have probably gathered by now the relationship between lexington catholic which is the largest institutional user in this area and the neighbors has not always been very copacetic there there has been some tension there um i do applaud the the current administration over the last few years they seem to have generally made good faith efforts of course having i i've lived in the neighborhood since 1975. i grew up there went to school at lafayette i was not always a model student to the neighbors at Lafayette so I understand that there are certain things that the school is not going to be able to control and we should not hold them accountable for that. That said, I hope that this project can begin a new chapter of if not cooperation then at least mutual mutually assured non-destruction with the neighborhood. so i did not get notice of the first meeting so i don't i may not have all of the facts i did attend the second meeting and that lexington catholic had and my comments are based on promises and statements that were made at that meeting i do not i have not seen the development plan that was filed so I don't know if those comments and promises are reflected in the body of that application or not. So to begin you'll see just a general orientation. This is the corner of Stratford and Clay's Mill looking north. You can see Lexington Catholic is generally on the side of a hill and the top of the hill is Holly Hill Road. So Catholic is kind of at the top of a minor watershed. And generally, whoops, which way is forward? Okay. Generally, so this is looking west, and you can see again the downward hill, the downward slope towards that corner this is kind of a local drainage point for the areas in in consideration generally the property drains though in two directions the the back part of the property of the current 10 acre lexington catholic property drains towards southgate drains towards the ball fields and all of that is it is collected into a 12 inch pipe drain pipe that empties onto southgate drive the eastern part of the property drains towards clausmo road and that runoff is is directed towards three retention basins along clausmo road let's see And the, so those are the two directions that the property drains and generally it drains north. The hill, as I said, starts at Holly Hill in the north and runs down to Wolfram Creek in the south, or Holly Hill in the south to Wolfram Creek in the north. So that's the general orientation of the property. So the reason I mention that is because the three houses that we're talking about are at the northernmost boundary of the project area. So they're potentially, if the project disturbs the existing stormwater flow on the 10-acre property, that is probably going to end up downhill at the three houses that are proposed for demolition. And so that is one of those minor details that needs to be accounted for in the planning and the calculations. Unfortunately, those calculations don't even begin until after you all have approved it. And so we're in a bit of a difficult situation. After the end of years, which I think is the last public comment, I'm going to have the city speak a little bit on the process of how that works. Because generally, they will not approve a plan that creates more water issues than they have today. Yes. Yeah, and I'm going to get to that. I'm glad to hear that. So this area of Stratford, this is that same corner but looking east down Stratford Drive. This area does not have major stormwater problems. That puddle there is due to people carelessly cutting that corner and including construction vehicles and large delivery vehicles and garbage trucks and whatever, and that's probably a curb problem more than a stormwater runoff problem. But part of the reason that this area does not have stormwater problems is that the existing stormwater management facilities intercept the water that's running downhill and direct it to the retention basins. Also, there could potentially, this project, depending on how it plays out, it's been mentioned that these three houses that are being torn down will be replaced with a lot with permeable pavers and stormwater storage underneath. There's a potential issue with that because it could affect subsurface flows. And subsurface, you know, Lexington is built on karst. It doesn't have the kind of slow drainage that you would find in a sand and gravel kind of situation. It's got potential channels that water runs directly through very quickly. And so there are houses here in the neighborhood, for example, that seem to have been built on springs, where once it rains, they'll be pumping water out of their basements for the next seven to ten days. And so that's another technical issue that's one of those details that I don't know if you can adequately address or not, but that we would like to address to keep this from becoming a problem area like they have on Southgate. So let's see. So this is the Lexington Catholic parking lot, the northwest corner of that lot. And you can see the, I would point your attention to the curb that redirects the stormwater running north and the swale as well that has that same effect. There's the swale. That's, you can see from the general orientation of the property that everything runs north. everything runs downhill for that whole parking lot along the entire frontage of Glazemill Road. And these are the retention basins that it's directed towards. The basins seem to be working adequately, but it was mentioned at one of the public meetings that some or all of these might be removed, which kind of begs the question of where that stormwater is going to be directed. Presumably, it's going to go downhill. And, you know, so we would need for all of that to be accounted for whenever they develop their stormwater management plan for those three houses, not just stormwater that falls on the three houses that they're going to have to account for. as potential additional runoff from whatever the final grading and condition is for the rest of the property, for the 10-acre property as well. So I've suggested, I've recommended or suggested conditions that might help address that. And one of them is for stormwater calculations for the subject properties should include the entire watershed at post-development grade and condition. There is going to have to be some regrading in order to allow vehicular access to the parking lots that they want to install. And that's probably going to have some stormwater impacts on those properties. And so that all flow volumes now directed into the detention basins that will be removed are accounted for as well. Also, on-site storage volumes should be calculated. So one of the issues is that this parking lot is at about 18 to 24 inches higher elevation than Stratford Drive. I did not have a slide of it, but on the Clay's Mill Road plan, there's at all four corners of Stratford and Clay's Mill, there are stormwater inlet boxes. And a stormwater main along the west side of Clay's Mill Road. This property is on the east side of Clay's Mill Road. So they're going to connect their drainage. It was mentioned at the public meeting that they plan to connect their drainage to the stormwater box at the southeast, southeast corner of Clay's Mill and Stratford, and then that'll run through the network into the stormwater main along Clay's Mill Road down to Wolf Run. So that, so the issue there is how much of the subsurface below the pavers can they count as storage? And of course the, uh you can't the pavers let water in but they also let water out we would ask that the stormwater calculation be based on the elevation of the stormwater inlet at stratford drive rather than the existing parking lot elevation because that two feet of water or 18 inches of of elevation can't really hold any water. Let's see. And then the third condition that subsurface stormwater retention detention facilities shall include a safety factor that accounts for loss of storage capacity due to root growth and sediment deposition over time. There's, this is going to be covered over so there's going to be, and it's going to be landscape so there's going to be the possibility of vegetation and sediment kind of degrading the storage the amount of storage capacity and it would be useful to take that into account because otherwise now you know ten years down the road maybe you've got ponding on Clay's Mill Road which is not ideal given the volumes of traffic and especially foot traffic there the okay So, as I said, the devil's in the details, and this is one of the details that is particularly devilish in our neighborhood. This is the much-discussed outlet on Southgate Drive, and you can see through the grates there the 12-inch pipe that drains all of the eastern half of the property. and what this does is it creates Lake Barkley and if you drove there today if you drove there right now you would see a puddle of water stretching from where that sidewalk all the mud is on that sidewalk all the way across the road and and that's that's just after the rain we had today you know so it's it's really I'm a runner. I don't run through that neighborhood because I don't want to get wet. Even after minor rainfall events, there's standing water there. And again, that's not an issue that you can address at this hearing, They accept that the project area does include the rear portion of the property. So there will need to be calculations done on stormwater flows to that outfall pipe. And if there's anything you can do to ensure that no additional volumes are generated, that would only be a benefit to the neighborhood. Ideally, there would be a restrictor plate there that would, if not eliminate, minimize the problem of ponding in that area. But those are details maybe for another hearing. but at least please don't make the problem any worse. So I have gone well beyond my three minutes. I appreciate your patience. I just want to conclude by pointing out that in my time as a board member of the Fayette County Neighborhood Association, working with neighborhoods on zone change hearings and comprehensive plan development, The one thing that has struck me is that the neighborhoods that last and endure and that people want to be in are the ones that people care for. And I hope you have gathered the level of concern and the level of care that exists in this community for our home. And that you will work with us to preserve what we have. Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. One more speaker. Are you in favor or opposition? Oh, next. I'm in favor. Okay. Please state your name for the record. My name is Darren Duzik. I apologize for my informality. I had not intended to attend today and certainly did not intend to speak. I do share something in common with the folks that have concerns over the project in that I live very close to Henry Clay High School and moved there 12 years ago. I knew full well when I moved that I would put up with traffic issues and teenage drivers and parking. issues on the street and I can certainly identify with some of their concerns but I can also tell you taking parking off of the streets around a high school is a good thing I will in two months conclude ten years as a board member at Lexington Catholic I've served it as as its chairman I've served as the chair of the building grounds committee I've served on numerous other committees the basic thing I wanted to offer to you all for your consideration and to make sure that the neighbors understand is that we did not decide to expand and improve the facilities and acquire these homes with the intention of just putting in additional parking. Dr. Angelouci and I, well about eight years ago, our board embarked upon a feasibility study to review whether or not we should stay on our campus or moved to another campus. After about 18 months of thorough analysis, we decided we were members of the community, we grew with that neighborhood, we wanted to stay with that neighborhood, but we still had a need to improve the facilities. Once that decision was made, we employed numerous consultants and their expertise to look at virtually every option feasible on how we could improve the campus, obtain the parking that we needed, and improve the parking situation in the neighborhood. We looked at everything from constructing a parking structure on campus to partnering with the city at Southgate Park to have a multi-use athletic facility and move some of our additional athletic facilities off of the campus. So we went through meeting after meeting with council members and their staff meeting after meeting with planning and zoning staff on all of these different options and all of these different alternatives i offer that to you because the decision was not embarked upon haphazardly and without analysis and consideration for the neighbors it's as i mentioned before being in an environment close to henry clay high school i understand the concerns of the neighbors but i also understand the advantage and the safety issues of taking those cars off the street from the parking from the parking perspective so thank you i have a question yes ma'am you said that you've you've looked at various options about the problem with the parking and the gentleman that lives at 594 stratford brought this up have you considered partnering or coming into some sort of parking agreement with like a church that some nearby uh existing parking lot like a church would have and in coming up with some sort of agreement where you could you know have some park you know some kids park their cars there and maybe bus them there or to the campus yes ma'am our students do park at mary queen which is across the street and i'm not sure exactly the situation i know dr angelucci can answer that and probably mr simpson can as well but i believe that the school pays for those parking spaces well it just seems like a viable idea to me um given that you know parking lots are just an issue they're an issue when you have straight up parking lot then when you're taking residences down for a parking lot it's in a neighborhood that's that's it's a tough issue for us sitting up here at least for me it is i understand and and that's why we we have reviewed all these options this has probably been in the process of going on eight years now in reviewing the different alternatives thank you thank you before mr. Simpson comes up I would like to see if staff or the city would address on the conditions number five it talks about the stormwater management plan and it discusses that with due attention given to existing drainage problems could you speak to the a little bit about what the process will be and can we go ahead and throw the aerial back up so that way if you need to you can point at items yeah so prior to developing the the lots into the parking lot the city would want to see a drainage study that shows what the current runoff conditions are along with the current volume what the watershed is for the for the we would we would see it for they would provide a watershed study that showed the breaks in the property which water goes where. We would want to see the amount of water that's being shed from that area, the existing condition. Then they would have to design their detention basin to hold that water and release it at a rate that's less than what's coming out off the property now. That water would then be either directed, depending on the schedule, I don't know the schedule of this project. I've heard a vague estimate of the schedule for the Clay's Mill widening which this is the last part of the first phase which is tentatively scheduled two years from now for the widening to come through so the pond would either have to discharge the existing detention ponds in front of the school or tie into the new system at a rate, at a flow rate less than what it's shedding now. They have to meet that condition or they can't build their parking lot. So it would decrease any, there's no flooding problems at that corner now, and it would decrease the runoff from the existing condition. That's what they have to meet. Would the same thing occur regarding the two-story addition they're putting? So what we would want to see is, are they increasing the runoff with that addition? And it looks to me, I haven't seen the plans, but just looking at the existing conditions out there, it'd be a new building going over a parking lot. You may lose an island or two, but it looks like they're probably putting those islands back. So I would assume it would be a net change of zero as far as your increase in runoff or even a slight reduction. And I always encourage developers to have a reduction in their redeveloped condition. That way you've got less water going into neighborhoods. And that would be a condition for their permit. Right. They could not obtain a land disturbance permit without providing those calculations to engineering. We would review them against the standards in the manual. if they met the standards in the manual, then they could get a land disturbance permit. And they can't get a building permit until they acquire a land disturbance permit, meet the site conditions set forth in the stormwater manual. Okay, well, thank you. Does anyone else have questions for engineering staff on the water issue? Okay. Okay. thinking that okay that wanted to discuss that I guess now unless anyone says anything else Mr. Simpson you can come up with your rebuttal I did I'm assuming you took notes I did take notes of some of the issues that I think the board and also the public wanted to hear one would be the timeline two would be where you plan on doing construction staging three whether this is going to be gross or net parking and then I think water engineering kind of handled sort of what the process will be on some of the other ones but I do know you brought I believe a special surprise slide that you didn't show us previously I saw you flip to it then flip back maybe a stormwater or the clays mill construction yes and I have something up there you didn't flip to us I'm sorry you had a slide that you flip to the flip back so i'm assuming yeah i've got that and tom hadfield can speak to that of course josh gave an update and we've met with josh and and greg lubeck in connection with our plans i've also got copies of the clays mill road plans here if you'd like to see hard copies too yeah i think i think we probably want to see those on the screen at some point would be my guess mr simpson i'll also like the the the the mr stokes ask the question about who owned the house on on clays mill Let's do with those four. She had four, I think, questions that she had. The first one, the time frame for construction, probably 18 to 24 months, probably started, approved next spring, so about a year away. there would be a on-site small trailer for construction management that would be on one of the parcels to do to do that manage the construction on the site in terms of the net new parking there would be 36 new spaces created with our plan on this corner the The current daycare center is being rented by the people that run the daycare center, and the owners of that property are going to, if this gets approved for use, gift it to Lexington Catholic for the purpose of the parking facility. Again, that building actually faces towards Clay's Mill, as does the current office, which is a residence that's been used as an office for 30 years, I think. So we have a consent letter that we had to file in connection with our application. Mr. Clark, that gave permission for us to file a conditional use application that if we got approved, we would be able to include their property in terms of the new parking. So that's a legal way typically required that we have to do. We've done that. So it's 36 net new parking. We got permission from the daycare to go forward, the owner of the property, 36 net new spaces, and a small construction type trailer on one of the parcels that would allow overall site management while the construction is taking place. When you say parcels, are you talking about one of the houses that are being demolished? Yes. Okay. Be one of the houses. and that would be a standard trailer construction trailer yes and then on the net parking um you're going to lose parking with the new building uh we'll lose a few spaces and that's why we get the net being 36. so staff's agreement that they will get 36 new spaces on this correct they will lose a few where they're placing the addition the new proposed parking i think is 41 so they will net an increase of 36 total new spaces i just want to make sure the record was clear thank you And just to follow up on the comments that Josh made with respect to the stormwater runoff, those folks that have been involved in the development business around Lexington for the last 10 years, once this body would approve the proposal, one of the conditions that's actually number five, is that the stormwater management plan shall be updated and implemented in accordance with the requirements of the adopted engineering manual with due attention given to any existing drainage problems. This plan shall be subject to acceptance by the Division of Engineering. This is a standard condition. We have already laid out our stormwater management plan with the Division of Engineering. Tom Hadfield is prepared to answer any questions that you might have in terms of how we're dealing with stormwater. And again, the problems on Southgate, which from drainage areas come from this part of the property, is going to be handled by the urban county government. And we did, in connection with Rebecca's, her husband, made a suggestion at our neighborhood meeting that we look into the possibility of kind of digging out some of the road to create a channel to direct the water away so it wouldn't puddle. And we met with Josh on that. And Josh, correct me if I'm wrong, but we had some, you all had some questions about whether or not that would actually work. Yeah. Yeah, so I went out there and looked at it. It's extremely flat in that neighborhood, as you know, and it does have a curb and gutter system. The gutter's not in great shape. It's broken in places, one part due to a tree. Roots have come up and popped the gutter. And it's our belief that if you – it would be very difficult to do something like that. There's also sanitary manholes in the street, which kind of dictate the grade. If you lower the pavement, you have a hump for a manhole. Unless you lower the manhole, that just adds cost. And you were just going to take it to another area that already floods. So you're not fixing the problem. You're just moving it to another area. You're still going to have flooding in the neighborhood if you push it down the street. So it didn't seem like that would be a viable solution. A better solution would be to install storm sewer and pipe it away, which is in the development phase right now. Do you all want to hear more response on the stormwater management? Because I can have Tom Hatfield come up and give you. I was going to ask the board if anyone thought they wanted to hear Mr. Hatfield or they had questions on the stormwater issue. It doesn't appear that so. I do want Steve Angelucci to address the question about alternatives in terms of parking that have been looked at over the years. As the previous board chair indicated to you, Lexington Catholic has been part of this neighborhood since its inception. It's not like it just came there 10, 15, 20 years after the houses were built. They all evolved together. And not surprisingly, you've got a non-residential institution. there can be some constraints that take place because it's a more intense use than residential. And as the former board chairs, they looked at the option of like, well, what can we do? Is one of the options just finding another location somewhere and rebuilding? I think that would be a bad option for the neighborhood because then you've got vacant parcel with institutional uses and what's going to happen. So Catholic wanted to work within the confines of their existing property, tweak to the extent they could, not create adverse impact on the neighborhood. I recognize people have different perceptions about how good that relationship is, but from the meetings that I attended, we received a fairly favorable feedback that it was a good relationship. but regardless of all that there's going to be tension and so in this case one of the big complaints has always been parking now i'm sorry ed left but um there were many people in those two meetings who live on stratford that complained about parking that they wanted some relief of people parking on their street even though they have permit parking which means you can only park on the public can only park on one side of the street more neighborhoods are instituting this permit parking. So it's going to be more challenging for anyone to drive to Catholic in the future. But it's there, it's a user, it would be in the best interest of the community to keep it there, tweak it or it can be tweaked with reasonable accommodation and protection for the existing homes. And Cy recognize that can be a challenge. In this instance we're talking in terms of one house on Stratford, a parking facility that we're willing to screen and so he doesn't even and see it with appropriate brick, appropriate landscape, vegetation, whatever Ed would like. We're willing to do that. I've known Ed for 30 years. Good guy. And he expressed serious concerns. Have we looked at other alternatives? And you heard the board chairman say that. We also looked into buying Ed's house. He gave us a price that was twice the amount of what he paid for it. it was just too high to deal with. So he was willing to accept X amount of dollars for the property. We want to work with Ed to come up with something that will satisfy him with respect to screening and buffering. We're sensitive to that. He is the most directly impacted by this one house in terms of a parking, expansion of the parking. but the hue and cry from the great majority of the people is get more parking on your property and less on our streets we can't park we can't control where they park on the street let me have Steve come up and share with you the efforts they've undertaken to negotiate off-site parking this does require the students to cross clays mill Road which is an extremely busy road in the peak hour traffics but steve can you just share with the board what you guys have done with respect to the leasing arrangements with mary queen and the other options in the area that might provide some alternatives for parking sure i bet you've heard the word parking today more than you've heard in your life it's a key issue in our world in our neighbor's world we're well aware of that it's an issue whether we're doing a renovation or hope to do a renovation or not we have for years tried to pursue other options uh prompted largely about five years ago uh harry you remember that time when stratford went to the permit parking uh yet ironically it was a difficult time but it resulted in some good things i'm also aware of another street surrounding Lexington Catholic that is pursuing that effort so every street around Lexington Catholic goes to private permit parking we we may be not a viable school any longer and so we've got to be prepared for that we've got to be more creative with what we do with our own parking the current parking spots we have we've got to figure out ways to incent people to carpool you can't make people do things when they're not on your campus but we can try to incent them i think it would be instead of seniors always getting first in line for their parking passes maybe it's those who prove their carpool so there's got to be some creative thinking on who who gets to park on campus to try to help reduce those mr dusick was here earlier he and i spent a good bit of time looking at some options and one being and he alluded to it we met with the city officials and fayette County Schools to look at converting the the floodplain land behind Clay's Mill Elementary and Southland Park into a combined neighborhood park resource that's bigger modern has more resources and moving our baseball field over there so mr. it mr. Dove was on to something if there's a way we could take something that we use our sports facilities are probably the most utilized facilities certainly in central Kentucky maybe the state of Kentucky so we thought we had something figured out until we started working with parks and rec on their needs and and the scheduling of it and frankly we weren't going to be a very good co-partner because we use it so much they were gonna feel like well we did it with you all and we don't get to use it so unfortunately we thought we had it figured out with that Mary Queen you've heard us talk about that with they lease us 50 spots a year to our students and those are sold out I think I think the best reasonable chance would be to talk to, I think it's Crestview Church on the corner, a block down from there. But the place? True Hope. True Hope. One of the challenges, you can't make somebody do something. So even if that church allows us to have a relationship, and they might. Now, you've got to remember, we'll park in there every single day, all day, that there's just some logistical issues that we'd have to think through. The idea of shuttles, people say, well, why don't you park off-site and do shuttles? Well, for insurance and liability reasons, we can only use a school bus, a full-size school bus, not the typical 18- to 20-person van that you think about when you think of shuttles. And I'm trying to think, how would you shuttle more than once at 7.30 in the morning with three schools arriving at the same time and getting out in the afternoon at the same time? So there's certainly some logistical issues to work through, no matter what we try. But our first option after we, not first option, an option after all that was if we have an opportunity to try to bring them onto campus that we can control, we'd like to try to do that. So there's been a lot of effort and attention to it, I will say. Not being greatly successful at it, but we'll spend a lot of time trying to fix it. Mr. Angelucci, I was going to ask Mr. Dusik, and I forgot, where do you play soccer? on the baseball field or on the football field? On our football field, we play football, boys and girls soccer, lacrosse and girls softball. Okay. It looks like there's more room on the baseball field, as Mr. Dove suggested, but it also looked like it's marked in 10-meter or 10-yard increments. So I thought you might play something other than baseball on the baseball field. Well, it's the flow-over practice field for soccer and football. when football is practicing, soccer practices over there, and then they flip-flop. So we do a lot of switching around on our campus to make 13 acres work. Thank you. Okay, thank you all. Thank you. All right, Mr. Simpson, can we get a quick? Quick. Quick, I understand, and I will be quick. We've tried to be responsive to the concerns that the folks have raised, and I think clearly when we get down to it, we have two houses that have predominantly non-residential type uses that face Claes Mill and one that does have a residential use that's on Stratford, and we're proposing that those houses be used for parking. We still need the conditional use permit for the addition. I mean, it's difficult for an institutional user that's been part of the neighborhood for 70 years to make changes without having some tension. We're trying to minimize the tension with this really one house that's residential that's on Stratford by including that in our parking facility. We need the parking. The neighbors want the parking off their street. We're trying to accommodate that more. as we perceive it more dominating concern to blend in the use of this property that's been in existence for seven years so we hope that you will take in fact fair consideration of the request for the the expansion and the conditional use for these three lots as you deliberate it is in terms of safety of the students and transportation of the students to the school the best option in terms of those critical factors. We believe that we can make appropriate accommodations to Mr. Dove that will eliminate any concern that he has about the parking facility. We can screen it and buffer it to his satisfaction. I'm confident we can achieve that goal. We're not going any further down Stratford. This is it. We're trying to meet a number of different complaint issues and resolutions and public safety for the students as well as the neighborhood by having the parking 36 new spaces on campus. We've looked at all the options, all the considerations, and if you factor in the safety of what we're proposing for these students, we believe this is the best proposal that we're prepared to come forward to the Board of Adjustment for consideration. We would ask that you approve it. I'd be happy to respond to any additional questions. Thank you, sir. Any more questions for the applicant? All right. I have several comments to make, not necessarily for Mr. Simpson. If you want, then I'll close the public portion and we can make comments. Yes. Thank you, sir. So at this point, we're going to go ahead and close the public comments. At this point, any board member who wants to speak or ask questions, we can bring people up if you need to also. Well, let me start this discussion if I might, and I may ramble a bit. It's a, first thing I have to say is that I have some history here, because when a lot of the parking issues came up, I was a council member for the 10th district. And supported the neighborhoods in their efforts to control some of the parking. And it was not a pleasant thing in many ways, but I must say it wasn't the administration of Lexington Catholic. It was parents who were upset about the fact that there was some controls that were being issued. And it was a tough time, a tough time for the neighborhoods, tough time for Lexington and Catholic. And Ms. Coates, I'm glad that the neighborhood association is going well, because that was one of the things we did. We started that neighborhood association again back in 2013, I think it was, something like that. Appreciate that. Let me address the storm sewer issue. One of the major problems that we had in the 10th District during that time was Southgate. It was terrible. It was horrible. So we began addressing it, and as you can tell, not much has happened. And it's still terrible. And all you have to do is look at it when it rains. And it is an issue. It's a serious issue. And I would say that, boy, I wish there was some quick fix. But I don't think there is. And in studying the problem back those many years ago, I realized that the problem was a lot more complex than a quick fix. And I'm sorry about that because that's not fair to the neighborhood. It's not fair to the people who live in those streets. And it's not fair to Lexington Catholic who takes a lot of the blame for it, of course. In this particular case, I do not think that stormwater control is a serious issue in this particular application. I think it is something that we have to be concerned about, and I think the development plans have to take this into consideration. I must say that my relationship with Steve, and Steve's good to see you again. I appreciate all his friendship because I think he was concerned, as I was, about some of the comments that I got during that period. But again, that's not the issue. Permit parking is one solution. And I think it solved some problems, but it also created some problems because it simply pushed some of the student parking to some of the other areas. It's just inevitable that was going to happen. Obviously, the fact that when this neighborhood was created and the Lexington Catholic was built, you did not have high school drivers trying to find places to park. But nowadays, if a high school kid doesn't have a car, he can drive, and many of them drive to school, it's a problem for them. And so it's a problem that's been created that we simply need to fix. One of the things that I said to Lexington Catholic back then is you need to provide additional places for people to park, rather than depending on the neighborhoods to absorb the need for parking. I hope that relative to that, that the idea of permeable pavers will help that. But as Mr. Tallwalker said, that simply drives the water down underneath, and it's still going to create a problem unless it's addressed with the new sewers. So it would be a disservice, I think, to Lexington Catholic because I think they have looked at this carefully. And I hate that this has to happen. I just hate that we have to take houses for parking. But I think in a way to try to solve some of the problems, I think Lexington Catholic has looked at the issue and said, what's the best way to do this? And so I think this is an imperfect solution, not one that any of us really like. I certainly don't, but I think it probably is one way to solve some of the problems. It's not going to solve all the problems, because 36 additional bases are not going to solve this problem. But I think we're headed in the right direction, and I applaud the school for trying to do something about this problem that it just continues on and on and on. It's been six, seven years or so since I was involved in it, and it's still not solved. Maybe this will help somewhat. So that's my comments. Thank you, Mr. Clark. Ms. Meyer, do you have? We have a letter. Any more comments or discussion with the board? I would just like to respond to Mr. Clark's comments. I think you're it's well this is this is a difficult issue and and 36 parking spots it's not going to solve the problem and I'm certainly in favor of the school you know adding the new building but I'm really conflicted about the parking lot I just don't I don't think it's going to solve the problem I think it's going to kick the can down the road and so that's my thoughts on that any additional items all right well hearing none I will entertain a motion this time I move for approval of PLNBOA 19-22, Roman Catholic Bishop Diocese of Lexington's request for a conditional use permit to expand the school for academic instruction in a single-family residential zone at 2236, 2240, and 2250 Clays Mill Road and 598 Stratford Drive, based on the staff's recommendations and also subject to the six conditions outlined. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. All right. Any discussion on the motion before we vote? All right. Hearing none, please register your votes. Thank you. I come up to the podium next. I believe Mr. Glover stated that his son was a graduate of Lexington Catholic High School, so perhaps there should be an abstention from the vote. At this point, the vote has been taken, and that is not how our complex rules work. But I appreciate your concern, and I took that under consideration when I elected to hear this case, or when I first looked at the materials several days ago, so I appreciate your concern. Thank you. And I also want to say that the fact that my son went there did not enter into the decision that I made on the application today. Thank you. Which brings us to the last case of the day, which is PLNBOA 19-18, Alan Chow. Am I pronouncing that correctly? It's Alan Chow, and I have one letter for that one. Okay, one letter. And this one the staff has recommended. partial disapproval which I'll let I'll let Alderman start first I think what Mr. Murphy would like to do today is request to hear the conditional use portion first and staff is agreeable to that and then we can circle back to the administrative review portion if we need to otherwise it may be withdrawn yes I think that we've been requested to have a five-minute break so people could use the facilities so while we will take a five-minute recess thank you good afternoon ladies gentlemen sorry about the few minute recess we needed to take at this time I believe that I've been formed by staff that the applicant would like to have its appeal heard first about it receiving approval for that could essentially its approval to have the church facility we have recommended approval of a conditional use for a place of religious assembly and I think that that is the part of the application that should be heard first in this scenario. So then we hear that first if we don't grant that? Correct. If we were to approve the conditional use then the administrative appeal I believe would be withdrawn. If we disapproved the conditional use then it would perhaps be postponed. Or heard today. But I think the applicant would prefer it be postponed. Okay. So Mr. Murphy you're going to make me listen to you and then you're going to postpone? Is that, come up here. Let's let him explain it to us. I am requesting a continuance on the administrative review, and that's because I did meet with the staff last week and discussed this over with them. And I understand the issue, and the issue is that if we were granted this on an administrative review, we might not be, or as staff said, we would not be required to construct a parking lot or other matters. It would just be a statement that we're allowed in the House. We understand the staff's concerned about having some conditions on this, so that I said we would be agreeable to conditions. The only way you could impose those would be for a conditional use hearing, not for an administrative review hearing. So I said that I would ask you to continue the administrative review portion of this and hear the conditional use today, because we are agreeable to conditions on this, which, as the staff has pointed out, you may or may not be able to do on an administrative review portion. But just to be clear, the administrative appeal is being, you want us to continue that to next month? Yes, or generally without a particular date. I won't be here next month. My clients won't be either. So we'd want it either two months or just indefinitely, which means that before we could bring it back to you, we'd have to send out new letters and new advertisements and all that sort of thing before it would ever come back to you. So how would that work, Autumn, if we did? I don't recall us doing an indefinite continuance since I've been on the board. Right. That's not something that we typically like to see. So would you like a 60-day then or two-month continuance? Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. So I guess let's go ahead and discuss whether we should do a two-month continuance on the disapproval of the administrative appeal. Then we will hear the conditional use application. Correct? Is that? I think that if, correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Murphy, if the conditional use is approved, will there be a need for the administrative appeal? That would basically be moot, and we could withdraw that. So I think it would be best for the board to not act on the administrative appeal until we have acted on the conditional use. I think we can just procedurally go ahead and do the conditional use first. We intend not to hear both today. Correct. That's correct. Okay. All right. I can live with that. Okay. So this brings us to PLMBOA 19-18, Alan Chow regarding 130-134 Northwood Drive. Mr. Murphy is here and he has, the staff has recommended approval based upon six conditions. And you and your client, have you seen those? I have seen those, and we are agreeable with those with one slight modification to condition number two, which I can discuss as part of my presentation, Mr. Chairman. I can hand that. I can hand out the proposed change as well. And we're putting it up on the screen right now. Staff has seen this condition and is agreeable to it. I'm not sure if the sheet Mr. Murphy is handing out has. We did change one word separate to consecutive. but this would be a swap for the existing condition number two if I may let me give you a little background to explain the reason for the change here and part that i'll have to explain our proposed use on this property mr chair i do represent alan chow alan is the president of the temple wat sitarum which is a buddhist congregation here in lexington his brother lon who's also a member was with him but had to leave we have there's a couple other people supporting us in the audience i think mr gene williams mr jerry sullivan chas height is as well as is here with me and this is a as i said the local buddhist congregation and the house will be used primarily as the residence for two buddhist monks and i did not know much about the buddhist religion when i started this it does not have meetings like a a christian would. It's religion and cultural instruction. The monks' purpose here in Lexington is to train Buddhist families in the cultural and religious practices of Buddhism. And the monks go to individual houses to work with families on those issues. About six times a year, about six times a year they have group meetings if you will i'd call them potluck dinners the monks bless the food and the families come and bring food and share it during a three to four hour period the individual family may not stay all three to four hours they may stay an hour and a half and leave and another group may come in. And we have about 25 active members in the temple here. As I said, the families gather for a potluck meal. They may have meetings on consecutive days. They may assemble on a Saturday and then on the next Sunday. They only do this about six times a year. So when we got to the condition about the approval number two, it currently says gatherings shall be limited to no more than 40 participants, which we are fine with, once per month on Sundays. Well, the Buddhists don't meet only on Sundays. They may meet on Sundays, may meet on other days, especially near the new year. They don't meet once per month. They meet quarterly, once every three months, plus they have meetings near the New Year's and maybe once another time during the year. So that's why we request a change to, say, no more than 40 participants six times per year. And it said gatherings may include activities on two consecutive days. Now, if they did two consecutive days six times a year, obviously that's 12 days, which is the same as the condition as proposed by the staff. It's just grouping those meetings differently. Rather than once a month, we may have consecutive days at one time, but only do that every two to three months. So it works out to about 12 days. And I've discussed this with Mr. Chow and the temple, and they are agreeable to it. I was somewhat surprised because a lot of other religious groups would not agree to a limitation on a number of times like that, but they did. They understand the concerns out there. I want to tell you a little bit about the property here, if I could as well. I have a few photographs, if we could put them up. This is the house on 130 Northwood Drive. There is an addition to the rear, which you can see behind it. I bring this up to show you that to the east of us, Northwood Drive is up here. The rear is back here. To the east of us, there are touristy lots which were purchased by the urban county government 10 or so years ago for flood control. Houses were demolished. new houses cannot be built on this property so that is a buffer area if you will over on the east side this is the another look at that same buffer areas i had this is looking from the street toward the rear of the property there's a concrete block wall on the rear of the property which i don't know if that was constructed by this there's a shopping center right across the other side that may have been constructed by by them or may have been constructed by someone else years ago this is looking the other way on northwood this is across the street from us just had this shot in here to show you that the city had bought these three lots as well which are going to be open space and that is up to looking up to constitution park which is just to the north of us this is another shot of of houses on northwood drive it's a residential drive there are predominantly one-story houses there there are a couple larger ones like this one this isn't our house but this is one to the west on northwood drive this is immediately to the south of us this is the shopping center which adjoins us in the rear this is the center where fitzpatrick furniture is next shot shows you we're more behind toward the end there's a hydroponics or something store there and a comic book and that sort of thing store on the end and this is looking at the end this is looking at our property on the other side of the fence there I want to discuss traffic a little bit. This is a picture of a street sign, a few houses to the west of us along Northwood Drive. Northwood runs all the way between Old Paris Pike and Bryan Station Road, right? Parallel to New Circle just north of it and with the commercial immediately to the south. the city has installed a number of speed humps and these are not speed bumps these are real speed humps and as you can see they warn drivers before they come in tell them it's 15 miles per hour we have speed humps on either side of our property there's about six of them in total on northwood drive and that's a picture of one so this is this is a lot wider than a speed bump this is the length of a car you can see on northwood drive near our house i just also have some pictures of i know we are a house in the in the middle of this street there are other churches in the area within about a mile or two in residential neighborhoods this one is on 400 block church of Kingston Road, which is the Church of God. That's obviously quite a bit larger than we have, but it's in the middle of a residential area. There's another one down, kind of click this forward here, down Northwood, excuse me, Kingston Road. If you can advance that, I can't. Clicker seems to have lost power. Well, there's another one down the street on Kingston at the First Free Will Baptist Church, which is in the 500 block of Kingston. That would be about picture, there you go. Yeah, there we go. That's the First Free Will Baptist Church at 500 Kingston. That's a picture of the church. that's a picture of a house right across the street to just give you the residential flavor of that use which is also not this the church is not on a corner lot and then there's another one nearby to that on swigert avenue this is the seek temple that's a picture of the temple there's a house immediately across the street as well just to give you a flavor of and of other churches in the area which are in residential areas. Ours is a lot smaller than any of those. That's the last slide I have here. But we wanted to tell you that to give you an indication of the area and what we're proposing with the property. The house which is under construction was fully permitted as a residential dwelling. They obtained a building permit for a residential use. they understand that they can't use it for a non-residential use without your approval. As I said, the monks will live in the house. I felt that I put the application on for the administrative review because other people have religious meetings in their house without getting permits, but we didn't want to pursue that because we understand the need for the staff's request for conditions on this property. So we are agreeable, basically, to the conditions that have been set forth by the staff regarding getting all our permits for the building, for the parking, doing the screening for the parking, and the lighting issue and the limitation on the gathering. So this will be a small-scale use. I want to mention that there was a larger gathering there in October, and the staff had checked that out after receiving some complaints. There were reports back there were 30 cars parked in the area, and that was because the congregation had invited other Buddhist congregation members from Ohio to Tennessee to celebrate with them. They were there, and they probably shouldn't have been there, but they were there. That was not the membership of this temple that was there. And I wanted to emphasize to you that it is this temple, the 25 members now, the staff has recommended that we limit it to 40 participants, which we are agreeable to on doing. We have 15 off-street parking spaces proposed. That would be more than adequate to handle the parking for this because we understood there were people objecting to parking on the public street. Even though that is allowed, we understand people have concerns about that, so we'll construct a parking lot with 15 parking spaces, which will be more than enough. So, as I said, we're in general agreement with the conditions. We will be holding gatherings here for meals, basically potluck meals here, about six times a year. Very limited use, much more limited than would other religious organizations from different religions at the property. And we're, as I said, we're in agreement with the conditions. Lexington's become a much more international community, and Mr. Chow himself has a very compelling personal story but has promised to devote himself partially to spread of Buddhism. He does the labor on this for free. He's the president of the congregation. Other people donate the materials to do it, but he does the labor for free on this property. And the monks are not in town right now. They're like a lot of us. They go warmer weather during the wintertime. They're in Cambodia right now, and we'll be coming back in a few weeks. but they generally take two weeks off or two months off or are in Cambodia during the winter weather and we'd like to be able to have this up and ready when they get back. I do want to emphasize also alcohol is not served at the events at this house and this is not going to be refugee housing as well. Not that that's a bad idea or anything, but I want to emphasize this will not be refugee housing and alcohol is not served here at the property. So that is our basic presentation on this. We'd be happy to answer any questions you all may have about it. I'd like to ask about the new addition, what that's for. It seems like a fairly large space for resident use. it's large obviously larger than the existing house that was permitted as a residential addition to the house as i said the houses on northwood are smaller although as you saw from my pictures there are some larger two stories that have had additions to them so this is a permitted addition to that house and everybody understands it has to be used for residential purposes unless you approve our conditional use permit today. And as your client opens, we don't have a condition, but we open to a condition that says that this conditional use permit is only for this user and it would be null and void for a transfer? Yes, he's indicating yes. This time I open questions. Any comments to the board members? If not, we'll... Mr. Mayor, I think my biggest concern here is that when I drive down this street, it seems very residential. And putting a parking lot in does really alter the character of the vicinity. And I think that's my biggest concern. And obviously the addition looks odd. like this was intended to be something different than what really it is and so that's my big concern The parking lot was brought up because of complaints in the neighborhood about parking on the street. We could make the parking lot smaller because we do not require that size of parking lot for 40 persons. Normally, 40 people attending a church would require 8 parking spaces, would not require 15 parking spaces. We wanted to show that we had enough to get all of our parking off the street. And Mr. Needham, in response to your question about the building itself, that was permitted before I became involved in this. Mr. Jerry Sullivan is here, who is a friend of the congregation. He and Mr. Williams are friends of this congregation. Mr. Sullivan is an architect and has volunteered to assist the congregation in adding architectural detail to that, which will somewhat change the appearance from what it is right now. If we could go back to the first one. The very first one. This was taken in November, so it's not quite looking like that right now. The addition is to the back of that, to the rear of it, obviously. Well, in reference to Chad's comments about the parking lot and my concerns about parking lots in general, having the last case, just stating the last, you know, from hearing the last case, I'd like to see a different parking lot. I mean, maybe, you know, do we go back to the drawing board and come back with something, that's not so parking lot-ish, let's say, just because it is a neighborhood. And I don't know how the neighbors feel about this. I think we've got people in the audience who would like to weigh in on this, too. So I don't know how we continue with us at this moment. Oh, well, as soon as Mr. Murphy is finished, we don't have any more questions for him. How many neighbors would like to speak today? Were you all sworn in? All right, we're halfway there. So any more questions for Mr. Murphy or does Mr. Murphy, do you have any more comments? Well, if I could just respond on the parking lot issue, as I said, we have more parking spaces than we need, so we have some flexibility there. Our surveyor drew up the parking lot to do it in what he felt was a good configuration, but we're open to other consideration. You do have a condition of your approval, I believe, which our parking lot needs to be approved by the Division of Traffic Engineering. Or if you want to see it again, we could bring it back to you in two months with a new plan. I mean, we're open to whatever you're comfortable with on this. mr murphy before you leave usually or typically we we grant or deny applications from the owners or leasers of the property and you said that mr chow is the president of the congregation or the president of the organization uh so he's not the owner of the property the owner is the temple corporation okay it is the temple watts sataram incorporated which is a non-profit corporation which owns these two lots the lot with the house on it and the lot where we would propose the parking lot the next two lots up which have to be remain open mr chow owns in his own name but they have to remain as open space. So why why is not Temple of Watt the applicant in this case? Well they're the owner and Alan is the applicant in his name. I'll be honest with you I made that call. And I mean I'm I ask it because if Mr. Chow gets hit by a bus you're gonna have to come back and do all this all over again so it seems to me that and i don't i'm not questioning in your your legal judgment or skills because i know it to be you to be very accomplished at this uh but i'm just curious how you made that decision well he applied as president of the temple so i think if you put a condition on there that it applies only i think your condition should be it applies only to the temple wat sitarum which is the owner of the property and um that's what i would have rather than the applicant i wasn't thinking when i agreed to that condition i wasn't registering that he was the applicant as opposed to the temple which is the owner i would i mean that's that would that's my only that's that's more of a comment than a concern anything else mr murphy all right and i question for staff and this may be a question for legal too so in this instance where the applicant is not the owner when we file if this were approved and we file the lur would it be filed in the name of the owner or the name of the applicant because if it's in the name of the applicant a title examiner wouldn't locate it both the owner and the applicant are listed on the certificate of land use restriction as i recall my name is clara craig i live at 380 northwood drive my husband and i have lived there for 45 years and I am in disagreement with the where it says approval of the conditional use should not adversely affect the public health safety or welfare nor alter the character of the general vicinity and I feel with the increased traffic that the welfare of our citizens and our children specifically will be affected and also the fact that this is a single family residential street i think that the character of the of the neighborhood has been changed would be changed as well i'm concerned that the original permit was for a residential addition and as you can see from these photos. The addition is two to three times larger than the house. You can go on to the next one. This is from each side of the house. There are multiple entrances on each side and in the back There are doors that are not visible in these photos from the top. So it seems like it looks more like an apartment building than it does a temple at this time. And I don't understand how a building permit was ever issued for this type of an addition. It just doesn't fit with the character of the neighborhood at all. And I'm concerned about the other activities that will go on besides the religious assembly. I know that Mr. Murphy said that they'll have potlucks and that there will be no more than 40 people attending. But I don't understand why it's such a huge building for so few people that are coming six times a year. And I understand that they already are having gatherings on that end of the street. And I notice in the other things on the agenda today that when things were approved or disapproved, it said that if they were approved, you were expected to get the appropriate permits. Well, in this case, the building permit was received before the conditional use, and that seems a little awkward to me. I know my husband and I have been involved with building two churches on the north end of town, and in each case we consulted with the neighborhood, with the neighbors, and then requested a building permit after, and we didn't start building until that was granted, until the conditional use was granted. So it seems like this was done a little backwards. Also, as Mr. Murphy said, this property adjacent was condemned by the city several years ago because of flooding. and there is a flood if you go to the next one there is a storm drain right in front of 134 and i'm a condition i mean i question the integrity of that storm drain if a parking lot is put there and then as we heard earlier what happens to the water that now soaks into the ground there if a parking lot is put there. And I'm looking at my notes to see it. And I have six additional letters or sheets of paper opposing this conditional use that I brought with me today and have given them to you. And I just, we wonder, you know, we understand from Mr. Murphy that there will be no rehab or refugee, but why the huge building and with all of the entrances? And in summary, I guess I would say that we request that the conditional use permit being considered be denied for the reasons that I have mentioned. Any questions? Thank you, ma'am. Any questions? Appreciate it. I will note a couple things. You can go sit down. a couple things generally um we prefer permission from us prior but that's the the argument is whether they even needed our permission for what they are currently doing which we are postponing potentially to a later date um and the second item as to the building size the building code and for it or a building permit is going to give a permit as long as it qualifies underneath the specifications of you can be this high you could be this wide setback so um i just wanted to make a comment to that and then lastly josh for a property like this does it even need a storm water management plan for the putting in a parking lot yes there's over five spaces so they would have to provide a storm water management plan so they would have to provide attention plan okay we We'd want to see that. Okay. So that would be captured underneath condition number three, unnecessary permits and approvals? Yes. Catch all? Okay. So they would have to have a stormwater management plan as part of their approval process with the engineering department. Okay. Who would like to speak next? All right. You guys arm yourself for it. Hello, my name is Greg Lawrence. I live at 312 Northwood Drive. The first guy who started this meeting was Mr. Green. Is that right? I'm Mr. Murphy. Murphy. I'm sorry, Mr. Murphy. I wish to attack his presentation. His first few photographs go to a lot of effort to make Northwood Drive look like an open territory and not a street full of houses. Number two, he talked about three other churches in the neighborhood or in the area that were built in neighborhoods. Of those three churches, I know for a fact that two of them are on the other side of I-75 and on the other side of Paris Pike. They're about a mile and a half away from Northwood Drive. They're not in the same character or neighborhood that Northwood Drive is in. So I'm saying he misrepresented that. said these are comparable when they are not. My biggest complaint about the whole idea of converting this house into a temple, or whatever you want to call it, is continuing a move of our neighborhood to not be residential. This changes the flavor. And there was a mistake made when those houses were taken out, That changed the neighborhood. It changed its overall feel. But that's going to continue if this house goes in and is converted to a temple with a parking lot. What I'm afraid of is some of the houses have already been bought up by people that rent the houses up. Once this temple goes in with its conditional use, what's to prevent some of these other landholders who are renting their houses out saying, oh, I got three of them together. I'll knock the houses down and put up a 12-unit apartment house. This same problem with changing the neighborhood's character is going to affect what's allowed between Northwood Drive and the commercial buildings or lots that are on New Circle Road. There is a very large group of, I don't know, 14 to 20 acres of open land between Northwood Drive and New Circle Road right now. And I don't want the changes that are allowed by having this temple be allowed to have a church there affect or increase the chances of apartments being put in behind our houses. On the other note about water, I will point out that the area where the temple and the parking lot are are just upstream of a very large retention basin that already exists. So I'm not sure that water runoff from those lots is important. Personally, that's my opinion. I think that's all I have. Thank you, sir. Any questions for the witness? You may sit down. Next. My name is Larry Baines, Sr. I live at 153 Northwood, which is about five houses up from where this property is. I've been there close to 40 years. I have seen flooding in that area, especially since the park has been put in behind my house. There's retention back there that when it gets flooded, water runs pretty bad through the property through there. The retention wall behind this property where it's blocked all through there is being covered up at the bottom instead of being open for water to run through since he started this building. The building does look like a barn in the neighborhood. Not all the houses are that big of a size. I couldn't understand why there's such a big building. I do have a recent picture of it, but I have it on my phone. If somebody would want to see that, I don't see why it's going to be. That should be in our neighborhood because, as I said, for the property where the house is being built, that's off a big place there on that little house to be built for just 40 people there. and plus not only that we have speed bumps on our street because we are a thorough street from paris pike to prine station if there's wrecks on new circle our street is always the one that traffic tries to cut through they also cut through from the shopping center especially delivery drivers we have speed bumps but they still do not slow them down and you'd be surprised how many people come flying over them. It's a I just don't think we should have this in our neighborhood at this time. Thank you, sir. Any questions for the witness? All right, who'd like to speak next? Come on up then. My name is Zach Tyler. I live at 336 Northwood Drive. Just bought a house there at the beginning of the year. I guess this will be short and sweet. I just wanted to say it's kind of hard for me to see how there'd be much detrimental effect from such a small institution as this one. I'm in favor of allowing the conditional usage permit. They plan to have their parking and activities very contained and have shown flexibility in the parking and aesthetic decisions. The visual impact of the house now, I think a lot of it's due to the fact that it's still being developed and i think that seems like it wouldn't be as relevant once that's finished but uh arguments of the traffic and safety don't really seem super relevant to me given the infrequent usage of the facility and that it's located pretty close to the one end of the street and just that personally i'd be happy to see the additional diversity and support the freedom that expression and religion on a local level and that's it Thank you, sir. Next. Good afternoon. My name is Belinda Sanchez. The very first picture that you showed, and you can see that little smart card, that's my house. So my house is adjacent to those lots. My concern is, and everybody's brought the water up, it does flood there. What will happen if it floods and the parking is not correct and it floods into my house, into my yard? It has rained. There has been times when it's rained so much it looks like a little river back there. It's just huge. What is your address? 146 Northwood. 114? 146. I'm right next door. Thank you. The other thing is, I don't know where the 25 people came from, because there are many people that show up on these religious occasions that they have. It's not been just 25. There's been many people. And the parking was so bad, at one point, that they blocked parking people's driveways. They were in front of the hydrant, as well as using my driveway to get into that area when it was a quagmire. so they were using my driveway to come through and the and the cars came all the way to my the edge of my driveway that's that's a big concern for me and if a parking lot is put there as it is there are people that send their are in there with their little four wheelers driving around what's going to happen now when it's a parking lot that's my concern i want to know how is that going to affect the value of my house as well i'm going to be right next door And that's all I have. Thank you. Any questions for the witness? Any other witnesses want to speak? All right. Oh, sir, come on up. My name is Gene Williams. I'm a realtor in town. I own the property that I sold to Allen for 30 years, beginning in 1978. So if I were to contribute some observation would be my experience being an absentee landlord with the property at 130 Northwood Drive. I don't think I was successful in getting the best tenants. So over that 30-year period I probably had four evictions and ran up quite a bill with the city in code violations during a time when I didn't have funds to make those repairs. So what I've noticed and what I think we've all noticed in neighborhoods where the rental landlord-owner balance changes, the more rental there is, the lower the property values are and the more traffic there is and the more complaints there are. So I would say approval of this would contribute positively to the neighborhood's property values and moving one rental house over to an owner-occupied house. The experience would be quite different. In speaking to the size, it just occurred to me, all of the labor is volunteer labor, and the materials are mostly contributed. So I think this is added to the exuberance that Alan has done with his building. I think he overbuilt, but he stayed within the confines of his permit. But, again, the property is no longer a rental property, and the property would be owner-occupied, and I think that's beneficial to the neighborhood. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Any more questions? Oh, come on up. Jerry Sullivan, an architect. I volunteer my services to Alan if he does need to make some revisions, make it a little more suitable. I've also been to a couple of the congregational events. I might preface that with the fact that I was fortunate when I was younger to travel as part of my education and visit other countries and see how they practiced religion. And Buddhism was one of those religions, especially in Asia and China. It's hard to find those type of congregations in Lexington. So it's nice to know that there is a place where you can practice Buddhism. But to the number of meetings that they have, I'll just say that they're really a wonderful congregation. They're small, and they're only a couple of times a year. I mean, I guess, what is it, six times? So I just want to put in a little positive note because my experiences have been fantastic. And I think it would be a shame to limit Lexington from having that opportunity, that diversity. Thanks. Thank you. All right, any more surprise witnesses in favor? All right, Mr. Murphy, then come on up. I just want to discuss a couple of things that were brought up. We don't feel this will be an increase in traffic over what a, however many people could live in a single family house would generate over a period of a year versus having two monks most of the year, but not all the year when they're in Cambodia, and six times a year having a gathering there. It's not much different than people in my neighborhood, people in houses in my neighborhood who have more than six gatherings a year with probably up to 30 people when they watch UK football or basketball games or have Christmas or holiday gatherings and that sort of thing. So they're not asking much more than could be done in a single family house. a suggestion about the space and in their meetings they sit on the floor they need a little more space than maybe you or i would if we were sitting in chairs the as i said there are six speed humps on northwood drive which i can assure you totally control the speed of traffic on northwood drive it may have been a cut through at one point between old paris and bryan station but it is a not a quick cut through at this point and it's not a high speed cut through you saw the 15 mile an hour sign that i had in my presentation the i wasn't showing other churches in the area to say that they're next door but they are in in the area and i did that to show that it has not harmed the residential area character of those other areas on on Kingston and Swigert Avenue those churches which are much much larger than our proposed church here are very compatible with the neighborhood and have not done anything to run property values down if anything maybe they've increased the property values as was mentioned by the representative of the Division of Engineering we'll have to do a stormwater plan as one of the residents mentioned we do have a large stormwater basin just just downstream from this we don't think stormwater is going to be a problem but we've got a lot of hoops to jump through and we will be jumping through those with the Division of Engineering Division of Water Quality which have to approve a parking lot of that that type a couple of the objectors were outside our 500 radius of 300 foot 300 block of Northwood is outside our radius this is infill the this is not a zone change there was a concern that will this be a precedent for somebody building an apartment house on the street absolutely not we are not changing the zone from our 1c single family to another zone churches as you all know are allowed as a conditional use in the single family residential area that will not be any kind of a precedent for putting multifamily housing in this neighborhood. We felt that having the 15 space parking lot would answer neighborhood concerns if it's a problem as I said we can reduce the size of that down and work with the staff and you all if we need to come up with another plan for the parking. But I want to, just in concluding, I don't have many clients that come before you that tell me that I can put off the theory of the case which would allow them to do a church or place of religious assembly on this property without the type of restrictions that are being imposed. They told me, yes, I could go ahead and use the alternative that has the restrictions that you may impose on us that the staff has recommended approval of. They have told me I don't have many even churches that would come in and say, yes, I'll restrict our gatherings to six times a year, two consecutive days, no more than 40 participants. This is, I think, a remarkable group of people who are willing to, in essence, almost self-regulate by submitting themselves to the regulation and to agree into conditions which are well less than many churches would experience. This is a fledgling congregation, as I think a couple of people mentioned to you. it's a congregation that is trying to get a start here I think this is the type of of use that would be beneficial to the area I think it would be beneficial to this community to have a place where the monks can live and people can come over six times a year I truly do not feel this will have any negative impact on the neighborhood we thank you very much and we'd be happy to answer any questions you all might have. I don't really have a question but along the lines of what you said I actually am a little more concerned about all these specific requirements that we're putting on it if the religious assembly is an allowable conditional use for that residential for that zoning just because our client is agreeable to these additional things I'm a little more concerned about setting the precedent precedent of telling you know religious assemblies of how often they can meet outside of the scope of you know to make sure that there's enough parking and they're you know the things that are normal within our purview that actually makes me more uncomfortable that if we're saying that it's allowable um and they have the parking available and those things that we have to check off the limiting it makes me a little more concerned miss Carter the issue is that conditional uses aren't allowable until we've approved them and so we are allowed and we often put conditions we put conditions on churches in the past when they have built I don't know we've ever said you can only meet six times a year No, that is true. You know, I mean, that just makes me nervous. I understand. Okay. Any more comments, questions for Mr. Murphy? All right. In that case, I'll close the public portion. At this point, if anyone from the board has any points they want to discuss. And of course, just to remind everyone, if you vote to disapprove this application, then you will need to speak with Ms. Tracy, who I'm sure has been working on findings for us, if that is your leanings. So at this time, I will entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move we approve PLN BOA 19-18 Alan Chow's request on behalf of the Temple for a conditional use to establish a place of religious assembly in a single-family residential zone at 130 and 134 Northwood Drive for the reasons enumerated by staff in their report. based on the discussion we've had today and subject to the six conditions listed on the report. Mr. Glover. And also with the amendment that Mr. Murphy proposes to the condition number two. And I can read that into the record if you need it. I think it was on the screen. Okay. So we have a first. Is there a second for Mr. Glover's motion? I second. Any discussion? Well, do we, we mentioned earlier adding a seventh condition where the conditional use becomes null and void should the temple. Property be transferred. Should the property be transferred? Well, that's why I was asking. And that's why I was asking Mr. Murphy about the identity of an applicant, because the property is owned, the real property is owned by the temple, which is the Buddhist temple. So how is that going to complicate the application? I think what we would do is just make a separate condition that the property was transferred by the owner or the user. was no longer using it couldn't we how do we impose that condition on mr chow if he's not the owner i think the condition could say temple wat sataram specifically you could say that should temple wat sataram no longer own the property that the use would be no and void okay so with the seventh condition that says should should the temple no longer own the property that the conditional use will be null and void I think that would cover it and I'll add that as an addendum to my motion Thank you. And for legal, do we need to do anything more than that on the motion? Does it need to be re-seconded if he has revised his first motion? If whoever made the second in the beginning is agreeable to it, then it doesn't have to be. Ms. Carter? All right. In that instance, then, that is the motion. So moved. Any other discussions on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then please vote. The application has been approved. And so in that instance, we will not need to have a hearing on the administrative review in two months. I would withdraw that request, Mr. Chair. I assume a withdrawal is without prejudice, as all are. Yeah. Thank you. Good luck with your project. Thank you. yeah the next item we have um i know mr needham needs to leave in a second now any any items from the board this time want to discuss um there will be a training opportunity on april 10th in the phoenix building room if you need to get any of your hours in for the our continuing education our next meeting will be may 13th 2019 at 1 30 p.m is there anything else the staff or the board members want to bring to our attention before I adjourn? All right. Thank you. We're adjourned.