The End Thank you. Bye. So Wilson might be in Galaxy Tab E. Thank you very much. We'll move him in. Thank you very much. That's all I have to do. Okay. All right. Thank you. And also, I want to revise my statement. This is the Planning Commission meeting, special zoning meeting for today. So I want to make sure that's on record. Next up, before we go into the agenda, I want to recognize we have two new members. We have Jane Myers and also Zach Davis. and I remember Ms. Myers from Board of Adjustments so happy to see you again and Zach nice to see you as well. I know your experience with the Rural Land Management Board and if I'm not mistaken you're on the Paris Pipe Commission so thank you both for serving and I'd love to hear just a brief background of yourself if you like kind of brag on yourself for a few minutes Zach you can go. Thank you Mr. Chairman My name is Zach Davis. I'm the president and principal broker of Kirkpatrick & Company, a real estate brokerage here in town. I have served on the Rural Land Management Board for five years. I was elected vice chair in 2018. I am on the Parris Pike Corridor Commission as well and look forward to being a part of these discussions for the next four years. Thank you. I'm Dan Meyer. I've been serving on the Board of Adjustments for the last 12 years. And I was born in on Tuesday to join the Planning Commission. And I look forward to continuing my work with city planning. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. All right. So next up, we have the approval of minutes, and these are the June 11th, 2020 minutes. So we need to take a motion on that. After everyone's call. All right, we have a motion. Carol Plumner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move approval of June 11th, 2020 minutes. Okay, we have a motion. Second. Second by Anthony. Thank you. All in favor, raise your hand. Okay. We don't have any postponements or withdrawals to my knowledge at this time. And we're going to go down. I guess we can go down. No abbreviated items either. Correct. So first up, we have Anderson Communities Incorporated Zoning Map Amendment and Catholic Church at Andover Property Zoning Development. And also, I do want to make a note, just kind of put it on record, that the church that we're in question here today is a client of the employer that I work for. They are not a client of mine, so there's no financial gain, but I just want everybody to be aware of that and put that part of the record. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the Planning Commission. I'm going to now share my screen. We are starting our discussion today with PLN MAR 20-7, Andy Anderson Communities, Inc. the requested rezoning is for the property uh located at uh 3330 tods road a portion of the applicant is seeking a zone change for the portion of this property from an agricultural urban zone to a high density apartment r4 zone for approximately 8.62 net and gross acres The applicant is seeking to redevelop this portion of land to develop a residential complex, apartment complex, that will be directed towards senior living. The development will include or comprise of a senior apartment complex of three buildings and then 10 single family dwelling units. The structures are proposed to step down in intensity as the developed moves from the front where the property is closest to the church to the rear, going from a five-story structure to a four-story structure and then down to a three-story structure. The applicant is seeking to construct a total of 268 dwelling units on this site. That includes the 10 single-family detached houses for a proposed residential density of 31 dwelling units per acre. To complete the residential development, the applicant is seeking to extend the street at Putter Lane and connect it with Todd's Road. No cross access is currently proposed to Andover Woods Lane, and we'll talk quite a bit about that as we move along. Just looking at the area that we are trying to discuss, we are located out off of Todd's Road past Man of War Boulevard. Todd's Road acts as a minor arterial roadway that extends out from Man of War Boulevard, connecting into Jesmond County. What we have surrounding this proposed rezoning is Forest Hill Drive, a collector street that connects all around from Todd's Road and back over to Todd's Road, feeding into various different local streets, including Reuben Lane, Putter Lane, which is stubbing directly into the portion of the property that is proposed to be rezoning, and then a host of other areas. One area I do want to bring your attention to is this portion down here. We'll talk about Andover Woods Lane quite a bit with this rezoning, as well as the associated Andover Green, Hunter's Green Court, Hunter's Knoll Way, and then Hunter's Green Way. If we pull in just a little closer, we're able to see a bit more of the zoning that has occurred over time. It is primarily residential in nature. The property is currently zoned AU, which is agricultural urban. Those types of zoning designations are really meant to act as an agricultural use until city and public services are available. And then they are meant to turn over and redevelop as they are inside the urban service area. We do have a significant amount of R1E and R1D in this location, with lesser amounts of R4 up in this location and down here. And we have a bit of R1T. That R1T is actually something that you should remember. This happened just recently with the redevelopment of the golf course driving range and the primary golf course building. That had also changed into a more business oriented site. Just getting an idea of the aerial of the air of this kind of area. So looking at the photography of it all, you do see the church in this location with two stub streets. Reuben Lane stubbing into the portion that is not seeking to be rezoned at this time. and Putter Lane, stubbing into the actual area that is proposed to be rezoning. I will point out that Andover Woods Lane in this location here is also an access point or a frontage along this site and was always considered to be pulled into this development as it went along. I also want to, as you're looking at this photography and some of the other aspects of this site, I do want to note that this was the area of a rezoning from 2019. That would be PLNMAR2019- and if I can find it really quick in front of me, it is associated with dash 1, 0001 for Clover Properties. At that previous application, staff recommended a disapproval. the applicant went forward with the meeting and the Planning Commission recommended approval of that zone change. That zone change went forward to the Urban County Council at which it was disapproved for reasons of blending into the neighborhood, the density, the type of development that it was, and then the access issues. So moving forward into the site itself, we get a view right here looking into the actual church property and the access easement into the church property. Looking down that access easement to the parking lot that serves the church. This is a photo of Todd's Road looking towards Man of War, the green space that was the golf course across the way, and then looking down Todd's Road towards Jesmond County border. Next, we can look into the area that is being proposed for rezoning. These two photos give you a very good look of what is there and what is not there right now. This area is largely an open field. This has been associated with the property for a very long time since the church sought to develop it and has remained in this kind of situation. This is a view just looking back on the church from the property that is being rezoned, and then just another view looking back out of the parking lot. Here we get a view of some of the the context of the area around Andover Woods Lane. This photo here in the top left, you're looking down Andover Woods Lane. You can see that it is comprised of single-family detached housing, primarily two stories. If you look down this way, this is looking back down south along that same roadway and a view of some of the houses in the area. This photo gives you a good look into the property that is proposed to be rezoned. This would be the location of the proposed 10 single-family detached houses. And then just another idea of the current boundary between the right-of-way and the proposed rezoning. Here we get another view from Putter Lane. This is the street that stubs into the property. You can see there is a similar type tree line that is associated with kind of a buffer of the two property lines. And you'll see that it is, again, single family detached houses going towards this stub street. I will also point out that there is a difference in the construction. You can see the difference between the houses on this side of the proposed development and on the other side. These are primarily single-story houses that are lining this street and lead down toward Forest Hill Drive. When we are looking at any type of zone change, the first thing that we ask applicants to do is reach out to neighborhoods and have discussions with them. In this case, the applicant has done a fair amount of neighborhood engagement, And during their presentation, I think that it would be best if they described some of those neighborhood engagements that they have had in the past couple of months. After that kind of review, we start to look at the place builder information and its association with the comprehensive plan. In this case, the applicant is looking to build as an enhanced neighborhood. This is an existing residential area that will have enhanced amenities or housing types. and have or neighborhood serving retail services and employment. From this place type we do look at the most suitable development types. In this case the applicant is seeking to construct a medium high density residential development. From that we get into a conversation of the recommended zone types. In this case the applicant is applying for a zone change from the AU to the R4 or the high into the apartment zone. In this case, staff had to take a look at that and review all of the information from the submitted justification letters, as well as the context and history of this site. With that review, staff is concerned that the R4 is not appropriate at this location without certain elements that the applicant is not currently showing on their plan. We'll delve through that as we go along. With this, there are two major threshold issues for staff with this application. The first being proper and adequate connections to reduce police, EMS, and fire response times. This is a major element of a comprehensive plan and something that is a best practice within planning. When it comes to expanding roadways or increasing densities, we really need to make sure that we are adding those connections that are necessary to get our police EMS and fire response teams to a location at a rapid pace so that they can serve our community. Next, we are looking at neighborhood integration. Much of staff's concerns with a lot of infill and redevelopment has been how that new development is integrating into the existing development. In this case, the applicant is building a public street that connects Putter Lane to Todd's Road. And that will be discussed quite a bit more with a waiver request by Mr. Mark. But with this neighborhood integration, staff is really concerned about how individuals from the Andover Woods Lane side of this development, which is part of this development, can connect or interact through with the proposed multifamily development. Much of the conversation that we have seen from neighborhoods and support have been talking about the need for integration, the need for having services for seniors as they are aging out of their larger homes and still being able to take advantage of the area. So if we start with the review of the health, safety, and welfare aspects that we are really discussing today, we need to look at theme A, goal 4C. Establish and promote road network connections in order to reduce police, EMS, and fire response times. Now, I do put certain things up here, and that's really supposed to get to the heart of what we're trying to do with a lot of these connections. When it comes to these sort of services, we are looking at trying to cut down on those times. There is a fire station within proximity of this site. However, due to the location of the subject property along Hunter's, essentially the firehouse in this location would have to drive, come down, up through Hunter's Greenway and over to Andover Woods Lane. As you can see from this aerial shot, what we have is a long and complex cul-de-sac. Essentially, we have 96 properties with the 10 the applicant is proposing on one access point. Fire Services has indicated that typically with any new development, they require two access points at 100 dwelling units. That is a threshold that they usually cite when we have a lot of multifamily development coming in through and we have new developments coming in with cul-de-sac links. In this case, the APKIN is falling for short, but staff believes that it is imperative that we try to get another access point into here as a best practice. While it does not meet the threshold of the fire and health services, it does meet a best practice need and nexus for us to add an extra cross street for EMS, police, and fire services at this location. Again, staff has been in constant contact with our fellow staff members in the Division of Fire and Emergency Services, and they have said, we do not need one per our regulations, but we will always take one. I want to pull this up just because of the distance that it requires to get over to some of these properties over on Andover Woods Lane. If we were talking about someone needing a health services or some sort of fire response, coming from that fire station, it's only 0.77 miles. It is a quick trip. However, let's say there is something that is blocking the roadway at this location. If that were to occur, we're looking at an increase to almost three times of 2.1 miles, increasing the time response to seven minutes. Furthermore, if we had something that just connected across the site, it would actually reduce the travel time for fire services to those locations and reduce the time response. Staff finds this to be incredibly important, largely because one of the leading causes of death in Kentucky is heart disease and stroke. When it comes to heart disease and stroke, every second counts. When it comes to trying to make sure that we're preventing death or additional damage to organs, EMS response is imperative to be a quick trip. In addition to some of staff's concerns from a health safety and welfare side with EMS police and fire services, staff is also a bit concerned about the integration of this development with the new proposed rezoning and the adjacent neighborhoods. So what we're seeing here, and I'm stealing a bit of Mr. Martin's thunder by showing the portion of the development plan before he can. But what we see here are the 10 single family houses located along Andover Woods Lane here. Essentially, what this does is it negates any possible connection that can be made from Puyter Lane across the parking and access easement into this portion of Andover Woods Lane. That is something that staff has been pushing for fairly consistently. We had pushed forward on the previous application, and we do need to push for those aspects here. This is a best practice perspective, as well as a health safety and welfare perspective, but also ties these neighborhoods together. Right now, the way that it is being portrayed acts as a wedge between what we're seeing at Andover Woods Lane, turning its back on the development, and then also separating it from Putter Lane. The applicant is, and I will give them credit on some of this, they are showing access pedestrian access out from the site to Todd's Road and out from the proposed development to Todd's Road. However, again, this is not an integration of the site or an enhancement of this neighborhood. It's a separation of this neighborhood. So staff is really concerned about how to integrate those two elements together. So at this time, staff is recommending disapproval of this application because of those two threshold elements. Staff is recommending disapproval for the following reasons, and that is not in, and that should say it's not, and I apologize for that, it does say that on your staff report, it is not in agreement with the 2018 comprehensive plan. plans goals and objectives for the following reasons. The proposed development adds housing to a complex and long road system that acts as a cul-de-sac without adequate connections that are meant to reduce police, EMS, and fire response times, Theme A, Goal 4C, and protect the health, safety, and welfare of the Lexington community. The proposed development does not create an integral roadway and pedestrian system that allows for the integration of the new development, Theme A, goal 3. The proposed development does not adequately meet the comprehensive plan's goals for connectivity for all modes of transportation. Theme A, goal 3B. By terminating the sub-street into the proposed development and eliminating connections between Putter Lane and Andover Woods Lane, the applicant is reducing the availability of future connections and limiting connectivity. The proposed development also does not support complete streets. Theme D, goal 1A. and the proposed development has not provided adequate materials to address all of the multifamily design standards, ADS 3-1. I did not get into that as much. However, the applicant has not addressed the architectural standards that are outlined in the multifamily design standards from Appendix 1 of the Comprehensive Plan. Furthermore, there have been no major changes of an economic, physical, or social nature within the immediate area which were not anticipated in the Comprehensive plan adopted by the commission and which have substantially altered the basic character of the area. The applicant has also not put forth the justification for why the current zoning is inappropriate and the proposed zoning is appropriate for the subject property. The goal of connectivity and the location of the site is heavily tied to the appropriateness of high density of the high density apartment zone. Without the availability of proper infrastructure, roadways and connectivity for all users or uses within the ARP core zone the rezoning is not appropriate at this location and with that I would be happy to answer any questions about this portion of our presentation Mr. Martin will be up here shortly just to describe some of the elements of the uh the development plan thank you Hal does any commission members have any questions for help. It's like Bruce. Yes sir Mr. Bailey I've got a question for you. Can you kind of put it into context just briefly in regards to the previous zone change how it was how the connectivity was shown the number of connections to Andover Woods Lane on the previous development plan. Please describe that briefly and then just walk us through the, I think we approved it and then explain to us what happened when it went to council. Yes, sir. So the original zone change was for an R4 zone. They were looking to construct a different style building. It was one large structure that was four stories in height and was meant to serve senior apartments. Now, with that development, the real difference that you see between the two developments is the connection out from Putter Lane up to Todd's Road. Actually, there are a couple of different ones, and I'll go through them really quickly. So that connection to Putter Lane and up through to Todd's Road was meant as an access easement for that application. So there was a bit of an idea of a flag lot in a way in which the applicant was not showing public infrastructure and public development in a real way. But at the same time, that applicant was also not showing any cross connection between Putter Lane and Andover Woods Lane. Staff reiterated at that time, staff was against not having that connection. Staff reiterated those concerns to this applicant at the time of the pre-application meeting. And then during some of their meetings with the neighborhood and in their design process, they decided they didn't want that access either. Other changes that you can see between this development and the previous development is the style of buildings. One has the three different buildings. The original application from last year was one monolithic building. Now, the difference with that is this application is actually asking for greater density. You have the five-story building up front, the four-story building in the middle, and then the three-story in the back. The applicant has spread out their development a little bit more with that and is trying to achieve some of what the – really trying to get what some of the multifamily design standards are outlined in the comprehensive plan. So we see a betterment of the connectivity out to Todd's Road, which necessitates a waiver, which, again, Mr. Martin will talk about here soon. However, we're still not seeing that cross access. So with staff, it was a real issue of trying to get that cross access across the site. Now, with the council's determination or the Planning Commission's original determination was that this was within character. It was buffered enough. It was providing some connections off Forest Hill Drive, and then it was providing that access easement out to Todd's Road. It was meeting elements of the comprehensive plan, including the, and I have the actual findings here in front of me if you would like me to give those to you. It was expanding housing choice, planning for safe, affordable and accessible housing to meet the needs of older and disadvantaged and or disadvantaged residents. It was supporting infill and redevelopment, and it was upholding the urban service boundary by utilizing the area for development that was underutilized previously. Now, I do want to stress that is the 2013 Comprehensive Plan and the 2018 Goals and Objectives. We're now into the whole scale 2018 Comprehensive Plan, so there are different things to weigh. Now, when it went to the Urban County Council, the council disapproved this application based off of the relationship to the surrounding neighborhood primarily. They actually said that it was not in context with the neighborhood, and it was actually out of context, and I'm pulling up those findings for you right now. the council found that it was not an agreement with the comprehensive plan as the proposed development of the site did not respect the character and context of the area theme a goal 2a by not properly transitioning in height amassing of the proposed structure furthermore the lack of trans transition of buffering from single family uh residences to uh domination of but for proposed multifamily structure led to a domineering aspect of the landscape by the proposed redevelopment. So those are the real differences between what we're seeing now and what was ruled on in 2019. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Any more questions for Mr. Mr. Bailey, I understood you saying that the statute is now recommending would you put on the screen not supporting this but our revised staff report says we are supporting it at this time is that correct that is in the revised staff report should say that we are not approving this this should say disapproval if you look at uh the staff report with the red top okay it does say disapproval on the back so you all you are not supporting the on change? No sir we cannot and this is largely to due to the fact of that connectivity. So we are. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Chair before we move on we have an attendee who has their hand raised. I think we should probably point out at this time that we're halfway through the staff's presentation then the presentation will follow by the applicant and then we'll call on the public to speak if they're interested in speaking at that time. Yes, that's correct. To the person who has their hand raised, you will get your opportunity. We'll get there in just a minute. Thank you. And Mr. Chair, Mr. Chair, there is a slight issue with the staff report. It does say disapproval at the top. However, in the first sentence, the requested Planned Neighborhood Residential R3 zone is in. It should say is not in. and I would just like to put that on the record right now. I apologize for any confusion that this may cause. However, we're focused more on the big red bull disapproval aspect. Thank you, Hal. There's no more questions for Hal. Tom? I'm going to share screen of our presentation and hand it over to Mr. Martin. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the Planning Commission. What you see before you on the screen today is the preliminary development plan associated with the proposed zone change. And I will emphasize once again that should this zone change be approved, you will see a final development plan on this property, as well as a combined preliminary subvision plan addressing the single family homes. Now, for the benefit of our new planning commission members, I will explain that when plans are reviewed by staff, we review them as if the zoning was approved, as if the zoning was in place. And that is why sometimes you will see a different recommendation on the plan versus the zone change proposal. And this is done because we review the plan just to see if it functions and if it meets the requirements of the zoning ordinance and the land subdivision regulations. And with that, we do have revised conditions. They're orange for me and others that have received a hard copy. I don't know what you'll see in your Google Drive, but we have revised conditions for this revised plan. Now, as Mr. Bailey has explained, we have Todd's Road in this location. The Putter Lane extension is in this location tying in to the existing Putter Lane. You've got a knuckle designed here, and you can see that it's providing access into the development into their parking areas. And again, the parking is along the perimeter in this location. They have a little lot indicated here to serve this apartment building. Now, the apartment buildings go from three-story to four-story to five-story. So their height, again, obviously changes. And this is giving them ability to utilize this difficult site. It is a difficult site, as you saw previously on the outline of it. It's triangular and gets to a point in this location. And so it is a challenging site in that regard. You can see again, as I pointed out, they're proposing their apartment buildings in this location, access and associated parking. This is a detention area and a green space area in this location. Here are the 10 single family lots. Oops, I did something wrong here. I'm going to get my tech help back in here. There we go. Thank you. Thank you. The development is proposing 260 senior housing units, along again with the 10 single family homes. They are proposing 206 parking spaces. They're only required 195, so they are not over parked by any means for this development. Again, it's a senior housing development. In reviewing this plan, staff, and this is a revised plan, there's only a few standard conditions that you can see on your agenda. There's several small cleanup conditions. Now, because of the AU zone for the church and the R4, if it's granted, there's a 25-foot setback along this boundary and along the boundary of this property, the single-family lot, that needs to be denoted because that is a requirement of your zoning ordinance and needs to be reflected on this plan. In addition, we have a number eight, note vehicular access to Andover Woods Lane in this location shall be at the time of a final development plan or preliminary subdivision plan. This is in support of Mr. Bailey's explanation about our concern about appropriate access into this site. Again, they're coming off a local street, Hutter Lane, into the site, and staff has been concerned, as Hal stated, with access to the local street system south of the property. Hal, as he stated before, they are providing pedestrian access, which also connects to a pedestrian system that serves the development. And that obviously is a positive aspect of this proposal. Now, there is a waiver, as you can see on your agenda, associated with this proposal. That waiver is this intersection right here on Todd's Road, where they intend to extend Putter Lane. Now, this is the existing driveway entrance for the church that they want to utilize for their access. Now, your subdivision regulations do not support, frankly, they state that it shall not be allowed, a multi-family, high-density, youth, not access a public street. Unfortunately, we are dealing with a remnant site, a difficult site, and the dominant road pattern that surrounds the entire property is, of course, local streets. Now, this reflects the original development pattern and the preliminary subdivision plans where this entire residential area all around this site was served by local streets. They, in turn, connected to the collector, which is Forest Hill, that curves around from Todd's Road and around all this residential area and comes back out onto Todd's Road. As Hal stated, Todd's Road is a minor arterial. That's kind of a classic example how our street system is supposed to work. You have local streets serving the homes in the neighborhoods. they then channel their traffic to a collector street, which in turn channels that traffic out to an arterial. And that is really a classic example of street hierarchy. Now, the subdivision regs, as I stated, do not allow high-density residential access to a local. There was very little choice here, obviously, with the local street system that stubs into this property. It also states, interesting enough, our regs, high-density residential is allowed access to minor arterials under the assumption that it will be a driveway. And that driveway will serve only that development. It won't be a public street, which will handle a lot of other traffic and other vehicles associated with the movement of the public. And that requirement utilizes a spacing formula, and staff had to make a decision of whether or not we would use a standard spacing for local streets, which local streets are not supposed to, and that's the problem staff had. local streets, Putter Lane is local, they're not supposed to intersect with arterials. They're supposed to intersect with collectors. So staff utilized the formula for multifamily accessing collector streets because there's a formula that allows the spacing to be based on the number of units and utilizing that formula, staff determined that this access point should be 840 feet, approximately 840 feet from any other access on the Todd's Road. So if we move north to Forest Hills, where it circles around, that is only, and you'll have to forgive me because I didn't mention to the fact that you do have the waiver report for you to review. The distance from the intersection to the north to the proposed street intersection is only 500 and roughly 40 or 36 feet. Pardon me. Let me. Versus it goes. Yeah, usually they don't ask for waivers. I'm trying to use my readers here. Okay, here we are. 525 feet from the intersection of the north to this proposed intersection. That is a waiver of 315 feet, which is a rather sizable waiver. We generally don't deal with waivers quite to that extent. They also required a waiver from the distance down here to Champions Way, and that's associated with the small fourplex development that took place to the south here that was recently approved in the last few years for this. So they actually had to have a waiver for the distance between two intersections. The one to the south is only approximately 80-some feet. That doesn't give staff any real concern. That's a relatively small distance waiver for an intersection. This is, as I stated, a rather significant waiver. It's almost 40% of what the formula would dictate would be the requirement. Now, Todd's Road, as you all know, has been improved in recent years. the site distances are better, and the state provided turn lanes into the church property. So we have left turn lanes into the property and a right turn lane as well, which helps facilitate the safe movement of traffic. So with that, again, finding ourselves in an unusual situation, staff did as I stated evaluate this as if it was not a public street but basically a multifamily driveway access to try to determine the appropriate spacing there is a basin in this area retention basin there's another smaller basin in this area and of course we have the existing church and the parking all these are mitigating factors on this development's ability to access Todd's Road So with that taken into account, with the fact that this is a small, rather short little local street, we wouldn't anticipate it dealing with a lot of traffic. Staff is recommending approval of the waiver. And as I stated previously, the development plan is also being recommended for approval by your staff. And I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. any questions for mr marks martin i said that i said marks martin sorry don i said no then questions yes i got i got one question on the request for uh a connectivity in the is the end of our woods is that correct yes yes what is will that will that have a significant any change in the traffic impact over there on the putter access to todd's road staff is of the opinion that the more access you have the better you disperse traffic and it actually therefore will lessen the impact on each individual street all right thank you again strictly through dispersal gives people choices. Graham was up next Bruce. I had more or less the same question. I guess I'm reluctant to approve the waiver unless the additional access is part of the deal. Okay thank you Mr. Fulton. Ms. Nickel. yes sir mr martin so what we're looking at is that you all have the staff has approved um the development plan as drawn but it has still has condition number nine on it discuss the vehicular access to andover woods lane yes um i understand that that's the sticking point that we're dealing with here today most likely or one of the larger ones um what would happen if you had the discussion and you did not get the access to andover lane or describe how they meet the condition of discuss because it seems like this is a sticking point is it just a matter of discussing and then so uh again how does that work well again this is a preliminary plan and staff uh would like to keep the discussion open if this zone change is approved as we move down the road. We do believe that access is important. It would be a better plan. And I want to make a point that I've made before. This applicant, this property has legal access to Andover Woods Lane. It's frontage. It is the 10 single family homes that are going to preclude any kind of frontage. I mean, they could have put that on the plan and it would require you to say no to it before it would go away. I mean, they have, they have a legal right to access that public right away because they have all that frontage. So again, the original subdivision plans envisioned single family homes. They showed at least three streets coming through and serving this property in one way or the other, including that would cross the property. As it evolved over time, you can see the street system changed. We've got a few more cul-de-sacs than we originally envisioned. And so here we are. We're dealing with a local street system that modified itself through development. And again, that's why the access to Todd's Road is important that this particular development is presented because of health and safety concerns and the need to allow people to access the property, at least through Butter Lane and also to Todd's Road. And as I pointed out, the subdivision regulations would allow a multifamily development to have an access drive to Todd's Road. It would still have to meet the spacing. That's how we're evaluating is if it was just an access drive. The fact is they're proposing a public street, which the subregs never really envisioned being allowed to access arterials. So that's it's it is an unusual situation that we're dealing with. And I think you described it well by saying that this is the way the area developed. I mean, you wouldn't normally put all these cul-de-sacs in planning these days. I wouldn't think. No, sir, we would not. No, we. OK, thank you. Anthony your hands raised yeah I just want to clarify with being make sure we're all looking at the same documents the revised staff report that I'm looking at item number eight says denote vehicular access not discuss it well that is that is correct it marked out discuss and it's shall be determined that final development plan preliminary subdivision plan And staff would like to have that discussion at least one more time with your applicant to try to see if we can't work out something on that access. Bruce, did you find it? All right. Great. Yes, sir. Thank you. Any more questions for Tom Martin? Al, was that your finger there? Okay. Thumbs up. Cool. Cool. So we will move on now to hear from the applicant. Real quick, before the applicant jumps in, we do have letters of both support and opposition for this application. You can find them in the Google Drive that you've been utilizing. We do have seven letters of opposition and 12 letters of support. Thank you. We would ask if you're with the petitioner at this time, please raise your hand electronically so that we can move you into the meeting. Mr. Murphy, Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Anderson, you've been promoted to panelists. If you could please show your video and turn on your sound, and you can begin whenever you're ready. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm Dick Murphy. I'm here representing Anderson Communities. I think Dennis Anderson is with us here. Tony Barrett is coming on. I noticed my video is pretty choppy. Can you hear my voice okay? Yes. Okay, thank you. And I apologize. my video appears to be frozen or choppy and I apologize in advance if you get shots with of me with my eyes closed or with my mouth open I apologize to you on that one your mouth is open right now pardon my mouth is open right now okay well I'll try to I'm going to be talking a little bit so probably be open on all of them here um thank you very much as I said Dennis is online I think and I think Tony Barrett is trying to get online. I don't see you. There you are, Tony. Okay. And we're pleased today to be presenting this proposal for the rear part of the property at 3030 Todd's Road. This is the rear portion of the Baptist Church at Andover. And we have a proposal for senior housing, 260 units. We actually have 260 units of senior housing on our current plan, plus 10 units of single-family detached housing. We have the step-down in height that Mr. Bailey and Mr. Martin mentioned to you, five stories to four stories to three stories. And I might mention, as you all probably know, there's a great need for senior housing here in Lexington. in the housing survey of 2017 estimated that I think by 2030, there's going to be 16,000 more people in the 65 and over age group in Lexington. And I want to emphasize that we have 55 and over on this development. We're a 55 and over community, so it's an even larger group of people who will be needing residential uses in this area. I want to talk to you about the previous plan. I'm going to try to share my screen and put up a couple exhibits with you here. I have the, this is the application you saw about a year ago from Clover Communities. And I don't have a flashing cursor, but I do have a little hand that goes up and down the plan here. Here's Todd's Road out on the right side. Here is a private drive at the same location we have, a private drive, not a public street, coming in to serve into their area. Private street coming up into sort of a hammerhead finish of Putter Lane and a drive around one large sort of monolithic building. as you can see it has no connection no vehicular connection no driveway or no walkway connection to andover woods lane which is down here no connection whatsoever we do have the row of single family houses on our plan so you see it's a large building private access point in and out that was approved. This plan was approved by the Planning Commission a year ago, I think, by unanimously or with one descending vote. The zone change went to the city council where it lost by one vote, but there was no advocacy from any neighbors for any connection to Andover Woods Lane. I'm going to try to share our plan right now. This is our development plan as colored up by Tony Barrett. Our designer is Tony Barrett, landscape architect. Our architect is Steve Albert with Albert Architecture here in Lexington. We want to show you what the difference is between what we're proposing and what was proposing a year ago. First of all, we complete the development of Andover Woods Lane. Now, this is a result of the place builder process that Dennis Anderson went through with the Andover Woods Lane people. This subdivision down here is generally called Andover Hill. And then over toward Todd's Road, it's the villas at Andover. Those are the four-unit fourplexes over here. These are single-family homes over here. There's no connection between the two of them. But when Dennis did his place builder meetings, and one of the differences between our plan and the previous one is we do go through place builder this year. when Dennis went through his place builder build meetings with the neighbors there were two main items that came as a result of the many meetings Dennis had Dennis had at least two meetings with both associations and many other meetings and telephone calls with the neighbors out here so he went through an extensive process even before he talked to Tony and me about doing his own change but one of the ideas that came out of here was the neighbors would like to have andover woods lane completed in a manner like the current development that is single family detached homes that serves two purposes not only does it complete the neighborhood uh the way the neighborhood is built now, but it offers visual screening from Andover Woods Lane up to the buildings here. So it visually screens and it completes the subdivision the way it was planned. And also the most important item on the place builder process through Dennis Anderson's communication with the neighborhood was no vehicular access to Andover Woods Lane. That was almost a unanimous request. And I think in your, as Mr. Bailey mentioned, that we have letters, much more letters of support than objection. But I think one thing, common thread going through all those is they do not want connection between the two neighborhoods. I'm going to discuss that a little bit more. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the differences between our plan and the old plan. We have an elbow here. We keep it as a public street. That's a better way to have traffic flow than have it a private street. Because we're a public street we need a waiver of the distance but I think being a public street with sidewalks and public street standards is a good way to go on putter lane through here we have as I said we screen the adjacent property not not only do we screen with these single family homes as you can see going around the edge we have garages on our side of the tree line that screen us from and the houses behind us to the north and this way and we have some garages there that also act as screening we have extensive property line screening through here as you can see we utilize the land better we have a step down of uses this is our five-story building this is our four-story building this is our three-story building and the thing i like about this plan the best is our pedestrian connection and the uh the this is designed to architecture to encourage interaction between the baptist church at andover which is right over here and our development. I'm going to switch over to another exhibit which shows the connection a little better. This is our pedestrian connection. These, the brown lines, Tony just quickly drew up the sidewalk and walkway or bikeway connections in the development. You can see that our main pedestrian route starts at the back door of Andover Baptist Church at Andover. And they have a back door there, which is used a great deal, coming through our building one and going out through our court guard, going through building two, going back through building three, all the way to the back. and that goes through the buildings but also we have the walkways going around all the buildings and you can see we have sidewalks going out to todd's road on the north also giving a connection to the people on putter lane we have sidewalks going out to this point and from this point our Our neighbors can turn right and go into Andover Woods Lane, or they can turn left and walk out to Todd's Road. What's important about that? Well, it's just two tenths of a mile from here down to the Andover Club, which was recently rezoned for hopefully a restaurant if we get more restaurants through all this process we have. And it's just a half mile up to the north to get to the Brighton Place shops and the restaurants in that area as well. and the Andover Woods Lane people have a pedestrian way out. They want to walk over to our development. They can take a left and go in. If they want to walk out the Todd's Road, they can take a right and go out there. That is a connection which the people on Andover Woods Lane do not have today and will have as a result of this development. Obviously, the people in Putter Lane here too will have that advantage of a connection. That was something that was not on the plan. We have good architectural design. I know the staff has talked about the design guidelines. And in fact, we put in a five-page memorandum on Monday at the request of the staff detailing exactly how we comply with the multifamily design standards. And we have articulation on all the walls. You can see the articulation going around the border of each one. We vary our roof shapes. We're setbacks, materials, colors, building heights, and landscaping. We avoid having blank walls. We have private open space and community open space. We're going to have patios and decks as private open space. And we have all the other open space, which Tony has detailed five or six open space areas through this, which will be available to all the community residents. And we vary the height. We have landscaping and adjustments and bulk and massing. So I feel very strongly we have complied with the architectural design guidelines. In any case, those are usually addressed in finality at the final development plan stage. We think we've addressed them well at this point, but we understand and agree that we would have to address those at the final development plan stage too. And we have added a note about having green infrastructure on the property. So we do have a difference between the plan we had last year and the plan which we're presenting to you now, which is before you. Now, I do want to talk about the road connection because that is the primary issue. I think that's really maybe the only issue the staff is recommending disapproval of our plan for. We're disappointed by that because, as I said, the reason that we are not making the connection is because of the fact that we went through the place builder process and Dennis met with the neighborhood associations and got the message loud and clear that there should be no vehicular connection. I want to clarify also that this is not an issue about our development. We have two ways in and out. We have the access point here at Todd's Road, whether it's public or private. We have the access point at Putter Lane. So we have met the standard. The fire code, as Captain Lengel explained it to me, requires two ways in and out for developments with between 101 and 600 units. We have two ways in and out. The issue is the existing development down on Andover Woods Lane, or what they call it, Andover Hill Subdivision, whether we have to provide a connection to that to make them compliant with fire code or health, safety, and welfare or whatever. And as I said, going through the process, that was the number one concern about residents in Andover Hill was having no connection, vehicular connection to our development. We have done, we have gone through the process of place builder. We have come up with a plan that's acceptable to the neighbors and to us, and we have presented it to you. And we hope all that process is not just an academic exercise, which everybody goes through and then is disregarded when the decisions are made. Nate, this is an important process. We went through the place builder process with this and came up with the solution. In Andover Woods right now, there are now 86 houses. This area right here is a circle. It's a circle which has two ways in and out here, albeit the fact down lower, there is one access point off the Forest Hill Lane. We are meeting the fire code limits. As I said, there will be 96 houses in Andover Hill after construction. There will never be more than 96 because there is no more land available to build on in Andover Hill. So 96 will be the limit. We talked to Captain Lengel, who said that fire was agreeable with this plan because it met fire codes. The only objective standard we have is the NFPA fire code, which says from zero to 100, you may have served that with one connection in and out. the there's a there's a discussion the staff had figures out there about strokes and heart attacks I want to emphasize that those our elderly population here is served by two ways in and out the population down below here does not want a connection to our street we meet the provisions and the only way we can plan in this community or any community is to have objective standards to meet. And the courts have actually ruled on this. This is the leading case in plan review in Kentucky. It's the case of Snyder versus Owensboro, decided by the highest court of the state in Kentucky back in 1975, referring to zoning, says the statute plainly contemplates that specific standards will be set forth rather than mere broad generalizations with regard to health, safety, morals, and general welfare, or the use of such flexible terms as most advantageous development. So the highest court in Kentucky has said that the objective standards are what is to guide zoning decisions, not generalizations about what some people feel is better. Obviously here, the planning staff feels it's better to have an access point. The neighbors feel just as strongly that they do not want the access point. I want to bring up, I've got a map here which shows this area as well. This is off an old, one of the old Atlas Lexington. Our property is right here. I've marked it with a star over on the left side. I've got the hand right there. Todd's Road is over here. and Putter Lane, which we're connecting, is right here, connects to Forest Hill Drive, and Andover Woods Lane is right here, down here, and the big F here in 21, that's Fire Station 21. That's what serves the area. You can see how close we are. No matter whether you're going this way up to 100th Greenway and then into Andover Woods Lane or whether you're coming up this way going to Putter Lane into our property, the response is no greater than six-tenths of a mile. We went over this with the fire department and there are excellent response times in all of this area. And you can see that from this map. This is the only fire station in this whole area. these people over here have a greater response time than the people on Andover Woods Lane do coming over here. Much greater response time. If we're solely concerned about response time from EMS people, these have much greater time. We ought to be looking at that too. We're going to need a fire station all over the place. But the standards that they have for fire location make this a good place. And we are extremely close to the fire. That's what I understand. This is what they call a full house. It has ladder truck, pumper truck, and EMS team at that fire station. So we have excellent, excellent response time to the fire station. And the responders here do not have to go out to Manowar Boulevard up here and get caught in a traffic jam. they don't have to go out in Todd's Road out here they can do it by the neighborhood streets coming up to both the Andover Woods Lane and our property and I want to read you to a couple comments that were given to us by neighborhood residents this first one is from the print Jackie Wilson I think it is who's president of the Andover Hill Neighborhood Association. She wrote to us, and we're getting some of these messages in. I'll paraphrase this first one. Good heavens, the Andover Green Area has lasted this long without another point of ingress-egress. It will not suffer from not having a connection to Andover Woods Lane. Opening it up poses greater danger to the children who play in the area. The second one came from Edwin Gibson, who is the manager of the Andover Hill Neighborhood Association. I think this is very telling. He says, I'm going to be out of pocket today and not be available to come. I would simply mention that Andover Hill has had to hire private security to supplement the police's presence because of the criminal activity in our community. We don't need another way into our neighborhood that may allow an additional increase in crime. I think you all heard this before. Police generally want fewer access points into a neighborhood because more access points result in a leaky situation. So the neighborhood association manager has said that they do not want the connection because of the crime issue that they have, as evidenced by the fact that they already hire private security to supplement the police presence in this area. We need to talk about the comprehensive plan just a little bit, too. Hey, Mr. Murphy. Yes. I just know out of respect for you and your presentation, getting close on your time. I just want to make sure, will you have anyone else speaking with your team? Well, I don't have any planned. Dennis is here and can answer any questions. I'll just rush through the rest of my experience. No, you've still got about seven to eight minutes. I just wanted to make sure I didn't want to wait to the last minute to take that. I appreciate that very much. but I'll try to go fast through some of these other exhibits. Okay. We do agree with the comprehensive plan. We've gone through this. We mentioned that we expand housing choices. We prioritize higher density and mixture of housing types. We have safe and accessible housing to meet the needs of older citizens, which is very important. We encourage higher density. And I cite all the clauses out of the comprehensive plan. I won't read all those. We support infill and redevelopment as a strategic component of growth. We ensure the compatibility with the neighboring properties. We step down development, adequate open space and private walking trails. We do connect the road work by construction of extension of Putter Lane. Now, obviously, we have to discuss Andover Woods Lane, but we feel that through the place builder process, we've worked that out with the neighborhood and the neighborhood does not want the connection. We have a viable network of accessory transportation alternatives. I do want to mention we will have van availability to our residents to supplement the walking, bicycling, private automobiles, walkability to Lex Tran stops. We have van service. And this does utilize underutilized land to maintain the current boundaries of the urban service area. So we feel very strongly that we are in agreement with the comprehensive plan. We have the waiver request that Mr. Martin has mentioned, which is the location of our access point on to Todd's Road. The staff has recommended in favor of that. we feel that in order to have if we took away if we didn't get the waiver on this and didn't have a connection here we would be even having less connectivity into the neighborhood we did have a variance filed for the setback which mr martin mentioned from the au zone which the church is actually zoned au and our property we our building is shown as 15 feet from the property line. We had that filed to be heard. Staff informed me Monday that they had not met the deadline to advertise that with the Herald leader. They asked us if we wanted to delay or go forward. We said we would go forward because we had a number of residents here who wanted to come and we will file that with the board of adjustments. So we'd like to add a note to the development plan saying that the setback will be complied with or a variance will be obtained from the board adjustment. And I did give you a set of findings of fact which recommend approval of this. And I have submitted that to the staff. And I will see if I can find that on my screen here. I have submitted a substantial set of findings which tell how we agree with the comprehensive plan I'm not going to read them all to you we have submitted them to you and I can go over them with you if you want when the time comes but we've also gone over the place builder criteria I have to respond to 61 place builder criteria on this application and we're down to arguing about one, which is the access issue out of those 61. I discussed some of those place builder. I've had to spend a long time discussing those, which much of that was in your application as well. And obviously it's subject to certification of the development plan. So I have submitted proposed findings. I sent those to the staff and to the law department this morning as well. I want to make sure I've covered everything I wanted to cover with you. The staff has mentioned connectivity a number of times, and I do want to emphasize that even in this original staff report, I want to quote to you from the original staff report, which was written on this. It said the applicants should consider ways to increase connectivity to allow better access to police, EMS, and power, while also seeking to promote connections that preference pedestrian connectivity. It says we should preference pedestrian connectivity. And I understand, we understand the issues the staff raises about response time. We understand the issues the staff has raised about number of units. But the National Fire Protection Association, which writes the codes, has dealt with these issues. And they come up with objective criteria which take those concerns into consideration. And they have determined, and Lexington has adopted the code which says that you can have up to 100 houses with one way in and out. And you find that in many places in Lexington, not just here. we meet the code, we meet the law, we meet the objective criteria as called for by the Kentucky courts, and we meet the requests of the neighborhood association that we came up through the place builder process. We feel we have a better plan than the one you voted to approve a year ago, and we hope you will vote to approve this plan and our zone change as well. and probably left some things out, but we thank you for hearing our presentation. And as I said, Dennis is here and Tony Barrett's here, and we'd be happy to answer any questions you all might have about this. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Thank you. Commission members, do we have any, anyone have any questions for the applicant? Okay, Mr. Nichols. Yes, sir. Mr. Murphy, I've got a question for you. As we're looking at the 10 residential lots, have you considered during your meetings with the neighbors to, I guess, overrule their wishes of putting, you know, removing two of the residential lots and creating a connection there? Is that, I understand that's probably what you've been balancing. The neighbor's needs below and the staff's needs for best practice. I just wanted you to let us know why you chose to side with the neighborhood's request rather than the staff's request. Well, there are a couple of reasons, some practical, some design. I'll let Dennis answer about some of the design criteria. But we felt since that was the number one concern of the neighbors, we needed to honor that. And also having observed the zone change one year ago on the Clover in which there was no push for a connection by any neighbor. And that was not an issue at the city council, as I recall, that there be a connection. we felt that any connection here would lead the neighbors to feel that they needed to oppose the zone change and get it voted down at the city council. So we think this is, I'll be honest with you, it's a practical situation. I think that this development depends upon the good faith of the neighbors, the goodwill of the neighbors by not making that connection. I think they have chosen there's a balancing of crime issues versus safety issues. They have made that choice. There may be some physical issues as well. I don't know if Dennis wants to address those on the property as well. Thank you very much. Dennis needs to unmute himself there. There we go. The, you know, this was the number one issue of the neighbors. When I met with them, I met with them prior to designing anything. I met with them prior into entering into a purchase agreement. Met with Andover Villas prior to that. Called the minister. I asked him if he was willing to go through this again. It's a very emotional, trying situation for someone who doesn't do it every day. And was his congregation willing to go through this again? And we all kind of got on the same page and we moved forward with it. Not only do I think the neighbors want it, but I think they're right. I don't think we need it. As Jackie said to me, she's the Homeowners Association president. Her last name's Long Dick, Jackie Long. you know we've been here 20 years Dennis if it had been built it would have never been used so not only is it what they want it's what I want and it's what the law says the law says it doesn't it's not the thing to do the fire code says it's not needed you know I just flabbergasted and then there's an actual aesthetic part of it the form of it, it would be, this land is like eight feet lower than the land the road is on. And so you have to kind of build a ramp up to it so that the grade will be where they could drive on it. And that, you know, then you've got the appearance of it. You've got a house beside this land going up to it. It just, you know, it just doesn't, the form and the function, the function is not necessary. The form is not pleasing. and I just can't, you know, I find it kind of frustrating that we're hung up on this. But yeah, you know, when I have a neighborhood group that stands with me, I've got to stand with them too. And not only is it a philosophical thing, but it's the crank thing. That's all I've got to say. Thank you. Mr. Bell? Well, I appreciate y'all very much working so diligently with the place builder. That's what we've been trying to do. And I really commend y'all for your efforts. I'm just curious if Captain Lynn, the captain of the fire department is on today. Would he be on? How? Yeah. May we have some comments from him on this, please? Mr. Lingle, we're going to go ahead and promote you as a panelist now, so you'll be able to show your video and speak. Captain, are you there? Yes, sir, I am. Let me see. Okay, I got the video up. First, I want to introduce myself. My name is Greg Lingua. I work with Fire Emergency Response. Welcome the new commission members. When we review these plans, we try to be consistent in our decision making. But we also review each plan separately. With that being said, we do like access points. We do like wide streets. but we also base our decision on the fire code and actually this plan does meet our criteria what the applicant said and I also discussed it with the staff as well so Mr. Bailey was correct we would accept that access point but it's not a requirement from the division of fire and I believe I've stated that everybody involved at this time before this meeting I'm sorry Thank you so much. Thank you. As a commission member, do we have any more questions for the applicant at this time? Okay. Next up, we'll move into the citizens' comments. Do we have any advocates for the plan? And with that, we would try to have a limit of 10 minutes total. So we'll be keeping a time clock here on our end. If there are citizens in support who would like to speak now, if you could raise your hands electronically, and we'll just move down that list. First, we're going to call on T. Van Wingerton. You'll be promoted to speak in just a moment. If you could give us your name and address for the record of the meeting, please. And you can go ahead and speak now. Can you all hear me? Yes. Great. My name is Tim Van Wengerden. My address is 1894 Marlboro Drive. I have vested interest in this because I am a member of Andover Baptist Church. And I'm very much in approval for moving forward with this development. I think that it meets the fire code and also that Anderson communities has a proven track record of development. And they've also been very compliant and understanding with the neighborhoods and with the church. So just wanted to voice my approval. Thank you. next we'll be moving to Irv Hurst and you're allowed to speak now please give us your name and address for the record okay my name is Irvin Hurst I live at 3406 Country Club Drive and I'm speaking for myself and my next door neighbor Roger Hall who lives at 3400 Country Club Drive who's out of town today and I will speak. I appreciate the couple minutes to speak about this. You should have a letter from Roger and I that we wrote to Tracy and Hal, part of this project. Our community, our first of all, our homes, Roger and my homes are on the property line, Vandover Club Villas, that connect directly to the church property. So the easement, the walking easement up into Todd's Road will go across go right next to our property lines but anyway we were very strongly opposed to the past proposal last year because we just felt it was not a good fit with the neighborhood it just it was a ginormous building it was a single building footprint like a football field and a half square footage and we just we had seen clover community buildings in other locations mr hall is from Buffalo, New York, and they had one right near where he grew up. After 10 years, it did not look good. Mr. Anderson has been really good about communicating on this. He's had several meetings with us. He talked about plans before he put anything to paper. He shared plans with us. He's talked with us. And we just have a lot of confidence in him. We think that he will put something in there that will complement the neighborhood instead of detract from it. So we are much more comfortable with what he plans to put in there and um as far as the road and so on goes i think the the extension of putter lane out to todd's road helps connectivity quite a bit uh i know that the residents from andover hills don't want the road going through there and i know they have safety and crime concerns and so on but i will kind of remind you again that they this thing did pass last year through this commission and was, you know, forwarded on to the city council. It lost in the city council meeting by only one vote. And I think the reason was more because of the mass objections from people over the buildings and not in the non fit with the community. I don't think it was so much on roads. But unless I'm wrong, I haven't heard much this time and I'm not seeing those mass objections. So I think this is kind of a unique opportunity to get something done that addresses a big part of the comprehensive plan. It addresses density, it addresses senior citizens, and the neighborhoods are willing to go along with it, which is, I think, pretty unusual. I think this is a great opportunity. So I would recommend, Roger and I would both recommend that you approve this proposal. Thank you. And that's all I have. Thank you. Okay, next up to speak will be Ben. okay uh you can go ahead and speak now please all right can you hear me yes okay i don't know how to turn on my video i apologize i'm not sure if i can make that work so uh just bear with me so i i want to just first off thank all the council this morning thank the planning staff uh you know i've saw both sides but and watch this i'm ben crawl i live on 916 and over woods lane I live right along the road where we're talking about the construction. And I can tell you, to speak to the last gentleman who was speaking, Mr. Anderson's come out. He's talked to myself and my family. We walked along the frontage area. We saw that. I also trust Mr. Anderson. I think he wants to do what's right for the community. He wants to do what's right for the HOA. He wants to do what's right for the church and Lexington and the senior citizens. We talked about the significant need for new senior living in Lexington. and we talked about the growing need that we anticipate over the next several years. I think that's very important to keep in mind and consider. I do want to mention, you know, we've talked over and over about police, fire safety, and even the objective standards of Kentucky. They don't require that additional access on Andover Woods Lane. So if it's not required, you know, my question to the planning staff, Is it just an opinion or a condition that the planning staff imposed outside of the police, fire, and safety requirements? And how did that become a part of it if it wasn't required last year? How did it become required this year when it's not required by the state or by security or safety? Thank you, Ben. we have about five minutes left so i want to make sure everyone okay i've got one more real quick question then that i'd like to follow up with uh when the staff was considering that through road did they also consider the risk of increasing traffic through a senior living area if they're wanting to route fire and safety ems through a residential area designed for seniors that may be hard of hearing may not be as mobile do you want to really put a through road there for fire police and ems units to go through the current plan shows all the traffic being routed around the outside perimeter but if we put a through road we're actually increasing traffic right through where we're going to have senior citizens trying to get out move around and through their recreational areas in the courtyard between the buildings then there will be a rebuttal phase and staff will be able to answer that question for you at that time okay thank you you're welcome Next up is Bradley Sinclair. Go ahead. You can speak now. Hello, my name is Bradley Sinclair. I live at 321 Colby Ridge, actually in Winchester, but I'm part of the community there in the area as the children's minister at the Baptist Church at Andover. And I would just like to express encouragement over this plan and my support for it, simply for the fact of as a children's minister, I really look forward to having a senior living facility in our backyard with people that we can minister to. And hopefully examples and relationships that we can build as a church and with our children as well, with the people that live here. thank you that's all i had thank you next is jackie long please go ahead you can speak now um my name is jackie long i am the president of the andover neighborhood association and i live at 651 brook green lane um our association by and large supports mr anderson's proposal we actually support it with with as it stands with no access across andover woods lane should access be granted through this process then i have a feeling that the neighborhood's going to have a very different opinion um i believe that the people who live in that section are happy with the way that their neighborhood looks now but they understand that there could be development at some point and as you looked at those pictures that were presented before the the people on andover woods lane their front porch literally looks out onto this property so they are very receptive to the added buffer of the houses but they're also very concerned about any traffic coming across Andover Woods Lane because they have kids who play there and the increased traffic is more of a concern to them than any EMS. I have zero ever had, as long as I've been on the board, which has been about 10 years. I've never had someone say, we need to increase access into our neighborhood for EMS. No one's ever had a problem with it. We also have had, as a neighborhood, had to pay for security for our neighborhood. So this just increases the ingress for people who, and egress, ingress and egress for people who may not have the best intentions. So I just really like to support it as his plan stands without any access across Andover Woods Lane because I believe that the residents there actually all are opposed to to access. Thank you, Jackie. We have two minutes left. Folks, I want to make sure they can be heard. Next is Edward Schwarberg. Go ahead. You can speak now. Hello there. Edward Schwarberg here, and I live on 1000 Autumn Ridge Drive right across the street. But I'm also the senior pastor at the Baptist Church at Andover, where the property is located off Todd's Road. And I just simply wanted to emphasize that as a church, we truly believe that this is a great opportunity for us to serve, specifically this often forgotten generation of wonderful people. And as a pastor, I am persuaded that senior housing behind the church, which is not uncommon, by the way, would benefit not only the city, but our area. I think that this would allow a great age demographic to continue to positively influence Andover as they will bring a wonderful contribution to the area. Listen, I enjoy this community just as much as anyone listening. I live here. I work here. I love it here. And as a pastor, our church is incredibly delighted and eager to have affordable senior living in our backyard. Now, we know that these folks will add value and impact to the District 7. So in my estimation, challenges, yeah, they'll come, but they pale in comparison to what these people will offer. And that is what is most important. The church back property has sat vacant for over 25 years. So we wanted something back there that conveys both connectedness and ministry opportunity. And that's exactly what is being offered through Dennis Anderson's plan. He's been wonderful to work with. He has expressed to me he wants there to be a sense of community between the senior living facility and the church. So in closing, I'll just say that our church is instructed to care for the least of these, including the widows and the elderly. And there is overwhelming support and excitement among our church membership with this potential project. So we hope that you can support the plans as well. Thank you for your service and thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Next is D. Rose. Go ahead. D. Rose, you're on mute. Okay. We'll go next to, is it Becky? Okay. We're going to allow Becky Vance to speak now. Go ahead, please. Okay. Ms. Vance? Ms. Vance, if you're there, you can go ahead and speak now. Our next raised hand is Susan. I'm going to go ahead and allow you to speak now. you are going by Susan next we're going to call Julie if your hand is raised and you are going by Julie you can speak now this is Susan hello we can hear you fine Susan uh yes I'm Susan Carter I live at nine 780 Chetford Drive, which is about 22nd Drive from the church. My husband and I have been here since 1999, and I'm really excited about this. I know that there's a lot of young folks moving into the area, but we feel the senior population, it'd be a great community. You know, we have a family that is getting older, and this would be perfect, of course, including myself. but I mean you know it would just be an aesthetically pleasing and we really support the plans and would like to see planning and zoning to get behind these efforts thank you all so much for your time thank you comments we will try Julie again if you're going by Julie you can go ahead and speak now my name is Julie Lewis and I reside at Hunter Knowles Place right near Andover Woods and I just sort of want to reiterate that I'm in agreement with just about everything that Jackie Long said regarding the development. I think the neighborhood has finally understood that there is a development that's going to take place. I think that the plan as it stands now with no access into the back end of Andover Woods is a very positive thing. You know, that area is all cul-de-sacs. There's lots of children in that area, and to have through traffic through there would not be a good thing. There's already enough traffic with all the people that live there. The other thing, too, and I could maybe address this later, but it's more of a question, is that, you know, I think the addition of Putter's Lane to Todd's Road is a good idea to allow ingress and egress out of that development. But I know that living where I live, I try to avoid Todd's Road at all costs, and I know a lot of neighbors do. And so getting on to Andover Village or Forest Hills Drive and the access to Maple Leaf, it's already a big traffic issue now in my eyes. And I think that the addition of this development may cause some other issues. And I don't know if there's a way to ever have a traffic light at Forest Hill Drive or where the church is. But I think seniors and elders trying to get out onto Todd's Road at that intersection, even though there are lanes in and out, is not going to be a good thing for that area. So I don't know when that gets addressed, but I think it's something everyone needs to be thinking about. and again I appreciate everybody's help Mr. Anderson's help and trying to get the development to appease everybody's thoughts has been a great thing thank you very much thank you next is Jennifer Hackworth go ahead you can speak now hi my name is Jennifer Hackworth and I live at 933 Andover Woods Lane so we are directly impacted as We're right next to the church. Historically, I have been very much against the idea of development. We specifically purchased this home because of the way Andover Woods exists today. However, I'm not naive to the fact that development is likely going to happen. I do have some concerns with the 10 houses being put onto our street and turning our street into a construction zone. However, I think the end product of having no throughput onto our street is the selling point for me today after seeing Mr. Anderson's presentation and the builder's presentation. So overall, I'm not happy with the idea of development, but if the sticking point is the through point onto our street, then I'm in support of the plan as it is today. And that's all. Thank you. Okay, next will be Dan Rose. Go ahead, you can speak now. Hello, everyone. Thank you. Our law firm is representing the church in connection with this. And on behalf of the church and Pastor Schwarberg, we'd just like to reiterate the institutional support for what Mr. Anderson is trying to do. I think as everyone sees, the plan has been well thought out with Mr. Murphy's assistance. I think as you're hearing from everyone else, the idea of this through road would really decimate the project in terms of the, as I see it, in terms of the safety of the residents of the community that Mr. Anderson is going to construct. to have through traffic, basically cutting in half the senior living facility, to me, is a major disadvantage. And I'd like to just second Reverend Schwarberg's comments about this being a very complementary project in terms of both the church and the senior living facility benefiting from the presence of each other's facilities. And we just think it's for the whole community, it's going to be a real plus. And if anybody's familiar with Mr. Anderson's developments, they know he does nothing but first class projects. So we just like to reiterate our support for the church as a whole to what's being requested here. Thank you. All right. We're going to move on. Do we have any objectors to the application? and if you would raise your hand we're going to have the same time and hopefully if not we will move on to the next recalve stage uh can we check with this phone call please yes uh we would like to check with the caller from number one six zero six five eight four four three nine eight to see if you're interested in this case we're going to allow you to speak now Okay, sir. That number just disappeared. All right. Okay. So we don't have any hands up for the... So we'll move on to the... Oh, we got one? Oh, excuse me. No, we do. Okay. We are going to allow M. Gallavati to speak now. Go ahead. Yes, my name is Michael Gallavati, 3601 Brook Green Circle. I guess a couple questions for the design team. There was some discussion about visual screening and how a two-story home or one-story garage screens a five-story building. I'm confused by that methodology or thought process. further from the five-story building in my review of the area the closest five-story building to the north is the Holiday Inn at Bryant Road near I-75 and maybe to the southeast is the the hospital St. Joseph's Hospital how how does this five-story building in the middle of a residential area meet the issue I think to ensure compatibility. I just don't agree with that statement and then I'm also confused at how we can approve the development plan when it doesn't meet the building setbacks. Those questions will be answered shortly here in the rebuttal stage. Staff will have an opportunity to answer those questions for you. I would appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome. I see no other hands, Mr. Chair. Okay. Now we'll move on to the applicant comments and we make sure we're going to limit these to five minutes if we can. And for the rebuttal. Okay. This is applicant comments, Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. For the rebuttal and closing statements. Yes, sir. Okay. Well, I think you heard the comments from the neighbors, and that, I think, had two major points from the comments that were made. Number one, Dennis Anderson has worked extremely hard with the Neighborhood Association and the neighbors to come up with a plan that is acceptable to them. And number two, a big part of that is not having the vehicular access in the Andover Woods Drive. Now, we do have good pedestrian access in there, but we are not showing vehicular access. And the reason we did not show it is because the law does not require it. And we felt that since the law does not require it, that we should go with what the neighbors were requesting on the property. We encountered this before. Fire codes set objective criteria. And obviously, we'd all be safer if we didn't live in wood houses. But fire codes allow us to live in wood houses because that is a desirable way to live. and we meet the product code requirements for this, which is the same as we have other places around town. There was a question about screening, and I'd like to show you how these units do accomplish screening. We had our architect prepare a visual to show how the screening works. This is the, at the top, of course, we stepped down from a five to a four to a three-story building. But we wanted to see how they would be visible from the people on Andover Woods Lane and how the two-story houses would screen a five-story building. If you look down here at the middle image, this is standing on the sidewalk in front of the houses, which will be constructed, which are not there now, but will be constructed on Andover Woods Lane. You can see the buildings peaked out in the rear there, but you can also see what a good job the screening does when you're standing on the sidewalk looking through. Now this second, the bottom image is when you're standing across the street on Andover Woods Lane in front of the existing houses looking toward our five-story building. You can see it peeks out a little bit over there. And you can see it peeks out right over here. But I think you can see what a good job these houses will do in screening this. And as I mentioned to you before, on our development plan itself, we also have not only the houses along Andover Woods Lane, but we do have the garages which are showing through here, garages here. We have tree line around the property as well, which will also screen it. And that's how we are going to accomplish that. And that's as Dennis told the neighbors on there. So I just wanted to give you a little idea of how we were screening the property. And I know the overall question is the connection into Andover Woods Lane. And I think you've heard from the neighbors a very good sort of brief summary of what Dennis heard in the many meetings he had, both with groups and one-on-one with the neighbors before the coronavirus thing hit out there. And you see where they stand with this. They have been historically opposed to development on the property, but find that they are agreeable with it, but do have great concerns about safety and crime themselves about what happens if the connection is made. And we think, again, that all things being equal, we should go with what the Lexington's adopted fire code calls for in the decision that you make today. and we're very pleased with this plan. I like the plan itself because, as I said, the architecture itself lends itself to interaction with the church. That's what the church wants, and that's what we want. We want the church to minister to us, and the church wants to minister to our people there, and we're very pleased with that. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. I think your five minutes are up. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. citizens we didn't have any citizen objectors except for one not sure if they want to speak raise your hand that was mr. Gallabody if you have any further comments would you like to recognize this yes Julie yes okay Julie will let you speak now go ahead I just you know as I said earlier I really am in favor of the development, but just have concerns about the 10 houses that will be new that back up to the proposed development, that they will not have much screening from a five-story building, and hence those property values may be lowered, and hence the rest of that neighborhood's property values may be lowered over time too. And I think that, you know, the privacy to those townhomes that are adjacent to there those may be affected by a five-story building as well so you know i know the density is probably needed but it just seems like if if all those buildings were three stories or lower it certainly would have been a better more favorable development for everybody and that's all thank you thank you for your comments we will move on to staffs rebuttal and closing statements yes sir um i will try to be brief uh we have a lot of things to cover uh just clarification points it was an 8-1 vote for uh approval of the development plan and the zone change previously for the clover properties rezoning an 8-4 vote at the urban county council against um i do want to clarify a bit of what the place builder is the place builder is not just an aspect of public engagement. It also incorporates the goals, objectives, and policies outlined in the comprehensive plan. It is, in fact, a distillation of those goals, objectives, and policies. And to disregard some of those aspects just to focus on one of them is inappropriate. While the staff finds the neighborhood input imperative, in fact, important, we are here to offer best practices regarding the health, safety, and welfare of our community. That is what we are here to discuss today from a staff perspective. Additionally, the applicant is showing access into Andover Woods Lane through a pedestrian walkway, however, not integrated into their site. So there is access. I do want to start that out with pedestrian access. With Snyder versus Owensboro, the applicant represents this as a zone change case. That is not the case in this review. It is, in fact, a subdivision case. The staff is making a recommendation for the zone change, not on the subdivision regulation. You're focusing on agreement with the comprehensive plan. This goes into a further aspect of the applicant's argument in the fact that the applicant is actually making an argument against measurable metrics. It is a salient fact that they are seeking a waiver to reduce measurable safety distance requirements with their request at this time. The applicant is the one here that is deviating from those requirements. I also want to point out that this is not a review of the fire safety manual. This is actually a review of compliance with the comprehensive plan. The staff is pushing and has pushed within our presentation that the applicant is actually missing the mark with very important aspects of the comprehensive plan. Whether or not they are hitting 100 dwelling unit mark or not, with what they are proposing, they are reducing the ability to create connectivity for EMS services, police services, and fire services by closing off access to Andover Woods Lane, a area that is a full frontage that is able to be connected from Putter and was planned for previously. Finally, I do want to focus on what the access staff is looking for. It seems as if the applicant and the neighborhood have discussed quite a bit about vehicular access that would go from Putter Lane across the site into Andover Woods Lane. What staff is looking for is pedestrian access that connects the sites rather than separates them, and EMS police and fire services access. Staff is not looking for a thoroughfare between the two areas. We would be fine with those kind of connections because it would disperse that kind of traffic, but the main things that staff are focusing on today are pedestrian connectivity and then also getting into that EMS connectivity. If you want to mention, one of the members of the public made a comment about how can they have a development plan that is recommended for approval when they are not meeting the setback. That is the setback for the AU zone to the R4 zone. That is a 25-foot setback. In this case, the applicant is going so that they can move forward with the application today. they are seeking to go with a BOA case that would allow them to go ahead and move this forward. Mr. Martin will go ahead and discuss that just briefly. Yes, and Hal could have addressed this as well. They need to reflect the required 25-foot setback. It's the more restrictive, but they will be able to seek relief from the BOA as this should this be approved and as this plan moves forward in the future. So on that, that is staff's rebuttal and final statements. If you have any questions, we'd be happy to answer. Thank you. So at this time, what we're going to do is we're going to close the hearing and bring it to the commission members for any questions. If I may, Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And I apologize just very briefly because I don't want, I do believe it's very important to emphasize a point that Hal made that the waiver request is the most salient point to this plan. Because without that waiver and without access to Todd's Road, they wouldn't meet the fire standards. Furthermore, they wouldn't meet your land subdivision regulations that state that a multifamily development should not access a local street, which Putter Lane is, in fact, a local street. So they are requesting relief from this body from very specific standards in your land subdivision regulations, regulations that use the word shall and should, and give us formulas to follow. So it is, they are very specific requirements. And I just wanted to emphasize that point for you. Thank you for that additional information. Okay, so we're going to close the hearing at this moment. And for planning commission members, we've got any questions for staff or concerns you want to ask. Maybe actually can ask questions to the applicant. If not, look for a vote for the zone change and or a waiver request. open up to the commission members i have a question here from just carolyn plumley she's like you're on mute uh for the staff hal mentioned pedestrian connectivity is the staff okay with that the way it is now well ma'am the way that the pedestrian connectivity is currently shown is actually not a way to integrate the neighborhood it's a way to get people to tons growth when staff is talking about pedestrian connectivity within creating a neighborhood, we want to tie those neighborhoods together. The way they're showing it would, in staff's opinion, would be the least common denominator in the way that they can get out to the roadway easiest, but it does not integrate into the development, nor make those connections between Putter Lane and Andover Woods Lane. Thank you. Got a question, Mr. Bench? I'm going to address this to Hal and the staff. I noticed on your reason for disapproval, your number one was that you recommended this stay an R3 and not an R4. But I didn't hear much discussion about that. I assume it's density. Could you address that for us? Currently, sir, it's actually an AU. Staff is recommending that it is currently the R4 is a appropriate zone when you have all the associated infrastructure. So right now the APKIN is asking to put this R4, a very dense development, into a site that is well off of an arterial roadway and connecting only through a local street. So without providing some of that cross-connectivity, without grouping this into the neighborhood, staff is unable to currently find that they are meeting this level of appropriateness for an R4 zone. Okay, the reason I brought that up is that the one that went to the council that we approved 8 to 1 was an R4. And so I assume density was not an issue here. I want that to be a matter of record. Thank you. Yes, sir. any other commission members any questions okay all right Mr. Chair I have another point of clarification and this is kind of what happens when you get a application submitted on a on a Monday before a planning commission hearing um we do have another uh screw up uh on the findings for disapproval it should say R4 and not a planned neighborhood residential it should say a high density apartment r4 zone i apologize for that screw up the problem mr pen caught that hell about an hour ago he's a better man than i okay so we will all right um we've been on this call for quite some time so it's up to the commission members to determine oh mr bill yeah mr chairman forrester um i've been trying to digest all of this and i've just been most encouraged um with the comments from the neighborhood um i more often than not try to support staff uh but i think the presentation has been been very very strong and um I'm inclined to support the developers on this project. Thank you. With that being said, Mr. Bell, do you want to make a motion? No. No. Thank you. Okay. Are there any more discussions? Mr. Chair, I also want to point out that we have Tracy Jones from law here available if you have any questions about findings or any anything going forward. Okay. All right. Well, we got a question here from Ms. Jones from Mr. Penn from Mr. Penn. I just like to ask Ms. Jones if she's read the applicant's reasons or findings and what her comment is on that. Mr. Penn, I have read their reasons and I'm assuming that you all are inclined to approve this that you would be considering and I'm sorry I'm looking on my phone because I was trying to document that the same time while we were talking from what I was reading on my computer, but that you all would be considering that in what you've heard today and in your consideration that you value what the neighborhood's saying and their input over and above what the connectivity arguments have been from the staff. And with that being the case, I would think that you might want to exclude number two subsection Q and number two subsection T of the ones that were submitted by by Mr. Murphy and those would then be okay I mean there's a number of other ones that you could leave out of time and the interest of being clear over this particular forum that might be the easiest thing to do. Section 2Q and Section 2T. 2Q and T, yes. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Mr. Nichols. Well, I think that sums up my position very succinctly, that in my opinion, I do value the neighbors above the staff's desire for a third connection point. I think it has to, I think we're juggling best practice versus practicality. And because we do have two access points and neighbor's approval, I would approve the practicality over the best practices, even though I think it's better practices that we're seeing here. So I will make a motion if that's appropriate. I will make a motion to approve plan PLN MAR 20-0007 Anderson Communities Inc. using the findings presented by the applicant with the removal of section 2 Q&T. Okay, we have a motion. Second. Second by Mr. Bell. All in favor, we'll raise our hands. So we can see everyone. So all in favor for this motion, raise your hand by aye. Okay. Any opposed? Okay. Ayes have it. And we need to do the waiver request too. Development plan. Development plan first. Sorry. Too fast. Then the waiver request. So you've got a development plan next. Okay. I guess I'll continue with this. I make a motion to recommend approval for PLNMJDP 20-00020, Baptist Church of Andover Properties with the staff's recommendations I do have a question about how we handle eight so can someone help me out with that trying to find it eight on the revised denote vehicular access to Andover Woods Lane okay I guess we'd have to strike that out is that the appropriate thing to do yes yes okay well then that's a lot that's the way i would like to state it please so you're eliminating eight making it nine conditions yes sir okay all right we have a motion second all in favor by raising can we can we discuss for a moment yes sir uh I'm the only person who didn't vote to approve. And my reason is that the pedestrian access is so weak. And it would be a very, very minor shift for them to put a pedestrian access over to Andover Drive in a more central location. that would make a really legitimate connectivity across those communities for pedestrians, bicyclists, wherever. I seriously doubt that neighbors would have any objection to that. So I'm not sure how we deal with that, but I think it's worth considering. Okay. Mr. Polk, this is the preliminary plan, so they're going to bring a final plan back that may be addressed there. I don't want to outspeak, but is that correct, Hal, or could be correct? Yes, sir. This could be discussed, and this will be discussed again at the time of final development plan or the preliminary subdivision plat. or uh so we can uh discuss that again uh and move forward with this now but mr graham thanks that's a good point i just want to make sure that's your question is addressed okay thank you you welcome can we have hal or tom say how we could solve any of the place builder criteria Does that condition still says discuss as well? Mr. Martin, the place builder criteria that to resolve with what they are showing. Mr. Martin states affirmatively, move that to resolve. To resolve. Change the percent to a whole. Okay. Mr. Nichols, your motion is still on the table with the changes to number 10 to resolve? Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Okay. Mr. Bell, you still seconding that motion? Second. Okay. All in favor by raising hands. Okay. All right. Thank you. It's unanimous. Next is the waiver request. Okay. I don't have that information how to, but I'm just going to request approval of the waiver. Is that appropriate or is that enough information or do I need to be more specific? You can be more specific. It's just the waiver to the spacing requirements along Todd's Okay, I would like to approve the waiver for the spacing along Todd's Road. Second. We got a motion and a second. Please raise your hands in favor. We want to discuss that. Could we discuss that? Sure. Yes. Thank you. So considering the waiver, I think Tom said the whole process of this development depended on the waiver. And so I just wonder about practices in having a single waiver, the whole process depending on a single waiver. I just don't think that's a good thing to happen. But generally, I think you guys know how I feel about waivers. So we'll move on. Thank you. No, thank you, Ms. Plumlee, for your comments. Thank you. Okay. I was in the process of asking. We had a motion and a second. All in favor, raise your hands. Any opposed? Okay, thank you. Thank you, applicant. It's a long hearing. I'm desperately going to take a 10-minute break. everyone take care of yourself turn your videos off please thank you all very much Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. All right, next up on the agenda we have Blackburn Development LLC. and then we also with that application we looks like we have three variances and there is a revised recommendation for the development plan so staff we're Al you're up thank you very much sir I want to start it off with pointing out that we have two letters of objection to this zone change they should have been uploaded to the Google Drive for your viewing. I will go ahead and share my screen. We are discussing PLN MAR 20-0009 Blackburn Development LLC. The EPCON is seeking a zone change from the two-family residential R2 zone to a high-rise apartment R2. 5 zone for 0.655 net and 0.717 gross acres for the properties located at 325, 329, and 333 Blackburn Avenue. While those are the areas that are going to be rezoned, I do want to bring in the fact that 345 Blackburn Avenue plays an imperative part to this development. You'll see that on a lot of our discussion here with the zone change, but you'll also see that on the major development plan associated with this application. The applicant is seeking to construct a three-story multifamily residential structure that will be associated with the existing apartments, which are located at 345 Blackburn Avenue. It's also known as the 345 Flats. The structure is proposed to be 36 feet in height and contain 36 one-bedroom apartment units. The proposed residential density of the development is approximately 55 dwelling units per net acre. To complete this residential development, the applicant is seeking to share the existing entryway and amenity space with 345 Blackburn Ave. There are two-dimensional variances and a parking variance that have also been requested with this, and we will describe that after the discussion of the major development plan that Ms. Galt pulled. here. So if we look at the subject property, I'm going to pull up my annotate tool so that I can spotlight what we're talking about. The subject property is located mid-block along Blackburn Avenue. Blackburn Avenue is a local street that connects between West 4th Street here and West 3rd Street here. West 3rd Street is one way going out towards Jefferson, whereas West 4th Street is a two-way access point. Both of those are more of a collector type roadway. Looking at the area around the subject rezoning, you can see that there are an awful lot of remnant aspects of the original use in this area. Because of the location next to the rail line, which extends along Newtown Pike. This area was primarily serving in industrial and warehousing type use. Over time, we've seen a significant change to an awful lot of the residential zoning in this area, as well as some of the other zoning in here. Specifically, moving towards a B1 form base, You saw that last week with our discussion of the Thistle Station major development plan that you approved. Moving closer onto this, we get a better idea of the zoning and some of the land uses that you have around this subject property. To the northwest, you're seeing a lot of that industrial use. To the south and southeast, you're seeing an R2 or a two-family residential zone. residential zone. And then you're seeing remnant I1 zoning and some higher density R4 housing over in this area. So currently the flats, which was rezoned a few years ago in 2016, that is what you're seeing here with the residential multifamily unit as the R4 zone at that location. The subject properties that we are looking to discuss today are located just here. You have two vacant parcels at this location and one currently standing single family structure. It has been indicated by the applicant that that structure is currently gutted, but it is still standing. You can also see what has developed at the end of this street. At this location, we actually see one structure, which is the powerhouse church of God. But in the rest of the area, you're looking at single family detached houses on smaller lots. Within this area, just within the residential side of things, the density per housing unit for this area with the single family houses is approximately between 8 to 12 units per net acre. if we look into the property itself you get a view of what is the area that's being rezoned you can see a portion of the house here the house here that is uh proposed to be demolished for the construction of this property and then the two open lots here you get a view of the connection down blackburn avenue towards fourth street at this location and then again down blackbird avenue towards Third Street at this location. You get a bit of a view of the Powerhouse Church of God, but you have a better view of that industrial building that is still standing at that location. Here we get a better view of the residential structures that are nearby this proposed zoning. Upon the top, you would see the three structures that other than the Powerhouse Church of God here that would be opposing this proposed development. These buildings are at about a story to a story and a half and stand at approximately 26 feet in height. If you look down in this bottom right picture, you can see the building that is being proposed to be demolished next to a two and a half story structure, residential structure, that is right next to it. That residential structure is just over 36 feet in height. This subject property is located within the Northside Historic Residential District. This was established in 1979 and consists of approximately 40 city blocks and about 1,700 individual structures. The vast majority of them are residential, but you can see this delves way deep into the downtown area and incorporates a fair amount of business and retail, as well as a fair amount of industrial space as well. This is a great map that I pulled out of the application for the NRHP designation, and it gives a lot of the information as to when certain areas were constructed. And you can see in this area, the subject property is located right here, and many of the houses there were constructed at the end of the 19th century as it moved into the 20th century. I will stress that this is not within an H1 overlay zone. The structure proposed for demolition for this site is not recognized within the NRHP report as a structure of historic significance as well. There are several areas of this north side historic residential district that have now become H1 overlays, but this is not part of that. So over the course of time, this area has been subject of numerous small area plans. The first one being the Lexington Central Sector Small Area Plan. Another, the Newtown Pike Extension Corridor Plan, which actually reaches up close to where we were discussing the Thistle Station development. And then more appropriately, we're looking at the 4th Street Zoning Study. This study actually looks at specifically Blackburn Avenue, 4th Street, and 3rd Street and gets at a lot of the wants and needs of both the neighborhood and future development in the area. Within this section there the specific properties are called out within opportunity districts. See the two areas here and here in which the fourth street zoning study recommended mid-density residential for this area. Now when this was done, it was done a few years ago under the previous comprehensive plan, but it has been adopted into the current comprehensive plan. So staff does take into account the recommendations of this area. There's another section that actually outlines this as a focus area for mixed-use development, but that section does talk about the need for mixed uses, but also gets at the need for mixed-use zoning. That is some other aspects that have occurred as time has gone on within the zoning ordinance and with subsequent so does. So the one thing to highlight here is that the small area plan did call for a mid-density residential. So within the review of this application, as we discussed previously, we look at what the applicant has done with outreach with neighbors and the neighborhood. This applicant has reached out to the neighborhood in a few different times. The first was actually last year and they were represented by a different legal entity and they have they had held a meeting in person since then they have hired new legal attorneys or legal advice or representation and that individual and the development team have held subsequent meetings with the neighborhood. I would recommend that the applicant go ahead and discuss some of those meetings that they've had with the neighborhood as they go through their presentation. Within this application, the applicant did reach out to staff and discuss what they were seeking to do, and they came in with their perceptions of both place type, development type, and a zone that would be appropriate to fit their development. In this case, the applicant is looking at a second-tier urban place type, which is where the significant infill and redevelopment opportunities exist to complement that urban core that we're seeing with our downtown place types. While not expected to be as intensely developed as the downtown core, high-rise opportunities are not precluded in this case. However, we do want to make sure that we're being sensitive to the development that is occurring around it. That can be done through step downs, as well as buffering aspects that will be discussed later on in this application. Regarding the place type, the applicant has actually come in with a medium density residential place type. Now this is similar to the recommendation of the fourth street zoning study. For the medium density residential development type that staff is looking at, we are looking primarily at attached and multifamily units. Now when we say attached multifamily, we do want to make sure that those multifamily units don't exceed too much of the height or the massing that you would see as the surrounding area. We want to make sure that we are transitioning, if it is nearby single-family detached houses, transitioning from those detached to a step up of multifamily or attached single-family to another step up of multifamily. These areas are typically nearby commercial and employment uses and have access to green space that is easily accessible. The applicant with their application and the location that this is set in has multiple access points to both transit, to the future bike and trail system that is nearby, as well as Kulivin Park. You can see some of the examples of the medium density in this location. So with that, the applicant has now, and I'm going to click on something so that it will work. The applicant is asking for a zone change to the high-density apartment or R5. I'm sorry, the high-rise apartment or R5 zone. This is primarily for their FAR purposes, and they're seeking to utilize a fair amount of this site. So within the conversations that we have had over the past couple of months regarding this development, one of the major points of conversation during the zoning subcommittee was the need for some sort of massing study or exhibit showing how this is fitting into the context of the area and how that the applicant is stepping down from a four-story structure to meet some of those aspects of the neighborhood as it is. In this exhibit, the applicant is showing that the current heights and approximate sizing of the proposed structures, as well as the current structure that is there. When reviewing some of these aspects of the application, staff has been really cognizant about how this could affect some of the single-family development that has been established since the turn of the 20th century. So staff has been really looking specifically at how to make sure that if there is going to be development at this site, are we providing enough buffer between the proposed new development and the established homes. Staff is recommending the use of conditional zoning restrictions along this boundary of the site. And we will describe those once we get into the full review of the staff's findings. So staff is recommending approval at this time for the following reasons. Staff sees that the request for the high-density apartment R5 zone is in agreement with the 2018 comprehensive plans, goals, and objectives for the following reasons. The proposed rezoning will expand housing choice, Theme A, Goal 1, by accommodating the demand for housing in Lexington responsibly, prioritizing higher density and a mixture of housing types, Theme A, Goal 1B. The proposed development prioritizes higher density housing by adding 36 dwelling units to a two-family residential area presently zoned for a total of six dwelling units on the three existing lots. The proposed development will support infill and redevelopment throughout the urban service area as a strategic component of growth, theme A, goal two, through the infill of two vacant parcels of land and increasing the utilization of an underutilized structure, theme E, goal one, D. Finally, the proposed rezoning will prioritize multimodal options through the establishment of an enhanced transit stop, themed B, goal 2D, while also prioritizing a pedestrian-first design that accommodates the need of bicycle, transit, and other vehicles through the increased infrastructure along the frontage of the property, themed D, goal 1A. This is specifically important for the discussion of an enhanced transit stop. At this time, the applicant has reached out and worked with LexTram to go ahead and set up a space at the corner near Blackburn and 4th to allow for the construction of a structured or sheltered space and a bench. This is actually important both for their application and to meet the goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan. For their application, and we will discuss this a bit more with the variants, they will be receiving a reduction in their required parking because of that transit stop both on this site and the site next door. In addition, the request in staff's review, the requested development type and proposed development is in agreement with the 4th Street Zoning Study, which recommends medium density residential for this area. Finally, the Justification and Corollary Development Plan are in agreement with the policies and development criteria of the 2018 Comprehensive Plan. The proposed rezoning meets the criteria for site design, building form, and location as the site creates a residential development that supports pedestrian mobility while also complementing the existing structures along Blackburn Avenue, seeing that step down the decrease in massive. The proposed rezoning includes safe facilities for the potential users through the incorporation of enhanced pedestrian facilities along the property's frontage and the establishment of an enhanced transit stop. These improvements address the transportation and pedestrian connectivity development criteria of the 2018 Comprehensive Plan. Finally, the proposed rezoning meets the criteria for green space and environmental health, as it works with the current landscape, limits the impacts on the surrounding environment, and increases tree canopy coverage. Staff is also, this ties into one of staff's recommendations for the conditional zoning restrictions. Staff is recommending that the applicant under the provisions of Article 6-7 of the zoning ordinance, the following buffering restrictions are recommended by a conditional zoning. There shall be no external light on the southwest portion of the structure, which is adjacent to the property located at 321 Blackburn Avenue. This is protect the neighboring property from any lighting that might spill over from this development. Even though they are giving an 18-foot buffer, we want to make sure that this development does not affect the livelihood of the neighbor. Additionally, there shall be an 18-foot landscape buffer yard adjacent to the property located at 321 Blackburn Avenue for the length of any principal structure on the subject property. This specifically gets, and I'm going to go back quickly. So if we are looking at the side of the property, for the entirety of that property, there shall be a landscape buffer between the two that would include the preservation of the trees that are currently established between the two structures. This is meant to further provide a buffer between the construction of a more intense residential use against a less intense residential use. Finally, this recommendation is made subject to the approval and certification of PLN MJDP 20-19 Yellman Subdivision Powerhouse Church of God Blackburn Development. With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you, Mr. Bailey. Do we have any questions for us? And I'll stop share so that we can see the whole. All right. Thank you. Do we have any questions for Mr. Bailey? All right, Mr. Pohl. Mr. Pohl, for some reason, we can't hear you right now. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Okay. What's to prevent the applicant from maxing out the size of the building in the R5 zone? That's a wonderful question, sir, and it's primarily the height-to-yard ratio. What the height-to-yard ratio requires for this location in an R5 is a 4-to-1 height-to-yard ratio or a minimum of 10 feet. We'll discuss this a fair amount more with the variances. However, with the aspect of the conditional zoning restrictions, we are making that an 18 foot. You would say maybe they could go up that distance. That would be an extra few feet that they could add on. That is not the case with this development, just because they are asking for that variance on the other side. because they have that ask for that variance from a 10 foot to a zero foot variance on the north side of the development. They would, if they wanted to go ahead and go up taller, they would one need to comply with the other side's restrictions, but they would also need to ask for another variance of the VOA to continue to build up and max out height of that property. So there is a limiting factor right now, both between the side yard and the height to yard ratios and the variance that we will be discussing here shortly. Is there a way for us to approve the application and be very specific about the height limitation? Yes, sir, there is. That would be a density cap that we would put through with a restriction on the height of the structure. And Ms. Wade can correct me if I'm wrong. Sid M's right. Thank you. I have another quick question. I'm just making an observation that the 4th Street zoning plan called for sensitivity to the existing infrastructure, existing neighborhoods. And what really strikes me about the proposed layout of this structure is that the depth of the structure is extremely deep on the side that it is adjacent to that neighboring house. And I don't really understand why the entire plan couldn't be flipped so that the neighboring house isn't dwarfed by that long, deep plan. And Mr. Pohl, I think the applicant can talk to you about that because they had considerations of that as well. But you are correct. That is why we are seeking to provide that buffering restriction for the length of that building so that it is not to say hidden, but at least is buffered against with that 18 foot landscape divide for the full length of the structure itself. And that if the applicant were to amend their application, that buffering requirement would remain. So let's say they shortened it up, they would still need to provide that landscape buffering along the length of that building that is adjacent to 321 Blackburn Avenue. Thank you. Any more questions for Hal? All right. All right. Missy Colts will come on up, and I'm going to share screen really quickly for her. And give it up. Good afternoon. This is time short off. We are looking at MJDP 20-19 Yellman Summit Division, Powerhouse Church of God, Blackburn Development. They've had several names on this property. We are looking at the development at this time. As Hal pointed out, this property on the corner of Blackburn and West 4th Street is the existing apartment building. and we're going to move down Blackburn slightly. There we go. We're going to move down Blackburn and we'll see the proposed building that they are in for the zone change. This is a three-story building, 36 feet tall. They are proposing 36 one-bedroom units in it. So there's to be able to meet the parking, in the open space and setbacks are kind of restricted. We have revised conditions for this plan. I don't know if anybody has the color. They're kind of a purple color. We have our typical sign-offs on this plan, just a few. We have the conditions also, we provided the Planning Commission grants the waiver, the requested waivers, and how we'll be going over these waivers shortly. very I'm sorry very interesting I'll do that denote next condition denote maintenance responsibilities for the access easement on this plan the only way to be able to access the parking to the rear of this property is to go through the adjacent property so they have to create an access easement that will take them back and back into the parking spaces to the rear with this being on the adjacent property these are two individual lots and that will not be consolidated we want to make sure it's spelled out as to who will be responsible for the maintenance of that access easement. Hal also spoke of conditional zoning restrictions so we want to make sure we have those noted on this plan we always like to carry forward any conditional zoning. As you can see on this plan here we have our landscape trees on our property but we also are showing several trees to go along Blackburn Avenue and along West 4th Street. Currently at this time these trees are not planted so we wanted to have a note on here that says to document documentation that the property at 345 Blackburn Avenue complies with article 26-5 of the zoning ordinance and and 18-3 of zoning ordinance for property perimeter screening also. We want to have this done prior to certification of the final development plan for 325 and 333 Blackburn Avenue. Currently, this is a preliminary development plan. So before they can start construction, they will have to submit a final development plan. So we believe at that point, they can be able to meet this requirement and have these trees planted. as it's required. We just wanna make sure that this is all done and we wanna have documentation. So when they do submit the final development plan, we review that, we can see that they have met that requirement. The last condition on the list of conditions is to discuss place builder criteria and that's how I've gone over that with you. With that, I'm gonna open it up to the committee and stop and ask if there's any other comments questions okay I have two questions I got Miss Carolyn Plumlee first and the next Frankman and Miss Plumlee you've got you're on mute Miss Carolyn thank you um on the new plan am I missing a dumpster are they going to share a dumpster next door the way they're sharing parking we're going to share a dumpster at this current time and it's right there in the rear of the property and they have dual dumpsters in the rear right there at the property line. Pull that up actually it's three dumpsters shown right there in the rear and so it's just adjacent to the property it's you're gonna have to go down the access easement to get those so it's right in the center location between the two buildings. Okay. Is that your question? Thank you. Are those two lots owned by the same person? Same entity? I'm going to allow Harold to answer that question. Who is it? So they are and they are not, sir. And that actually gets to one of the questions that staff and the zoning committee asked during the time of the zoning committee, which was, why are these not being grouped as a group resident project? The applicant indicated to us that they have overlapping membership ownership, but it is not the exact ownership group. That it plays into a part of their financing for this, which is why they are also not grouping them together. The reason I asked the question, Hal, is that when you put an access easement on one piece of property to access the other one, it pretty much becomes a permanent access agreement, and I didn't want one piece of property to be sold off and then have the fight over who actually owns the access easement. So any way we can tighten that up, I'm sure we're going to see this again on a final development plan and we'll deal with it. It will be both a final development plan and a final record plat for this. They will need to consolidate the three properties seeking to rezone today. They will also need to create that access easement and show who that access easement is in favor of. Thank you. Welcome. Any more questions for staff? All right. Okay, we'll move on now. It's the applicant. One second, sir. I'm going to hop back in here for the review of the waivers. I'm sorry, I'm doing it now too. Variance. I'm going to quickly share my screen again. So within this application, as per the zoning ordinance, the applicant is able to make a variance request to the planning commission. The petitioner is seeking two variants, I'm going to quickly click out of that, two variants requests, then you need to see it, two variants, dimensional variants requests, as well as one parking variants request. They are seeking to reduce the required front yard setback from 20 feet to 14 feet. For those members of the planning commission that are part of the zoning subcommittee, you'll see that that is a reduction of variance of four feet. They previously had asked for 10 feet. And they are also seeking to reduce the side yard setback from 10 feet to zero feet. Additionally, they are seeking to reduce their required off-street parking by five spaces. For review of this, I actually do think that it would help if we go back to the development plan so that I could point out the areas that we'll be discussing. Okay. For the first request, shifting the building forward, the current zoning requires a 20-foot setback. The setback previously that was requested was actually more in line with the setback that was established with the 345 Flats or the 345 Blackburn Avenue property. The applicant at first wanted to match their front yard setback between these buildings. For staff, we saw that as not transitioning into the neighborhood. So during conversations with the applicant, we recommended they look at the context of the neighborhood and shift that building back to match that context. In this case, they shifted it back to 14 feet, which is actually matching the front yard setback of the neighboring property at 321 Blackburn Avenue. The next variance that the applicant was asking for is a reduction of the side yard setback. Now, this gets to what Mr. Cole and I were discussing previously, which is what is the side yard setback for a building such as this? It is a minimum side yard setback of 10 feet or four to one height to yard ratio. So in this case, the applicant is seeking to add a bit more buffering in this 18-foot area, so shifting it away from that required 10 feet to 18 feet so that they can move their building over a bit and create a more cohesive development between this and 345's flats. This reduction is only located along this area, which is set for an entryway into the building itself. The final ask or variance request is a reduction of the parking by five spaces. Now, you will see that the applicant is only providing 30 spaces in this location. The applicant has also worked out a reciprocal parking agreement with 345 Blackburn Avenue, in which they are in an excess of parking by 11 spaces. So by sharing these 11 spaces along this side of the building through a reciprocal parking agreement, the applicant is actually bringing their available parking to 41 spaces. So within the defined infill and redevelopment area, the applicant is able to reduce their parking or ask for relief from the parking requirements by 50%. In this case, they're only going with five spots, which is a decrease from the previous request, which was 12 spaces. The applicant is showing that they're also going to enhance the road right of way here by incorporating some parking spots on the street and increasing the width of the sidewalk, while also providing some increased amenities for pedestrians. With staff's review of these variance requests, staff is supportive of the variance request and is recommending approval. We state that granting the requested variances should not adversely affect the public health, safety, or welfare, nor should it affect the character of the general vicinity, as the applicant is adding buffering to the adjacent single-family use, matching the character of the established neighborhood, and is providing adequate parking for their users and potential visitors. The need for the variances arises from special circumstances of the proposed development and the established character of the neighborhood. And the strict application of the minimum side yard setback requirements would create an unnecessary hardship on the proposed development with the proposed buffering that has been added to the southwest portion of the property. Additionally, the strict application of the front yard setback would necessitate the building be set further back than the surrounding residential development. Finally, the inclusion of the five parking spaces would result in the decrease in usable open space and building footprint. Finally, the requests are not a result of a willful violation that is in accordance. The applicant has taken care to go through the necessary process for this project and has requested the variances prior to commencing construction. And with that, staff is also recommending approval of this made subject to the following conditions. Provided that the Planning Commission approves the requested zone change to the R5 zone, not R4 zone, otherwise the requested variances shall be null and void. The development shall be constructed in accordance with the approved final development plan or as amended to address the requirements of the Division of Engineering, Traffic Engineering, or Building Inspection. All necessary permits shall be obtained from the Division of Planning, Traffic Engineering, Engineering, and Building Inspection prior to the construction and occupancy. And finally, action of the Planning Commission shall be noted on the development plan for the subject property. At this time, I'd be happy to answer any questions, and I'll stop sharing so that we can have a conversation, if you would like to, on the proposed variances and staff's recommendation of approval. Yes, thank you. How was it, were five cars going to be out on the street? No, ma'am. Actually, they are looking at just putting, there are four parking spaces on the street. They are asking the reduction of five, mainly so that they can fit what they're trying to do on site. I will stress that the current plan for this development is 36 single-bedroom apartments. So right now, our regulations actually ask for 1.5 parking spaces per. that might be and the applicant has indicated that that is more than they need for this site since they are in the infill and redevelopment area staff is willing to work with them and see where they can reduce parking to meet their in this case if we count in those four spaces in the front of the building they are only missing one space thank you any further questions on the variances. Ms. Meyer, I didn't, I'm sorry that you had to hear more variances. We just brought you in for one more. Yeah, I just wanted to confirm somehow. When I think first saw this, it was the request on the front was a 10-foot setback. Yes, sir. And so now it's at 14. And did you say that the adjoining property, I'm assuming it's their side yard, is at 14 also? The property of 321 Blackburn Avenue, that single family house that I depicted previously, that's 14 feet set back. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Hearing none, Hal. Thank you. Thank you very much. We're hoping it'll now be applicant. If you're associated with the applicant's team at this time, please raise your hand electronically. One. Mr. Clendenin, Mr. Warner, you guys have been added to the meeting, Mr. Bowman. I would ask at this time, I'm going to allow Daniel Durek to speak for a moment. Please tell us if you're with the applicants team. Hi, yes, this is Daniel Durek. Sorry, I just unmuted. I'm sorry, what was the question? Are you with the applicants team or are you a citizen, sir? Citizen. We live on 332 Blackburn Avenue. Okay, we will have time for citizens to speak after the applicants presentation, and we'll call on you and you'll need to raise your hand then. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Chris, you're up. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the commission. Welcome to the new members. Also, hello to staff. For those of you who do not know me, I'm Chris Clendenin of Murphy and Clendenin, and I'm very pleased today to be here representing the Blackburn Development Limited Liability Company. Joining me from the applicant is Carson Bauman and also Kevin Warner from Carmen Engineering, who is our landscape architect. Since I am not all that skilled audiovisually or technically, Mr. Bauman is going to be assisting me with my PowerPoint. I know we have already had a long afternoon from the previous matter for the Commission. So I am going to try to not duplicate things that Mr. Bailey and Ms. Galt have already addressed and done a very good job. Again, this is the start of our presentation. Introductoring and this is PLN MAR 200009. This is for a zone change and a development plan. You can go to the next slide, Carson. This is a rendering of what we think that the building will look like from the architect, from the architectural drawings. buildings and as was mentioned from the staff presentation we're going to eventually consolidate these properties which are 325, 329 and 331 with the address ultimately going to be 325 You can see the 325 on the building and the door that we've added. This is, as far as the place builder criteria, this is second tier urban and medium density, as Mr. Bailey mentioned. And we're seeking a zone change from R2 to R5. Essentially what this is is a complementary project to the adjacent property that was previously approved and constructed known as the flats at 345. And as previously discussed, even though it's not the same ownership, there is a commonality and there is a desire for the two projects to kind of work together and complement each other and make use of parking and shared amenity space. For the zone change, the lots that we are looking at currently are 325 Blackburn. That is presently, and you saw a photo from Mr. Bailey's presentation, a single family home which is vacant and has been vacant since, my understanding is since 2017. In addition to that, there's two other lots that are currently just vacant land and not improved at this point. In addition to the zone change, as Mr. Bailey and Ms. Galt pointed out, we're seeking two variance requests, dimensional variances and a partial variance in connection with this zone change. Next slide, please. Thank you. This is kind of an overhead view of the area. You can tell that it's close in proximity to the recently approved Thistle Station that I think has kind of been approved in connection with the goals and objectives of the new comprehensive plan and in connection with the 4th Street Study. The big focal points in this area are BCTC and Transy, and our existing apartment building, the flats at 345, was designed and mined along with the new project to cater to undergraduate age students, also young professionals who are getting out in that area in their first job. As you can see, in addition to the academic institutions, there's another school, the Montessori School, and you've got the remnants, as Mr. Bailey described, of I-1. If you look particularly along Henry Street, which is immediately behind our project, that is nothing but industrial, and there is no residential. So here's some photos for those of you, I'm sure you all are familiar with the neighborhood, but if you're not, I'm going to quickly give you some snapshots here of what this area looks like. The first one, if you see, you're looking straight down Blackburn from 4th Street. From to your right, you see the building, the flats, and you look to your left, the warehouse, and then straight down Blackburn towards 3rd Street. And then on the right, you see the vacant lots. And in the background, basically, as a focal issue, is the grain elevator that's located on Henry Street immediately behind our project. Next slide. Thank you. On your left, you see the single-family structure that is located on 325, and again, that's going to be torn down. There is 321, which is the adjacent property that's been much of the discussion, has focused on us being as courteous as we possibly can and providing as much buffering and step down from the other thing just to not interfere with his enjoyment of his property. So if we could move on to your right, you see the grain elevator again, the flats on the right where that fencing is and that fencing would be taken over to the left and you see the tree trees over there where the vacant lot is. Again similar photos the way that it looks currently. Next slide thank you. Again I've got a lot of these. You see the inside of where the flats is and where the pavement is and the parking. And then we would be extending that towards the new projected development in which each building would be able to have walking access to the other building and also the shared amenities. There's an amenity space that's at the flats. There is a proposed amenity space that would be at 325 Blackburn as well. So the residents of each apartment community, in addition to having shared access for parking, would have shared access to the amenity space. You see the frontage that also a glimpse of the powerhouse church that's across from the flats presently located on Blackburn. where the flats is directly located across from the trans the athletic field as you see on the left mr bailey mentioned the bus stop currently there is a transit stop located in front of the flats there is no shelter there is no bench in our conversations with lextran they indicated to us that because of the flats they've experienced increased ridership from this bus stop. This bus stop serves Route 2 and Route 4. They projected a substantial increase with the addition of this development if it's approved and constructed. So in order to meet the goals and objectives of the comp plan and the place builder criteria we've agreed to construct a shelter and bench in order to make the Lex Tran bus stop more appealing and enhance the ability for people to take advantage of this mode of transportation. These are some of the warehouses that are located along the 4th street and then towards the neighborhood, towards the building, towards the Henry Street area. You see also from where this picture was taken from was across the street where the Montessori school is and you're shooting down 4th street towards Henry on the right. these are photos of structures that are located along Henry Street just so you can see the area as Mr. Bailey said all of this is either warehouse or light industrial there's the baseball school which I actually thought that's actually pretty cool I didn't know it was down there I'd like to know what's going on there you know some additional photos going down towards towards 3rd Street on Henry, kind of doing a square block, and then coming back around 3rd Street towards Blackburn. Okay, again, this project, the description is this. We're looking for a zone change from the current R2 to R5. We are looking to have this be constructed as 36 units. It's been referred to as 36 units. I really kind of want to address that. It is 36 units, but Since we've made the initial application, and I'll kind of touch on this as part of some of the input that we got from our neighborhood engagement, especially in the most recent meeting, we made a change in the design. And if you can see, actually, if you go up a couple more, Carson, I think this will illustrate it better. Right here, site plan concept. If you see the part of the structure that is running parallel with the adjoining property at 321, right there. Okay, the footprint from the one bedrooms initially were three stories with four units and, you know, two additional stories from the ground unit. They were one bedroom so square footage the applicants decided to in order to import reduce the footprint of the building. for the adjoining property 321 to reduce these units from one full one bedrooms down to studios. So it reduces the length of the structure an additional 12 feet. And we thought that that was a good use of this. We also thought it would be helpful in terms of providing an additional price point for the neighborhood for some more affordable housing with the studios being a little bit cheaper than the full one bedrooms. Carson, if you could go back to where we were. Okay, here's the development plan that you've already seen. It shows the canopy. Again, As was previously shown, what we're proposing here is the structure of the building to be as far. And part of the reason, and Mr. Bailey touched on this, part of the reason we're asking for the side yard setback going from 10 feet to zero enables us to push our building closer to the 345, the flat structure, and further away from the property at 321. That enables us to provide the 18-foot buffer that staff is requesting that we have from our structure to the contiguous structure at 321. You go ahead and advance these slides please. One more. Okay this is the tree inventory map And what we're looking to do here, just for the key, if you look, we're looking to remove some of the existing trees, but we're going to be replacing. So if we look first at 345, what we have here is we're going to be removing 8% of the existing tree canopy. Currently, based on our tree inventory, we're right at what's required. we're going to be removing 8% but we're proposing to replace those and we'll touch on that when we get to the development plan and or any conditions that have already been discussed you can see the key here the dark green are the existing trees the light green is where we're proposing to add trees red is where we're proposing to remove them as discussed you see along the property line close to 321. We're not going to touch any of those trees. Can you hear us? Yes, I'm sorry. Chris, this is Chairman Forster. Yes. We've got about two more minutes. Okay, well I'll speed it up. that. Sorry about that. The tree inventory here is self-explanatory. Carson, if you want to go ahead and advance please. This is our massing study. As you can see, what we're really trying to do here is step down from a four-story building to a three-story building and in fact, if you look at the height of our proposed project it's actually at its tallest point a few feet shorter than the adjoining property. Carson go ahead okay go ahead and advance those slides as well. Okay right go back go back one the focus area as you can see for the fourth street zoning We're right in that this is an agreement with that where we're looking to transition from the industrial that's in there to a more heavier, a mid-density residential. Carson, go ahead. One more, please. These are the changes we've made since our initial application. We really appreciate the staff working with us and giving us another opportunity to change our initial application. We were deficient in a few ways and they gave us the opportunity to work with them. We've tried to work with the neighbors as best we possibly can and put together what we believe conforms to the goals and objectives of the comp plan, also the place builder criteria. Go ahead and advance. As you can see, Mr. Bailey addressed our variance request. He did a good job with that. You see where we are with the parking. Go ahead and wrap up. Okay, these are letters of support from some of the neighbors. Dixon, the Catholic Church there, the powerhouse church of God that's on Blackburn and Onan. Here's how we're in agreement with the goals and objectives of the comp plan. Go ahead and advance as much as possible. Now, the last thing I did want to point this out. We're going to have bike racks. What we want to try to do is make, if we use this as an example, but an example where we're going to have maps where the bike racks are and in the development to show the people that live there, okay, well, this is how you bike the transit. This is how you hit the Legacy Trail. Here's how you get to the Blue Stallion. Here's how you get to Triangle Park. We want to try to incorporate the vibe that we think is going to take place down here in this 4th Street area and really emphasize the bus and the biking in this community. Again, how we are in agreement with the comp plan. And that's how we wrap up. I want to thank you for bearing with us. I tried to go as quick as I possibly could. sorry if I was long-winded thank you any other planning commission members have any questions for Chris I'm sorry Mr. Forrester you're coming in a little quiet you just might need to yell at us a little bit Okay. Get on my knee. How does that sound, Hal? Okay, thank you. All righty. I seen a hand raised for a question for Chris, if I'm not mistaken, but just want to. Anyone want to ask any questions? Graham, did you have your hand raised? Can't hear Graham. Unfortunately, we can't hear you, Mr. Pohl. You try your headphones just one more time. I'm going to hold my question. Okay. All right. So we'll bring it over to It's now the citizens comments Stephanie I'll let you handle that part If citizens who would like to speak in support If you could raise your hands first please Okay This time I see One hand raised for Blake Hall Mr. Hall we're going to allow you to speak now You can go ahead Yes, Blake Hall, live at 36 Richmond Avenue, I'm here to voice my support for the project. I feel like this is textbook infill and redevelopment, especially when we are in a housing shortage. As much as some people don't like to consider them people who need housing, students need somewhere to live too. And this doesn't just affect students. It's right there on Jefferson. There's plenty of amenities. Being so close to transit, BCTC, the park, and the trails, this is the exact sort of place that we want to increase our density. This is a modest proposal, if anything, with only three stories. It's matching the height of the single-family home next to it. And I would like to point out that it's converting one home into 36 homes. So I would hope that you all would support this. Thank you. Thank you, Blake. I did have a letter from Mark Clare, excuse me, and not sure if he's on an opposition. He asked me for an allocated time to speak. Yes, Mr. Clare is with us. He has a presentation so if you'll bear with me for a moment we need to share our screen to get Mr. Clark's presentation up. Mr. Clark I'm going to go ahead and allow you to speak but give me just a moment to get your presentation on screen. Okay. Okay, Mr. Clark, can you see your presentation now? I can. Okay, if you can, let me know when you need to advance. I'll do that for you. Okay, thank you. Sure. Let me begin by saying normally I would ask, I've asked for a postponement, although I couldn't get on. because of the late edition of the supplemental staff report. I have not had a chance to really go over it carefully, but I will address it at the end of my presentation, what I have noticed about that report. I know that everyone is tired of sitting around doing this, so I'll try to do this as quickly as possible. Yes, Mark, by the time you're here, we're going to put you on a timer for three to four minutes, okay? I asked for 15 minutes. Is that unavailable? No, sir. No, sir, that's not available or no, sir, that is available? No, sir, that's not available. Well, my argument is basically that the mass and scale of this is way too large. And because of that size, it creates a problem in terms of intensity of the housing use and parking challenges for those of us who live in the neighborhood, not just on the street. Next slide. First of all, the house, the proposed building is 10 times the size of the house next door to it. Now, that house happens to be my house. But I'm speaking not only for myself, I'm also speaking for, I hope, for the neighborhood. If you'll notice that Mr. Klanden did not show any of the picture of any of the houses on the opposite side of the street of this proposed building. Next slide, please. You can see that it dwarfs the nearest neighbors. The whole development is now two-thirds of the side of the street. The distance between the two families is a scant 18 yards and the height and depth mass is up against the gabled house. It turns basically a cold shoulder onto the historic neighborhood, which is the next slide. This really soon became a separate development from the previous developments. These developments were, I'm sure the property was bought, assuming that at some point they would have the second development occurring. And it seems to be a speaking argument to say something different than that. These were, this is one development. Next slide, please. This removes the existing historic fabric as a buffer compatible with its neighbor. What we have now before this building is apt for duplex conversion to today's zone. Fully half the house lies sacrificed to a vacant new 18-foot yard. And I'd like to make a note that the house on the left is much more representative of the houses on the street than my house or the house next to mine. That is the house in the middle and the house on the right. They're all one and a half story houses and it should be noted. Next slide. The intensity of the R5 is unsuitable here. The R5 is our highest intensity residential zone. It actually calls R4 the high density department, and R5 is actually called the high resident department. It does not even match the applicant's professed development type, and that is a medium density residential zone. which brings me to the question of whether this meets the, the four streets zone plan. The four street zone plan was created under the old comprehensive bill. And that, and since the new one, the meaning of medium density has, is now changed. What is now, what is now called medium density used to be called high density. and the other part of this plan is that this was used the last time for the other development for the quote the development on the corner and we had an argument at that point with this use as a uh the forestry development plan being used as a reason for doing this apartment because the forestry development plan was never accepted by the uh council by city council So again, another species argument regarding this. It doesn't really support the use of this development. The actual density, next slide please. The actual density is a good third higher than the corner apartments on 345 Blackburn. 325 Blackburn has 55 units per acre. acre. The 345 black balloon, the development on the corner, has only 42 units per acre. The applicant calls this a medium density in the 220, in this 220 zone change, and the applicant call for a high density in 2017 for the previous zone change. The next slide, please. This is an encroaching on the historic fabric of the rest of the neighborhood. This is an intrusion on the historic fabric of the rest of the neighborhood. These are zoned. These lots are zoned R2. The house next door to it is also zoned R2. And as a correction to the staff, it is not gutted. There were some walls removed. but the rest of the house is intact and is easily rehabitable. It requires some work, but not an extraordinary amount of work. And because of the size, we're still short on needed parking. Next slide, please. in fact what the staff has included does not include that there are parking spaces lost due to putting the two projects together quote unquote the two projects together there is a loss of parking spaces for the additional, the next slide please. There's those that are colored in blue are lost. The added dumpster, another loss, and the square in the middle is another law. So we believe that in fact, there isn't enough parking for the development. Next slide, please. And as per the argument that somehow bike racks preclude the need for parking spaces, this is what the bike racks look like now. They are unused. And I assume that providing more will not perhaps might fill them, but they will remain basically unused. When the six cars at curbside are lost, the racks for the bikes on the rack through. Next slide, please. How am I doing on time? Excuse me, how am I doing on time? That was Mr. Clark doing on time. Okay, you need two minutes. The E-Balance Growth 9 supports the idea of missing middle housing types throughout Lexington. The R5 actually narrows, I'd like to put the next slide on please. The R5 narrows the mix of densities and uses. What you see on the left are the principal permitted in R3 and R4, and those permitted in R5. And there's more selection in R3 and R4 than there is in R5. There's actually a reduction. I'm not real thrilled by basically having dormitories put in the middle of a block, but that seems to be the aim of this housing development. And I don't really want, next slide, please. The next slide. What we're looking for is mixed housing. We are not, and I repeat, I said this at the last meeting, we are not opposed to development of this property. We are not opposed to increased density of housing. We are opposed to the size and intrusion based on the size of this development into our neighborhood. We are looking for, and can you please put on the next slide? We look for a different kind of development. We look for a more intense development that at least somehow acts as a buffer, a real buffer, between the developments that already exists and the rest of the houses on our street. And these are only some of the examples. I would have gone out and taken pictures of those that I think would be more appropriate for this development. Your time's up. Hey, Mark. Yes. Your time is up. Yeah, I'd like to voice an objection to the amount of time that was given to the applicant and the amount of time that was given to us. You know, I mean, I have no problem that we would have less time than the applicant, but I'm really concerned that we were given such a short shrift regarding this. And I'd like to note that in the, on the record. Yes, sir. It's noted and it's on the record. Thank you. We're stopping our screen share now, sir. Okay. Great. Okay. With that being said, we're in a rebuttal phase. an applicant? Actually, excuse me, I'm sorry. Are there any other citizens that would like to speak on behalf or against? We only have one in support, sir, and that was Mr. Hall. Okay. Do you intend to oppose a time limit? I have to. We need to oppose a three-minute time limit on everyone. Okay, in case anyone didn't hear the chair, further speakers at this point will be given a three minute time limit. Ms. Clark, I'm going to allow you to speak now if you could give your name and address for the record. My name is Amy Clark and I live at 628 Castle Road. In the public engagement, I wonder if you have spoken with the tenants in the existing apartment building. what Mr. Klar had to say about the parking and you could perfectly well put that slide back up is very concerning you should have received and you can tell me if you have not a transcript of certain elements of the 2017 and 2016 actually planning commission hearing when the first building discussed parking. And over and over again, they said, we need every single one of the 108 spaces that are required by the development. They were even asked, would they like to take the bus and bike reduction? And they said, no, we need every space. Traffic engineering asked to carve out further spaces in the roadway at curbside and that was done as well so there's an apartment building that at the time of its planning and development needed every space i happen to have friends both on the block in the houses and in the actual new apartment building and the friends in the new apartment building report that until the virus the parking was at capacity if you come in late at night from working a late shift you're getting the last face on the lot they also reported that a parking area that that row between the proposed new building and the old one um is designated for visitors but what they saw were resident spots they have a sticker system i'm just hearsay but you might ask the applicant how many parking permits they give, have given, and whether the parking is or is not at capacity. The problem is this. The Planning Commission voted and approved the existing development with 108 parking spaces. There's a tacit amendment going on here where they are now taking a parking reduction on the existing building of 16 spaces. They are taking, they are asking a parking reduction. These are the 15% for having a bus and bike available facilities. They are asking that also for the new development. The new development is farther than 300 feet distant from the bus shelter. It should not qualify for the bus reduction. The bike reduction requires 50 spaces furnished on the lot before you can begin to reduce the spaces over 50. They are furnishing a net 25 spaces. They are furnishing 30 spaces on their lot. But they are taking five away from the existing lot to get access to their rear parking area and the dumpster. Okay. Thank you. Sir, our next speaker is Faith Harders. Ms. Harders, I will be allowing you to speak now. it's my understanding that you had photographs you would like to show and I will share our screen and put those up for you if you can tell me here in just a moment when to advance them. Okay can you hear me? Yes we can. Okay, Ms. Harder, your photo should be showing now. Okay. My name is Faith Harders. I live at 539 West 3rd, which is the corner of Blackburn and 3rd Street. One, this shows how close the houses are together. If you were out in Heartland and said, I'm going to be 18 feet from somebody's property line, that's one thing. But to be 18 feet from this property line is a totally different picture. Next. Next, please. Ms. Harters, one moment, please. I'm not, it's not advancing. Okay. Oh, too fast. Okay. Okay, that's perfect. These are the three houses across the street. They're going to be looking at a solid wall. I would also like to point out how narrow Blackburn is. When people are parked on both sides of the street, it's a two-way street. You have to wait your turn. Also, at our end of the street and across from this, it is residential sticker parking only. so we've been able to keep some parking these people have no off-street parking and so when this comes in I assume they're going to you know those people are residents too but what is going to happen to the parking for these for these houses and you know the fact that they're looking at a huge flat wall and just the traffic flow there's going to be more people waiting their turn to go through. Next. Just to show that with the words, when you're at R4, the words high density appear, and at R5, that's high density. It is not medium density. Next. oh okay down here if you look in the left it says need uses that will aid in transition for more intense uses to single family neighborhood and I don't think this solid wall that they're building is a transition next and just showing that 4a is mid-density residential and really this is not mid-density this is high density thank you thank you we'll stop our screen share now sorry mr chair no no you're fine thank you yes it looks like our next speaker is brooks scudder uh you'll be allowed to speak now please go ahead and give your name and address for the record let's see can you hear me yes okay good i had to unmute myself there so my name is brooks scudder uh i live at 445 west second street and i'm the president of the north side neighborhood association um i think um obviously there are some some folks who have some concerns about uh about the development i think our concern with the north side neighborhood association is the is the house at 325 and the destruction of that house it was built in 1910 and i think you know i think all we'd like to do is ask you all to consider uh whether that's something we want to do. I know the house is not in the H1 overlay, so it has no protection other than what you all might give it. So that's really all I have to say. Thank you all. Thank you. Mr. Chair, the next hand raised is Marlee Baumann. I'm going to allow you to speak now. If you would state your name and address please hi marley bauman 550 west third street um again main concern parking uh we have parking at my house but i've got a bunch of neighbors that don't and it keeps getting worse and worse i don't know if we should pursue you know separate residential street parking for or 3rd and Blackburn like 2nd Street has done to resolve this for those that don't have parking on their property. The existing I think it's the 345 building that's already up. We were told when that was being built that that was not going to be targeted at students. But now they're saying that this one is going to be targeted at students. So it's a bit of a conflict of a message there. I agree with checking on the capacity of that parking lot. I think it's fairly full and eliminating the whole row of the spots is only going to make it worse. So that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Palma. Next is Evelyn Knight. You can go ahead and speak, please. Give us an address for the record. Thank you. I'm Evelyn Knight. I live at 516 West 3rd Street. I've lived here for 14 years. I think there are several issues that have come up in the conversation related to transitional spaces and we have a very special neighborhood it's not like somewhere out by Hamburg or something like that where we just need housing what we need is special beautiful charming housing and we need spaces that will appeal to people of the creative class we know this from the creative cities conversation we had. So we have a very special opportunity to create something that really is that is special that will bring people from Austin to see what we've done. We don't find empty lots downtown a lot so this is an opportunity. I just want to mention that. I do want to mention about the tree plan. The inventory map was a little bit specious in the sense of I think we're taking down more than 8% of the trees. The tree line between the existing house and those empty lots consists of at least 14 12-inch trees and the back line has at least 24-inch trees and some others that really create a great buffer between that industrial zone on the other side. Those are established trees and again speaking for quality of life in our city we want to maintain our trees just like we maintain a house that was built in the 20th early 20th century even if it is needing some rehab so i think mark gave some interesting ideas about what the transition would look like a brick wall building not an attractive charm in our attractive charming neighborhood There's a lot of history here and a brick wall building is not going to enhance our neighborhood in any way. Parking is an issue. Certainly, there are tenants in many of these dwellings on 3rd Street and in the neighborhood. And I think this is a great opportunity to respond to the times, respond to the times of innovation and sustainability. little said about that where's the green plan um so i just think in in general the plan is presented is not responsive to the notion of a transitional space it's a liminal space where something really really wonderful could happen a brick building with a flat facade is not that and um so that's from an architectural and planning perspective i don't know how i'm going to be integrated is a neighborhood with the students living in that building. You know, how that domineering structure is going to make me feel more homey here. So, you know, I think there's a lot of issues related to a opportunity. And so I think that's one of those things that is up to us as citizens to think about the future of our community. What makes it special? What makes it charming? What makes it a community? and how can I be integrated with people living in studio apartments right around the corner from me where I walk every day. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Looks as if Mr. Clark might have his hand raised again sir. Hold on one second. Let's see if he's going to let him. No, no, there are no other hands raised now except for Mr. Clark. Okay. We want to hear what Mr. Clark has. Mr. Clark, we're allowing you to speak again. Go ahead. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes. I just want to make sure that the transcript of the Planning Commission hearing of December 15th, 2016 is entered into the record. These are comments made by the then lawyer for Calgill Development regarding the need and the expectation that the space between the development, the corner development that was planned and the rest of the neighborhood, there would be a buffer. I would like that entered into the record and I would like to be sure that you see it. I mean, I could read a few things, but I know that your question is fine. That's okay. Thank you. Okay. We're going to bring this back now in the rebuttal and closing statements. Applicant, five minutes, and then we'll bring it back to the citizens. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, well, first of all, I'd like to commend the neighbors there for coming out and participating in this process and voicing their concerns with the project. I do want to address a couple of the issues raised, which is the first one, which I think is we're arguing to some extent semantics. We're talking about what's described as medium density or mid-density or high density or high rise. What is proposed here is second tier urban medium residential under the place builder criteria. R5 is a permitted zone under that place builder criteria. So all we're doing is adhering to the guidelines of the comprehensive plan as given to us and the parameters given to us by staff. So whether it's described as mid-density or medium density, the R5 zone as indicated earlier in Mr. Bailey's presentation is permitted and one of the used types for density for this type of project. And we're merely just utilizing that. I think it's more how it's being described with the verbs as opposed to what's permitted and what's not. Second, with regard to the photos of the bicycle racks, it's the summer. there may or may not be a lot of people using bikes you know at this point there may not be there may be transy students that are not there there may be bct bc students that are not currently attending school during the time of year so there may not be as many bikes you know that that's you It could be one reason. Further, in terms of the parking, the parking seems to be an issue. This is infill and redevelopment. And as somebody stated on this call, we've got two vacant lots and one lot. And whether the house is gutted or not, that's how it's been described to me. It's a vacant house. Nobody's living there. Nobody's been living there for three years now. we're using that space to provide mixed housing types in a more dense manner. And what we're doing is transitioning not only from industrial, but from a building that's four stories high, gradually stepping it down to a building that's three stories high and maintaining that buffer as the staff has requested us as far as we possibly can and using the setbacks and variances that we've requested to move the building as far away from Mr. Clark as we possibly feasibly can get to. I want to add in another note about the parking. When we originally built the flats at 345, we did issue parking stickers for all of the residents. We have stopped doing that because through the operation of the flats at 345, we've had an excess of empty parking spots. We have 108 spots in the actual lot. We also have 13 spots along the street, which don't go into that calculation. but they're just street parking for anybody available. They're not designated visitor or otherwise. And then we have the additional 30 for this new development with the, I believe it's four now along that frontage. So I did want to mention that operationally we have not seen an over parking issue in the flats at 345. And we have allowed powerhouse church of God to actually park in our lot on Sundays because it's been an extra spot. um so i did want to mention that as well because that kind of adds to the point that we we do have from experienced operations of the past couple years um we haven't had parking issues now if that if there's parking issues on other areas of the street i'm not sure why that would be um but within our parking lot no matter what time of day you go over there there are always available spots okay lastly i just want to briefly touch on two more things um first 30 seconds okay first i need to make an objection to mr clars or introduction of evidence that's not presently before the commission which is the 2016 transcript records i understand that they may exist but it has not been introduced at this hearing it's not before you so i'm going to object to it being introduced into the record but to touch on that my understanding i was not counsel for the applicant then i know mr walborn and a lot of you remember him when he was working at mcbrayer and represented the applicant my understanding is he made a comment that this is going to remain a buffer um why he did that i don't know I can only speculate. I know Mr. Warburn personally I don't know him to be somebody who that's it okay all right well thank you for your time. Thank you. We will move on to the citizens opposition there's a total of five minutes. Okay Mr. Chair first we have Mark Mr. Klar, I'm going to allow you to speak now. Okay. I don't know whether you're going to accept this transcript or not, but since Mr. Plannedam referred to it, I'd like to point out that it wasn't just one comment that the former lawyer for Calgo said, there were four comments that reiterated that this space would remain a buffer. And I have submitted it. I submitted it earlier on in the day. I just wanted to make sure that it was accepted as part of the record. If it's not, if this copy is not accepted as part of the record, I hope that you would refer to it either later on or at a later date. If this development is created, will there still be enough parking for the church? That's another question that I have since the development. And I appreciate that they have allowed the church to park there in their spaces. But my question is, will there be enough space after this development and with the reduction of the parking spaces? Again, I know that you guys are pressing for time. And I think I might go on and on, but I won't. There is one other thing, and that is the trees along the boundary between my country and the new development. Those trees, those old trees are on my property. And therefore, they are not really a gift from the development company to me to allow them to remain standing. They can't really do anything with my trees because they're on my property. Anyway, just as a point of fact. Thank you. Any other hands? Yes. Next we have Brooks Scudder. Mr. Scudder, you can go ahead. Yeah, I just, since I wasn't going to say anything else, but since it came up, I mean, I think whether or not that house has been vacant for since 2017 has no bearing on anything, especially considering they've owned it for the last year. So a third of that time they've owned it. So of course it's empty now. You know, again, you know, I think, I think we just need to think about it before we start tearing down houses that were built, you know, 110 years ago. That's it. Thank you. Next we have Evelyn Knight. Miss Knight, you can go ahead. Thank you. Yes. There's been several references to input from the community, community meetings and so forth, of which I know nothing as a community resident. And I would be very interested in the transcripts from those meetings as you attended. Because I noticed the support for this development comes from local businesses, not from local residents. Thank you. Ms. Clark, you can go ahead. Thank you. It's Amy Clark. There is a policy in the comp plan to not heed unjustified, ungrounded claims for historic significance. And so I would point out that this is a National Register district. It has exactly the criteria that the comp plan points to for having regard for historic fabric. And one way you do that is not to offer incentive for the destruction of historic fabric, even when it is not under a zoning ordinance protection. You don't offer incentive to that by an unsuitably intense zone and project next door. In a way, it's funny. I feel like this is the emperor's new clothes. To me, this development looks like Corbusier meets Mary Poppins. and they're slap up against each other. There are 18 feet between, there's 18 foot of side yard that the applicant is offering. By contrast, there are 320 feet between the bookends of the two projects, the proposed and the existing corner apartments. There are 535 feet in the courtyard area behind. That kind of distance and ease and open space and low-lying design would be much more welcome to on the side of the neighborhood instead of having the big block right up against the neighborhood there. If it were a group project, it would actually also require pitched roofs in the infill area and 20 foot would be the minimum side yard so as far as the bikes go I you know I have differing information I will say that thank you that's enough yes I would like to allow Ms. Faith to speak to you Ms. Farters you can go ahead now okay I was just going to point out I was on the committee that did the fourth street plan. I attended all the meetings. And I think if you look at it, the overall goal is to preserve our neighborhoods. And I was on with representatives from some of the bars and we talked a lot about density. And I thought, Oh no, here it comes. Greater the density, more beer you sell. And they said just the opposite. Their clientele does not come from downtown. their clientele comes from outside in the suburbs who come downtown because of the neighborhoods and the importance for their business of maintaining the neighborhoods. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, staff. Thank you, sir. I'll just have a point of clarification. Staff has reviewed the calculations for the parking for the proposed development, and staff is willing to say on the record that the proposed calculations associated with both the variance and the development plan are correct. They are taking advantage of aspects of the comprehensive area of the zoning ordinance that do not need review and asking for just the reduction of those five spaces. Thank you. That's all we have. Okay. Thank you. So we're going to bring this back close the hearing right now and open it up for questions. Mr. Wilson. Yep. You have a question? Oh, no, I did not raise my hand. Thank you. Oh, sorry, Mr. Cole. I see you there. I don't have a question. I have a comment. And that is that first, can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay. I'm looking at this, I guess, in part as an architect. And I know that they have made some efforts with regard to respecting the fabric of the existing neighborhood. They've stepped the building back to a setback that matches the property. They've dropped the height down somewhat. But when I look at the building, I see a building that is absolutely designed to speak to the project that they developed on the other corner. it is not designed to speak to the texture of the neighborhood next door. And just looking at the floor plan and seeing the way the length of the building runs back along that adjacent property line is a good example of that. So I feel like it's not ready for crime time. It's just not respecting the existing neighborhood. It's not doing what needs to be done to follow the recommendations of the 4th Street plan or really the comprehensive plan, in my view. Thank you, Mr. Paul. Commission members. Okay, Ms. Plumlee. Yes, thank you. I think going back in a quick review, one of our obligations, I believe, is in our planning and development is to keep neighborhoods livable. And I think there are some aspects of this development that question that. Thank you. Thank you. All right. mr bill i have a great deal of respect for mr pole and if i may ask him a question because i have a tendency to do that um graham i i'm confused if if there's already been a building built in the neighborhood and been built and approved and lived in. And, you know, so how does this one not able to really comply when one already exists? I just don't quite understand because it's not really what I do. So I respect what you, your thoughts maybe on something like that. Well, I guess for me, the answer to that is the proximity. And the one that was built was, you know, had two empty lots between it and the existing historic fabric. And this one's slammed right up against the historic fabric. And so to me, it's incumbent on the developer to find a language that mediates between the form that they had developed earlier and the form of the historic fabric of the neighborhood. I don't think they have done that. I think they have developed a building that speaks the same language as the new building and really have virtually ignored the historic fabric. Thank you, Graham. Very much. okay sorry time around there any more questions or comments commission members that said i'm looking for a motion for this applicant uh yes yes you have anyone who wants to make a motion i will i'll make a motion okay i'd like to make a motion to approve pln mar two zero zero zero zero nine blackburn development per the recommendations of approval and the conditions that were provided by staff. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, raise your hand. Two, three, four, five, six. Okay. Any opposed? Great. All right. We need a motion for development plan. Bruce, are you going to handle that? Okay. My network's off a little bit. I recommend approval of PLNMJDP 20-00019 Yellman Subdivision powerhouse church of god lectern development in concurrence with the recommendation from staff and using their recommendations second got a second all in favor raise your hand opposed Graham did you oppose you're on mute Mr. Paul you're on mute I'm sorry I haven't been hearing what's going on I've been distracted Okay. This was a motion was on the table for the development. Opposed. Okay. Thank you. So, Mr. Forrester, could you just give us a second? We're trying to get everybody. It's a little more difficult when there's a split vote. We're getting to that now. Who said that motion? it was anthony mr dimokulon um mr chair i just want to uh check in uh did we have miss plumley uh mr penn mr pole and miss meyer as opposed all others were in favor yes that's what I yes great thank you very much sir okay six more okay thank you you're welcome Mr. Nichols we have the variances too okay hopefully I can do this correctly I would like to recommend approval of the variances per the recommendation of staff. And I think that's it. Sir, I just would like to pull notice to the misstep. It should be R5, not R4, within the recommendation for staff for the variance. If you could just make that modification by saying that it is the R5, not the R4 zone being applied for. This is the R5, not the R4 zone being applied for. Second. Got a motion and a second. All in favor, do I show our hands? One, two, three, four, and then six. Opposed? Raise your hand. One, two, three, four. Okay, thank you. All right. All right. Thank you. I just have it. Take a brief five-minute break so we can get to the next application. I have to leave the meeting. I apologize, everybody. I know Anthony has to leave at six. Is that still correct? I got to go. Mr. Chairman, I also have to go. This is my anniversary. If I want to be married for another year compared to the last 43. I have to get to dinner. Why are you even on the meeting? You need to be taking care of the boss. Do we still have a quorum? I don't think we do. If we lose three, we will have a quorum. We'll have seven. One, two. Great. Take it somewhere nice. Okay. Well, I'm going to go pick it up because we're not eating out anymore. I understand. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, so five or ten minutes? Five. Five. Five minutes break. Everyone, our last application today is Paul Holmes, LLC, Zoning Map Amendment, and Hal, you're up. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. This is PLNMAR20-00010. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen right now for the presentation. And I do want to note, sir, there is the development plan on this one, but Mr. Jimmy Emmons is also on the line so that he can present on the traffic impact study associated with this application. So looking at the application, the applicant is seeking a zone change for an agricultural urban AU zone to a planned neighborhood residential R3 zone for the property located at 2300 Sandersville Road. This is a very large golf course that is currently in use. It is 138.2 net and 143.01 gross acres. The applicant is seeking to develop a residential development that will comprise of 330 single-family detached homes, 65 single-family attached homes, and 10 apartment buildings that will contain 280 apartments. The proposed development for this residential development is a 4.88 dwelling unit per net acre. While they do have a large set of multifamily homes, the single-family homes comprise the largest space across this site. To complete their proposed development, the applicant is seeking to construct a roadway system with two main access points, One located at Greendale Road and one located off of Sandersville Road opposite Caldula Road, an entrance to the new neighborhood on the north side of Sandersville Road for the Hillenmeyer property. I'm sorry for butchering that name there. The main roadway extending from Greendale Road is proposed to be a single loaded roadway with the residential development located to the southern edge of the roadway and a large greenway along the road's northern edge. As you'll see in a little bit, that northern edge is comprised primarily of a hundred-year floodplain as well as two other ponds or retention ponds that were developed for the golf course. The proposed apartments and the associated amenities are located along the eastern edge of the subject property, bordering the Norfolk Southern Railroad. As we look at this, and to be completely honest, there's not much of a change when I zoom in, just to keep this all in there since it's a large site, so I'm just going to go to the next one. What you can see is the location, as I pull up my annotate tool, location of Greendale Road here, Sandersville Road here. You can see that the primary land use in this area is an I-1 or I-2 land use bordering, and that's light industrial and heavy industrial, bordering the east, west, and south sides of the proposed area. There is some residential that has been established with that Hill and Meyer development or the Hill and Meyer property, which is being constructed currently. This AU portion is currently being operated as the Hill and Meyer distributing facility. So that's where they're having all their plants and a lot of the turf. Across the way, you do see an element of R4, which is high density residential or high density apartment residential zone. It is occupied currently by two single-family houses. One is an older house located at this property, and the other is the old seller's office associated with the Hillenmeyer nursery that has been converted to a house. Next to that property, you'll see this big I-1 portion. This I-1 portion was actually rezoned last year, if you remember, from that apartment zone to the I-1 to allow for a more of a mixed-use development to occur. That has the large old warehouse that extends down Sandersville Road. We'll be able to see that here shortly. As well as the Lincoln House, which is historic in nature and has ties to Abraham Lincoln's work as a clerk in this area. going to the aerial, we get a little bit better of an idea of how the surrounding lane uses are currently being operated on their properties and what is occurring just north of the subject property. If you look in this area, you can see the movement of dirt. That is where that residential development is really pushing through. You can also see that industrial nature that is going around along around the outside of the the developer proposed development site or and the area of proposed rezoning. I will say that the applicant had sought to utilize the appropriateness versus inappropriateness argument within their letter of justification and within the original staff report staff disagreed with that application of the of KRS. Staff actually thinks that the only way that this zone change could occur would be compliance or agreement with the 2018 Comprehensive Plan. So as we move further along into the subject property, if I can get things to move, you get to get the feeling of what has developed over time. Currently at this top picture, you sit at the intersection of Sandersville and Greendale. This is Greendale pointing south as we get closer to those industrial developments. And this is Sandersville as we go out towards some of the other industrial, but towards that Hill and Meyer property. Down here we have Greendale Road looking along that northern or that western side of the property heading north. You can look into and see the golf course and some established tree lines. Here we have at the other end, at the very far end of Sandersville Road, the entryway for the golf course itself. You can see the signs right there. If we move down Sandersville Road from that entryway, you can look at this top picture. This is that warehousing building that received the zone change last year to I-1. The Lincoln House is actually located just over in this area. Below, you can see the two houses. One house right here, you can barely see it in the trees, and this is the refurbished house that was the offices for Hill and Meyer Nursery. Across the street, there is one historic structure. This is historically significant and recognized as such. It has been individually listed on the National Register for Historic Properties. That's right here. This leads into the nursery for the Hill and Meyer Nursery. If we shift back out, it's somewhat hard with a site this large and without being able to get into the site itself to show you the pictures of the golf course. But this aerial does give you a good view of what is occurring on site, the pathways which the applicant is seeking to utilize for a lot of their development and their pedestrian activity within the site. A historic structure here, this building was actually historically associated with the farming operations that occurred here. It was a cattle operation for an extended period of time and then was retained by the golf course owners as their clubhouse. In this application, the applicant is seeking to maintain and retain that structure so that they can use it for their amenity space associated with this development. One thing that I do want to point out, you can see the stream that is going through this site, emptying into pond, pond, pond, and associated with that is a fairly extensive floodplain in which the applicant is seeking to single load that street facing that floodplain and greenway. It is an identified greenway within the Greenway Master Plan. Moving forward, we can look at the nearby industrial land uses. Here we have the UPS shipping center, and then some of up along Sandersville Road, some of those other industrial uses. I bring this up largely because staff will be discussing the use of conditional zoning restrictions. Typically, we are more concerned when an industrial use comes into a residential area. In this case, the residential use is coming into the industrial area. That necessitates a fair amount more discussion as to how this area is being developed, making sure that appropriate buffers are applied between those industrial uses and the proposed rezoning to a residential use. We run into issues of individuals moving into the area and moving next to industrial uses and being unhappy with the potential nuisances that can be developed by those industrial spaces. Industrial spaces are meant for manufacturing and production, whether that's on a light side or a heavy side, that gets that to some of the emissions that might occur, whether that's noise, light, or sound. I'm sorry, noise, sound, or noise, light, or any type of air pollutants. When looking at this application, as we've seen with the other applications, we really do need to look at how they are going to develop this site. In this case, the applicant is looking at a new complete neighborhood in this location, and they are asking for that new complete neighborhood in a way to develop a very large greenfield site. This site needs to be a little bit more on the mixed side of things. With staff, we really do push for a mixture of whether that is low density residential, high density residential, and then getting into the mixed use zones. We do also talk about using B1 and B1 form base, the inclusion of businesses to support these neighborhoods. This is one aspect of this application that could actually complement what is going on with that rezoning to the I1 that will achieve that mixed use category. Within the most suitable types, this application is interesting in the fact that it is actually seeking to develop both a low density residential development, LR here, and a medium density residential development MR here. The low density residential development is really focused on those single family detached and attached houses. And when Mr. Martin comes up, I am going to cheat and show you some of this. But when Mr. Martin comes up, he'll go over the development plan and the locations of these different mixtures of types of residents. The medium density residential really is the multifamily residential type. That is where we're seeing the two to three-story buildings that are being developed closer to the rail line. They are adding quite a bit of density, and that will kind of bring up their density for the area, but it does incorporate it into the site. For the recommended zones, the applicant is jumping into the R3, or the Planned Neighborhood Residential Zone. The planned neighborhood residential zone is actually quite good at covering a lot of different options. This gives the applicant the ability to do those single-family detached, attached, and multifamily within one comprehensive zone and mix those within the site. So I'm going to move us forward to a little bit of an overview of the development plan. This will allow me to go through some of the staff's and the zoning committee's concerns at the time of the committees. And it's not colored up, so I'm not stealing too much of Mr. Martin's thunder. When we're looking at this application, what you can see is that single-loaded street that is called for by the comprehensive plan and is really trying to enhance this greenway. I almost pointed at it with my hand. This greenway in this area. So utilizing this open space and these natural features to enhance their site and produce a greater amount of amenity space for their potential residents. You can see that you have all the low-density residential across here. and then moving into the multifamily or the medium density residential. During the early conversations that staff had with the applicant, there were major issues about how the applicant was locating some of their parking and connecting the multifamily development to the single family development. The applicant with this newest submission has shifted their parking to the rear of the buildings, which will buffer between the buildings and the railroad, and pushed their green space open space in front of those buildings. This has allowed the applicant to go ahead and create a continuity of green space that runs down the spine of the single loaded street down into the multifamily residential. This allows for the production of usable open space that is really called for within the comprehensive plan. One of the other aspects that was really important to staff was connectivity. The connectivity of these two portions of the single family development that was proposed into the multifamily development. We want to make sure that with new multifamily development, it is part of a neighborhood, not separate from a neighborhood. Staff does still have a little bit of concern with backing up of the neighborhood to these buildings. And those can be discussions that we have at the time of the final development plan. I'm going to go back to this to stop stealing Mr. Martin's thunder. Within the applicant's letter of justification, they have talked about what they can do in the future to allow for greater compliance or agreement with the comprehensive plan. Throughout their application and through their letter of justification, especially for the multifamily design standards, which are outlined in development criteria ADS 3-1, they state that they will seek to work with staff at a greater level at the time of the final development plan. In your staff report or your supplemental staff report that you were given today, there is a table of the various different multifamily design standards that the applicant has indicated that they would work with staff to achieve a greater agreement with the comprehensive plan at the time of the final development plan. That has been listed here, and staff would like to have that in the record just so that when this does come back for the final development plan, we do have these conversations. These things need to be on the table at that time, as the applicant indicated in their letter of justification. Furthermore, there has been a fair amount of conversation, and I will go back to this. There's been a fair amount of conversation about trying to integrate the current road systems to create a frontage-like system while retaining an access easement in front of the apartment complexes. Specifically, staff is discussing this right here. In our conversations with the applicants, we have recommended, and we rarely do this, the use of a waiver so that we can streamline the road system so that there isn't a use for the cul-de-sacs here and here, which reduces costs for the applicant, but would also make it feel like a more normal transition or a roadway continuation from this area all the way up to the top. With that, staff is recommending at the time of the final development, we do remove these 32 spots from being perpendicular, but we do talk about pushing them back on there in a parallel sense so that they can retain their parking. This site is over parked by 102 spaces, so the loss of 32 is not a great disadvantage to the applicant. With that, and with the continued discussion items that staff is recommending for the continuation of this project in the final development plan stage, staff is recommending approval of this zone change application. The requested plan neighborhood residential R3 zone is in agreement with the comprehensive plans, goals and objectives for the following reasons. And I will try to be brief on this. The proposed rezoning will expand housing choice, accommodating them responsibly, prioritizing high density and a mixture of housing types. And they do so, as you can see, with the different types that they're showing with their application. The proposed development will support infill and redevelopment throughout the urban service area and will do so on an underutilized portion of land that currently acts as a golf course. The proposed rezoning will respect the context and design features of the surrounding areas and will develop design standards and guidelines to ensure compatibility with the existing urban form. This is especially important with that green space, open space area, and the tie of the roadway into the northern residential development. The proposed development will provide a well-designed neighborhood and connect these neighborhood residential areas onto both minor arterial roadways and then all the way out into some of our major arterial systems. And I apologize, I think they're collector streets. They are. They are collector streets. So going back to Mr. Martin's conversation about the adequate transitioning of roadway systems from the locals to the collectors. And Mr. Martin will discuss an aspect of this with a collector street in the center. Furthermore, the proposed rezoning allows for positive and safe social interactions in neighborhoods and really pushes for new development with neighborhoods that are connected for both pedestrians and also allow for reduced police EMS and fire response times. Throughout the establishment of the shared use trails, the proposed development will provide a people first design that emphasizes an accessible community. The applicant has indicated that that green space, open space along the floodplain will be accessible to all individuals in our community, not just HOAs or not just the HOA that is supporting this. They are opening this up to the public. The proposed development will protect and enhance natural and cultural resources by maintaining the historic structure on the site as an amenity space for the potential residents. Furthermore, the justification and the corollary development plan are in agreement with the policies and development criteria of the 2018 Comprehensive Plan. This language you've seen over and over again, but it is tailored to what they are trying to do on site. I will not read these to you. this home. The one thing that I will bring up that due to the location of this site and its proximity to the I-1 zoning, staff is recommending that there shall be a 25-foot landscape buffer that will include a double row of trees from group A or B only, which are staggered on center and spaced every 30 feet along the southern property line, where adjacent to industrial I-1 or I-2 zoned land. Now, we put I-2 in there even though it's not there right now, but at some point there could be a rezoning and we just wanted to cover our bases. Now, there was a lot of conversation about whether or not they should have to remove the established trees to put this in. If there is an established and denser tree line, staff would support the retention of that tree line. Finally, this recommendation is made subject to the approval and certification of PLN-MJDP 20-27 Spring Lake, which Mr. Martin will go over just here shortly. On that, I will stop share and ask if anyone has any questions for me regarding this application. Mr. Nichols? All right. Sorry to ask a question, but we don't have much land left. And at 140 gross acres with a parcel we're looking at right now, I see that you all are requesting approval or recommending approval. But what kind of yield are we getting for dwelling units per acre? I think I missed that. But that's important for us to increase housing choices and affordability. Yes, Mr. Nickel, they are at a low end. I will say that. It's 4.88. Now, a large portion of the diminishing of the amount of dwelling units per acre is because of the large amount of green and open space that they are providing. That floodplain takes up quite a bit of space. That being said, the staff has brought up the potential for other areas multifamily on site, and the applicant has said that they would consider it at the time of final development plan. The one aspect of the R3 zone is that it allows for the shifting a bit of this at the time of final development plan with the planning commission's request and not deviating too much. thank you i just thank you good use sir if there are no other questions i'll hand it over to mr martin and uh try not to speak anymore thank you it's smart thank you members of the planning commission we are viewing major development plan 20-27 spring lake and uh mr bailey how don't have to worry about stealing much thunder because i know at this hour none of us have a lot of thunder left the plan that you see before you is as stated 143 acres 331 single family lots all in the area that you can see here, there are 63 townhouses being proposed here in this area, kind of in its own little neighborhood, as it were. And then in these two areas, you're seeing townhouses proposed here. This is Greendale, by the way. Here's Greendale and Sandersville Road and the railroad, of course, just to remind you of what frames this development. This is taking advantage of an area that is isolated by floodplain here. This is not the major floodplain, but this is floodplain that affects this property. And of course, here's the major greenway and floodplain that Hal described. And again, we have an isolated little area separated from the rest of the property that they are taking advantage of by proposing townhouses in this area. The multifamily area here that is adjacent to the railroad, they're proposing 280 apartments with 504 bedrooms. So there's a mix of unit types and a mix of bedrooms being proposed within the apartments, the multifamily development. Now, Hal had talked a little bit about, again, this area and the cul-de-sac and the access easement and the orientation in this area. And again, as he stated, and I won't belabor it, there's a lot of good green space and continuity of green space. The transition, should it be determined at the time of the final and the preliminary subdivision plan, would allow some opportunity for additional, perhaps higher density development adjacent to these areas where the cul-de-sacs currently exist. It would require a waiver to terminate these cul-de-sacs under your land subdivision regulations. Now, you can see from, we have revised conditions for you, mine happen to be blue. I don't know what color that you all are looking at, but some of the issues besides just the standard sign-offs, also deal with some springs that are on the property. There's one in this area, and there's two located in here and down here in the Greenway. They have denoted those springs on the property, and at the time of the final development plan, that will be a topic of discussion about how they will be dealt with, and it may be that they will be left alone. It may be that some work may have to be done to accommodate the springs and their function. I would point out that there is a spring north of here on a townhouse development that is located in a detention basin. And that has not proven to be a problem and has worked well, according to staff's understanding. That's upstream is up from the creek that flows down and joins into the creek in this greenway. As Hal stated, this is a FEMA floodplain and will be protected. The additional conditions involve the road network. And again, over the years, staff has worked diligently to try to get improvements along Greendale Road. And frankly, when the state controlled Greendale Road, we weren't always successful. You can see from a condition that we are stating that they need to denote half. Pardon me. Like I say, I've lost my thunder. The half section road improvements along Greendale. We think that's important, that that be brought up at full urban standards for this collector. Now, Sandersville is also a collector. And the previous development on the Hill and Meyer property, the improvements to Sandersville, it was a compromise between staff and the developer. And that compromise was agreed upon to protect the stone walls, the stone fence along Sandersville in that area. And a pedestrian system was placed in easements on the other side of that stone wall within the development. And we are contemplating that that may be the approach we want to take along this side of Sandersville Road as well to protect the existing stone walls on this side. So that is something, again, a condition that they need to denote the treatment of the stone wall. Again, that is connected to the potential improvements to Sandersville Road. there are some slight concerns again that are cleanup conditions that can be dealt with at the time of the final development plan and the preliminary subdivision plan again you will see combinations because the infrastructure that you see with all the public streets these local streets, they will be constructed off of a preliminary subdivision plan, whereas most of the development and public improvements and infrastructure connected to the multifamily are usually built from a final development plan. So with that said, we would like to see a more developed pedestrian system tying this townhouse area into the existing system. that's not a big problem from staff's perspective and can be easily accomplished. This does, however, lead us to an important discussion, and that is the single loaded street, which staff is very pleased with. We think it's an excellent way to deal with the infrastructure and to deal with the greenway. and the question is we're willing to defer the discussion however staff wants to make it clear based on a previous discussion that you heard today that multi-family developments are required to access a collector street not local streets here's your local network staff believes this local network should be anchored on a collector street which is single loaded as you see next to the greenway. And again, we would certainly entertain waivers on the cul-de-sac, but that we believe is an important aspect of this development. And one of the reasons that's important is that a collector street already has requirements in our relatively newly adopted standards for traffic calming. And that's important because that's a standard. It's been developed. Everyone knows what it is, and it grants certainty to the development process. The developer knows what's required and knows what to build, whether that's a collector street or these local streets as well. And it saves us all the difficulty in negotiating some sort of modified street system that is not a part of our adopted standards. and I believe I have covered the pertinent issues and I will answer any questions you may have. Thank you Mr. Martin. Any questions for Tom? All right we have a traffic study as well Mr. Jimmy Emmons is here today to speak to us about that. Yes, sir, if I can share my screen. I intend to be very brief. I do have more information if the commission has any questions about the traffic impact study. We can go in more depth. But I just want to give you a very brief look at this. The traffic impact study was done by EA Partners. And I believe, at least on my screen, the numbers are covered up. But the new development would generate during the morning and evening peak hour traffic would generate about 400 trips. And what you would see is in the morning, you would see about 300 trips leaving the residential development about in the evening, 300 trips coming back in. And that's very typical for what we would expect in the rush hour for this type of residential development. The traffic impact study did look at several intersections that are highlighted on your screen. It looked at the existing intersections along Greendale Road and Sandersville Road and also looked at the proposed access points for the development itself. I've kind of highlighted here in green just the areas, the two new access points, didn't see any concerns with that. The traffic study did go under the railroad underpass and look at the Jaggi Fox and Sandersville Road, and we didn't see any issues with that. The issues and concerns that we do have along Greendale Road are actually primarily due to the fact that there is a large amount of traffic on Greendale Road already. They're not necessarily concerns that are caused by the proposed development. But we did look at the, that look at traffic accident data for three years in this area. And we saw that Sandersville Road did not actually have very many traffic accidents. We didn't see any particular accidents at the railroad underpass, which is one of the things that we were focused on looking at. And we see very typical traffic patterns along the major roads and intersections. The staff has looked at this and we are happy with the two points of access that they are proposing to Sandersville Road and Greendale Road. We do believe that in the future that we are going to have to look at and be creative about what we do with the, as we approach the railroad underpass. underpass. In particular, the staff report actually from a transportation planning staff report only had two recommendations. The first one was covered already by Mr. Martin in the conditions that are before you and it was to provide the road improvements to Greendale Road and Sandersville Road and we went on to recognize that the special circumstances on Sandersville road will need to be looked at in more detail at the time of the final development plan. And finally, the staff is asking the applicant to denote on the development plan that at the time of the preliminary subdivision or final development plan, that the developer will coordinate with traffic engineering and bicycle pedestrian planner and other necessary entities to further evaluate potential safety improvements, especially for pedestrians and bicycles traveling through the railroad underpass. At this point in time, we don't have any specific recommendations for what that would look like, who would be responsible or anything like that. But what we do have is a commitment from the staff part to look at safety, especially for those most vulnerable that would be utilizing that underpass in the future. For the ease of the planning commission, if you agree that this should be on there, you could simply add a condition to denote the railroad underpass language as recommended by staff. That is a very brief overview of the traffic impact study. I'm going to stop sharing my screen now. If the commission has any questions for me, like I said, we can go much deeper dive on any of the information. But yes, sir. Jimmy, so does this feed onto Leastown? Where does this feed onto Sandersville, Greendale? Yeah, where will it come out? If you're on Sandersville Road and you take a right, you would go under the underpass and head towards Georgetown Road. If you made a left, you would head towards the Greendale Road and Sandersville Road intersection. And ultimately, Sandersville Road, it's under construction right now. it's not open today but it will lead all the way out to Citation Boulevard which will allow you to to get either direction you go if you were coming out on to Greendale Road and you were going if you were going right you would head north and then you would have the options to kind of shortcut and get over to Citation Boulevard or continue on to Spur Road or if you headed left you would head down to Leestown Road. And you feel that the impact on those roads isn't a concern? My overall concern for those areas is that you've got a growing amount of residential traffic and you've already got a lot of industrial traffic and you've got old rural roads. So it's not discounting any of the things, but whenever you look at the existing concerns, especially along Greendale Road, which has about 10,000 cars per day. It's just that the staff agrees with the applicant that the traffic that they're generating as a part of this new development doesn't really make a difference on that road. So that's really why the staff is focused our concern on ensuring that the half section improvements are filled for the, as per your land subdivision regulations. Okay. Thank you. I believe that concludes all of the staff presentations, unless they're, Ms. Plumlee? I'm sorry, you're still muted. I'm reading now from the urban service report, the staff report. It says that Greendale and Sandersville Road are classified as urban collector roadways, although they have not been upgraded to function in that manner at this location. So are you saying they are now upgraded better and that they can really handle all these 400 in the morning and 300 in the afternoon trips? I am recommending that the applicant upgrade them per the land subdivision regulations and do their portion of improvements along their frontage. Thank you. and that was covered as one of the conditions recommended by mr martin on the development plan all right okay any more questions for mr emmons i'll be available for comments if you have any questions for me all right thank you jimmy we're going to move into citizens comments and before we get there Staff. Applicant. Oh, excuse me. It's been a long day. Applicant presentation first. Then we'll go to citizen comment. Sorry about that. Promoting Mr. Nicholson. Is there anyone else from the applicant's team who would like to be promoted to participate at this time? I believe you should have them both. on there uh just say cancel on there all right we are trying to plug in the video for everybody here uh with me as well and just move the camera now there's rory's head Oh, sorry. While we are basically beginning this process, I do specifically want to thank the staff for how much work they have put in on this particular project. Throughout the kind of COVID-19, right at the beginning of the kind of when we kind of partially opened back up was when we were trying to file everything. And so with how much work has gone in this week and during the entire kind of pandemic era, I cannot thank the planning staff enough for everything that they have kind of helped out on this particular zone change request. With that being said, I'm going to try to share screen. Okay, thank you all. Nick Nicholson here on behalf of Bald Looms. With me is Buddy Goodwin, Al Gross, and Rory Cayley, and we are happy to answer any questions that you all may have. The specific request that is before you today is to rezone 138 acres of land currently zoned agricultural urban to a planned neighborhood residential R3. As Mr. Bailey pointed out, we are proposing this in a new complete neighborhood with a blend between low density for the single family portion and medium density for the multifamily component. As you all are now quite aware, this is on the Spring Valley golf course. The aerial right here kind of shows the section of town in between, you know, Georgetown, Greendale, Sandersville, and Citation that has become really increasingly residential as the past kind of decade has come on. Most of this zoning in this area that you now are seeing dirt moving occurred in about 05 and 06, and slowly they have been coming online. With this kind of trend in residential, we think that it is a natural extension for this area to go ahead and continue on into the Spring Valley golf course. The development we're proposing consists of 331 single-family lots, 63 townhomes, and 280 apartment units, and has a significant neighborhood focal point with the single-loaded street and the kind of open space and amenity areas in the multifamily. I specifically point out the amenities area because I do want to make sure everyone is aware we are preserving the 1937 Spring Valley Clubhouse and turning that into part of this amenity area for the multifamily. In the single family portion, we have basically interspersed the single family lots and townhomes in order to take advantage of how the floodplain really interacts with this parcel. The comprehensive plan kind of points out how we need to start kind of being more respectful to these type of green areas. And we certainly think that this plan is a great example of how that can be done on a rather large site. As Hal has indicated, our primary justification is that we are in agreement with the 2018 comprehensive plan. As I'll show kind of momentarily on an aerial zoning slide, we think that R3 is absolutely the natural zone for this property. It allows for a development that will activate a very large tract of underutilized agricultural land. Throughout our comprehensive plan, we often hear about the need to activate these large agricultural tracts that are inside the urban service area. This one has been inside the urban service area for over 40 years. R3 zoning also will allow for the continued development of the exact type of residential uses that already exist today on the Greendale corridor and are being built on the Sandersville corridor. It will also be done at an appropriate density level to remain consistent with the existing and improved neighborhoods, but also give the density that our community very much has indicated that they desire. Here is the kind of aerial slide that shows how much of this land is or how much of this area that is residential is all zoned R3. Here is your Georgetown Road over here and so everything towards Masterson Station that is residential except for two or three parcels is entirely R3 zoning. It makes perfect sense to continue that process as we head towards the industrial area. Also, I will kind of show on a finished construction site what this area will kind of look like in the future. You will see that these are the dentures that we are proposing right now. So they are in keeping with what the area has already developed in and has been approved. This number would indeed be larger as Mr. Bailey and Council Member, Commission Member Nickel had pointed out, except for this floodplain area. However, what this does ideally is from the railroad tracks to the multifamily, it basically acts as a transition use buffer as we head towards single family and head out you know, towards Masterson Station Park. Also, the proposed density is in keeping with one of the scenarios that is in the comprehensive plan and contemplated for the continued growth, specifically of vacant land in this area. When we look at the individual goals and objectives, I don't want to dwell too long because we've already kept you here too long and Mr. Bill hit a lot of these points, but I do very quickly want to kind of hit some highlights with regards to the goals and objectives. Of course, this is a residential development, and that hits the very first goal and the very first theme that we have in our comprehensive plan is we must expand housing types and housing options. That's exactly what we are doing here. We are adding in much needed density, much needed housing types, but we are making sure to stay consistent with what is in the area. This is a bread and butter infill and redevelopment project. Within the infill and redevelopment goals, they make sure to indicate that we're not supposed to be harming the rural area in any way, shape, or form. We want to focus on these type of, or basically, you know, underutilized agricultural land inside the urban service boundary, and that is exactly what we are doing. And when we do bring those large tracks online, we must do it in a respectful manner. And as Mr. Bailey said, this is a well-designed... Well, I'll kind of get into some of the design policies that the comprehensive plan specifically calls out. We are matching the zone, we are matching the types, and we are matching kind of the densities of these existing areas. But we're doing so in such a way to make sure that there are safe interactions, that this is a pedestrian people first development. We are focusing on the kind of the the entryway, the open space, and making sure as soon as you come in here, you recognize right away that this is a people first development. But we're also doing it in such a way that we are making the necessary connections in order to ensure that we are further the connectivity goals that is throughout the planning, throughout the conference plan. We're also focusing on protecting the greenway and the natural buffers in order to make sure that we are respectful of the area that we are coming into. We know that there are industrial users in this area, and we want to make sure that all of us are able to coexist moving forward. But we also have to recognize that the pressing need in this community is for residential housing, and that's why we think that R3 is such an appropriate zone and within the goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan. I've kind of already hit on the desirable community aspects of why we think this development hits so perfectly with what we're showing. But I do have to point out that this is in keeping also with the goal to uphold the urban service area concept. It is right here in objective E where we're talking about activating large undeveloped land holdings within the urban service area. That is exactly what this development is. And I think everyone in this Zoom certainly knows that if we are serious about making sure that we are maintaining the current boundary of the urban service area, there is no way to maintain that boundary and turn down development on this type of 138 acres of agricultural land that has had urban services and inside the urban service area for over 40 years. with regards to the design policies uh kind of group them into a couple different uh features and i will start with the streetscape and multimodal infrastructure the policies talk about making sure to utilize people first development ensure proper road connections but doing so in a pedestrian friendly way while allowing these to be multimodal and that is certainly what we're doing uh as soon as you come in here we are having greenway crossings We are making sure that the predominant focal point and, you know, immediately you see the pedestrian infrastructure. And so we think as you come along this area, you are constantly reminded of the path system, of the open space, and of the pedestrians in this area. And it heads down into the multifamily area, which again, staff has pointed out, immediately directs you also into an open space. So at no point along this entire kind of road connection do you ever, you know, think that you are just traveling on a highway. This is very much a people first development. With regards to the multifamily design standards, Hal is very correct. my justification letter did indicate that we believe that we are in compliance with the multifamily design guidelines, but we will continue to work with them on the design of this area, specifically where they were talking about possibly submitting waiver requests along this kind of stretch. But as you all may recall from committees, the parking used to be on the other side of the buildings towards the railroad, or excuse me, the open space was where the parking is now on the other side of the railroads and flipping those certainly was in keeping with the multifamily design standards that talks about easily accessible open space that is available to all of the tenants there and certainly creates a very walkable development. The next kind of set of design policies talks about essentially residential housing mix with design sensitivity and we very much believe that we are doing that because of how we are kind of incorporating the green space to the area, how we've basically designed the car parking areas and providing the kind of the wide variety of housing choices that this development certainly offers. The last design policies deal with the green space. We think that that certainly is being kept because we are providing more than just adequate green space for neighborhoods. We are adding these focal points and we are using the single loaded roads. These design policies that are specifically called out, I just have a hard time believing that this is not exactly what was envisioned with those design policies. So in kind of, you know, quick summary with regards to the urban service, or excuse me, the compliance with the comprehensive plan, we believe that this is a very well-designed project that upholds the urban service area preservation strategy, It is certainly appropriate development of an underutilized agricultural parcel that's been inside the urban service area for 40 years. We're providing additional housing units with a mix of housing types. We're encouraging community interaction through pedestrian connectivity and multimodal infrastructure. And we're doing so by respecting our neighbors and protecting the environment with the landscaping buffers and protected green space. So we certainly believe that this is in compliance with the comprehensive plan. me being me an attorney I feel like I have to check all of the boxes with regards to ways you can have a zone change and so I do have to point out that we do believe that the existing zoning is inappropriate and the proposed zoning is in fact appropriate agricultural urban is clearly not appropriate for this parcel our zoning ordinance says itself that with the AU zone that should only be land that will remain in this zone until public facilities and services are or will be adequate to serve urban uses. That time has long passed this particular parcel, and that is why development has leapfrogged this area and has occurred all too. This is why this is now an infill project, because it is simply no longer appropriate for this to be zoned agricultural urban. We believe that the proposed zoning of R3 is clearly appropriate. A lot of the reasons I've already covered and I will not go back over them, but I do just want to say that we are matching the overwhelming residential zoning scheme in this area from Georgetown Road out to Masterson Station, and we are allowing for the continuity of the types of housing choices and the area's density to help ensure the development will respect the existing atmosphere. This again is the slide that kind of will show what the finished area will look like when all of the development along Greendale and Sandersville is complete. And this kind of gets in again at the kind of use transition I was talking about that, you know, we are kind of proposing to go from the heaviest industrial right here to the railroads, to a landscape buffer, to the multifamily before we get to the single family. And then we have another kind of green space area before we transition into the additional residential units that are in the area. So, you know, we think that R3 is a perfect zone to capture exactly what this community needs and what the community has indicated that, you know, we want for this property. And so as such, we think this zone change is very much, you know, should be approved. And we certainly would request that you approve that today. I only have kind of two things to talk about with regards to the staff recommendations as far as one of them is minor and it deals with the condition number eight that is on the development plan conditions of approval. We would only request that that say basically that that occurs at the time of the final development plan, that that discussion occurs. It's the exact same language that is in note number 11 with regards to Sandersville Road. And so we think that both of these roads should be basically treated the same. Right now we are showing the exact same cross section that the Hillenmeyer development just north of this property is showing. We aren't opposed to doing the half improvements, but we do think that it warrants more of a discussion. We have received contradictory information on whether there is any of the stone fencing that is in the basically fence row trees that have grown up in this area. And so we do just want to make sure that we have that discussion at the final development plan. Again, we're not against it, but we would just like to make sure we just save that to the final development plan. The second point is the conditional zoning restriction. instead of a conditional zoning restriction, the applicant would request that that be a resolve at the time of final development plan. There are kind of a lot of unknowns with regards to adding the type of trees and areas that they're talking about and what that can do to kind of existing property. I say this because first of all, here would be part of the land that we are talking about adding trees to. This is a heavily dense area, but we would have to do this for the entire perimeter. Also, starting right here, there's a 100-foot utility easement that crosses all the way through these back lots. And any type of planting in that utility easement is highly discouraged and typically fought by the utility companies fairly significantly. But also, along this property line, there is one of the historic stone fences, as you can see in this area. Here is a bit of a close-up of these fences. And in order to basically comply with this zoning condition, we would have to basically be covering up this stone fence. And so we don't think that that's what Lexington wants. We don't think that that's what the staff wants either. And so we're not saying no. We just don't think that this should be a conditional zoning restriction because I think there are a couple different areas that it might not make sense to have a uniform kind of double staggered row of trees. We are happy to talk about enhanced landscaping throughout the industrial side. We just think that it warrants a study because there are a bunch of areas where it just doesn't truly make sense for that CZR to be there. I know that there are some industrial neighbors that are on the Zoom that want to weigh in. I cannot repeat enough that we are more than willing to talk about how these properties interact, what type of landscaping should go in there. We just think that we should do that at the final development plan instead of uniformly dictating something that doesn't make sense in the utility easement area, in the area that's already simply wooded for over 200 yards, and also kind of, you know, interfering with the historic stone fences. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions, but we very much are in agreement with staff except for those two minor issues. Thank you all. Ms. Blumley? Thank you. Thank you, Nick, for your presentation. Yes, ma'am. Am I correct in assuming there are two access points for this development? Yes, ma'am, there are. Okay, and I'm still worried about the roads. You've got 400 cars taken off with their travel mugs on them in the morning, and they're not going to be thinking nice things about the planning commission when the road is inadequate. So when you say upgrade, just what do you do? You resurface it? Do you make it wider? Could you just kind of hold my hand on that one? Thank you. Half improvements, and I'm sure the staff can can also weigh in on this often that that's basically bringing a rural road to something that's your more typical used to seeing in town where you're talking about a you know curb and gutter and sidewalk area um again we're not against that we just think that people should should have that conversation at the final plan because of exactly what's happened uh to the north of that the hill and meyer uh property has one of these stone fences and so the planning Commission decided not to expand it because that would have meant basically tearing down the stone fence. We do not believe that there is one on our property, but we've received conflicting information. It's a very treed area, similar to how kind of these fence row trees come in. And so we just think we should just make sure that this is what we want to do. I don't know if a sidewalk should go in there or we deal with a trail system. That's exactly what we're basically doing on Sandersville and on the Hillenmeyer property. Again, this is not a no in any way. It's just let's really study. All right, Mr. Penn. I like your security camera view, Mr. Penn. Tommy's muted. You are muted. Yeah. I think he's trying to figure out how to work the security camera. I don't know. Okay. I have to kind of mute, but. Don't make fun of me. There we are. Welcome. Nick, I want to tell you that I'm impressed with the work that's been done, not only by you, but by the staff on this, because this is a large piece of property. There's lots of challenges. Do you see this develop as a phase development over several years? How do you see this development? Absolutely. This will be a phase development similar to what we have been doing with Blackford, I would say, and similar to what we're doing right across the street with Hill and Meyer. So are you looking at three to five year phase? What are you looking at? At least three to five. At least three to five, yes, sir. Okay, well, that gives me a lot more comfort because I think that your final development plan, this is a plan that really doesn't look like a preliminary development plan. It looks more like you're working very hard toward the final development plan. and my experience has been that as you start down this road you will be able to to see things that need to be tweaked that would help the whole situation what my concern is like carolyn was was is it's the traffic impact of that thing and and that railroad because we're not going to be able to change that railroad right it's going to be what it is and it's it's a country railroad road situation the other thing i just make an observation here is that i am hopeful that we will look at this as a residential going into an already established which it is i want an i2 situation and i don't know that we have done that before and i don't know that we know all the questions need to happen there. Are you in contact with Bombing Paper and FedEx and all the people there that are your neighbors? Do you know what they need? We've been in extensive talks throughout today, these past weeks. I think I've spoke with the UPS folks four or five times today, Bombing Papers, in a similar number. I cannot be more candid in saying we are more than willing to continue working with them as this goes along to make sure that the proper screenage goes in place in the proper locations. I just don't think you can treat that entire southern property line the exact same because, you know, there are different issues in different locations, but we are more than happy to continue to work with all of these neighbors to make sure that, you know, our residents aren't unhappy because at the end of the day, especially on the Bowman Paper Park, that's a multifamily development that we're going to continue to own and manage, And so we need to make sure our people are just as happy. So this is in our best interest. We certainly will continue to work on it. One thing I do want to point out about the road system is that when all of these traffic studies were done, it was before Sandersville connected to Citation. That's true. And so I think that connection is going to have a huge impact on where these cars are going. And so it might not be 400 that are headed down Greendale and they head to Citation. That's right. And we've heard that before. but the point I'm trying to make here if you're going to phase it over three to five years let's do the best development plan we can do and and a lot of this thing can be postponed until the final development plan even though I think you're farther along than the preliminary thank you this is by far the most detailed preliminary development plan I've ever been a part of and a lot of that was due to working with the staff they made a couple like uh kind of you know, suggestions such as flipping the open space that we think that has made it a much better plan. So we are more happy, more than happy to keep working with them because we think we got a real good plan and it's going to take us some time to develop all of this. Thank you, Nick. All right. Nick, thank you. Thank you. Okay, so now we can move on to our citizens' comments. And what I'd like to do first is anyone that's speaking on behalf of the application, we're going to do a 10-minute maximum time or three minutes each. And we'll go by a show of hands via the Zoom. Mr. Chair, I do not see any hands raised. Okay, all right. Next up, any objectors? And we will allow 30 minutes maximum time limit or three minutes each for the objectors. Okay, our first objector is Jeff McKenzie. Mr. McKenzie, I'm going to allow you to speak. If you could please give us your name and your address for the record. Sure, this is Jeff McKenzie. I'm with the firm of Denton's Bingham Greenbaum. I want to make sure you're hearing me first. I don't see my picture up. Yes, we can hear you, Jeff. Am I connected? Good. Good. I'm better off without a picture. A face that works in radio. With that, I'm with the firm of Denton's Bingham Greenbaum. My address is 3500 National Tower in Louisville. I've been on this call, as you all have, since 1.30, and I'll do everything I can to move quickly. As Mr. Nicholson has mentioned, we've been in conversations throughout, especially today, I would say, and during this hearing, trying to get to language that hopefully moves this along. I would say preliminarily that we believe that there are some issues that are not yet resolved, and we would propose that this action be deferred, at least to resolve those along that property line that has been mentioned here to some degree. But to run through very quickly a few things. One is the issues with regard to notice and response. You know, there's been limited public discussion. As you know, the prior hearings are on limited, more limited issues in limited form. This is the first full presentation of the complete rezoning. And in this public hearing, a single notice opportunity with this complicated of a plan does leave us with a feeling of a need for a little further discussion. Along that line, you did have a lot of information included in the file put into the file Monday. I know and deal with this in various places throughout the state. The protocols under COVID-19, for those who are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with televised hearings such as this, when we're always seeking to show our respect for them and give them ample opportunity, I don't believe that they've been given ample opportunity to deal with the information that was put into the file on Monday, when in fact the response is a male response. So I would raise those issues, at least with regards to the meeting of protocols for giving notice in public hearing in this condition. So then to get to some points here, the industrial growth issue, there is a traffic issue, I believe. As has been placed in the record, the existing traffic on Greendale is a problem. That's what your record has just said. We know it's an existing problem and to load what we're talking about into that existing problem, whether or not the cause of the problem today exists, whether this development causes the problem or not is not the question. The question is whether or not we are exacerbating existing conditions. And that's something we'd like to be able to resolve in some discussion here. We also think that the provisions of the comprehensive plan that have been cited certainly don't reflect all of those that advance the interest of industrial uses. Industrial uses are certainly not as pretty, but they do get the job done tax-wise, jobs, et cetera. And the reason that people want to live in these locations are they're here for those jobs. So that's in order to meet those requirements, we think that's a something that should be under consideration to be in conformance with the 2018 comprehensive plan. We believe that in looking at this plan, I certainly see some values to it. And in my experience, I can see that there has been and would agree that lots of work has been done with this. the comments made regarding the transition from industrial to residential, though I take some issue there because certainly you can point to the perimeter with the more dense multifamily conditions, and they do provide a transition from industrial uses on that end of the property. However, the most dense single-family population along this border has been pushed and is immediately adjacent to the industrial perimeter uses. And that is not a condition that is normal. And certainly your planning commissions has mentioned that as well. These are not extremely common situations where a residential development is pushing into industrial areas. and in this case and in others I believe that can be planning commission's central role in these types of development requests are to eliminate or at least reduce the conflicts between the conflicting uses that you'll have here between industrial and residential uses so with that that's the reason why we've had the discussions we've had with Mr. Nicholson regarding the property I represent UPS with its subsidiary, PT-OH LLC, that has adjoining property here. They are a 24-7 use of the property. They are an industrial use that does provide jobs, and they do their part for the community as well. And we just want to make sure that the net result of this development is not a series of conflicts with those who move under these perimeters. So that is really the central issue that I think we could resolve with a little bit of time. And the reason why we would ask that we postpone the final decision on this plan in order to let us resolve, as Mr. Nicholson has mentioned, And, you know, he has conflicting information regarding the stone fence. I certainly think with the amount of time that's been involved here, we need to locate that stone fence and make that decision. This is a very important issue. We need to put all of this in place and certainly in service to my client to avoid conflicts, but also to Ball Homes and all of the homeowners who would locate along this perimeter. we should resolve that to the best of our ability and be able to say as a planning commission and as adjacent property owners, we've done our best job to put in place a buffer that will at least reduce the potential for conflicts along that. So that's been our effort today and in fact and if you're able to put the language up that I had proposed that really matches the conditional zoning restriction proposed by the staff. Thank you Tricia for putting that up. Hopefully that will help and as you can see there the the first one is the number one is the language that we had proposed regarding this and I think if If we were to move today, we would use this type of language. It proposes the 25-foot border, of course, a setback without buildings in it from the Ball home side. And the added agreement is that they would preserve the existing trees and foliage and install the two lines of trees on 30-foot centers. and then and and and this was in response to the issues that have been presented here where the installation of specific trees would endanger the preservation of the fence the applicant will endeavor to install the affected trees in other places where we'll advance the goal of providing a visual buffer between the ups site and the applicant's property and that was specific to the ups site it may be something that we want to look at for this development elsewhere but i I believe that that is a fair request of the developer in this case. Then the other three, four conditions really have to do with giving notice and making certain that those who purchase lots along this perimeter are aware that this is a 24-7 industrial use along the border. That does not say that they won't move in there because they will. It is a way of ensuring to the best degree we can that no one shows up later and says, gee, I wasn't told. And who was in charge of this condition? Because we right now are in charge of that condition. So for those reasons, we have proposed this notice go out to those who have adjacent property and those within about 100 yards. I think there are several who wouldn't be necessarily adjacent by the legal definition, but are certainly within 100 yards of our property with lights and potentially noise beyond the nine to five that most homeowners would expect. I think if we're fair to them, they are still going to be interested in these properties. But doing so with information in hand is the best way to avoid problems. Sorry to take up so much time, but that is that's the short answer. We believe, again, that this is the best way to bring this into conformance with the comprehensive plan. There are lots of other issues we can put out, but I don't want to steal anyone else's time. I'll certainly take any questions. Thank you, Jeff. Looks like our next answer is Brandon Gross. One moment, please. I'll go ahead and allow Mr. Gross to speak and he also has a presentation that we'll prepare to share at this time can you hear me Tracy yes we can can you see me we can see your photo oh well that's probably pretty good well well no but you know what i let me see if i can get this sorry i apologize i'm looking at your i'm trying to figure out i don't know how to turn on the video when i'm looking at it well actually you as a attendee to the planning commission um not as a representative of an applicant you're only allowed to speak so so i've sat here for the last five hours in a tie and a jacket waiting for my turn and you can't even see me that's true well mister i'd like you know unfortunately bill has already left but you know i'd like him to know that i was in a coat and a tie today for you um so i know we're late and i don't want to take up a ton of your time um tracy does have my presentation and my material materials um Brandon Gross with Denton's Bingham Greenbaum. Just coincidentally that Jeff is representing UPS out of our Louisville office. But I represent Bowman Paper Company, which is owned by the Bowman family. It's been located in Lexington for a number of decades. If you could go to the next slide, Tracy. I'm gonna just give you a kind of update. So the industrial park, just so everyone knows, and I think this was a little, I feel like it's a little bit glossed over and I'm going to get to that point when I talk about the conference plan. The industrial park is on three sides of this, on this proposed development. We've got on the east side, you've got I one, I two in the railway on the south side, you have I one and on the west side, you have I one. There's also industrial land located on sandersville road itself that would be surrounded the um uh horseshoeing horseshoed by this development so the established neighborhood in this area is industrial um i know that they have tried to tie this into properties and developments north of sandersville road to say this is a normal evolution of residential um but ultimately this is an encroachment on what has i believe I talked to Ms. Darby Turner earlier, has always been kind of believed that this would one day become industrial with the remaining industrial properties on this side of Sandersville Road. But this industrial park was built in the 1950s is when it started. It's been growing since then with new industrials. As I've spoken earlier, Dixie Cup has a huge facility. If you look at my screen, our property is at 1601, but Dixie Cup owns the wooded area next to us that hopefully will at some point be redeveloped for more industrial land. Bowman Paper Company has been at this location since 1976, so we're going on 50 years at this location. We've got a 72,000 square foot building right now. We employ about 60 employees. Our operation hours are 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. currently. We are, and we have been working on for the last few years doing an expansion. If you can look at the number 1601 on the area, you'll see a footer that has already been poured with the plans of hopefully turning that into a 47,000 square foot extension of our building. was at this point we have um fortunately bone the paper is out um unfortunately it's got to make quite a bit of a capital infusion into its property to kind of go to its next uh level of evolution of itself um it believes that it'll add um 10 new employees with that expansion it's also looking at the green space on the um what would be i'm trying to get my orientation the east side of our property. Possibly we've looked at even putting in a 33,000 square foot new building at that location. So we can go to the next slide. I want to kind of talk about briefly, you know, I know there's been lots of talks about committee meetings and discussion points and meetings. I will say, you know, as everyone knows, Nick and I have a very good relationship. So yes, we do talk quite often. Unfortunately, with this particular application, all that's occurred is talk. There's been no resolution of really any issues. And everything so far has been, well, let's wait for the development plan. Let's do a study later. Let's get the zone change now. And then we'll address any of your concerns in the future at that point. But some of these concerns need to be addressed now. But one thing I want to talk about is kind of the failure of the public engagement input for this plan. As was shown on the original staff report, the applicant did not have pre-filing notices with the neighbors. They said COVID was the reason, but I can tell you right now I've had meetings with neighbors through Zoom and otherwise during the COVID time period, but there weren't any meetings to be had. At the June committee meetings, I was there. A number of individuals were there from the public. The staff gave its presentation, but then the applicant said that, you know, did not give a presentation. We are told to limit kind of our public comments because the applicant was going to come back through the committee hearings in July. Well, July came and went, and they were not heard at the July committee meetings, even though members of the public were once again sitting there all day waiting for them to be heard. Materials, you know were filed Monday and things were uploaded to Asilia as late as yesterday related to this plan at least with my conversations none of our real concerns were adopted into the preliminary development plan and I'll talk about those in a minute now staff supplemental staff report was issued this morning recommending approval and I'm not blaming staff for getting it out this morning because you can only get out as fast as materials are delivered to you But it's a little unfair for the public to get materials days before when we really had no real public hearings in front of you to discuss some of our concerns and issues. And this feels like a real rush job. So the comprehensive plan makes it clear that public engagement is a key component of our 2018 Imagine Lexington plan. And that's just it. We have to meet. you guys want us to collaborate, you want us to meet, but there are no meetings with you, and the applicants aren't willing to settle or address our concerns, then I think the lack of that public engagement is a violation of the comprehensive plan in and of itself, and that should prohibit this from being adopted today. Next slide, please. Now this is a little bit inverse of what you would normally hear, but the comprehensive plan in theme C, livability policy nine, really addresses our community's need for industrial land. Yes, we need housing, but also we need industrial land. Our tax base in Lexington is based upon jobs. It's not based upon houses. Houses don't pay any money into the government offers. Houses don't provide anyone with full employment or employment that is above minimum or retail wages. Industrial jobs can give people with high school education an opportunity to live the middle class dream. With that, the comprehensive plan acknowledges that and says we need to promote and preserve our industrial lands. It talks about residential uses should not encroach upon industrial lands and that encroachment should be limited. It talks about the residential zones are inherently incompatible with one another and once again those issues are not development plan issues those are comprehensive plan issues and the industrial in the comprehensive plan says that we need to work on appropriate buffering and transitions between our residential in our industrial land uses. The development plan and the justification letter do not address either of those concerns of the industrial users. The burden is on the applicant that it has met the comprehensive plan and that its plan satisfies the goals and objectives and is in compliance with the comprehensive plan. You cannot just ignore a portion of the comprehensive plan because it's inconvenient. My industrial using client has the same rights as a residential client if we were to be moving into a residential area. Our concern should be addressed and should not be waived as mere development issues that should be arrived later. So far, we have not been able to come to any resolution with the applicant on those issues. Once again, it's clear that this is an industrial area. It is clear that this residential area is not being properly buffered against us to protect my clients from the potential of future residential users complaining about nuisances and other noises and to allow my client to use its property in the way that it has been using this property and to not be burdened by the complaints of neighbors who are coming in. So in summary, the comprehensive plan is not being met because there's not been adequate public input during this application process. The comprehensive plan is not being met because industrial users have the right to exist and affirmatively this planning committee commission is tasked with adopting appropriate buffering and transitions to protect the residential users from the encroachment of the residential users. And lastly, I would propose that, while it may not be appropriate as an AU zone, I do not think the R3 is necessarily the most appropriate use for this zone. I would propose that an I1 industrial user, given the fact that it's on three sides already, and it will horseshoe one, would be the more appropriate stance. um lastly i think we've heard a lot today about well should sandersville road be widened well we should study that later well we've got these stone fences well we should study those later well we got some potential flooding issues next to the ups land well maybe we should study that later it all we're doing is studying and studying and studying talk talk talk in the meantime my client's property and its rights and its property are not being protected. So I would ask you to, at this point, not necessarily turn down this application today, but I would ask for a continuance of this hearing so that the parties could possibly work some of these issues out amongst themselves. We go to the next slide. Because right now we are not in agreement, and they're not in agreement with a comprehensive plan. So with that, I'm open here for any questions. I would like to mention that the Bowman family, Fred Bowman, the founder, and Marley Bowman, his daughter and the current president of the company are online if you have any questions for them, but I'm here to answer anything you may have. Thank you, Mr. Gross. all right any questions for mr gross from commission members don't see here that uh mr chair we do have one more hand that was raised who would like to speak i'm going to allow carrie coffin to speak right now if you could give us your name and address for the record please. Hi Mr. Chairman members of the Planning Commission my name is Kerry Cawthon my address is 2501 our native lane my office address the address of the property we own the Hill and Meyer nursery which is 2370 uh sandersville road um i am neither in opposition nor a full agreement at this point um there's been a lot of changes in the last uh you know 24 hours um i probably i do support that it is residential um i think that uh you know there's uh as early as a week ago i was under the understanding from Mr. Nicholson that this was going to be postponed for about a week. He explained fully, and I do not, you know, he was very forthcoming in explaining why this has gone forward today. and as well as today there's been a agreement reached between the you know ball homes and Mr. Nicholson and my neighbor to the immediate east which has changed some of the dynamics of our position however I will also state that I've been reached out to by members of the Ball Homes community, making every assurance that they will work with me to, with my property and, you know, meet the screening requests that I might have as it relates to the Hill and Meyer nurseries. Also considering possible discussion of purchases of small parcels that are near our property in order to buffer us. Basically, you know, while we are an I-1 zone, you know, it's used, and I've stated, you know, unfortunately, very many times in front of this commission that our intent is to, you know, retain the Sandersville Warehouse property, enhance it, and really fits well with this plan overall. I think what we're most interested in is the screening, you know, the retention of trees and rock walls in our area, and making this a very good community area. Like I said, I've been given assurances that, as I've heard on this call, that, you know, this is not the appropriate place, that the final development plan is where we would talk this on further. I accept that that is the appropriate place, but there were a lot of, I mean, I've learned of the purchase of that property at one o'clock today and it rather surprised me. So I just want to be, make a public statement that, you know, that those assurances are being made to me and, and I'm sure that we'll be able to work some things out. All right. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move to the rebuttal stage. First up, the applicant, Mr. Nicholson, we would like to limit this time for five minutes if that's possible. Well, certainly I will be very quick because, you know, it was kind of what I expected in my preliminary presentation. Most of the concerns were really about, well, how can we properly buffer these type of uses? How can we bring residential to the industrial area in a responsible manner? And quite frankly, that's a bread and butter final development plan issue. We need to look at what structures are going where and what is adjacent to those in determining what is the appropriate buffer. Is there a stone wall in between them that we need to protect? Let's take a look at that. Is there like 200 yards of trees behind there? Let's take a look at that. Is there a utility easement that is running down between them where there's 100 foot space where we're not allowed to do anything? that that's something that we need to look at and so how the different uh kind of the different parts of 138 acres plays against an adjacent property owner is bread and butter final development plan issue because it matters what the final plan looks like and it matters what the neighbor is as far as the failure of public engagement that mr grose pointed out um before filing we sent out letters to the surrounding area in order to say, we are talking about a zone change. We are going to be filing one. Please contact me if you have any questions whatsoever. That was on April 30th. I spoke to Bauman Paper on May 1st. That next day, I spoke with Bauman Paper. And ever since then, I've been talking with Brandon Gross once he got involved. And so to indicate that there is a failure of public engagement when I have been talking with his client specifically since well before filing. I just do not think that that is accurate. We've also only heard from basically three people up until today, and that was the two residential neighbors that Kerry Cawthon and the Gary Bunch that are next stored in, and Bauman Papers. UPS did show up today. So it is just not accurate to say that we have not had public engagement, and I just have to, you know, push back against that assertion. As far as postponements, that's just not necessary at this time. As Council Member Penn indicated, this is well past a simple development plan that is before you. A whole lot of work has gone into this with the staff, with us, and talking to the neighbors, and there is no reason to delay finding out whether or not this property can be residential right now. The changes that were made on Monday were internal to the site. They do not impact the basically the southern property line that we are talking about with the industrial users. They were talking about the different road systems, the open space area, things to make this a more walkable, you know, community and a development plan that is more in fitting with place building. And so I very much do not believe a postponement is needed. And we would request approval of this zone change. And I'm certainly happy to answer any questions. thank you nick we do have a question from snickles all right the ipad is tired it's not working okay so we're looking at right now this question for you mr nicholson we've got pln mar 20-00010 we're talking about um the zone change specifically we're looking at an approval from the staff a part of the staff's approval recommendations includes staff recommends for approval on number three and i want you to tell me if you agree with this or not under the revisions of articles six and seven of the zoning ordinance the following buffering restrictions is recommended via conditional zoning there shall be a 25 foot landscape buffer that will include a double row of trees from group a or b only which are staggered center and spaced every 30 feet along the southern poverty line we're adjacent to industrial zone i1 or i2 zone land do you agree with that or not we do not think it needs to be a conditional zoning restriction because the the southernmost property boundary is very different uh a bunch of things one that would conflict with a hundred foot utility easement in a fairly large section of that southern property boundary however i am not saying don't listen to the staff on this issue i am simply saying instead of conditional zoning restriction let's make this a resolve at the final development plan and there's a condition so we know it's on the table we know we have to talk about we know we have to add enhanced answers where it's appropriate just not a conditional zoning restriction because that southern property boundary is so different okay the reason i ask that is that i think that this is the when we heard the from the other attorneys representing ups and the bowman group that that's their major concern so what you're saying is this needs to be a resolve on final development plan um because that as mr penn will tell us we've got a couple things to do here we need to we need to make a decision on the zone change then we need to make a decision on a preliminary development plan then we need to making a decision on a final development plan. So I'm just trying to distill it down to what I'm hearing here. What you want to do is take three from somehow change it to resolve and I'll rely on staff and my fellow commissioners to make a decision on that. But I just wanted to put it out there that that's what I heard. Yes, sir. We're not trying to run away from this issue in any way, shape or form. We just don't think the conditional zoning restriction is necessary because of the disparate kind of neighbors that we have. He wants to chime in on that. Yes, and we have staff member Hal that wants to speak. Sir, now, now. I'll wait for my turn to robot. Okay. Okay. All right. That's fine. That's fine. I didn't mean to. I'm just trying to get information out here as quickly as possible. I did not mean to overstep in any way, but I definitely would like to hear from staff on that. that's what I was saying okay now we had three really two of the objectives Jeff and Brendan on the opposition's it would each of you want to speak or one of you want to speak on behalf if you want to raise your hands let us know mr. chair I also see your raised hand from Fred Bowman if you want to allow him to speak he did not speak before okay uh mr bauman we're allowing you to speak now if you wouldn't mind to state your name and address for the record please yeah this is fred bauman bauman paper company out of lexington kentucky uh neighbor to this property i want to bring about three or four issues that that have not been spoken to at all in this is a conversation and one is uh some kind of a fence needs to be put up between us, a buffer or a fence between us and the industrial sector, part of the equation in the residential that y'all propose. And why I say that is because I lived in an area at one time, had an industrial area. And I, as a kid, I trespassed. And that's what I'm saying about we're going to have, we're going to have young people on our property. We don't want on our property because of this residential area. We're going to have pets on this property. We don't want pets on this property either. We're going to have people get upset when the dog gets killed or the cat gets killed and come home at night. So we get those issues to deal with. Then we got the odors on the other side of the fence. When you got the processing plants over there on the other side of the tracks, at points in time when they do some refining over there, it gets smelling pretty peculiar. And you want to hear those kind of issues too. So in regards to our attorney said, this is horseshoed around, you know, you're horseshoeing into an industrial area. And therefore, you've got those issues to deal with. Deal with the traffic as well. You've got Amazon.com on Mercer Road, and between Christmas, excuse me, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's an absolute nightmare between 530 and 730 in the evening. You have to have cops out there running the traffic 24-7. Greendale Road is overloaded on many occasions during that time frame, and that road needs to be addressed before any of this work proceeds. I'm with Mr. Penn, and when he said we're dealing with this issue that hasn't been dealt with before, and that's putting a residential area butting up to an industrial area, which he indicated we haven't done this before. So I think some thought needs to be done in regards to this whole issue. And that's why we're complaining that this needs to be talked and had conversation before the zoning request goes through. That's it in my statement. Thank you, sir. Sir, next is Jeff McKenzie. Mr. McKenzie, you can go ahead. Just to be, I'll be brief with this. I think that it comes down to a number of issues that can be condensed to one. If given the time, I believe we can sit down and work through this. But I believe that Mr. Nicholson is certainly properly advancing the interest of his client to get this thing through and passed and out of your hands and ours. and changing the conversation that easily we could be having if we just had two or three simple things that he's mentioned. One is, is the fence, is the stone fence in existence? Does it affect the line? Number two, what is the condition with the power line? Those are things that we can put on the table immediately. That's something that Mr. Nicholson could have done for you in all of this conversation and for us. So I believe that, and again, I don't believe we're picking a fight. I think we're right at the verge of resolving it. And this is the kind of thing that time actually can make a difference. And there's no reason, given this level of development and this level of potential conflict, that we don't take these few minutes and get this thing resolved the next couple weeks. That's my input on it, and I believe there are others. The condition that you just heard about, you know, public safety with the residential use is yet another one along that perimeter. So, again, I think that's something we should be able to deal with. Thank you. Mr. Gross? Okay, Mr. Gross, we're going to allow you to speak now. One moment. I won't take too much of your time. I'll address directly Bruce's question, which is I think under the comprehensive plan, it's a condition precedent that appropriate buffering and transitions be adopted before residential property can abut industrial property. I think it's clear it's in the comprehensive plan. If we can't come to an agreement, I don't think we should, I don't think it's in compliance with the comprehensive plan. and what i'm asking for and what mr mckenzie's asked for is for the applicant to sit down for us to work this out and get up and get appropriate transition and buffering we're not what we're asking for isn't unreasonable a 25 foot landscape buffering maybe not be able to put residential right now just so everyone knows and your r3 your rear setback is 10 feet in theory they could put the apartment building 10 feet from our property. Hal's shaking his head. I must have misquoted the ordinance. But the point being is that there's nothing currently in this zoning ordinance that would keep them from putting an apartment building 10 feet from the boundary of my client's property, which would then bring residentials even closer to my uses. So I think we have to address that. I think uh theme C says you have to address that and that's all I'm asking for is for us to have time for us to get that addressed thank you that's all thank you yeah one more Ms. Bowman we're allowing you to speak now go ahead hi I just wanted to re-emphasize the the kind of miscommunication on the notice requirements I know um Mr. Nicholson said notice was sent out in April Basically, myself from our company was the only person that was notified. And we've reached out to Dixie, Georgia Pacific, and UPS to inform them of this situation. And they had no idea. And really what we're asking for at this time is at least just postpone because I don't think everyone has enough information yet. Everyone's still processing. Like our neighbors over at Georgia Pacific, they have no idea. they never got a letter. I mean, it probably was mailed. We don't know where it went. We were notified by their manager that they had not received notice. That's just what they told me. So this time, that's what we're asking for is just a postponement. So we all have time to make sure we do this right. Thank you. Thank you. staff is taking notes on that information so we're going to move over to staff comments for the rebuttal yes sir uh so a couple of points of clarification there is a buffering requirement with all zone to zone screening or what we call the property perimeter uh requirements that's outlined in article 18 now for staff with this application we do believe that the increase of that buffer and the increase of the establishment of trees is essential to buffer these two developments. Staff believes that the 25-foot buffer does give the applicant a fair amount of room to go ahead and plant those trees in it if they do not already have that established tree line without affecting the stone fence. Now again, the property perimeter requirements for zone-to-zone interaction would affect that actual fence. So the applicant would not be in violation of the buffering requirements by maintaining the fence. They would actually need to go ahead and seek to deal with Article 18 to deal with any impacts on that fence with the requirements of the zoning ordinance. Staff is also, we wanted to point out, that notice was sent out for this public hearing on May 25th. This was a somewhat strange circumstance because the applicant did supply all their notice and their information in May for the May filing. However, due to COVID-19 and some of the impacts of that on our schedule, the applicant chose to push their application out to today's date. Um, furthermore, with the staff report, uh, staff's original report actually outlines all of staff's original concerns. The updated report today actually just looks at what the applicant has responded to with that report and then reacts to it. So any member of the public who was notified of this and was paying attention could see that the staff was moving in a certain direction and what our concerns were so that they could get the applicant could go ahead and move forward with their application for a recommendation of approval. Finally, I do want to point out that much of this site will not be governed by a final development plan. those single family residences that are to be detached would most likely come into you as a preliminary subdivision plan and then a final record plat. there is a bit of discontinuity with some of the aspects of trying to put this either resolved at the time of the final development plan or resolved during the preliminary subdivision plan or in the safest way possible in staff's opinion apply using utilizing conditional zoning restrictions finally i do want to just emphasize that we we have seen some areas of industrial land and residential land abutting, we will see an application coming up here in the future involving similar type things. So these are situations that staff is cognizant about, and we do seek to provide buffers that allow for certain distancing requirements regarding the fences or something like that. Those are requirements of the buffer zones and the property pruner screen. If you have any questions for me, I'd be happy to answer. Any questions for staff? Ms. Plumlee, you want to take yourself off mute? Hal, yes. At the time of a zone change, doesn't the Planning Commission have prerogative to increase buffers from what is required, like in Article 18? That is correct, ma'am. The Planning Commission, through conditional zoning restrictions, has the ability to go ahead and add increased buffering in which they see that there could be an incompatibility or an issue between different land uses that are allowable within the different zones. In this case, the residential zoning is coming to the industrial zoning, so the residential zoning would have to deal with the required buffering standards set out in Article 18, but you could expand it beyond even what the staff has recommended today. uh yes mr nicholas sorry i just that's interesting um to hear that but i'm looking at my document from the google drive right now and we're looking at a staff recommendation of approval so this question is for you mr baley um number three which just seems to be where the conversation is it says that is that a conditional zoning restriction that you're applying on number three that there shall be a 25 foot landscape buffer is that conditional yes sir that is conditional zoning restrictions that we are suggesting for the application of this so you're already you're already requesting a conditional um buffering restriction is that correct staff is recommending that 25 foot buffering area with uh trees staggered off center at 30 foot intervals okay so we've addressed that in the staff's recommendations right here that i'm looking yes sir that is staff's recommendation at this time thank you thank you mr bayle yes mr bailey um would you would you address the two resolved questions i think they were resolved that nick uh brought up um just your opinion about those please i will actually put that over on to Mr. Martin he would that's for the development plan I am fairly certain and that is to items number eight and item 11 on the the staff's recommendation of approval and he's coming on over right now that'd be great thank y'all mr. pinhead of course the two after that so let's see hold on Larry he's going to address it I believe yeah thanks all right we if I understand your question it is uh number seven I'm pardon me number eight on the half road improvements on Greendale yes I mean Nick if you want to if you want to interject please please do no I well thank you I Nick wants to resolve that at a later date um staff is not entirely in opposition to resolving at a later date uh however we want everyone to understand that we feel very strongly about the need to upgrade greendale road to an urban collector and there may be some things that have to go in order to accomplish that I mean, and so as much as we like to preserve something, sometimes public safety and road improvements and other items have to take precedence. So, so am I incorrect? Sorry, I'm sorry. So I'm not I'm not actually in opposition to resolving that later, as long as I just do want to make it clear. Staff's position on this is pretty strong about the need to upgrade Green Day. And am I not correct to assume that that can be decided upon final development? Well, again, yes, final development plan and preliminary subdivision plan, because this is a land subdivision regulation requirement. But my point is that we'll have a chance to look at this again for everybody to come to terms. Yes, sir. You are going to see this plan again. Thank you. If I could just confirm what Tom had said, I had previously said at the time of final development plan, because that was the same language that was in condition 11. If staff would like that to say at the time of the final development plan or preliminary subdivision plan as well, we certainly are okay with that. We just want to make sure everyone knows what, as Mr. Martin said, some stuff may have to go away. We figure everybody needs to make sure they know what that stuff is. I think that's helpful. And Bruce, I hope you're so noting this. I don't have the Google Drive today for whatever reason, so you're the man. Go for it. May I make a suggestion on the compromise on this? It really kind of comes down to what is the starting point. Our subdivision regulations, Article 6-8P1, says that the developer will do these improvements. but common sense and a lot of common sense and a long history of planning in this area makes me understand and we recognized in our recommendation to you that there might be some waivers to that. I would suggest for this one that the applicants go ahead and show the required improvements with an asterisk note on those that at the time of the final development or preliminary subdivision plan that they will revisit this. We are already recommending internal street land subdivision regulation waivers as the staff is actually recommending that the applicant work together. It's pretty obvious to me that we want to continue to work with them at the next stage of development. The most important part to me is where is the starting point. I think the starting point should be that the requirements that these improvements are required by your land subdivision regulations and then we can work from there if there are special circumstances that we would end up with a better proposal that would still accomplish the goals of our subdivision regulations. First Ms. Meyer, Mr. Penn had a question. And then Ms. Meyer. You know, we're talking about a zone change here, and Nick is requesting that we move number three over and make it a recommendation. I think a zone change, it boils down to two things. Does this commission want this to be R4 land or R3 land, or does it want it to be I-O land? because that's the two issues you have here. If you don't develop it residential, it could be developed I-1 land. So if the proposal for the applicant is to come in and make it residential land, then I think that number three has to stay as part of the zone change. And I know why Nick's trying to do what he's trying to do because he gets his zone change unencumbered. But I think because we're doing something totally different and we're putting a residential up against an I-1 land, and buffering seems to be the sticking point how to relieve the industrial from some of the problems they're going to have with residential there, that that stays part of the zone change. And I want to make that where Mr. Dickens has a chance to respond to it, and that's why I brought it up at this time. Mr. Penn, if I could very quickly just say that while I think that that was a very accurate assessment, the conditional zone restriction as proposed will have some unintended consequences and that that's that's all our point was is you're you're trying to plant trees underneath the giant overhead utility line that cuts right on there that's not what we want that's not the what utilities want but that would be the result of this where i think a better result would be taking a look at what the actual industrial parcels next door to Amar? Is there a fence right there? Is there a utility right there before deciding, yes, we should put double stacks of trees every 30 feet. We're not opposed to doing that. It's just, it doesn't make sense to do it across the entire boundary. That's our only point. But you're wanting to move it to the final development stage. Or the preliminary subdivision. Either one. You're trying to move it to that discussion. And my point with that is, Nick, and that's why I want to do it this time, it's not that I don't think it can be worked out. It's the fact that you're having complaints or you're having questions from your neighbors that are assuming things are going to happen that we don't know if it's going to happen or not. And the zone change is, to me, the most important thing we're going to do here today. Not the development plan, but the zone change. I'm with you entirely. And their parcels are exactly where we should be putting this type of buffering. There's just a couple other spaces that doesn't really make sense. That's all. Ms. Meyer? Since I'm new to this, back to the issue of traffic and the roads, particularly Greendale Road, at what point are the improvements made? Is it made, are the improvements, you know, are they made before construction starts or after construction start, you know, when this whole, yes, it's going to take three to five years, but when does row get improved? The applicant's half section improvements would be done concurrent with their construction of the subdivision. During the improvement plan process, they would come in with their plans to improve the collector roads as they're doing their grading and doing their improvements for their internal local roads. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Any further questions? Okay. So we're going to, I'm closing the hearing for right now and just bringing it back to the planning commission members to move this forward in some form or fashion. Mr. Nickel? yes sir now that we're kind of closed to the um committee members um mr penn do you think it would be appropriate if we made a decision on the zone change now and kind of address it as a zone change first and then move forward to the preliminary development plan i think that's kind of what i heard you say am i i'm leaning on you for expertise here because you're the one that I don't have the expertise. I've got some. I'm long in the tooth. Let's put it that way. I just feel like that normally, normally I would want to grant Mr. Nichols what he's asking for. But in this situation, I think the zone change is way more important than the development plan, because I think the development plan we've seen is going to go forward. You'll get another bite at that apple. I understand he's concerned about the unintended consequences, but I'm trying to make the people that are on the other side of that fence, the industrial people, a little more comfortable. And by trying to say that we're going to address this issue as a condition of the zone change, because I think we have two choices here, R3 or I1. And if we're making a zone change, we're choosing R3. and and that's that's the situation i've been involved in but i think they have a right to have some comfort too so that's what i'm saying but frank if i may ask um on the record nick has said he appreciates that but it locks him in to something that just you know that just doesn't seem as if it's as good as it is it could be if he wasn't locked in I mean, he said for the record that he wants to do it right. And that will lock him in to such that it doesn't give him that flexibility, as I heard. So do you have a response to that? Yes, I do. I think the staff put this in the zoning requirement for a reason. I understand his unintended consequences and we'll have to deal with those as they come along. But it's a different plan. if you approve the zone change and take number three out, then if you approve the zone change, you leave number three in. And I think we can't afford to take that risk. So do you have a motion? Well. Nicholas is shaking his head as he has a motion. Well, you know, we tried to ask you earlier. If you have a motion, you decline. I told you I didn't get Google Drive today. I would be all over it, Frank. All right. are we ready for a motion okay mr newton oh mr penn i thought i was going to make the motion it doesn't matter who makes it go for it yes go for it mr penn all right I move for approval of PLN MAR 2010 with the following reasons provided by staff as we have on our approval list. We have a motion. We have a second. Motion and a second. Bruce Nichols. If you're in favor of the motion, raise your hand. okay thank you motion passes you want to do the development plan yes all right i move for approval of the revised staff recommendation for approval of pln mjdp 2027 revised 14 conditions adding number 15 to denote that the railroad underpass will be a consideration the safety issue of the railroad underpass will be a consideration and changing number 8 to resolve and changing number 11 to resolve Okay we have a motion on the table I have a second. And thank you for taking such diligent notes. Wow. Thank you. We have a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. Okay. Thank you. I think we can breathe now. Thank you all so very much. And please, let's turn this. Thank you, Nick, as well presented. thank you very much thank you everyone thank you staff larry good job i don't know first one eight o'clock congratulations i know you're gonna scare you're gonna scare poor jan and zach this isn't the norm zach and jan i can tell you that it is not i'm i'm about to expire from wait before mr um adjourns the meeting i'm actually just like four feet from him but i've I've got my mask on. We do have another really fun and exciting planning commission meeting scheduled for next week on July 23rd. I do not think we'll last nearly as long. How shaking is head in agreement. So right now we think we're going to have two cases. Is that correct? Yeah, two cases. So that will be much better. But we do, if you remember from two weeks ago or last week, have a couple development plan cases that got postponed. So we'll take care of those and then the two zone changes as well. All right. Well, staff, great job to get this out of the way. And this is significant. So really great, great job. It was time well spent. Thank you all so much. Absolutely. And my comment is we have a fabulous staff and all applicants who work hard to get staff's approval and to get on a consent agenda. Could I comment once on that? Yes. What we've seen today with just three zone changes tells us that if we don't push for what Bruce just talked about, we're not going to be able to handle the load that's going to come down the pike. We have got to get these things to where you can't have a consent agenda on a zone change. But you've got to push to get this thing worked out. The subdivision side of this thing, I don't know whether I'll be the chair or not, but we have got to get these conditions down to 8 or 10 or 12. We can't have 19, 20, 25. one of them today if you looked at it had 11 resolved issues or 11 discussed issues we just can't go forward with things that have 11 discussed issues because you just can't stand it that's about as long as we can make it happen and before we get too far down that road we can talk about that in another work session but we're still on live and we'll let the chairman adjourn us Yes, I was going to adjourn the meeting and ask for a motion. Thank you all. Zach, thank you. So moved. Appreciate it. The rest of the staff is taking the day off tomorrow, so don't anybody call us. That's good.