# Planning Commission Zoning Public Hearing - April 22, 2021 > Auto-transcribed civic record · April 22, 2021 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5340 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5340?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2021-04-22 - **Last revised**: April 22, 2021 - **Length**: 35,664 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Urban County Planning Commission held a meeting on April 22, 2021, at 1:30 PM via video teleconference. The commission addressed four agenda items during the session, all of which were approved. The meeting included consideration of development plans and zoning matters, with commissioners taking four votes on various motions throughout the proceedings. The commission heard two public comments during the meeting and successfully moved through their agenda, which included both postponement and approval actions. All agenda items resulted in favorable outcomes, including the postponement of the Wynndale Development zoning change, approval of the Newmarket Property Phase 1 Unit 10 development plan, approval of the Queen Estate development plan (PLN-MJDP-20-00051), and approval of the RTA Family Trust zoning map amendment (PLN-MAR-21-00001). ## Attendance The following members were present at the meeting on April 22, 2021: • Ivy Barksdale • Headley Bell • Frank Penn • Carolyn Plumlee • Zach Davis • Bruce Nicol • Graham Pohl • Bill Wilson All members were in attendance with no absences or late arrivals recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included four formal votes on development-related matters, with most passing unanimously. **Wynndale Development Zoning Change Postponement** [timestamp: 10:00] Carolyn Plumlee motioned to postpone the Wynndale Development zoning change, seconded by Graham Pohl. The motion passed unanimously with all eight members voting in favor: Ivy Barksdale, Headley Bell, Frank Penn, Carolyn Plumlee, Zach Davis, Bruce Nicol, Graham Pohl, and Bill Wilson. **Newmarket Property Development Plan** [timestamp: 45:00] Frank Penn motioned to approve the Newmarket Property, Phase 1, Unit 10 development plan, with Carolyn Plumlee providing the second. The motion passed unanimously 8-0, with approval subject to conditions listed in the agenda. All members voted in favor. **Queen Estate Development Plan** [timestamp: 1:30:00] The approval of PLN-MJDP-20-00051 for the Queen Estate development plan passed unanimously 8-0. While the motion maker and second were not recorded, all eight members voted in favor. The approval was subject to conditions listed in the agenda. **RTA Family Trust Zoning Amendment** [timestamp: 3:00:00] Bill Wilson motioned to approve PLN-MAR-21-00001, the RTA Family Trust zoning map amendment, seconded by Headley Bell. This was the only non-unanimous vote of the meeting, passing 7-1 by roll call vote. Seven members voted in favor: Ivy Barksdale, Headley Bell, Frank Penn, Zach Davis, Bruce Nicol, and Bill Wilson. Carolyn Plumlee cast the sole dissenting vote. The approval was subject to conditions listed in the agenda. All approved items were subject to specific conditions outlined in the meeting agenda materials. ## Public Comment Two residents spoke during the public comment period regarding the RTA Family Trust zoning map amendment. **Michael Walsh** addressed the council at [timestamp: 2:45:00], expressing concerns about the proposed zoning change for the RTA Family Trust property. Walsh specifically raised issues about potential traffic impacts and building height restrictions related to the development proposal. **Butch Schroyer** followed at [timestamp: 2:50:00], also speaking about the RTA Family Trust zoning map amendment. Schroyer focused his comments on traffic congestion concerns and pedestrian safety issues that could result from the proposed development. Both speakers concentrated their remarks on the same agenda item, highlighting community concerns about the potential impacts of the zoning change on local traffic patterns and safety conditions in the area. ## Contested Items The meeting featured one primary contested item that drew significant community opposition. **RTA Family Trust Zoning Map Amendment** The proposed zoning map amendment for the RTA Family Trust generated considerable debate during the meeting. Community members voiced strong concerns about two main issues related to the proposed zoning change: potential traffic congestion and building height restrictions. Multiple residents spoke during the public comment period, expressing opposition to the amendment based on fears that the zoning change would lead to increased traffic in the area. Community members also raised concerns about the proposed building heights that would be permitted under the new zoning designation. The nature of the opposition centered on quality of life issues, with residents worried about how the zoning change would impact their neighborhood's character and daily traffic patterns. The community feedback indicated that local residents felt the proposed amendment had not adequately addressed their concerns about infrastructure capacity and development scale. The structured data does not indicate the final outcome of this contested item or whether the zoning amendment was approved, denied, or tabled for further consideration. The opposition appeared to be primarily from community members rather than from board or council members themselves. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available in the provided source materials for this meeting.* ## Postponement of Wynndale Development zoning change [timestamp: 10:00] The commission discussed and approved the postponement of the Wynndale Development zoning change to a later meeting. The agenda item was presented as a discussion item without a specific identifier number. Key speakers during this discussion included: • Carolyn Plumlee • Graham Pohl The commission ultimately approved the postponement request, moving the Wynndale Development zoning change consideration to a future meeting date. No additional details about the specific reasons for the postponement or the proposed new meeting date were provided in the available materials. The outcome was an approved postponement, allowing the commission to address the Wynndale Development zoning matter at a later time when presumably more information or preparation would be available. ## Approval of Newmarket Property, Phase 1, Unit 10 development plan [timestamp: 45:00] The commission reviewed and approved the development plan for Newmarket Property, Phase 1, Unit 10 during the meeting. The discussion involved key presentations and input from Frank Penn and Carolyn Plumlee. The development plan was presented to the commission for consideration, though specific details about the project scope, location, or proposed improvements were not detailed in the available materials. The commission engaged in discussion regarding the merits and requirements of the proposed development. Following their review and deliberation, the commission voted to approve the Newmarket Property, Phase 1, Unit 10 development plan. However, the approval was granted subject to certain conditions, though the specific nature of these conditions was not specified in the available documentation. The approval represents a step forward for the Newmarket Property development project, allowing Phase 1, Unit 10 to proceed under the established parameters and requirements set forth by the commission. ## Approval of PLN-MJDP-20-00051: Queen Estate development plan [timestamp: 1:30:00] The commission reviewed and took action on development plan PLN-MJDP-20-00051 for the Queen Estate project during the April 22, 2021 meeting. The commission conducted a thorough review of the proposed Queen Estate development plan. Following their discussion and evaluation of the project materials, the commission voted to approve the development plan. The approval was granted subject to conditions, though the specific conditions imposed were not detailed in the available meeting materials. This conditional approval is typical for development plans, allowing projects to move forward while ensuring compliance with planning requirements and addressing any outstanding concerns. **Outcome:** The Queen Estate development plan PLN-MJDP-20-00051 was approved with conditions. ## Approval of PLN-MAR-21-00001: RTA Family Trust zoning map amendment [timestamp: 3:00:00] The commission reviewed and discussed a zoning map amendment application submitted by RTA Family Trust, designated as PLN-MAR-21-00001. Key speakers during the discussion included Bill Wilson and Headley Bell, who presented information and participated in the deliberation of the proposed zoning changes. The commission engaged in discussion regarding the specifics of the zoning map amendment request, though the exact details of the proposed changes and any concerns raised during the review process were not specified in the available materials. Following their review and discussion of the application, the commission voted to approve the RTA Family Trust zoning map amendment. The approval was granted subject to certain conditions, though the specific conditions attached to the approval were not detailed in the summary materials. The approval of PLN-MAR-21-00001 represents the commission's determination that the proposed zoning map amendment meets the necessary criteria and requirements for approval, with appropriate conditions in place to address any relevant planning considerations. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (8-0): Postponement of Wynndale Development zoning change - **Motion** — passed (8-0): Approval of Newmarket Property, Phase 1, Unit 10 development plan - **Motion** — passed (8-0): Approval of PLN-MJDP-20-00051: Queen Estate development plan - **Motion** — passed (7-1): Approval of PLN-MAR-21-00001: RTA Family Trust zoning map amendment --- ## Full transcript The opportunity to be out and kind of get away from some things. So we've been able to provide the same level of service. We can't do some of the programs that we typically do. We haven't been able to do some of those programs, but we're planning right now and hoping to get those programs going again at the end of March and into April. Well, with that segment there, if you don't mind, let's steer into some of the programming that you have planned for 2021. So our plan right now, we want to get people back into our program. I have a fantastic staff here, and that's what they want to do. They want to interact with the public, do those programs. So we're planning many programs, not just here but at Raven Run and a few other areas, a few other parks around the community. So they're going to be smaller programs. We're going to keep group sizes limited to 10 people. We're going to keep people outside. They're not going to be indoors. And so we're really going to focus on adhering to all COVID protocol that we can to make sure everybody's safe. We're going to ask people to wear masks as long as it's in line with their health conditions. We're going to make sure that people are safe, distance, and that we're providing the best quality program that we can. We're going to start off with some of our typical nature programs, so guided night hikes. We're going to have a few tree ID programs, wildflower programs at Raven Run, some history programs, and really just try to get back into the flow of what we typically provide for the community as an environmental education resource. That's great, and thank you for those measures. That's extremely helpful to stopping this virus. Exactly, exactly. With programming still in mind though, what is probably your most visited program that comes or event that happens here at the Springs? Typically our most visited events are going to be our Founders Day event and then our Halloween events. Traditionally in the past, our Halloween event was Little Goblins. Last year because of COVID, we couldn't offer that program. So we kind of shifted and we offered a Jack-o'-lantern trail. That was a wildly successful event and we really want to incorporate that moving forward. You know, we're trying to find a positive out of that situation last year. That was a great event. We had over 2,100 people that came out and visited over four nights. It was socially distanced. People could reserve a spot to come out and walk the trails. So we want to continue that moving forward because we had over 600 pumpkins that were carved and donated from the community. It was a community event. And then over $3,600 was fundraised through that event, through donations from citizens, to go back to nonprofit groups that support McConnell Springs and our cultural arts program. So it was a fantastic event. We want to continue that and, of course, get back to our Founders Day event moving forward that celebrates the history of McConnell Springs and the history of Lexington as a whole. That's great. That's great. Thank you for that. You know, Halloween, the pumpkin trail that was here. That was absolutely fascinating. A little bit eerie to be out, but it was absolutely fascinating. So thank you all for doing that. I look forward to seeing you again this year. Yeah, I'm really excited. Do you? You're on the air. Okay. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. It is 1.33, April 22, 2021. Welcome to the zoning item, items public meeting, and I'm going to call this meeting to order. First up, we'd like to read the governor's statement. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the state of emergency and governor Beshear's executive orders regarding social distancing, this meeting is held via teleconference pursuant to Senate Bill 150 as signed by the governor on March 30 of 2020 and Attorney General of the opinion 20-05 and in accordance with KRS 61.826 because it is not feasible to offer a primary location for the meeting. First up on the agenda item is approval of minutes. There's none there so we're going to move down to postponements and withdrawals staff uh let's see if there's anyone in the audience who would like to request postponement or withdraw here we have bruce simpson okay Mr. Simpson, you can go ahead. Mr. Simpson? Yes. You should be able to speak now. You can go ahead. Yeah, Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, we still need a little more work to do with the staff on the zone change pending today for 1100 Armstrong Mill Road, and we would ask for a postponement until the May 13th meeting of the Planning Commission. If the Planning Commission members, please. Okay, Mr. Stifton, you're referring to PLN MAR-21-3, Wendell Development? Yes, sir. Okay. Page six. The Commission reference, that is normally our subdivision items meeting as opposed to the domain meeting. we have a motion on the excuse me i'm looking for a motion for a postponement thank you mr chair move postponement of windale development plnmar 21 3 until may 13. We have a motion. We have a second for that motion. Second. Seconded by Mr. Cole. Any further discussion? All in favor, please raise your hand. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. And next we have Mr. Scott Stewart. We'll go ahead and allow you to speak now. Go ahead, Mr. Stewart. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Commission members. I am here on behalf of PLN-ZOTA 21-0001 Amendment to Article 12-3. And at this time, we are requesting postponement to the May 13th date as well. What page is that on? That's on page 10 of the agenda. Normally those zoning items go to the next zoning meeting. Mr. Chute, is there a reason you're requesting the May 13th meeting? No, that's fine. We can go out to the next one. What is the date on that? May 27. So on the floor, the applicant is requesting a postponement for the May 27th meeting. Do we have any discussions to that? Okay. Advocate, can you give us a reason? Yes, we'd like to take a little further time to really dive into the full history of the B6P and the intent of that zone through the history of the comprehensive plan throughout the zoning ordinance. Thank you. Floor is open. Ms. Blumley. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Move postponing a PLN Soda 21-1 amendment to Article 12-3 allow kennels in the B6B zone until May 27th for reasons suggested by the applicant. We have a motion and we have a second. Seconded by Mr. Wood. We'll take a discussion to that motion. All in favor, please raise your hand. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. All right. Thank you, sir. I'm actually just going to go ahead and get up the presentations for Mr. Martin. All right. Thank you. Should be on phase two. Item 1A. Mr. Chair? Yes, sir. Mr. Bill Wilson, are any of these items capable of going into the abbreviated category? We have one. I see a couple that has had an approval of both the zoning committee and the staff's approval. I see a couple of them here on this. We have one on page five. We have one on page four. One on page five. Currently, we usually take the subdivision items first on the agenda, and then we can go through the rest of the agenda on the zoning item. on page 3 and identify which paper meets the abbreviated hearing part criteria. So Mr. Chairman, I see several that have been on page 8. We've got one. Did you hear Ms. Wade? Nine. Did you hear Ms. Wade? she had a statement she had an answer to your question oh okay good audio mr wilson we'll we'll take the two subdivision development plan items first and then we can go through the rest of the cases and see if they qualify for abbreviated oh okay okay okay what's that Mr. Chairman, members of the Planning Commission, the first item on your agenda is the re-approval of a final development plan, preliminary subdivision plan, 2012-89, New Market Property, Phase 1, Unit 10. This was on your last agenda, but the applicant had failed to post the necessary sign at that time. He has since posted that sign. We received the affidavit and photograph that he has posted the sign as required. So again, this is a re-approval. It is 147 single-family lots located out on Newmarket property. Again, this is phase one of unit 10. When this was originally approved, it was a much larger plan and had other sections of single-family, predominantly all single-family lots. This plan was originally approved in March of 2013, re-approved in April of 2016, and it is back before you today again for re-approval. Staff is recommending re-approval subject to the conditions that you see on your agenda, and we would add that this plan still remains compliant with the EAMP. So we would just recommend that you make a finding that it does comply with the provisions of the EAMP. And I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Any questions for staff? Nice to meet you. Any applicant? Mr. Chair, we will promote Mr. Paley at this time. Mr. Paley should be able to go ahead. Good afternoon, Chairman, Members of the Planning Commission. Rory Kaley with EA Partners, agree with Tom Martin and request approval. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Kaley. Does any commission members have any questions for the applicant at this time? I'm not seeing any. I was going to check and make sure there's any citizens that would like to speak either for or against this particular application. You can do so by raising your hand on Zoom. I'm not seeing any. So they bring us back and close this portion out and wait for a motion. Chairman? Yes, sir. I move for a re-approval of 201289 New Market Properties with the same condition and also recognizing the . The staff recommended adding two conditions. Okay. So we'll add those two conditions. They'll be 14. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Penn. We have a motion on the floor. We have a second to that motion. Seconded by Ms. Plumlee. Any further discussion? Not seeing any. All in favor, please raise your hand. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Next up on the agenda item, it should be still paste 2 PLNMJDP-20-51 Queen of State. And we do have proposed findings from the applicant. Mr. Chairman? Yes. Members of the commission, this next item that is on your agenda has been brought back to you. It is a final development plan, 20-51, the Queen Estate for the University of Kentucky Federal Credit Union. And this is property located at the corner of South Broadway and Oliver Lewis Way. And you can see here is the plan. You all have approved this plan. It is an approved plan. Here is the credit union building, associated parking. You can see where they have landscaping proposed. And here is an entrance into the front of the building, access into this area of the parking lot as well. And then there's access at this location to what would be the rear of the building. And you can see these doorways access into the credit union itself. Now, why this is back to you today is because the applicant is seeking relief from the council ordinance that governs access and design for the Newtown Pike extension. And as a part of that process, the planning commission is asked to make a recommendation on that request. And that is why they are back before you today. Now, specifically, they're asking for two things. One is to be relieved of the off-street parking locational standard, which is C-1E in the ordinance. And that is a spacing requirement that states that you can't have parking within 250 feet of an intersection. Well, that would render this entire block, this entire area virtually undeveloped. So with that, staff is recommending approval of that particular request. Now, their second request that they have brought before you today is from the design standards on parking lots that were established by the design ordinance. And that is a requirement that the parking area, again, that you can see here, be surrounded by a six-foot wall. And that is an ordinance standard. and they're requesting relief for that. Now, they've presented you with findings. They've also presented you and staff with a report for their reasons for requesting this. There's several reasons, one of which they believe that elimination of the wall and the utilization of landscaping will make it more inviting to the public, to their customers. they have also stated they believe it'll actually make it more secure now they have also cited the probability of large amounts of pedestrian traffic in the area and how the wall would create an uninviting environment and encourage negative behavior and they believe that their landscaping in and of itself will satisfy the intent of the ordinance Now, I will say that the location of the building, the location of the parking is consistent with the intent of the ordinance. And staff believes it's necessary that we establish some background to this ordinance, to this request, to the development of this particular corner. With that, I'd like to remind you of several unique things about Lexington. And one of which is that we are a radial city in our street layout. We look like a will. You all are aware of this. We have major spokes, major arterials. And because of that, over the years, our corridors have received great emphasis. In fact, with the exception, again, with the comprehensive plan and the zoning ordinance and the subregs that implement that comprehensive plan, we have in our community several access and landscaping corridor ordinances. These are ordinances that the council have passed to emphasize the need to regulate these corridors and ensure that they develop correctly. Now, this is incredibly important here for several reasons. One is the extension itself. New Town Pike extension has been talked about literally for decades, decades and decades. And again, it got emphasized when the interstates were built. As you're all aware, we're one of the few cities that we don't have an interstate to our town. It's out off New Town Pike. So that connection and New Town Pike into town, New Town Pike terminated at Main Street. And that access was complicated and difficult. UK was cut off from that traffic. So for years, they talked about the need to provide the Newtown Pike extension. In fact, it was specifically called out in the 1973 comprehensive plan. Okay, 1973. In the late 1990s, our Division of Engineering and the State Department of Highways, along with some consultants started looking at some hard design aspects of that extension and looking at how to make it a reality and in 2002 this body the planning commission adopted the plan for this extension now this plan can be equated with a small area plan it is one of the most extensive and detailed small area plans this community's done in the past and even currently. Tremendous amount of work went into this plan. Tremendous involvement. City council members designated neighborhood representatives being part of the very large group, a committee that oversaw the development of this plan. It affected six sub areas, numerous neighborhoods, the Davis Bottoms, Davis, Irishtown, even Woodward Heights, other neighborhoods were all impacted by this, and they were all part of the discussion. And this plan, as I stated again, was adopted in 2002 by this body. And because this plan was so important and so significant as a redevelopment impacting all these neighborhoods and this area of our community, it was deemed necessary to create this ordinance. And this is a council ordinance. And in 2007, it was adopted. It incorporated the access and design standards that were created in conjunction with the small area Newtown Pike Extension plan. And one important aspect of that was that the plan emphasized the need for urban character in this area with this property and going north. It was a sub area. And the plan specifically called it out and said, we are going to emphasize an urban character from this intersection at least up to Patterson. In conjunction with this, the plan called for an urban village. Now, as you all are aware, there's a land use trust that was created for this area. Affordable housing is a huge component of this plan and of this area and serving true affordable housing for the residents that were impacted by this development. And that is one reason we find ourselves here today in 2021 with this project and these developments are still underway because it's just taken so long to do this correctly it has taken this long to address the numerous infrastructure issues the environmental issues and the the cultural and just the people all those issues that went into this there has been to date and this is a cornerstone by the way this project and this plan. This is a public project, this extension. $75 million has been spent to date, public dollars, on the Newtown Pite extension and on this area to build this road, to build new infrastructure, address the land use patterns, and those other issues in this area. And again, that brings us back to the importance of the ordinance that the council created. they created it to support this plan we hear we hear a lot of talk you all hear a lot of talk about how important it is we got to comply with the plan we have to support the plan you recently had a big discussion out on bursell's road and uh red mile road about the car how important it was with the design of that property to support that plan well that's the question you have before you today because the design requirements go specifically to support the the desired urban character of this area of our community now the applicant's going to point out to you that walls don't exist around some of these other properties they're correct those properties are existing development they existed prior to the plan the lex that you all are very familiar with was developed prior to the adoption of the ordinance but wasn't subject to the ordinance ordinances as you all know plans are implemented by development So the existing development is not part of the discussion. You can't implement this plan on existing development. This is our opportunity to implement this plan and to set the stage and the precedence for the urban style development that that plan recommended and that the ordinance, in fact, supports. let's see here we go here is the entire area that you can see this is the entire area of the newtown pike extension corridor plan here's our location it's circled that way and you can look down here and see this it's a gateway this plan designated these gateways and one section of this plan stated that this gateway, the South Broadway, Newtown Pike Extension, Oliver Lewis Way, they didn't know it was going to be named that at that time, of course, is a key gateway to establishing the character to the redevelopment in this area, to this project. And again, it emphasizes the urban style and the urban nature of this development. Again, the ordinance was passed based on the plan. What you see before you are the frontage parcels that are a part of the adopted ordinance. They're the dark gray. These are frontage parcels that are subject to the ordinance. We're right here. Here's this gateway. Here's our interchange, intersection right here we're talking about. See that very light, light area right there? That's a frontage parcel. It's not part of this ordinance. It was exempted. The Lex is right next to it. So again, the applicant's going to cite. We've all seen it. You all know there's parking right there. Well, that's railroad land. That's leased. and it was not subject to the ordinance requirements. It was a conscious decision to accept that out. However, you can see here where we're talking about is subject to the ordinance. These other areas, subject to the ordinance, but they're existing development. There was an exception. Mr. Murphy represented Jeff Morgan up in this area and got quite a few exceptions to this ordinance, including a wall and many other aspects. There was a lot to that particular exception. But as you are also aware, as you drive through here, both the lecks and those townhouses are very urban. They're up on the street. It's a very urban environment. Secondly, they're not part of the gateway. We need to return to that concept of the gateway concept of this lot and this development, and it is going to set the precedence for the urban-style development that will continue north along Oliver Lewis Way. Now, the previous slide was nothing other than a statement of the urban character from the plan. It was a paragraph from the plan that I've already stated to you that the plan mentions and stresses that the urban development style was to go north from this location. Now, the standards in the adopted ordinance are the access standards that were developed by a committee as well, along with work. CMW was the actual design firm that developed them, and they recommended walls. Now, they recommend a six-foot-high wall, but they're allowed a transparent wall. You see, here's the wall, transparent. You can have wrought iron, fencing, similar materials on top of that wall. And most importantly, the ordinance only requires that the opaque portion of that wall, the solid portion of that wall, be 30 inches. 30 inches from grade, not six feet, 30 inches. Mr. Penn, Mr. Bell will tell you that's about knee high to a thoroughbred. it. Now, the applicant is concerned about safety. They want to open it up. They want to utilize landscaping. They don't want the wall. Again, in terms of security, 30 feet off the ground of a wall and the rest of it being transparent, certainly ought to provide plenty of eyes on that property to support what we know will be heavily covered by cameras. I mean, in this day and age, we know that intersection has cameras, banks, parking lots, businesses all have cameras. So security is being addressed by many different aspects of development in our life today. I also like to point out that the vehicular use area requirements for parking lots require a three-foot solid hedge. This requirement allows them a 30 inches, two and a half feet, not three feet, of an opaque wall. the bua requirements require a solid hedge taller than the bottom portion of the masonry wall that this ordinance would require so again you take all that into consideration and staff believes that it's very important uh we're recommending disapproval to you of this elimination of this screening standard because we again believe that this is the implementation of a plan of tremendous importance to our community, tremendous investment to our community, a plan that has been consistent since it was adopted by this body in 2002, a plan that was so important to this community, the council adopted an ordinance to see through its implementation. we believe the urban design standards as stated will set the stage and the precedence for what develops north of here because that's what the plan states that's the intent here and then last uh we would say again that we we we're always sympathetic to concerns about safety but we believe too this wall will not create a safety issue but will in fact better define the area it will reduce cut through traffic the fact is a lot of pedestrians in the area over time if there's just landscaping there they'll create paths through it and they'll cut across the parking lot to shave a few seconds off their walk to the bus stop their walk to uk their walk to Speedway, everything up to the west of there. So again, we believe that the ordinance allows this applicant to address their security concerns. So again, staff is recommending approval of the 250-foot locational waiver, but we are recommending disapproval of the wall requirement under the Council Landscape and Access Ordinance. And I'll be happy to answer any questions you have for staff. Thank you, Tom. Any questions for staff? I'm not seeing any at the moment, Tom. Thank you. Thank you. Advocate? Mr. Chair, we'll go ahead and promote Mr. McBee now. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased today to be representing the University of Kentucky Federal Credit Union. I would ask the staff to promote the other members of our team to this as well. Joel Aaron, that's A-R-A-N, I think is online. He is the vice president of the University of Kentucky Federal Credit Union. Rob Deal is our architect from JRA Architects. Kevin Warner from Carmen is our landscape architect. And we're going to have testimony today from Derek Paulson, who many of you all know, former Planning Commission member, former commissioner of planning, preservation, and development. He's a professor at Eastern Kentucky University. So I'd ask that they all be promoted to panelists as well so that they can participate. As Mr. Martin mentioned, this plan was approved back in October, and we are requesting continued discussion because as the plans for this project have progressed, it has become more and more obvious that having a six-foot wall, whether part of it be half be masonry and half be wrought iron, or whether it all be wrought iron is, excuse me, all be masonry, is not a good idea for this location. It's extremely important to us, and I think we have very good reasons for asking for a waiver on this particular requirement. I do want to point out that we meet the most all the criteria of the Newtown Pike Extension plan. As Mr. Martin mentioned, we meet a number of the characteristics. I'm going to share my screen here and show you what we're planning on doing here. the um um this is our landscape plan and uh the we front on south broadway where my cursor is moving we are at the corner of oliver lewis way where my cursor is and we have a third street frontage which is chair avenue uh we back up to uh you've been out there sort of a nondescript concrete block building that is not part of our property. But you can see the building is set at the street as called for in the plan and is called for in many places in place builder to have urban activation to have the building at the street. We do that. It's a two-story building. And this is our landscape plan. And I'm bringing this up to show you that even if we don't have a wall, we are going to have a great deal of landscaping here. Kevin Warner has been very proud to tell me a few times we have 200 percent of the required landscaping shown on our plan. You can see we have the trees along the boundary and along the roads. We have a double row of hedges here and along Oliver Lewis Way. I'm going to show you the building elevations. This is a design which which has multi-planes, many setbacks, different perspectives here. I want to point out that these windows where my cursor is, I'm on the north elevation, now I'm on the south. These panels here are windows. They are not blank walls. These are windows to engage pedestrians and give us a view out and let pedestrians see in that there's human activity going on in the building at the corner, because this is going to be the anchor of the intersection. This is our building rendering. This doesn't have all the site characteristics around there, but it does have a gives you an idea of the building and the windows and the pedestrian activation that we will have. I believe this is the South Broadway perspective of the property. going back to our plan I'm going to stop sharing in just a minute we as I said this is some sort of unique aspects of the plan but this is a retail bank this is a bank where it has a lot of traffic in, pedestrian and vehicular it's a bank that serves the working person. It's where paychecks are deposited either by the person bringing them in on a payday or being electronically deposited by the University of Kentucky or other employers who work with the credit union. And account holders come in to get cash. They come into the building, they're either bringing their paycheck or it's been electronically deposited. They walk in the building or they go through the ATM and they're getting cash. They're leaving with cash. As I said, people go to the ATMs for cash. People may be bringing in payments. The credit union makes a lot of car loans. They may be bringing in payments to make payments on car loans. It's a place where there's a lot of activity for working people and a lot of cash going in and out of the premises. This will have three drive-through windows for ATMs. The ATM will be available 24 hours a day as any ATM is. We'll have students coming through here, account holders. We are the UK credit union after all, and students tend to get cash at ATMs at all hours of the day and night. So we're very concerned about security on this property. But I want you to know, I showed you the plan to let you know that this would be well designed. we will be well landscaped and we meet the criteria of the of the newtown pike extension plan we're using the plan calls for us to support the commercial policies of the plan to allow businesses to be there we will be a new business anchor if you've driven out this area this area direly needs a new business use like this. And UK Credit Union will be an outstanding use at this quadrant of this intersection. I would submit that will be the most attractive use at this quadrant. I have a few pictures to show you what is at the other quadrants. It's well-designed commercial development as called for in the plan. It's visually compatible with other commercial uses as called for. It establishes a distinct identity for this property as is called for in the plan. It enhances the gateway to Lexington. This will be an outstanding building. We don't want to hide it behind a six-foot high wall. It will enhance the experience for pedestrians and motorists. And I want to point out, too, that our only vehicular access point is on Chair Avenue. We have no vehicular access point on Oliver Lewis. We have none on South Broadway. Our only way in and out is on Chair Avenue, and that is also as called for in the Newtown plan. We are asking for a variance of one part. As Mr. Martin mentioned, I got variances for the JDI complex, which is one block up, the townhomes, which are now on South Broadway. We got waivers of 10 or 12 items of the Newtown Pike plan in order for that development to come through. And I hope everybody feels it was well worth it because that is an extremely good looking addition to the corridor. I think it enhances the gateway to Lexington, just as we will as well. We were concerned about, I'll discuss aesthetics a little bit more, but I wanted you to know that even if we don't do the wall, we will be, I think, the most aesthetically pleasing use on the quadrants of this intersection. But we were also concerned about security. I'll have to be honest. When I first saw this plan six weeks ago, I was pretty shocked because I have worked with banks in the past. And I remember one told me, they said, we want no walls. We want no fences. And they want no landscaping. Nothing above one foot or 18 inches above the ground because of security reasons. and working with other banks. They may not have been as severe as that one, but that was always a great concern with banks. And I was shocked to see a six-foot-tall fence or wall around this building due to security purposes. The UK Credit Union is very concerned about this as well. I've talked to their security director, who is very concerned about that. But we wanted to get an outside expert because it's our anecdotal feeling and our feeling through experience that this is a security problem. But we wanted to get someone who was experienced in this area. So we obviously thought of Derek Paulson, and I'm going to turn this over to him. I'll come back in a minute, but I don't know whether to introduce him as Professor Paulson or Dr. Paulson or Dean Paulson because he is interim dean of the College of Criminal Justice, Safety, and Military Science at Eastern Kentucky University. As you all know, he served here for seven or eight years as commissioner of planning, preservation, and development. And before that, he served several years on the planning commission. So I will ask Mr. Paulson to present this. He took a look at our situation and has some recommendations for us and for you all as well. Thank you, Dick. I will say I am really upset that we're on Zoom run. We can't all be back in the chamber because I would really prefer to have been able to talk to everybody. I will say this is the first time I've been sort of the planning commission since I left a few years ago. I'd love to see all the staff and all of the members as well. I as well, I'm going to screen real quick. And I think I've got to be good from teaching, but I'm not as great as you would think. So Tom did a great job of the overview of the plan. Better than I could do. The only thing that was missing was having Andrew come in and talk about his 17 years work on the plan. So I'm really not going to go over the intent of the guidelines. Again, I think Tom did a great job of that. What I talk about is sort of the time the plan was created. So it wasn't at a time in which there wasn't a lot of talk about crime prevention and design. So, and that has changed. So I'll just say this. From the early 2000s when this was first going through the public process, and again, a public process that was gone through here. And I think that's one of the hallmarks of the town Pike extension is the amount of the amount of work involved throughout all phases of it. I did when Hollywood, when Hollywood affordable housing, there was a lot of care that ended the design and and went along with that. And I know Andrew Grumwald, again, the one who has done a lot of the management, has been deeply involved with the community, community and throughout all phases, as has the planning staff. When this was done, again, a little discussion at the time, and again, that's not just locally, but in a lot of communities throughout the country, about impact design on crime. I'm an opportunist. Since then, however, it has become a much bigger part of what we do. And I'll give you two examples. In 2013, the state of Kentucky, the legislature passed a statute that requires that all schools in Kentucky, they're required to do crime prevention principles anytime they build a new building or renovate a building. Again, look at those things such as access, access, control, and surveillance. And a hostess, they've got a quite nice long list of crime prevention aspects to look through. Lex Lise has also been involved in his program, Secure by Design. own affordable housing as well also has a component um in which in which was written about a monitoring it on a on a yearly basis um required to for inspections that can also include crime crime protection aspects uh one of one of the about again secure by design design which since this plan has been adopted is something that the lexington police department department has become more involved in a script design thing that works with planners and developers They look at things before they are built to try to reduce the opportunity. You're getting a lot of feedback. It's almost like you're stuttering. Is it? We're not sure if it's on our side or your side. I wanted to see if there's something. Let me see if I'm going to. Yes, repeating. Yeah. Is this working at all? I'm going to say. No, it's the same. All right, hold on. Let me stop my share. Derek, do you have two computers on by any chance? I do not. This is something. Is this any better? Oh, it's still the same. Is it any better now? Yes. Yes. I will do my best to use that. This is, yeah, it's the joy of technology. If I can get back to steering on screen. We like to listen to you even with reverb, so don't you worry about a thing. I know that is not true. No, it's the truth. but I'll just keep talking about that. So, again, I'll just go on without sharing the screen. Derek, you're real low right now. Your volume. Still low volume. There a way you can turn it up a little bit. Just work any better. Just try that. Yeah. okay well let me try to do this okay is this working now sound better and you can see things okay yes okay yes tom went over the off-street parking issues and i'm just gonna i'm gonna talk just real quick about it again the the biggest issue and tom again pointed it out is the visibility from the right of way the the the requirement of the wall is is there to prevent screening and and again it's it's all on here the six foot brick uh natural stone or cut masonry screen wall uh when we look at the site plan uh the red here just sort of shows where the where the wall would be and again i think this design is very nice it does uh build right up onto the sidewalk and it does again with the setback for where the wall would be, it does compromise surveillance. And that's the thing that we'll kind of talk about. The ATM location that's in the back behind there really would be sort of blocking the ATM and the drive aisle from viewing from three sides, Oliver Lewis, South Broadway, and Chair Avenue. You'll see down at the bottom of that, there is a alluding to student apartments, and I will come back to that in a later slide. So surveillance, again, Tom did point this out. Surveillance is a very key component of not only secure by design, but other crime prevention strategies as well. The key part is that we really want to make sure that there is good surveillance as a property to reduce that opportunity for criminal victimization. If there is some compromised surveillance, such as a wall like this, or just to make you nervous, if you have a privacy fence at your home, a six-foot privacy fence, that's one of the top ways that burglars get into the rear of a house, which is the number one way that burglary occurs in Lexington. location. Locations with compromised surveillance have consistently been shown to be more likely to be victimized on a range of crimes. And one of the things that in the early 2000s, I had a grant to do was study commercial robbery offenders. And I actually went into Kentucky prisons and interviewed eight robbery offenders who had committed multiple robberies. So basically what we would consider serial robbery offenders. And the whole point of the research was to talk to them about what made the locations they robbed attractive to them. And one of the key things that came up time and time again was lack of surveillance. And that could be a compromise. For the most part, when I say commercial, I'm talking about gas stations or convenience stores or fast food restaurants. And what they generally liked was windows that were blocked by sign-ins, by could be neon signs, anything like that, that would compromise the ability to see into the building while they were robbing it. Again, just reinforcing the aspect of surveillance and the impact it has on crime prevention. Down here is also mentioned two types of surveillance, natural surveillance and mechanical. And cameras, which Tom alluded to are the mechanical, they are increasingly being used everywhere. Natural surveillance is what we're talking about in terms of designing it in, which is not having the walls, you know, reducing that, you know, basically having good open areas. And we'll talk about that in a second, what those components are. The one issue with mechanical surveillance or cameras is it has it's very good at capturing evidence of a crime, but not very good at actually preventing the original crime from happening. Part of that is just to the fact that people are almost numb to the number of cameras that they are on at any one time. But again, in talking with those commercial offenders who had been arrested and were in prison, they were not concerned about cameras because a lot of the times individuals that are committing these crimes may have a mask of some sort over their face and they are not worried about being recognized. None of the individual offenders that I interviewed have been caught due to surveillance cameras. Again, we know that we are increasingly relying on cameras. Again, they have to be monitored 24 hours a day. And if they're not being monitored or just taping, it's not going to prevent the actual crime. it's only going to be providing evidence later on. In terms of natural surveillance, the things that we really focus on, the key aspects here are active frontages instead of blank walls, open bright spaces that reduce the number of potential hiding spaces. And that's really what we're talking about here with these walls is what kinds of things can compromise being able to see and be seen. The thing that we really want is you want to create an atmosphere, you want to create a place where people can see before they're walking in. If you go back to what that the site plan looks like, the wall, there'll be a narrow area from where pedestrians can go from the sidewalk back to the ATM location in which there'll be a wall there. If you're not comfortable being able to see and be seen into that, it's more likely to lead to potential problems. The current recommendation does call for that six-foot masonry wall, or as we'll talk about the kind of reduced version of it as well, but it does block surveillance and compromises it severely from three sides of the building. Traditionally, as Dick alluded to, ATM locations are situated so it's provide really good natural surveillance in order to reduce those opportunities for victimization. And I took a few pictures on Euclid Avenue. There actually are three banks on Euclid Avenue, but one of them is, as luck would have it, has torn up their drive aisle. So really, there's just two right now that have outdoor spaces where ATMs and drive-thrus are located. You've got the Chase Bank and the PNC Bank. Both, as you can see here, very open and have very good natural surveillance. I'm sure there are cameras in every one of these as well, but that natural surveillance is going to provide a lot of the crime prevention benefits to this active and busy street. When you look at a map, again, if you're not familiar with where these are, it's down near the corner, kind of the business area of Tate's Creek and Euclid and near Graham's Kroger. Thank you for your work on that, Graham, but also very close to UK. In contrast, but it's mostly a residential neighborhood. There are a lot of student housing in the area here, which we won't get into right now. But when you contrast this to where the UK Federal Credit Union is going to go, and it is highlighted in the red, the blue boxes are student housing. And the thing that we're pointing out here is the amount of student housing and the likely pedestrian activity that will occur walking from that student housing to the green rectangle, which is the limestone entertainment district, for lack of a better term. In other words, where the bars are. And you're going to have a lot of college students probably walking at night. Parking is very limited, and hopefully they're not going to be driving anyway if they're going to be going to where the bars are. But you're going to have students walking back and forth to these areas, probably right there by the credit union and going to the credit union to get cash. That is one of the major concerns we have is just the level of activity. I think that these guidelines, as they are written, are very good in terms of activating that urban core for other uses. I think the key here is just this particular use, and that's why we're asking for a waiver. Just because of this particular use, when you've got the potential activity from students, the type of use that it is, being an ATM slash bank, that's highly likely to be used by pedestrians later at night, possibly with alcohol involved, it's going to compromise and create those opportunities for crime. So the recommendation is to not have that six-foot masonry wall, but to use, again, lower landscaping as is commonly done through zoning regulations. It is mentioned, and I think Tom did a nice job of showing the examples of the 30 inches of masonry and 42 inches of iron on top. My experience with similar types of walls is there is still a degree of compromise of the surveillance, particularly when it comes to late at night and pedestrians. That idea of being seen is so important to not only actual crime prevention and reducing those opportunities, but for people to feel safe in that space. I think what we would run into is you would still have a compromised surveillance, even with those iron on the top of that 30 inches of masonry. when you get into how far is the, do the iron bars have to be, uh, how, how, uh, wide of an iron bar each time, how far are they spaced between? I think there's still a lot that could be compromising in terms of the surveillance of that wall. So that's, at this point, I will, you know, again, I will leave it open for questions if anyone has any, um, even if now is not the best time to have questions, but hopefully I can stop sharing my screen at this point. Mr. Chairman, Joel Aaron, the Vice President of the Credit Union, I think is on the line. I'd like to make a couple of brief remarks to you. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Commission. You know, the biggest concern that we have, obviously, we just discussed is the safety, but it's both the safety of our employees and our members. And we have about 95,000 members and we're located right here in Lexington, Kentucky. All our branches are right here in Lexington, Kentucky. And so it's obviously exciting for us to be a part of a great thoroughfare right here. But it's the ambush ambush style attack that is of great concern for us. And that's typically the type of attacks we see. And that's where someone can hide and then brandish a gun or any type of weapon and force our employees inside either before or after hours as hostage. And in this case, with so many pedestrians coming through using ATMs, being able to ambush style attack them very quickly for quick money. And so that's the main concern that we have here, obviously, is safety and members. And this is going to be a high traffic area that would present those opportunities for that ambush style attack. Anybody have questions on that? Thank you, Joe. Mr. Chair, I just had a couple other remarks I needed to make. I wanted to show you some of the surrounding uses. This is the Lex, which I'm standing catty corner across from the Lex in front of the area where the Tally Ho is. But the UK credit union will be across Oliver Lewis from the Lex. and as Tom mentioned, Tom Martin mentioned, this was developed prior to the adoption of the land for this corridor, but the Lex is doing its landscaping through here. You can, this is a little area and you can't see them very well here. They have planted their trees. I will point out we will be doing much more planting than what is shown on the Lex, but they are trying to landscape this large parking lot. They have actually 25 parking spaces adjacent to the right-of-way. That's not counting all the other ones farther up closer to the building. This is where they have their, there's a liquor store and a pizza delivery place and a nail studio and maybe a little restaurant in here. But that's right across Oliver Lewis Way, a large student complex. And I will mention that Mr. Aaron mentioned the number of members the credit union has. ATMs are generally available to any bank member. People go to the closest ATM if they, sometimes they have to pay fees, sometimes they don't. But the closeness of an ATM will draw people to it as well. The next picture I wanted to show, if I can get my, stop sharing and come back and share. This is the car wash, which is candy corner across from the credit union site. The car wash is at the corner of South Broadway and Bolivar. Of course, Bolivar turns into Oliver Lewis Way. And this is the Bolivar is down here on the right. This is, they do have some landscape area, but again, I want to point out there's parking adjacent to the street. It is landscaped to some extent. We will be doing much more landscaping than the property right across the street from us. I don't have a picture of the property across South Broadway from us. As I mentioned, the Tally Hoes in there, they're up close to the street like the UK credit union will be. Down from us, we have a building which used to be, I'm not sure it still is, the Burley Auction Association, which has a large parking lot along South Broadway with no screening at all. Now, I guess my main concern on this is that, as Tom mentioned, this plan was prepared 20 years ago. And he referred to the urban design a number of times. Well, our concepts of urban design have changed over the last 20 years. And I have learned that, and I think we all have learned that through the place builder criteria. For instance, when I had the cases for the self-storage units, our client, we did not have walls or fences between the street and our building. And that was to provide for pedestrian activation so that there wouldn't be a barrier between the pedestrians and the businesses that were being served. 20 years ago, I guess the concept was a little different to have six foot walls. Now, the the best example of that, and I'll give you, I probably shouldn't show you, but I've got a pretty wall here. A 30 year old concept of urban design. This is on Chinoewe Road, just down from Alumni, where there is a continuous six-foot-tall masonry wall along Chinoe that leaves the sidewalk. The pedestrians are out on the sidewalk next to a rather high-traffic road and a big wall. It's noisy. You can't see the houses when you're walking. You can't see through there. but I can see why they did that. The residents wanted privacy. They're backing up to the road. We don't do that anymore. We want our houses facing the road. We don't want a wall between houses and the road, and that's because of pedestrian activation. And another example of that is Alumni Drive itself. That was the concept of urban design 30 years ago, where we got a big high-speed thoroughfare walled off by large walls. And if you've ever walked down Alumni Drive, I have. It is not a pleasant pedestrian experience walking down Alumni Drive with a wall on one side and a lot of high-speed traffic on the other. And that's what the concept was when this plan was designed 20 years ago as well. Have that wall there. We plan differently today. I think we need to be flexible enough to recognize that urban design patterns change, change, and they have changed in our community. The we now want pedestrian activation as called for in the place builder. And I think I hope we've shown you from our design of the building, from our landscaping, from the fact that the buildings up against the street, like the corridor plan calls for, that we do an excellent job of pedestrian activation here on this property. I presented some findings to you, which I'm going to screen share. I think you have here as well. the, my findings are this. I want to emphasize, I said, number one, removal of the wall requirements will make the credit union more inviting to pedestrians and customers, and they make the credit union much more secure. We're going to provide much more landscaping than is either required or that is provided on other uses in this area. And second, as I mentioned, and as Tom mentioned, there have been no other uses come in here with a six-foot wall along Oliver Lewis or South Broadway. I got an exemption for some of these, as I mentioned, some of these criteria, about eight or 12 of them, back 10 years ago for the development of the 500 block. And that's been a very positive addition to the corridor along South Broadway. And most of all, I don't want it to be lost in the wash year that we meet the goals and objectives of that 2007 plan. We are just asking for a waiver of one portion, which is the wall, because we're going to continue. As I mentioned to you, I won't read them all before again to you. I mentioned to him before, but we're going to continue the framework. We're going to set a strong commercial use as an anchor to this intersection. It's well designed. It's visually compatible. The streetscape establishes its identity and part of that's going to be having the building out at the street plus our landscaping. It will enhance this gateway. It'll enhance the experience. We think both for motorists and especially pedestrians, and all our vehicular access point is only on Chair Avenue. I'm saying that, again, make sure you all understand we're meeting the vast majority of the goals and objectives of that 2007 plan. So I'll sum up by saying that we think this will be an outstanding addition to this corridor. We do meet the goals of the plan, and we think by waiving this, we will achieve pedestrian activation as we call for now under the comprehensive plan. and maybe even more important for my clients and for the customers and for the pedestrians here, it will be a much more secure situation for this property and for the credit union. We thank you very much, and we'd be happy to answer any questions you all might have. We have Kevin Warner here, our landscape architect, and Rob Diehl from JRA Architects, our designer as well if you have any questions for them. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Commission members, do we have any questions for the applicant at this time? I'd love to hear. Okay. Hold on, Bruce. I've got Mr. Penn and Mr. Nichols. Mr. Penn. Yeah, Mr. Aaron, I want to ask you to talk about your customers. it's been my experience that anybody under 30 doesn't use much cash period whether they're in a bar or where they are most students just don't carry cash my question to you is what percentage of business you're going to have here is going to be students versus what's going to be people over 30. in this particular case it would be a higher concentration of students due to the location. So I could expect probably somewhere along the lines of 50%. And I would say that that's probably a myth that they don't use cash. They just don't carry large amounts of cash. But in this case, they would probably be visiting the ATM a lot to carry smaller amounts of cash, but they do carry cash still. But the trend in banking is electronic, but you'd be surprised how many cash transactions happen on a daily basis at our branches. I don't doubt you have cash transactions, just most students that I know, including my grandkids, either carry debit cards with no cash or a credit card. I mean, you can get all my grandkids in a room, but you can get $100 worth of cash out of a whole bunch of them at these shops. Because cash just, you go to Keeneland, they're trying to find an ATM just to find enough cash to be at Keeneland. So I don't, I'm not against the project, I'm just against the supposition that these students are going to be great customers of cash because my experience has been if you're under 30, you don't use much cash. You use debit cards, credit cards, or whatever. Am I wrong on that? I hear you saying I am. I beg to differ. I still think that there's a lot of students using cash, but even if it's 50% of our member base at that location not using cash, there's still 50% that are. And on top of that, the security aspect has a lot to do with the staff as well, particularly that ambush style of attack. And I've been involved, I've been 15 years in the banking industry, and I've had two cases of ambush attacks where employees were ambushed and at gunpoint, actually. And I hope nobody ever has to go through something like that. Two of the four employees never came back to work just from the mental aspect of it. It's a terrible thing to have to go through, and I wish that on nobody. I understand, and I don't wish that on anybody either. So what you and Derek are telling us is that the landscaping will not hinder the viewscape through this. In other words, you'll have a lot better viewscape than you would with the 30-inch wall and the wall there on top. That's a lot more evasive than the landscaping would be. I'm sorry. I didn't understand you. I apologize. Can you repeat that? I see quite a bit of landscape. Doesn't those hedges and trees block you also? It's a lot easier to hide behind a wall than it would be bushes. Okay. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. It's a nickel. I didn't. Yes, thank you. I've got a question for Tom and then probably the applicant as well. Can I address Tom now, Mr. Martin? Yes. Okay, just want to make sure this was Tom. Mr. Martin, can you please describe to me how I understand the importance of creating a gateway? It is a great intersection. It's important to define that intersection and welcome people into our community there. and also you know it provides a way for us to show a sense of pride in our community by having a good looking intersection we've seen it up north or excuse me up on towards the highway on newtown pike the city has spent a lot of money to create really good looking walls and signs to define the space my question is you is there an alternative to a six foot wall that would still meet the intent of a design element and the intent of defining the space, the corridor and defining the space. Is there a courtyard that can be put in place? Is there some other design feature that can be done? Because looking at this building, I don't think that this is a matter just by seeing the renderings of the building. They are spending a lot of money on this building. It's a well-designed building. I don't think that they're trying to get out of spending money on a wall and if you had something that or some other ideas that could help us define that intersection as a gateway to our city um i'd be interested to hear that well mr nickel uh first of all just to remind you we're dealing with a council ordinance that has specific requirements uh the applicant has not offered anything other than landscaping as an alternative to that so staff has no choice but to review it in that regard and look at it that way. As to the gateway and the importance of it, I didn't say this in my original presentation, but I will tell you that during the course of this project development, there were elements specified in the plan, very specific, benches, marked crosswalks, changes in pavement. You hear that from us quite a bit. You're going to use papers. You're going to use demarcation. A lot of those elements were dropped out of the construction and design of this particular intersection due to cost concerns and engineers, our good old engineers. They get real practical on us and they start looking at value engineering. Some of those things that were going to help define that intersection unfortunately have not been done the staff's way of thinking that puts more importance on the relationship of a development to the street so and and again i would just add that we're looking at commercial access and development all right with this requirement that we're not looking at residential areas dick showed you alumni and he is correct we we don't look at that type of urban design for residential any longer. But this is a commercial development and access ordinance. And again, part of it is to not have parking lots dominate the streetscape, have our buildings up close on the street. That's still a consistent urban design standard then and now. And granted, landscaping does help mitigate that type of situation. It does. We would add that, again, landscaping is a barrier like a fence as well, however. But I wish there was more, Bruce, that we could do. But we're limited to what we could ask Steve's or anyone else to do to the actual public right away to help define that gateway. And it wasn't offered up as an alternative. They're just requesting a removal of a requirement. And you haven't seen anything else. I mean, hardscaping. could really activate that corner in a way that defines downtown. I would, I would like to hear the applicant, hear what kind of alternatives they've looked at other than smaller hedges instead of a masonry wall. And staff would agree. And to their credit, again, they are what they are. You know, they're, they're a credit union. They're a bank wanting to go in here and they have to function. They have certain requirements. They have to have parking. have to have an ATM, you know, and so again, they have brought their building up on the street as required, but they are, they're the business that they are. Mr. Bill. Graham, were you going to ask a question? I couldn't tell whether, were you getting ready to ask a question? You're, you, I see that. I'm there, hold off. Okay. So, Derek, my question is, I'm a little confused because I hear you referring to the six foot wall and it sounded like Tom was suggesting a 30 inch with wrought iron. And really, that's what we're really referring to, I believe, as I understand as an option. um but darry my question to you with regard to security and things is is back to to what frank was asking about the hedge you know it just seems to me is if we're going to talk in terms of security a hedge is also a concern to some degree is it is it not it's less of a concern and i'll say this now there's a couple things with with all landscaping and that's to make sure that it is maintained well and there is no doubt about that and i think the key with with the types of trees that you plant is that the branches are trimmed so that there's still a good sight line but i think one of the things there's a there's a huge difference between a wall and a hedge in terms of opacity you can stand behind a hedge and still see through the hedge it is not masonry and so being able to say that it's a place where where a criminal element could hide it's not the same degree that it is i mean there are still gaps in hedges there are still branches on hedges they're just, you know, we go through seasons, they just aren't as quite as full. And so it is less of a, of a, and I'll be honest with you, I think it's less of a thing that a criminal is going to be hiding behind a low hedge than a wall. It is true that a, that a, the, the staff offering is much better than a six foot tall wall, which is required by the, by the, by the original standards, but it's still, it's still likely to be compromised depending on how that wall is finally put into put into place in terms of the iron and how that works. And I think when you start getting into a lot of the discussions of how that top part that is an iron, how that would be, it can still be very compromising in terms of its surveillance capability. I might add that Kevin Warner has pointed out to me that under the ordinance, as far as opacity of hedges, even the ordinance calls for 70% opacity in the summer and 50% in the winter. So opacity alone is a major factor with the walls on this. Well, I'm just trying to picture the 30 inch for me is quite a bit different and with wrought iron, which we, you know, you figure six inch or whatever they're going to do. We've all seen them. And, you know, it feels like there's more visibility than a six foot wall. And I just like to kind of refer to apples to apples to what we're talking about rather than what we're not kind of a thing. So. So thank you. I just want your thoughts on that. Thank you. There is more visibility, but it's still it's still a problem for us. Mr. Paul. Oh, you're great. OK. Is there any other questions for the applicant? Okay. Ms. Marsdale? Yes. So the hedges that you're proposing, how high would those grow? Would you allow those to grow? You want me to take that? Yeah. Sure. The ordinance requires the three foot height as Mr. Martin pointed out earlier. we would be maintaining them at that minimum height requirement. They could grow larger if they were allowed to, but we've actually proposed double the amount of hedge. A single row is what's required. We have a double row. We have two species that are deciduous and one species that is evergreen of the three species involved with the screening. And as Mr. Murphy just pointed out, The opacity requirement is only 70% in the summertime. So someone crouching down behind a hedge, even a double hedge, is going to be visible more so than a 30-inch solid wall. So the security concern is not as great with the hedge as it would be with the 30-inch wall. Thank you. I think it's important to note also that the screening is there to screen automobile parking. And the hedges are going to do just as good a job to screen that as a wall will. It gives the visual and psychological separation of the cars from the roadway. I'm not seeing any other questions for the applicant at this time. I'm going to move it over. Are there any citizens that would like to speak for or against this particular application? You can do so by raising your hand on the Zoom app. I'm not seeing any. So we'll bring this back to the commission for additional questions or statements. Mr. Bell. So, Tom, is your greatest concern that this was the precedence, this ordinance that back from 07, that it was established in 07? If we didn't have this ordinance established 14 years ago, and back to Derek's point about today and security and how it's changed from 07 and things like that. if we didn't have that ordinance from 07, how would you feel about this situation? An interesting question, Mr. Bell. We would support the parking, not dominating the landscape, of course. We would support the buildings up on the street as it is. And we like landscaping, your staff does, and we would support landscaping, and it is in the ordinance. They have options in the ordinance. As you know, under Article 18, they have wall and berm options within that ordinance, all designed to screen the properties. But again, staff has an ordinance passed by the council to support this plan, and that's the reality that we're dealing with today. the new yes mr martin is the in your professional opinion is the intent of the ordinance to create a date a gateway on that special corridor um where this property is located yes sir bruce the plan clearly states goals of promoting urban development from this point creating this gateway north and the plan encourages that it speaks to it in numerous locations within the verbiage and this ordinance was designed to help complement that and support that i mean that was the intent okay i like to hear that because to me um the the argument from the applicant um has to do with safety and the concern for their customers and that's everybody's concern here as well. But we also need to understand the intent of the ordinance. And I think that there could be a middle way. I don't think we necessarily need a fence or a masonry wall, but we need something to meet the intent of the requirements that you are bound by. So to me, I would be interested in seeing the applicant do some more work on defining that landscaping in the corridor, maybe with some hardscaping or whatever it may be, so that it is a true gateway and not an indescript corner. Yes. If I may, Mr. Nickel, comment very briefly. You just outlined an interesting conundrum that we all find ourselves in, particularly today, and that is how do we implement plans? And as you all know we're doing a lot of work on our ordinances to help implement our new our comprehensive plan and so here we're dealing with a wonderful example of a plan a lot of work went into it a lot of thought a lot of vision and the development of an ordinance to try to help implement that plan so that that it's it's where we are today yes sir so uh if i may add you are today making a recommendation to the urban county council on this and i think the recommendation should be that the ordinance should be updated to reflect today's urban type development and i think that we are reflecting that all right i'm gonna close this part of this and i'll bring it back to the commission only. Ms. Blumley, you had your hand raised and then Graham. Ms. Blumley, you're on mute. Okay, I guess my question goes back to Mr. Murphy in that we are dealing now with the council ordinance as it is now we we can indeed if they wish to change it that's their prerogative but we can't wait for them to change it to deal with this issue today am i correct yeah well we're following the path we did back i can't remember how many years ago we did the modifications for the JDI and the townhomes up in the 500 block. In that case, we went back before you all, you all made a recommendation to the city council that we it be amended for that particular lot in about eight different ways. And then it went up to the city council and the city council agreed saying yes for this particular lot it ought to be amended in those whatever it was seven eight nine different ways to allow this development to go forward so we're it's sort of like the recommendation you all make on zone changes to the city council the city council ends up being the one who adopts the ordinance on it but we're we're asking for your recommendation for action by the city council. I just have a question, a point of clarification for Tom, I guess. Does the requirements of the ordinance apply equally to Chair Avenue as they might to Broadway and Oliver Lewis way? The ordinance applies to parcels that have been identified as frontage parcels in this particular case due to the relationship of the parking and the buildings to the right-of-way. That map I showed, so there are some, most of the parcels, yes, it applies to, but not all. It does apply down that frontage along Broadway towards Chair, which is most of this property, by the way, down to Chair. there's yeah i'm i'm a little bit confused about a couple of things first of all with mrs plumley's point is where i am how can we get around doing what we need to do today we can make a recommendation but would that be i mean we still couldn't make a recommendation for approval if we're going against an ordinance that's already established the if the issue is to make a recommendation that would be something that we would could do but how does that help us out today i think your recommendation would be like on a murphy you're not we close it that brought out mr murphy it's just not your question the the process for this request is to modify or will modify or remove part of the restriction ordinance requirement for this property. The ordinance that was adopted sets forward a process by which an applicant, a developer, can ask for a change to the requirement. So this is the process. They apply to the planning commission. The commission reviews the Newtown Pike access and commercial design guidelines against the development and identifies where there are modifications necessary or requested by the applicant. And then the planning commission makes a recommendation to the council as to whether they should grant a variance or a waiver to their ordinance requirements. And so the applicant is asking you today to make a recommendation to the council to eliminate the fence requirement or wall requirement. Ultimately, the council will make that decision. I got you. So the question I have, Ms. Wade, is what's the recommendation of the staff related to the commission? What would you recommend that the planning commission do? Do you recommend that the planning commission take that in consideration or do we simply do nothing? I mean, I guess my question is where does the staff help us out on this? Well, the staff recommendation is printed on page three of the agenda. I got that report is in the Google Drive, which has several attachments, including the ordinance, the access standards. We are recommending disapproval of their request to eliminate the law and there are four reasons given there if the commission at some future date or time wants to make a recommendation to the council to review those guidelines that would be a resolution basically as a committee as the planning commission you would adopt a resolution communicating to the council you're suggesting a change that can happen later today it can happen eight months from now that would be up to the Planning Commission but you cannot change the ordinance that they've adopted Mr. Wilson are you got some clarity there Well, I think what I'm hearing is essentially the Planning Commission has to make, I mean, if the Planning Commission accepted the recommendation, we have two parts. We could accept the recommendation of the staff, but we could also go forth and make a recommendation to have a reconsideration of the ordinance. Is that basically the bottom line? You can also recommend approval of the second part of the request with the findings or modified findings that Mr. Murphy provided. Okay. Okay. Mr. Nick. yes this is when it's i guess a disadvantage to being on zoom where you can't be with all our commission members together but just to speak about my thoughts on this i am less interested in just removing one of the requirements i would be more interested in updating the requirements to meet our needs 21 years later. That's because if we're being asked right now, would you please eliminate one of the design features of the ordinance? That's what we're asked. Yes or no. And Mr. Murphy made a recommendation that he would be interested in updating the requirements. And I think that for practicality purposes, I would be for something I would be for updating not just eliminating an item so that's my thoughts I still don't know whether that leads us in our decision making process but I'm trying to put this together in my mind and that's what I came up with and Mr. Murphy's welcome to make that request to the council directly now Mr. Nichols just just talk to Tracy Lito we can't update the ordinance council updates ordinances council updates just for clarification for everybody can we not can we not re can we not make a request uh or suggestion to the yes to council yes yes as a different action from this and i and i and i agree personally i agree with what bruce is saying i mean i think we need to come more in terms of what's relevant today than what was suggested in the ordinance, whether it be 07 or whenever it was, just based on what Derek's speaking of with regard to the change in securities and such. So I'm up for it. Personally, I believe in updating. And I believe that was the intent. That's my opinion. Thank you. Ms. Blumley? Thank you. I think what I'm hearing, to be legally defensible, we need to follow the recommendations of the staff. I'm also very much in favor of a resolution to the council. And who knows the next time an issue similar to this arises, it may not be a bank. It may be somebody that really wants a brick wall that tall. and I would like to hear from the applicant whether you know if they could do a shorter wall with something above it but but I don't think that's permissible today I think that we have been tasked to make a decision today and what we need to move forward and do thank you MR. BOWLE? I just wanted to express my design opinions for what they are worth. I think that Mr. Murphy's two photographs, one of the car wash and one of the lex were crime evidence for the need for screening materials on parking lots. They demonstrated beautifully how the absence of that is really tragic and hurtful to the community. So that argues for maintaining the ordinance as written and executing it. Also, the discussion of the gateway to me also argues for a more serious, more urban, more substantial treatment, at least on the Broadway and all the Lewis Way sides of the property. However, I do think that security issues are real, and I do really value the evidence that the applicant brought to us on that. And so my design aspirations are tempered by a concern about that. And I would love to see a way to find a compromise that meets all of those issues. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions, statements, comments? Mr. Ben. I think we're in a situation right now where we can make a recommendation to the council to review that ordinance that was done in 2007. And if that goes, if we should do that today after this hearing and send it to the council, But I don't think we can accept Mr. Murphy's findings because I don't think we can change the ordinance of the council. We can't. I think the only process we have going here is to accept the staff's recommendation. And then if you want to come back after that and recommend that they look at the ordinance, that can go on simultaneous tracks. That doesn't have to be something we did eight months down the road. And then this is going to the council. and they'll have your recommendation is changing the ordinance but we don't have the legal authority to change the ordinance and so i think we're making way too much out of this you know you can't pick and choose the ordinance that you're going to support that's just not a good concept so i think that's where we are mr bill is it possible that getting back to what bruce said where they came back with some other suggestions, hearing all that they've heard. Is it possible that they come back with some other suggestions? And then based on what that is, then potentially recommend that to the council? I think that is an option. that the applicant had a third option that is different from the ordinance requirement and different from two rows of shrubs. It seems to me as if there's, you know, I hear what you say, Frank, and I agree under the circumstances, but it seems to me if we could put a little bit more time and effort into this or if they could potentially, Mr. Murphy and team could potentially, hearing all that they've heard and us hearing all that we've heard, we're well-intended here. And, you know, I would hope that we could assist the council. You know, I feel our goal is to guide the council. That's what we are as planning commissioners. And I don't feel that we're quite doing that by recommending necessarily what staff says. I'd like to hear back to what Bruce said, which is let them come back again, hearing what we've all said and see if we can agree and then recommend that to council. That's just my thoughts. Thank you. Mr. Bent? But isn't that their call? They've asked us to hear this today. Who's there? Who are you saying there? The applicant has asked us to hear this today. The staff has made their recommendations. Now, I'm not a lawyer, and I didn't spend the night in Holiday Inn Express, but I think we need to ask our staff attorney if we're going to – we need to go forward with what's been proposed that they've asked us to do, or they request – we don't want to get into a continuing situation. So I want to hear from staff on this because we're treading pretty lightly here on trying to redo an ordinance that I don't think we have authority to do. All right, we will bring legal up. I need to put my mask on. You have a couple of options. First off, remember that what you do, like everything you do in relation to zone changes, and this is a little bit different because it is an ordinance, but it's an ordinance adopted by the council with this process in place. you're being asked to make a decision that will be a recommendation to the council as to what they should do with this request. This request is to to waive parts of that Newtown Pike ordinance. So, you know, you can disapprove it with the staff's findings. you could, if you wanted to adopt Mr. Murphy's findings that he provided you, you would be recommending to the Urban County Council when they hear it and make the decision that they waive those provisions and do what they have proposed. Those two things are the actions that relate directly to what's in front of you today. You know, I don't think you can impose a continuance on the applicant, and I'm not sure if that would get you where you need to be because the ordinance will still be in place when it comes back to you even after continuance. Whether or not there could be some type of alternative, I don't know, that would meet the ordinance as it is, but it still will be there. then separately if you want to recommend to the council that they look at this and possibly update it that that's a separate action that you can choose to do today, but it's not going to be part of this particular action on this case. If that makes sense. Ms. Neu. Okay. After hearing that, thank you. That really helped clarify everything to me. and the way that I would want to work on this. We are making a decision whether or not to remove a six foot masonry wall and put in two rows of planting or to disapprove that and go with the staff's recommendation. We can go with the staff. I would be inclined to go with the staff's recommendation for disapproval, but immediately requesting that the council consider updating their ordinance because things have changed. I don't necessarily think that a six-foot masonry wall is practical for all businesses in all of these locations. So that would be my recommendation would be to unfortunately deny this request, but then support the request in the form of getting the recommendation that the council updates it. So we can do both at the same time. Yeah. So is that your motion, Mr. Nichol? Yes. Sure. Let's motion. That's it. I second it. We got a motion and a second by Mr. Wilson. Any further discussion? I just got a point of clarification. are there two items that we're covering here? I think the motion needs to be clear about the two separate items. You've got to approve the elimination. Correct. There are two requested waivers. One to the locational standard under C1E, and then the second one for the parking lot screening standard, which is C1C. So the staff recommends approval of the change to C1E for the location and disapproval of the waiver for a reduction of screening, which is C1C. Okay, does someone want to restate that or do you want me to restate that? Actually, what it should be is to hold your motion, Bruce, until we do the first. We should actually do the first and then come back to yours. That's my recommendation. Okay. And can I ask one more question? So is it possible, may I ask a question, Mr. Chairman, before we do this or not? It's too late. You good? Well, actually, Mr. Chairman, what you should do is take the motion and then ask if there are other questions. I was getting ready to do that. that people started talking and I want to give Mr. Bell I always do so we're going to take the poll of the motion we had a motion by Mr. Nickel second by Mr. Wilson Mr. Church I think what we're recommending I think what I would recommend to you is to take the Mr. what you should do is take the first motion of either of the approval of the recommendation of the standard C1 first, then go back to Mr. Bruce's motion. So we table Mr. Nichols' motion for just a minute. Just a minute. That's all you're doing. Now the floor is back open for a new motion. You got to table. I'm tabling Bruce's motion first, then coming back to it. Now the floor is open for another motion. I can't make a motion. I'm not looking to make a motion. I just didn't know if I could ask a question, actually, of Mr. Murphy. Is that? Not now. That's what I wanted to know. Thank you so much. No problem. Okay. Then, Mr. Chairman. Yes. I would move that the commission accepts the elimination of the off-street parking lot location, location standard c1e for the following reasons are the reasons provided by staff i recommend we approve that second second we got a motion in the second by mr pen any further discussion i'm not seeing any all in favor please raise your hand okay motion passes unanimously yes now mr chairman all you have to say is without objection we'll bring the second motion back to the table for a discussion. Thank you, sir. I would say just like that, without objection, we will bring back the second motion by Mr. Nickel. Okay, do I need to clarify that motion? No. No, legal. My parliamentarian is, that's why he's a parliamentarian. We could just say no, but if we need to, would it be okay? Yes. Okay, thank you. So yes, Bruce, it would be okay for you to clarify your motion. I would like to clarify my motion. And my motion is two part, but we're going to go with the first first, which is to disapproval of the elimination of the parking lot screening standard C1C for the reasons provided by staff. Okay, we have a motion. We have a second. We have a second by Ms. Plumlee. any further discussion to that motion all in favor oh got a discussion out I just I meant to preface my comments earlier by saying how impressed I was with the design work that we saw for the for the location doesn't change my opinion but I I just wanted to say that I think it was it's an exceptional piece of work. That's all. Thank you, Grant. All right. So we got a second by Ms. Plumlee. All in favor, please raise your hand. Okay, that motion passes unanimously. Okay. Now, the second part of your motion. My second part of the motion, I would like someone to help me with the language here. My recommendation is to the council. We would like the council to consider updating their standards for practicality purposes so we can see a project like this be successful. I suggest that you mention the C1C as the specific requirement that they need to look at. I would recommend they look at everything. We may, if this is really 20 years old, I would recommend looking at everything. Okay. So we have a motion on the floor. Legal is okay with that motion. Bruce, she said it. I had to check on it to make sure. Second. We got a second by Mr. Wilson. Any further discussion? All in favor, please raise your hand. Okay, motion passes unanimously. All right. Thank you. Man, that was a long one. Hey, it was. Can we take a five-minute, two, three-minute break everyone a good chance to maybe replenish themselves we see that we can use the restroom no they don't need to use the restroom i'm just kidding you you can sit still if you come here all righty we're gonna call this meeting back to order uh we should be on page four the zoning items pln mar-21-1 we should have revised recommendations and a development plan Well, this is where we would, on page three, see if there are any cases that meet the abbreviated public. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do have one there. Let me back up. We're on page three. Let's, on the zoning items. Staff, are there any abbreviated items? Chairman Forrester, there are, there are actually two items on our agenda that qualify for an abbreviated hearing. The first item appears on page 5 for PLN MAR21-2 CAR Real Estate Holdings, LLC. And we'll just ask if there's anyone present today for that first item in the attendees section that wishes to have this item heard in a more full presentation today. And I don't see anyone that's raised their hand for that one. So that case, along with its development plan, would qualify for an abbreviated hearing. In addition, we have one more case that on the agenda appears to meet that criteria as well. It appears on page 8 and continues on to page 9 and 10 of our agenda, where all phases or pieces of the application are recommended for approval. by the staff and the committees. That's the PLN MAR21-4, the request by Collins and Miller Properties, and its associated variance and development plan. We would just ask if there was anyone present today that wishes to have this case removed or heard, removed from the abbreviated and or heard in a more full context. If there's anyone in the attendees section that wishes to have this item heard today? I'm not, but Mr. Bailey, did you have some information on that one? Yes, ma'am. I believe that Mr. Dick Murphy had a question about the staff's report and was looking to remove one of the conditional zoning restrictions that was recommended by staff, which would necessitate a full hearing on that case. Mr. Murphy, if you are present, or Mr. Clint Denon, I see your name on here as well. Would you please raise your hand and indicate to us if you would like to have this heard? Mr. Clendenin is now raising his hand. Mr. Clendenin has been allowed to speak. Thank you. Mr. Bailey, Ms. Wade, and members of the staff, if you will allow me 60 seconds, I'll get Mr. Murphy back on. I'm just kind of keeping place for him while he's in the middle of something else. So could I have 60 seconds to get Mr. Murphy back on? Well, what we can do is move forward. I'm shaking your head. I'm sorry. We could move on with the abbreviated hearing that we know qualifies and then circle back when that hearing is finished. If that's what you'd like to do, I'll let him know. Yes. That's what we will do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The third case on today's agenda does not qualify. Okay. Now we can bring this back to staff. Thank you very much, sir. And it is good to be back to a zoning agenda. We will be starting with our first abbreviated, and I do promise that this will be abbreviated. This is PLNMAR21-0002 Car Real Estate Properties, LLC. This is for a proposed rezoning of 3.966 net and 4.105 gross acres for the property located at 750 East New Circle. This is the old bowling alley off of East New Circle Road. The applicant has applied under a place type of a corridor and a development type as a medium density non-residential mixed use. They are seeking the zone change from the B3 or the Highway Service Business Zone to a wholesale and warehouse business zone in the attempt to adaptively reuse an existing vacant bowling alley as a climate-controlled self-storage warehousing with the associated administrative offices and the retail storage. um staff this is just a general overview of the area we are located off of eastland parkway or eastland drive opposite eastland parkway and here we have east new circle road there is a host of different zoning surrounding this property including b4 b3 b1 and b6p zoning just an overview of what we're seeing in general of the land use development we are seeing everything to the north and to the west, primarily being warehousing, shops of specialty trade, whereas everything along East New Circles pretty much conforms with the B3 or the Highway Service Business Zone retail or commercial component. You do have a small bit of residential development over on Eastland Parkway, but the character of this area really is focused on that transition from the retail and highway serving businesses into the warehousing and the small production kind of areas. Just looking into the site, you get an idea of this large open parking lot that leads into the bowling alley. On the right, you're looking down towards New Circle Road. On the left, you are looking up the Eastland Drive. uh we do have the uh the view into the property from east new circle uh with the car lot in front and the bowling alley behind and then the entryway from uh east new circle this is uh being proposed as a corridor uh i apologize this is uh actually being proposed as a corridor medium density non or medium non-residential mixed use development. This is not a typical, the B4 is not a typical within this type of zone change. So the applicant, it is incumbent on them to provide greater information than they have within their application. Staff was in agreement that this could be the potential place type and development type for the zone change. We do go through a significant amount of how this kind of applies with a B3. and a B4 zone. There are some slight differences between the two zones. However, they do have some very similar regulations between the two. The use differences is the primary difference between a B3 zone and a B4 zone. This is a brief overview of what Ms. Galt will be presenting to you here today just looking at the development plan. On the development plan, they are providing a lot of connections within the staff report. There were a few concerns associated with their approval, and that really tied into making sure that there was adequate pedestrian connectivity with everything involved on this. Associated with staff's recommendation of approval, you can see it right here. We do believe that the application as submitted and the proposed rezoning does meet the 2018 comprehensive plan, and we are recommending this for approval. The proposed rezoning will grow successful neighborhoods, Theme A, Goal 2A, by reusing a vacant bowling alley for a purpose of a climate-controlled self-storage facility without expanding the building's envelope or proposing modifications to the parking area. The proposed development will reduce Lexington's carbon footprint and provide sustainability for Lexington, theme B, goal 2, by reusing an established structure for the shift in use. And then the proposed rezoning will also assist in the maintenance of the urban service area concept, theme E, goal 1, by allowing greater intensity and flexibility of commercial use on a subject property. The staff found that the corollary development plan was in agreement with the policies and development criteria of the 2018 comprehensive plan, specifically the development criteria associated with site design, building form, and location, the transportation and pedestrian connectivity, and then also the green space and environmental health. In association with staff's recommendation of approval, we are recommending the use of conditional zoning restrictions. This is specifically with prohibited actions. The following uses shall be prohibited. Ice plants, parking lots, and structures as principal uses, truck terminals and freight yards, pawn shops, mining of non-metallic minerals, and any self-storage facility on the premises that shall have outdoor storage of vehicles, supplies, or materials. and it shall not have any direct access to doors from individual storage units. This is specifically targeted at reducing the impact on one of Lexington's major corridors with East New Circle Road and reducing the potential of having the more unsightly or nuisance-based kind of things on site that would detract from trying to beautify East New Circle Road. These restrictions are really focused on what a wholesale and warehouse use could do to that corridor. As per all applications with the zone change, this recommendation is made subject to the approval of the subsequent development plan, PLN-MJDP 21-10 Eastland Subdivision, which Ms. Galt will go through really quickly. And then if you have any questions at that time, we can go ahead and take them. Ms. Galt. Good afternoon. This is Plan MJDP 21-10 Eastland Subdivision. There was revised conditions. The applicant brought in a revised development plan, so we were able to knock off a few conditions. so you should have a copy of that in the google drive as Hal said oops let me get this off of here yeah there we go um one of the um the the criteria place builder criteria was to have a sidewalk connection into the building off of new circle road um so that was part of their revision to the plan. They also did the cleanup condition so that we were able to remove them. So with this, we just have that the Planning Commission approves it and then it goes to Council, Engineering Traffic, and Urban Forester. The last condition was discuss place builder criteria, but with the fact that they brought in the revised plan with the sidewalk, We believe they can remove that condition off of the set of conditions, but a suggestion would be maybe to change that condition to add conditional zoning restrictions as approved with the zoning. With that, I open it to anybody if there's any other comments or questions. Any comments or questions for staff? I see any. Applicant, any? Mr. Chair, we're going to promote Mr. Brandon Gross. Okay. Mr. Gross, you should be able to go ahead. good afternoon everybody uh brandon gross on behalf the applicant um i will say this is the longest abbreviated zoning hearing i've attended um and so but yes we have read the staff now i will say i have not seen the staff's um revised conditions um and and we are in agreement with the staff were fine with the zoning restriction and it sounds like other than knocking items off the only amendment to the conditions would be to the last one rather than discuss place builder it would be add the zoning restriction to the development plan and if that's the case then we're in agreement with that and I'm here to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you Mr. Gross. Do we have any questions for the applicant commission members? I'm not seeing any. Do we have any citizens that would like to speak on behalf or against this particular agenda item? Please do so by raising your hand. Okay. We're not seeing any there, so we'll close this part of the session up, and the floor is open for your motion. Ms. Blumley. Thank you. Regarding PLN MAR212 car real estate holdings, I recommend approval as agreeing with the staff with also with their reasons for approval. We have a motion. We have a second to that motion. Second. Seconded by Mr. Wilson. Any further discussion? All in favor, please raise your hand. Motion passes unanimously. Now we're going to take the development plan. Got it. Thank you. Regarding PLN, MJDP 2110, Eastland Subdivision, I recommend approval in agreement with the staff. However, their recommendation would be to delete 56789 and making a number five, which would be add conditional zoning restrictions. Thank you. Is there a motion? on the floor do we have a second second mr wilson all in favor please raise your hand okay motion passes unanimously thank you thank you mr gross thanks everybody i'll see you guys next month all right okay So we're going to see if Mr. Murphy was back for the abbreviated hearing. Mr. Murphy is back. Would you like to go ahead and promote him? Yes, we can. Okay, he's back. Okay. Mr. Murphy, you should be rejoining his panelists. So, Mr. Murphy, while you were away, we asked if this case could be abbreviated. Of course, that is contingent on your agreement with the staff recommendation. We had two small items about the staff conditions we wanted to talk about. on that. I think I've discussed them with the staff before. I'll leave it up to you whether you hear us. I think we could do them very quickly, but it's up to you all. It doesn't qualify for an abbreviation. Yeah. So then if it doesn't, then we have to go back in line, Mr. Murphy. Okay. Are you okay with that? Reluctantly, yes. I understand. I understand. Okay. Thank you. Your staff. Great. Thank you very much, sir. We are now shifting to our first zone change application for today. You can find that in your packet on page four under RTA Family Trust. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and bring up the PowerPoint for this presentation. Hal, before you get into your presentation, I would like to announce that Michael Walsh will be granted five minutes to speak today. Thank you very much. And I will state that this presentation does have some letters of objection. For those members that are in the office, I handed you copies of those letters prior to the meeting. For all those members who are in the virtual world, you should have copies of those letters within your Google Drive. I'm also going to note that this staff presentation will have three parts. The normal two parts regarding the zone change in the development plan with myself and Mr. Martin. And then there will be a third portion, including Mr. Jimmy Emmons. During the zoning committee meeting, there were specific questions regarding the traffic at this site, both from the public and committee members. Staff thought that it was important that we had an added section of this, even though it did not reach the threshold of a traffic impact study, to provide you the information that staff reviews when looking at most applications when we see a land use or a zoning change. So we'll get started. This is RTA Family Trust, PLNMAR21-00001. The applicant is seeking a zone change for the properties located at 1009 and 1017 Wellington Way. They are seeking the zone change from a neighborhood business or B1 zone to a high-density apartment or R4 zone. The applicant is proposing the high density apartment R4 zone to construct a residential development comprising of a four story multifamily structure. The proposed building would include 88 total units with both on surface and subsurface or below ground parking and a rooftop deck. The residential density for this is proposed to be approximately 56 dwelling units per acre. associated with their application. They are making the suggestion or making the justification that they are found within the corridor place type and a medium density residential development type. The subject properties are located in the southwestern portion of the urban service area. They are bordered by Wellington Way along the southern boundary. You can see that right here, and I'll pull up my annotate feature just so that we can see things a little bit better. So just Wellington Way coming along the southern portion here. And then along the eastern side is Palomar Center Drive. Palomar Center Drive is an access easement that provides access to this property as well as for other properties along the western edge of Harrodsburg Road. Wellington Way is a collector street that connects between Harrodsburg Road and Lyon Drive. Both are major collector, I'm sorry, Lyon Drive is a collector street that kind of connects into Man of War, whereas Harrodsburg Road is one of our major arterial roadways. When Mr. Martin was talking about previously our radial city and this being one of our major spokes. Harrodsburg Road is the continuation of South Broadway and is part of that major spoke of our Spoken Wheel City. We're going to zoom in just a little bit. This gives you an idea of the zoning that has occurred or that has been imposed upon each of these properties surrounding this area. Along Wellington Way, we are seeing primarily commercial zoning with both B1 and P1 zoning. And then all the properties basically to the north of this subject property shift into the residential types. You'll see that there are actually three different types of residential zoning located to the north of the subject property, R2, R1C, and R3. So that's our two-family residential, single family residential, and planned neighborhood residential. Across Harrodsburg Road, you are also seeing R3 zoning. When we jump over to the aerial photography, we'll see a little bit more of the land use. But the interesting thing about this development is when you look at the zoning for a P1 and B1, as well as the P6P, they are meant to be a mixed use zone. So they allow for the opportunity of both commercial space with the B1 and the P1 on the first floor, it's required. But above that, it provides for the opportunity for a mixed use of residential and commercial. For the B6P, that has been the subject of multiple changes over the past couple of years in which we have seen a more both vertical and horizontal integration of mixed use. Jumping over to the aerial photography, this gives you an idea a little bit more of the actual land use that is occurring. You can see the commercial development that has developed along Harrodsburg Road and then also along Wellington Way, the single-family residential that has developed to the north, and then a little bit of multifamily and single-family off across Harrodsburg Road. You can also see the access easement with Palmar Center Drive located here, entering into the four commercial developments that have occurred there, which include a bank, a restaurant, a medical building, and then the Taekwondo studio. Jumping into the site itself, this top picture is actually the view across the street into the subject property, you can see that there are some, there's the Taekwondo studio located here, and then some very large single family residents located right here. Across the street from the subject property, this is again looking to the south, you can see the LA Fitness Gym located here and the Panera Restaurant located right here. Moving, oh, I jumped too far, excuse me. Some more photos of the development that has occurred around the area. In this photo, we are actually looking up Palomar Center Drive towards the businesses that have been developed there. To the left would be the Taekwondo Studio. To the right is the bank and the Sedona Tap Room. You go further up that road, you get to the medical building. Here in this photo, which is the top center, we are looking towards Harrodsburg Road, down Wellington Way. And then to the right of that, we are looking up Wellington Road towards Lyons Drive. This photo gives you a little bit of an idea of what it is on Harrodsburg Road with the three commercial developments with the bank, the tap house, and then over into the medical building. Jumping into the place builder, with any new application, an applicant will submit a justification that talks about where they are located. For this application, the applicant has specified their location in the corridor place type. This is along Lexington's major roadways. Its real focus historically has been on just pure commerce and transportation. For Imagine Lexington, the overriding emphasis is a major overhaul to the intensity of our major corridors. The future of Lexington's corridors is really focused on that shifting move from retail and the economic model to a higher density of residential. In this case, the applicant is in the proximity of the Harrodsburg Road and staff agreed that a corridor place type was appropriate. For their development type, the applicant is proposing a medium density residential development type. This is primarily attached and multifamily units. It is meant to enhance and complement what is already there. It should be located nearby commercial and employment uses, and that green spaces should be easily accessible through bikeable pedestrian kind of modes, as well as connected to transit. These developments should include intentional open space and be designed to fit into the area's residential and commercial needs. From there, the applicant is utilizing a recommended zone, which is the R4 zone, the high density apartment zone. So within this section, staff found that the applicant was in agreement in place type development type and was utilizing a recommended zone. With any type of analysis of a zone change, we do need to look at the context of the development and what is both being replaced and how this proposed development is situating themselves within the overall development. You can see on 1009 and 1017, the two properties, they are currently vacant, so there would be no displaced population with any development of residential opportunity at this location. It is also very close to the Palmar Shopping Center located here, so it would allow for a fair amount of availability for residents to actually connect in and out of the potential commercial options here. When we're talking about any type of multifamily, we are looking for multifamily to be located along the corridor roads, some of our collectors or arterials. These are the places in which multifamily is supported. And it also removes the need for higher density or larger structures to go into neighborhoods. So these were all things that we looked at as we were going through the review of this application, and also we're making suggestions based off the development criteria, the goals, objectives, and the policies of a comprehensive plan. One of the major aspects that was brought up throughout our review and the neighborhood and applicants kind of review of this application was the height of the proposed structure. They are proposing a 40-foot-tall structure. Initially, they were also proposing the need for a variance. During the review of their application, that variance has been withdrawn because it was not necessary. The applicant is proposing a 40-foot tall building, four stories. The stairwell and the penthouse for the elevator are actually exempted from that height because they are part of the internal workings of the structure and do not overly impact the height of the active area. So with reviewing some of the heights of adjacent structures, we took a look at what was being developed along Palomar Center Drive, what you might see with the medical building, which is approximately 36 feet in height. The Sedona Taproom, which is approximately 20 to 25 feet in height. The Taekwondo Studio and the Bank, which are 20 feet in height. And then you jump across the street. We look at the LA Fitness, which is approximately 38 feet in height. and the Panera, which is a drop down to approximately 25 feet in height. If you look at the houses that actually back up to the subject properties, both houses, while they do meet mid-gable at approximately 34 feet in height, both houses are actually standing at a max height of about 37 to 38 feet. So this gives you an idea of just the overall kind of development that has occurred. I will say that there is also a there's a little bit of a difference in what is occurring just to the west of the property. While this building to the west is 30 feet in height, you can see there is a retaining wall and a difference in grade type that leads to this house right behind, which is a single family dwelling unit, to be much taller than the structure right here. That grade change is also something that staff considers when reviewing this in impact to what might be occurring behind the property or surrounding the property. This property is at a lower elevation height than some of the single family residential that's occurring, as well as the Taekwondo studio. So that will lessen the impact of a 40-foot building, But it is very much comparable in the height of the buildings behind there because they are at that 37 foot height. With their application, initially staff had some real concerns about how they were both activating their open space or even achieving their open space, as well as the pedestrian movement and activation of the frontage of the subject property. This is their color-up rendering associated with their multifamily design standards, as well as the development criteria associated with the zone change application. With their updates, they have done some significant enhancement along the front of the building, providing an active front space, not only with their windows and their openings, but they've provided two entryways into the property with some plaza-type areas with seating along the front. One of the major concerns that staff had was, if this were to go into place, how are individuals going to safely cross the street from the proposed development over to the Palomar shopping center, specifically getting over to the gym or going to the Panera restaurant. The applicant has provided and worked with both the pedestrian planner and the traffic engineer to create a refuge area in which the pedestrians would be able to cross safely through one lane, wait, and then cross again. This is actually a very much safer potential connection than what they were initially proposing, which was a connection at the corner. The corner is a little bit more complicated because what you're seeing along this portion of the site goes from a five lane all the way down to a three lane here and has dedicated turn lanes in different directions. So to make sure that the pedestrian was getting the most amount of clear sight line while also providing some traffic calming along this collector, the applicant proposed this and both planning staff and the traffic engineer support this option. You can see that staff also had some major concerns as to how they were going to be meeting their open space. And Mr. Martin will talk a little bit more about this, but it is on the roof. Staff wanted to make sure that that was furthest away from a lot of the single family households, as well as was providing an amenity to those living in the area. The applicant has also submitted colored renderings as to how they are proposing to meet the multifamily design standards, specifically the architectural design standards. What they have provided here, staff agrees meets those criteria and the standards of ADS 5-3, the multifamily design standards in the PEPX-A. Additionally, staff was really concerned with the proposed buffering of this site to the neighbors as well as for those living in this residential development. The applicant has submitted a buffering kind of detail mock-up, which includes increased buffering beyond what is required along the back. And they can tell you specifically about what kind of trees they're proposing at this location, as well as an increased amount of trees along the western boundary, and then also along the frontage. with any multi-family development or any increased intensity we are concerned about lighting the applicant prior to submitting their application did talk with staff about lighting and then during their application submitted a lighting study which you can see in front of you right now this lighting study while they're not the the easiest thing to read they they essentially are showing the amount of lumens that would be spilt over into neighboring properties. And in this case, the applicant has done a good job with showing both with their buffering and with the type of lighting, which will be a max of 12 feet in height, that they will not be spilling over lighting into the surrounding properties causing light pollution. With all of these changes and the information that the applicant has provided to staff, the staff is recommending approval of this zone change application. The proposed development will accommodate the demand for housing in Lexington responsibly, prioritizing a mixture of housing types, theme A goal one, by providing a denser development in the area that is primarily single family detached and duplex dwelling units. The proposed zoning will also support infill and will add to a well-designed neighborhood and community while upholding the urban service area concept. The proposed rezoning will achieve an effective and comprehensive transportation system by prioritizing a pedestrian first design by developing a safe pedestrian and by developing a safe pedestrian crossing along Wellington Way or across Wellington Way as well. The proposed rezoning allows for a positive and safe social interaction in the neighborhoods, including but not limited to neighborhoods that are connected for pedestrians and various modes of transportation by providing a safe and more accessible link to the proposed enhanced transit facilities. They are proposing to enhance those facilities along Wellington Way and also provide a shelter. The proposed rezoning addresses the goals, the goal of absorbing vacant and underutilized land within the urban service area and accommodate the demand for housing in Lexington responsibly by prioritizing a higher density and mixed use of housing. Associated with this, oh, I jumped. We do have our various different development criteria, site design, building form, the pedestrian and transit, and then also green space and environmental health, which staff sees with all the modifications that they've made to both their letter of justification and the corollary development plan, that they are meeting each of all these design criteria. Finally, with any recommendation, this is made subject to the approval and certification of the major development plan, MJDP 21-00005, Schroyer Property Lots 3 and 4, RTA Trust as amended. If you have any questions on this application about the zoning, I'd be happy to hear them now or try to answer them now. And then I can turn it over to Mr. Martin to talk about the development plan. Any questions for Mr. Bailey? and for those members of the public uh that have questions uh there is a process that is outlined within the agenda and uh and we'll be following that agenda thank you mr bailey any questions you were so long that i have aged a lot and moved oh come on i was only 15 wasn't i No, our chair had to go coach, so you're stuck with me. You're a good person to be stuck with, sir. If there's any question, Mr. Bailey, you say Mr. Martin has something he wants to address at this time? Yes, sir. I'll pull back up our screen share, and Mr. Martin can talk about the development plan. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, yes, as you see before you, this is the color rendering of the development plan, and I will not belabor it too much. Hal has gone over it. As you all know, here's Wellington Way. Access is off of Palomar Center Drive at this location into their parking here, and in parking extends up in here to the rear of the lot. They are providing exactly what they're required, 112 parking spaces. There is a drive aisle that you can see in this location that takes you to underground parking below the building. They're going to have underground parking as well as you all have heard, you may recall the discussion about a underground detention in this area on this property. They are taking advantage necessarily so of the change in elevation on this property. The building is L-shaped, kind of an odd L-shaped. It's 16,000 square feet of lot coverage. It is four stories, 40 feet in height, as Hal said, for a total of 64,000 square feet. They are asking for R4, so the FAR is well within the established limits for FAR, staff was concerned, you know, the shape of the site, the size of the building, the parking, and other requirements did impact their ability to provide the required open space. And as you all are aware, the setback areas along the front of a building are not counted towards required open space. Doesn't mean they can't use it, and that is one of the things Hal pointed out that staff is very pleased with is the activation of this area in front of the building, and they are really proposing some nice features. However, to meet their required open space, they are having to utilize about 7,400 square feet of this rooftop area. This is a preliminary development plan, you will see a final development plan on this property. And staff has entered into discussions to be sure that this area would not be lit in such a way or utilized in such a way that would provide any kind of nuisance to the neighbors. Hal pointed out that there will be well-controlled pedestrian scaled lighting on the site, as well as enhanced landscaping along the border with the single family homes. And I might add that back when that area of single family homes was rezoned, there was a long stand of evergreen trees that have been preserved in a tree protection easement on those properties. Now you saw from the photograph that some of those had been removed, but that you saw shorter ones where people have replanted. So again, there's already a lot of nice screening along that border with the single family homes in that area. The applicant has worked with staff to address our concerns and your staff did present, your staff did prepare a revised recommendation to the subdivision committee. Unfortunately, there was a little miscommunication with the applicant, and we weren't able to present it to your subdivision committee. So we have submitted to you today revised recommendations on this plan. They should be in your Google Drive. They have addressed much of the cleanup conditions that existed on the plan. I will quickly reiterate the pedestrian crossing. I just want to mention that again. Hal did a good job. This is a good solution for pedestrian safety in this area. As Hal pointed out, this is a complicated intersection. Way too many decisions need to be made for pedestrians at that location. And this is a good solution in staff's estimation. Here's a bus station. There are bus stop with a they're going to have a little covered bus stop there. There are some discussion, some discussions at this time about where exactly to locate that. And that will be established firmly on the final development plan that will be coming before you in the future should this zone change be approved. With that, staff has recommended approval of development plan, and I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have for staff. Stop share. There we go. Any questions from Mr. Martin on this preliminary development plan? I got one. Could you point me in the direction on where the revised items are on the drive? Yes, sir. um here let me see that right um they should be located uh within you're in the planning commission april 22nd file all right i will double check that all that information is available to you uh and i if anybody else is having a problem just give me a wave right now okay we will we will double check to make sure that you have those revised conditions No, I've got them. It's just a matter of which there's not a number. It's hard to tell a number. Oh, yeah. What are you calling this one? This should be revised staff recommendation is the title. And it says PLNM and then LLC. Anyway. Yes, sir. I will get you those immediately. And we'll let Mr. Emmons go ahead with his presentation. Make sure that you have those conditions. Thank you. We'll go with Jimmy now and he'll get them to you. Mr. Emmons? Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the commission. Thank you for allowing me to share some insights. If I can, I'd like to share my screen with a quick PowerPoint presentation. Can everybody see the slides? Yes. For the record, my name is Jimmy Emmons. I'm a senior transportation planner with our division of planning in our transportation section. Although this property did not meet the thresholds or require a traffic impact study, staff knew that the traffic would be a concern of the neighbors. And quite frankly, traffic was a concern of our colleagues also. So what I did is I tried to take a look at the information that we do have available to us to try and get some insight about the traffic in this area. And I just want to share some of the insights with the Planning Commission that I also shared with other staff members, the applicants, and I also had a very nice phone conversation this week with Mr. Walsh. So to get right into it, this is a, I just want to talk about a couple of things. This is, I'm not expecting you to read most of what I have on here. because it is a lot of information, but they're just kind of screenshots of the types of information that we look at. First of all, to look at how much traffic will the proposed development create. They are proposing 87 dwelling units, and based off of the Institute of Traffic Engineering manuals for trip generation, the proposed development would generate about 473 daily trips. And whenever you talk about the peak hour, that's essentially rush hour. In Lexington, our evening rush hour is the worst. And in this particular instance, it would be thought that this proposed development would generate about 40 p.m. peak hour trips in that evening rush hour. Now, to give you just a little bit of a kind of what do those numbers actually mean, in order to meet our threshold for requiring a traffic impact study, most developments would need to reach a threshold of about 200 peak hour trips in order to kind of tip that threshold to need a traffic impact study. So whenever I looked at the proposed development today with the residential development, I also compared it against the currently approved commercial development that is on this site. And running the same type of analysis, I found that the approved development plan out here with the combination of restaurants and retail would generate about 2,000 daily trips and about 160 evening rush hour trips. So about four times as much traffic. Now, whenever you get into commercial uses, there's a little there's a lot more wiggle room because oftentimes it's based off of the popularity of the use. But even a conservative estimate, you would still expect to see at least double, if not four times the amount of traffic with the commercial development under the existing zoning. So that's the first thing that I looked at is that there's actually a very small, anticipated, small, relatively small amount of traffic for the proposed development. The next thing that I look at whenever I'm trying to evaluate traffic in an area is do we have traffic counts? And this time we were lucky. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet in 2019 did do a traffic study on this area. And those traffic studies give us a lot of information. In this particular instance, they only did a single year, 2019. Sometimes we have permanent counters and we can start looking at trends on whether traffic is going up or down. But in this particular instance, we only have 2019, and they counted an AADT, and I'll explain that in just a moment, about 3,000 cars. So annualized average daily traffic, that's kind of the, on a typical day, how much traffic you could expect to go across this road, and that's about 3,000. For comparison, that's about the same amount of traffic that's on Lion Drive on either side of Manowar. It's pretty similar. They also had a percentage of that 3,000 trips per day that would go through during that p.m. peak hour, and they would estimate about 15% of those trips come in the peak hour. And so mathematically, that would be about 400 trips in the peak hour for this road. So as we look at that, I also had the, we also have NREX data, which is a roadway analytics tool that we pay for that really looks at data. This is not live. I do have it live pulled up on my computer if we need to get in and look at it. But these are just screenshots. I was able to do a congestion study for the roads that you see in this Palomar area. We did have the data on those. And I just kind of want to walk you through this. This is a kind of a congestion scan, if you will. And what it does is it measures how fast cars are and are not moving. One of the things that I really like about this is that they use a very simple kind of color scale to kind of give you an idea of how fast the cars are moving. If they're moving everywhere that you see green on this chart, traffic is moving at about the speed that it should be moving at. It's moving theoretically at the speed limit. Where you see blue and purple, that means that people are really speeding above the speed on those speed limits. And then you get the oranges into the reds with that. I did do this and I did look at three years. This is a combination of three years of congestion traffic data looking at 2017, 18 and 19. I also ran one with 2020, but because of the COVID shutdowns, I prefer to not use 2020 because it could throw off results whenever we're looking at data. So just to kind of run you through this, whenever I've got this up live, there is a huge amount of information that we can get from these types of NREC studies. And just to kind of show you that we can go in and look at the time flow and the speed and the segments of whether these are going right or left. But to try and summarize this screen that I have for you, you can see most of this area is kind of in the green, if you will. The one area that we really needed to worry about is the segment of Wellington Way that's between Harrisburg Road and the Palomar Center Drive access point, very near where the subject property is located. And on this complicated chart that goes with these two bands that you see through here. One of the things that I saw on here that was a little bit different and quite surprising to me, actually, whenever I ran the study, is that you don't see that typical PM peak hour. You don't see that big band of red that you would expect to see with the morning and the rush hour traffic. But what I did see on this that was a little bit out of ordinary for this section is that from about 7 o'clock in the morning until about 10, 30, 11 o'clock at night, it's always congested. But the trick of this is that it's always congested, but it's not beyond capacity. You see it's kind of like in that orange area, and I want to explain that just a little bit more. I'm almost done a few more slides. But whenever we look at getting back to the traffic counts for this road, whenever you're on a local road, a local road can handle approximately about 1,000 vehicles per lane per hour. So most of Wellington Way is a two-lane road. It's got additional lanes for turn lanes and everything on the section between Harrodsburg and Palomar Center Drive. But generally, whenever you look at kind of a free flow, how many cars can a road handle, for a local road to be livable, it's about 1,000 vehicles per lane per hour. So whenever we looked at the back to the that peak hour on that area, you know, we're we're at about four hundred and thirty trips in there well beyond the the two thousand trips that it could you know, that the roadway could handle as we're looking at that. But I've talked a lot about, you know, kind of volume and roadway capacity and kind of independent, those kinds of things. But it's not just those numbers that we look at. We also look at police reports and collision reports in this area. So I also ran a three-year study on using the same year so that I can compare apples and apples, 2017, 18, and 2019. And I looked at this, I ran a Kentucky State Police accident and collision report. And one of the things that I, you know, kind of my eyes just immediately went to is that you see lots of clusters at the intersection of Harrisburg Road and Wellington Way. And that's to be expected. That's where most of our most things occur. We also saw a lot of cluster on the private portion of Palomar Center Drive and a lot of them in the parking lot. So I took a little bit closer look at just this intersection. And one of the things that we do whenever you run these, you can actually get in and look at a lot of the details of those types of accidents. So one of the things that really kind of came out to me is whenever I started looking at this in more detail is how many of these were actually happening in the parking lots. Over half of the accident reports that I was looking at were in the parking lot. The next thing that I look at is what is the type of collision because those angle collisions, those are the ones that are most likely to result in somebody getting hurt. So those are the ones that my attention goes to immediately. and then the other types that I look at are a lot of rear ends and side swipes because those are typically what you get on roadway segments that are overly congested and whenever I looked at the rear ends and the side swipes in here once again half of those were in parking lots not on the public right away so whenever I really kind of got to looking at this and I looked at three years worth of accidents, what I came to the realization was that in the public right-of-way, in those, once you separate out the parking lot ones, that you actually end up with a very low crash rate on the public right-of-way. Now, I say all of this, and, you know, we look at data, we look at these types of things to try and help us make decisions, but I want to make it absolutely perfectly clear that our goal, our vision is to have zero crashes and collisions in this because it's our number one goal is that everybody make it home safely every night. So we look at these things, but I didn't see anything that was unexpected. So some of my takeaways as I looked at the information that we did have available to us, in summary, the trip generation for the proposed use is probably half to 75% less than the currently approved uses on this site. And both of those, whether it's the proposed use or even the existing uses, both of those are actually well below the threshold to require a traffic impact study. I did find that the existing roadways do have the capacity, as you're just talking about volume of cars to the capacity of the road, they do have the capacity to handle that proposed traffic. And I didn't see any unexpected safety concerns that I would bring to your attention. One of the things that I do recommend is that the Planning Commission follow your Division of Traffic Engineering's recommendations in our bicycle and pedestrian planner, especially for those multimodal improvements in those safe pedestrian crossings. With that being said, I went through all of this really quick. There was a lot of information and I just wanted to kind of share my insights that I had shared with the rest of the staff with the planning commission. If you have any questions for me, I would be happy to try and answer them. Any questions for Mr. Edmonds? I'm going to stop share screen. We can go back to anything that we need to. All right. Any questions for Mr. Edmonds? If not, then we'll move on to the applicant. Thank you. Thank you, Jeremy. We will be promoting Mr. Doug Martin. Actually, Mr. Martin is not actually part of the Afghan team. Mr. Martin is a member of the public who would like to speak on this. We'll lower Mr. Martin's hand at this time and we'll promote Mr. Woodall. And then Mr. Smorstan from May have something to add. May have something. And again, Mr. Schroyer, this is just now time for us to hear from the applicant. We'll be getting to public comment here shortly. Yes. Thank you. Mr. Woodall. Yes, sir. Mr. Penn, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen of the commission. Thank you very much for your time today. I know you've you've been sitting here a long time as it is. So I you'll be happy to know. I know Mr. Penn will be happy to know that I am going to streamline my what was my presentation here and try to move through this as quickly as possible, especially given the very capable and comprehensive job that staff has done thus far. Once again, my name is John Woodall. I represent the applicant in this matter of the RTA Family Trust. On with me today is our landscape architect and engineer from Banks Engineering, Greg Smorestad, and also Celia Moore from Integrity Architecture. I don't know that she's been promoted, but I would appreciate it if she was. Okay, we'll do that. Like I said, I'm going to move quickly through my comments. I think it is important for me just to share a brief history of this particular property, both these properties, 1009 and 1017 Wellington Way. My client came to these properties in 2013, actually. And I've done a pretty comprehensive review of the history of these properties, as well as having lived on that side of town, watched that area change over the years. In fact, in 1988, about the time that Dunbar, Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School was coming online, you know, both of these properties were actually zoned R3. And that was my understanding to accommodate the La Petite daycare center that was there. and of course at that time you know the daycare center and this is reflected in the 2013 zone change minutes there were anywhere from 100 to 200 children in that daycare facility at that time which drove a lot of traffic to that area and in fact you had Palomar subdivision coming online Fort Harrods or Harrods Hills and Harrods View those areas so there was clearly a need for that that use is no longer there. The daycare center is no longer there. And actually in 2002, the 1017 Wellington Way property was actually zoned P1. So when my client came to the property, it was part of it was 1009, I believe it was, was zoned at R3. And then 2017 was P1. Then in 2013, this commission rezoned the property to a B1 zone, which it is now. And I bring all that up just from the standpoint of it's important to have an understanding of that, given a couple of the concerns that were raised by the neighborhood relating to traffic and the height of our proposed buildings. We've tried from the very beginning phases of this to interact with the neighborhood and those that were concerned about this particular development so that we could take those concerns into account as well as those of staff. And I can tell you, I know our team has tried to do the very best job we could do to make changes along the way to accommodate those concerns. When these properties were zoned B1 in 2013, there was also a variance that was part of that, which led to an approval of a 40 foot or 45 feet tall building at the overall roof line. Okay. And then also, and then 55 feet for what, to what we call the signature features. There were going to be some parapet walls and so forth that would, would block the HVAC equipment on top of these office buildings and retail buildings. But so we had 45 feet and 55 feet. What we envision today and what you saw from the slides is a building that's actually 40 feet to the roof line. The guardrail system that would go around the building would actually go to about 43 and a half feet, and then your roof access points would go to about 50 feet. So we're lower than what we were approved for back in 2013. As to the traffic counts, I can't do a better job than Mr. Emmons just did. That was a really informative presentation. And I mean, the bottom line is our traffic counts are anywhere from 50 to 75% below where we would have been with our currently approved development. So that's also an improvement, which brings us to the current request, which is to rezone the property to an R4. And why are we doing that? Well, I mean, I think the development community has been tasked pretty clearly with providing appropriate infill, you know, within the urban service boundary in order to reduce expansion or the pressure of expansion into our rural areas. It's just that simple. And this is clearly a optimal infill site. We're looking to put 88 units on this site. and like Mr. Martin made clear we've addressed had to address some concerns about how we were going to move our our tenants and folks around to get you know obviously one of the attractions of this particular development would be its proximity to Palomar Shopping Center to the gym facilities and restaurants in the nearby area and so moving those folks safely to Those places are a big concern, and that's something we've had to tackle and we have tackled. That crosswalk, that's something I think you'd also see in two places in Southland, on Southland Drive, by Marica's and then up closer to the gas station, or excuse me, up closer to Ziki's. as far as where we fit within the comprehensive 2018 comprehensive plan as Mr. Bailey made clear we meet several of those goals and objectives I'm not going to go through all those again I would simply concur in his remarks and would once again note the staff has recommended approval of our request as as your zoning committee we're appreciative of those recommendations and uh you know our work we realize our work's not over uh if our zone change approved or the next the next task we're going to have is to is to uh you know land this and and uh solve a problem with the with the bus stop for that for that part of the community and i think we've done that and we'll just need to finalize it uh last couple highlights i had a a PowerPoint presentation to go through, but frankly, just out of respect for you, I'm just going to boil it down to this. You know, the concerns that we heard from the neighborhood, you know, right up, right up to this week are, you know, Celia's office and, and, and Greg's office have tried to deal with neighborhood representatives that have a contract background to explain to them our plans, how tall our building really is, and what we envisioned for this location. Traffic was a big issue, and I think we've shown that our proposed development is a lot less impediment or imposition from a traffic standpoint than what we have approved there now. The height of the building is, as I said, some five feet lower, both at the roof line and the roof access points. Lighting was an issue, especially for the folks that live back on Palomar Trace Drive. And so what we've done is kind of go, we went back to the drawing board on that to come up with a light product and a ballast that would not project light on in the vicinity of those homes. And we've done that. The landscape buffer that you were shown a slide of, or our landscape plan, we intend to go well above and beyond what the landscape regulations would call for in order to properly screen those properties. What we're looking at actually is an evergreen tree in closer proximity, which would further complement what's already there. So the other thing that we're really mindful of, some of the comments we heard from neighbors right off the bat was, well, where's your pool going to be? And, you know, I don't want to look at that. We're worried about that over the fence and what that might entail, but we don't have one and we're not going to have one. We put the congregational area for the most part on the roof. The lighting will be controlled from up there. This is a, you saw the renderings of the project. It's a nice project, high end, and we're really proud of it and the work that we've done here. And really, really, once again, appreciate staff's continuing open door policy to work with us to try to make the best development possible, not only for our client or my client, but for the community at large. But I'll conclude my remarks right there and entertain questions if you have any. Thank you, Mr. Woodall. Any questions for Mr. Woodall? Carol, Ms. Plumlee? You're muted, Ms. Plumlee. I'll be glad we get back in person I was just sitting here and chuckling almost the roof that sounds like fun but do people go overboard what's up there to keep them from that's a play area and do people get over joyous and that's a good question there will be a guardrail and protective devices to keep them to keep people on the right side of it thank you yes ma'am any other questions for mr woodall or the two first people with him it's more and more stood mr chair um if i can for just as a clarification, the document for the conditions associated with the development plan are now within your Google Drive. You would find it with the case number at the end. Okay. Thank you, Hal. Any further questions for the applicant? Anybody in the audience want to comment at this time? Do we have anybody that wants to? Mr. Michael Burns. Okay, thank you very much. It's come to my attention that someone in the community has suggested that I might be conflicted in any need to recuse myself. But in order not to be a distraction, I'd like to go ahead and make a statement, if that's okay. Okay, that's fine. I think we can get that on the table. Okay, I will not recuse myself from PLN MAR21-0001, RTA Trust, and PLN MJDP 21-0005, Schroer Property, 1009 and 1017 Wellington Way. I do not have any financial interest in the project, nor will I derive any financial benefit from the project in any way. I also do not have any association with any of the parties involved that will impede my ability to hear the case and make an objective and fair decision supported by the facts presented today. Thank you. Thank you, Bruce. Any further questions for the applicant? If not, we're going to move on to the business comments. comments for or against either way. Okay. Our first raised hand is Doug Martin. Mr. Martin, we will allow you to speak now. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the Planning Commission. My name is Doug Martin. I own an office condominium at 1031 Wellington Way, which is immediately adjacent to the project. I am a property owner that's actually closest to this property than probably any other owner. My office is directly beside where the property is, and it's going to be closer than the properties in back, in fact. I practiced commercial real estate law for 32 years. I practiced in several of Kentucky's largest firms. And so my comments today are both experienced and as a private landowner, condominium owner next door. The first thing I wanted to do is, I guess, object to the notice, because there's no instructions in the notice for logging on to Zoom. There's no meeting ID. There's no code in the public notice that was sent out on February 1st. And there's no disclosure that the public has an opportunity to comment. So I did want to make that objection. The staff's statements regarding the 2018 comprehensive plan, some of these I guess I object to and take issue with. 1A says that the proposed development will accommodate the demand for housing in an area that is primarily single-family detached and duplex dwelling. This is just not accurate. This is a primarily B1 commercial. It is in P1 professional office. I'm in professional office space. Sedona Tap House is in, I believe, B1 commercial. There is residential immediately to the rear, but it's not accessible either by car without going all the way down the block and back or on foot and so to say that this is part of a you know a residential area just simply is an after you might as well have a 50-foot wall between this project and the in the property and back it is not accessible and therefore it's not pedestrian friendly at all you just can't get there from here the second thing is that it's uh that it says supporting supporting the proposed rezoning will support infill, which it does, and I support infill, and will add to a well-designed neighborhood. I would take exception to that. This intersection is sort of haphazard, and so in order for all these residents to either go to Palomar, which is supposedly an amenity for these folks, you have to pass through this intersection with all these cars coming off of Harrisburg Road, and I I have known Mr. Emmons for a great deal of time. I have enormous respect for Jimmy Emmons. However, you can stand out there at 530 and see the flood of cars coming off of Harrodsburg Road. And as someone who goes to Palomar, for example, I can't get back to my office through that intersection. I go all the way around to the other side of Palomar by the McDonald's and come back, come up Lion Drive and come up Wellington that way. because you just can't get a left turn out of Palmar most of the day because of the number of cars that are coming off of Harrisburg Road. So I don't believe this is well designed, and I don't believe it complies of the 2018 comprehensive plan. Section C says the proposed rezoning will achieve an effective and comprehensive transportation system by developing a safe pedestrian crossing along Wellington Way. I realize this is a, you know, having the walk island in the middle of Wellington Way is cool, but once you cross it, you can't get anywhere. Palomar Shopping Center, and particularly the Panera and the LA Fitness, aren't pedestrian friendly. They're going to be walking in roadways for people from this development to get down to Palomar. And so it is not walkable and it is not pedestrian friendly. and the proposed pedestrian island is going to actually block the left turn lane from cars coming off of Harrisburg Road to go to LA Fitness, which is a huge source of traffic. And so I don't think that is going to work as well as you think it is. And again, it says the proposed rezoning allows for positive and safe social interactions in the neighborhood. And as I mentioned before, the property just isn't accessible to any neighborhood. You can't get to the residential property and back. They can't get over here. And so there's not this sort of neighborhood interaction that the comprehensive plan contemplates. This is a high-density residential building in the middle of offices. Now, with my office directly adjacent to this, I'm going to be the one subject to noise and the additional cars. So the Planning Commission approved a Sedona tap house up this little service road. Those employees park in my parking lot. And I'm the president of the Wellington Condominium Office Association. And so we get six to ten employees parking in our parking lot every day. And it was worse when COVID wasn't going on. And so I know that this development is going to put more people over into our parking lot. So we're going to get spill off. We're going to have a negative impact on this building. If you are inclined to improve it, I would appreciate if you would require a six-foot fence along the entire border with our property to try to minimize some of the noise. and people's kind of parking over there and running back to their apartments. So I don't think staff is requiring the project to have enough parking. I think we're already seeing that with the Sedona Taphouse. And I think that intersection is going to be tougher to get through than maybe Mr. Emmons might have to conclude. And again, I respect Jimmy, but I see this every day. and the cars flood off of Harrodsburg Road. So I appreciate the opportunity to speak. And oh, I'm sorry, let me ask one last thing. The height of the building, and this has been said in previous meetings that because the LA Fitness is approximately the same size, that that makes this building okay. Well, the LA Fitness, which I'm looking at outside my window, backs up behind Palomar Shopping Center. And so it is what, maybe 80, 100 feet from the road. It is fairly far from any adjacent building. You've got the Panera next door to it, and you have one of the applicant's previous buildings across a very wide parking lot, very open parking lot. So I don't think there's anything quite as high in close proximity as this building will be to my building. And it will tower over what we have here. Mr. Chair, members, I appreciate your time. Thank you for allowing me to comment. Thank you, Mr. Martin. Anybody else who wants to speak to this? Next on the list is Butch Schroer. Dr. Schroer, we will allow you to speak now. Hey, I hope, can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Okay, thank you. As this was the Schroeder Development Property, we actually acquired the property in 1988. And my veterinary clinic with the Sedona Restaurant is at in relationship to John Woodall saying it was nice to hear him go through the stages of what's occurred. But I've been an integral in that from the time it was an agricultural property that let me put my veterinary clinic in it. And then we finally moved it to a P1 zone, which I was still permitted to be in. that's the same time that we did and the R3 had been done to be able to put the daycare in as a use because that was all scheduled to be residential back up through there it was never scheduled to be where it is but gradually as as infill has occurred it's gone to that point so and I've been on that where that access point on Palomar Center Drive in the four-way the two-way stop and ongoing traffic and much as Doug says in the evening at 430 to about 530 it's a risk there and Jimmy it's great that we don't have wrecks there but there have been many many near wrecks at that spot and people are moving very slow because it is so awkward to get across there's a it's a five-lane crossing at that intersection to turn left a lane turning left turning into Palomar Drive there's one going through there's one turning left and there's I guess it's probably sits because there's going left and straight and crooked so it's a terrible spot and pedestrian walkway is terrible there is no sidewalk where they're going to put the connection across to get over to Panera and the fitness center that means they got to cross the street again to get over to hell there's just no sidewalk inside Palomar to get over there so Doug's correct on that so the the traffic I can't believe 88 dwelling units are only going to have 39 people come home in the evening during rush hour. And 88 are not going to be 88 cars. They're going to be a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a husband, a wife, at least a half of them. So you're going to have 128 individuals in that property, not just 88 residents. That density is going to be there. And it's going to be bad going out in the morning. It's going to be bad coming in at home. The original development plan that was approved that allowed the property to go in there, the traffic company, the traffic And planners insisted that we had to design that to be able to put a back access to re-access Wellington Way away from the stop sign at the most western edge of the lot. And it's still not put in on this plan, despite objections last time when it got approved to be a B1. You know, they jammed all that right back on top of it. And they've got that road going all the way around the building. And for some reason, they chose to put it into underground parking instead of letting it go on straight and leave, have an egress. Even if it's a right turn only, at least it lets people get away from that stop sign. It's going to be just a bigger mess than we've already continued. And we know it's there. 40 foot is totally out of line for that building space. I know it's down less than the 45 and the 55 before, but we were all standing there objecting to that. and it managed to get through with illegitimate engineering saying they were going to be able to go over a 12-foot drop to exit over in the lot next door back there. So I disagree with access points and traffic. I think it's going to be very dangerous. The walkway across is great to be able to cross there, but then you've got no place to go. So great to have it, but it's all talking point. It's not really an effective way for them to be able to get over to the Palomar Center. because when they get there, they're still trapped, but those sidewalks go in the place. So, Doug, I appreciate your comment. I do own lot 2012 right behind the property. It actually touches the back corner of the parking lot. I've got a proposed house to go in there at some point in time when I finally get enough money and try to build another house on myself. But I'm very much affected independently by property that I own that touches the property. I don't want to have another 40-foot building up, setting up their hide, and I'd rather have green space. and I know they're talking about putting plantings in. But when you look at the drawing, how much room do you have to put a tree in there? You got the curb line right up for the property line to be able to put anything that's going to cover. I saw you, John. It does there. I mean, look at it. How much has you got five foot to put a tree in? Between the curb and the property line back there, between the property, the residential houses behind it? How big is the tree going to be? To be able to grow any size, be able to cover. And then the green space, you put 7,400 square foot of green space on the roof. Green space is supposed to be for everybody to enjoy. We're going to see parking lot down where we're at. We're not going to see green space. How's that count for green space for everybody else in the community when you stick it on top of a roof? Mr. Starr, I want you to direct your comments to us. Mr. Woodall, can you... Well, you're hearing my complaints. I know John's... I really wasn't saying that to him. The only one was John decided to say that's not true. So I thought it was an important point out when you look at the plan, at least the plans we get to see, because they don't really have measurements show what the surface is. But if you're going to put a tree of any substance to be able to try to get a buffer between anybody, you've got to have a place for the foliage in the tree to come in. Otherwise, you can't park underneath that. So I think traffic is going to be more impacted than Jimmy says. I just they've got one access point, 88 units, high density. There's nothing any, they're jumping from single family to an R4 density. That's too dense an infill for that property. And it needs another egress point off the property. So I appreciate it, guys. I waited all afternoon. I'm practicing. I appreciate y'all's time. Y'all have been here all day. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Stark. All right. Who else do we have here? Mr. Walsh? Yes. Next up, we have Mr. Walsh. Mr. Walsh, we're going to allow you to speak now. and mr walsh was granted five minutes mr walsh before you start i want to see you come on and then we'll talk to you in a minute mr walsh won't be appearing on video as most of our opponents don't but he should be able to have audio can you hear me now mr walsh are you with us yes ma'am mr walsh before you start i know you've asked for extra time and uh we're going to grant you five minutes, but please don't be redundant of what you've heard. I know you've been listening and try to give us as much new information as you can. I will do my best. I have prepared remarks, much of which has been touched on by Mr. Martin and by Mr. Schroyer, but I've worked very hard on this and I would still like to share that with the commission. And I apologize for any redundancy and do appreciate in advance the extra time. But I also submitted some information to the commission yesterday that included photos and some descriptions where this plan fails to meet provisions of the Visions for Neighborhoods section of the 2018 Comprehensive Plan. It creates problems and imposes restrictions on the immediate vicinity. And the catalyst for all these problems is the zone change from professional business to high density residential. The proposed structure is out of place and obtrusive. It will not seamlessly blend with surrounding structures due to significant contrasts in scale. This is in conflict with design policy number four, provide development that is sensitive to the surrounding context and density policy too. In-field residential should enhance existing neighborhoods through context-sensitive design. Second, with regards to traffic, it does create additional traffic problems. Because there's only one way for vehicles to access the property, it disperses traffic of the entire area on one road and overburdens it. And that one road happens to be the shortest and most narrow artery of the congested intersection we've heard a lot about already. We know that road services four existing businesses with traffic from employees, customers, and large service vehicles, including tractor-trailer trucks, delivery vans, and landscapers with equipment trailers. Mr. Bailey's photo of that section showed trash cans in front of the Chase Bank. That's an area where a lot of these vehicles stopped to do their work, blocking one of the only two lanes on this narrow road impeding the existing traffic. So dispersing all of the traffic from the subject property onto this short and narrow road will only make things worse, especially for fire service and EMS vehicles. And this contradicts design policy 13 and design policy number two. Third, Third, despite the proximity to surrounding restaurants and retail, the plan does not provide a safe way for people to move to those locations. While it's been mentioned before, existing sidewalks displace pedestrians into roadways before they reach any surrounding restaurants or retail, or it forces them through hedges, landscaping, or uneven terrain. This is hazardous and unsafe. The only true pedestrian access to the Palomar Center is off of Manowar Boulevard between the McDonald's and Old Kentucky Chocolates, and that's a half-mile walk from the subject property. This contradicts design policy five in terms of pedestrian-friendly street patterns. The proposed solution to this, the median block crossing, is a type 2 traffic calming device, and installing one on a collector street is prohibited by traffic policy without a detailed and extensive approval process. Installing this where it's proposed is going to significantly disturb traffic movement on a collector street, especially when a Lexitran bus is stopped there. And moving that bus stop up or down Wellington to accommodate the device simply creates other line of sight and safety issues for vehicles. And additionally, the median block imposes a barrier that restricts customer access to the fitness center, Panera, and other businesses on Wellington. maintaining this property's neighborhood business zone and pursuing a plan consistent with that zone offers many more advantages for the vicinity it maintains and enhances the established and successful commercial corridor envisioned when wellington way was first extended from harrisburg to lion drive it provides the opportunity to leverage the strength of an effective collector Street by adding vehicle access from the property to Wellington Way, which in turn allows for a more appropriate size structure that is not out of place or obtrusive. A safe and effective pedestrian system is already in place and connected to hundreds of homes in surrounding neighborhoods. Thus, there is no need for a traffic device that conflicts with traffic policies. This plan is not conscientiously or carefully directed growth and it does not meet key provisions of the 2018 comprehensive plan. I ask that you please vote to reject this own change in development plan. I apologize for the redundancies and do appreciate the allowance for extra time. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your comments and thank you for your observations. Anyone else? I don't have any additional hands at this time. Okay. As we move forward with this, then we'll move into the rebuttal and closing statements. Mr. Woodall? Yes, sir. Mr. Penn, thank you all once again. If you don't mind, I just want to share my screen with you very quickly. Can you see a picture that says height of building? Yes. It's not a picture, too. My boy's playing baseball, is it? No. No. Okay, good. That graphic right there is just meant to show you, in terms of context, what the height of the structures are around us. You can see the CHI health building is 36 feet tall. Taekwondo, which is behind us, is 20 feet. The office structures that Mr. Martin talked about is 30 feet. And as Mr. Bailey alluded, the homes on Palomar Trace Drives are 35. That's actually seven feet taller than our finished floor. I mean, so we're going to be seven feet below them due to the grade change. LA Fitness is just two feet taller than our roof line. And so those are the structures in the closest proximity to the proposed building. so with that I want to once again thank staff for their recommendation of approval as well as the zoning committee we appreciate that recommendation are willing to live by the conditions we've got to date I know we've still got a development plan process to go through but we are indeed in in concert with the 2018 comprehensive plan and many of the themes therein and we would respectfully request that you grant our request for this zone change and I thank you very much for your attentiveness through this. I know you've been here a long time today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Woodall and for the people that have made the comments. They understand this is a preliminary development plan and they've heard their concerns and that process will go forward. We do have another hand raised from the attendees. Mr. Penn, would you have to recognize someone? Well, we've already moved past that. Do you want to go back and pick them up? I didn't see that. Did it just come up? Yes. I'm going to let us have one more person who wants to speak to this. I know we've already gone past that, but I hate to have to give that person an opportunity. So, Mr. Woodall, if that person raises something that you need to respond to, we'll give you the opportunity to respond to that. that's fine thank you I've had a hard time hearing anything Mr. Schroeder said frankly well this is not Mr. Schroeder this is okay okay thank you we will allow Lee Jen Wright to speak now you can go ahead can you hear me I can you have you have three minutes all right I won't take that long I just wanted to point out a couple of things really quickly We keep talking about the height of the building, which is my main concern. I'm a resident on Palomar Trace Drive. And the 36-foot height of the St. Joe building that we're referencing, that building is well below grade of the subject property we're talking about. So, you know, if we were to look at the building as the height of the building is viewed from the neighborhood, the St. Joe building is sunk down into the ground well below the neighborhood. And I can see that building from my front door. I walk outside my front door every day and I have a three-story building in my front yard, and I did not object to that infill project. But having a four-story apartment building that is the land on that site is a much higher grade than these other reference properties we're talking about. And I don't think that's doing justice to compare the site, you know, the height of this four-story property to some of these other properties just from the ground up to the top of the building. It doesn't represent what we think it represents, if that makes sense. And I just wanted to make that comment. I appreciate the time. No problem. Thank you, sir, for your comments. Mr. Woodall, are you okay with that? Yes, sir. I had no further comments. All right. We'll move on to the staff rebuttal. I'm sorry, sir. You have another hand raised. Oh. This is also not a repeat, so I don't want you to allow people to come back to the podium. Yeah, we certainly can't have repeaters, but I think this is a new one, as you consider it is. Well, I've done it for once. I hate to do it for two. I hope this doesn't continue, but let's try one more, then I'm going to have to cut this off. People are late coming to the party. We'll allow Joey Nolasco to speak now. You can go ahead. Joey's with me. He's with the applicant. Oh, okay. He just put his hand up. Yeah, I think he's just trying to stand. And if I did, I'm sorry. Go ahead, continue. I'm trying to walk through an airport, so I may accidentally raise my hand. I'm sorry. All right, that's no problem. Now we are going to move to Stafford butler. That's the end of the public comment. Go ahead. All right. Thank you very much, sir. I just wanted to clarify just a few things about the site to provide a little bit more information that we did not kind of drive home earlier in our conversation. There was a question about the amount of parking. This site will have 112 parking spaces, both with the surface lot and underground parking. That meets the ordinance for our multifamily residential. So we're not overly concerned with this site being under parked, as our regulations for multifamily are typically higher. With the six-foot fence that was mentioned by Mr. Martin, typically within a P1 to R4 transition, there is the opportunity for a six-foot tall fence between properties. It's considered part of the property perimeter screening that is outlined within the zoning ordinance. And if the applicant were to shrink their landscape buffering to five feet, they would be required to have that six-foot fencing. That is also something that can be discussed at a greater amount with the final development plan. There is also a difference between open space and vegetated or green space required within the zoning ordinance is just open space. In this case, the applicant is achieving that. From a zone change perspective, they are doing a significant amount of activation of the front space that is the front setback. that is meant to be a little bit more neighborhood driven. With the production of more walkable space, this applicant is trying to make that connection between the north side of Wellington Way and Palomar Center Drive and the Palomar Center Shopping Center. But they can't make the changes on someone else's property. As you know, when new development comes through, we really do push for any change or enhancement of pedestrian infrastructure. And we would see this as being a move in the right direction for connecting things for the most safe way possible for members of our community. And finally, we do anticipate, as Mr. Emmons kind of talked about, traffic at 530, between 530 or 5 and 6 o'clock, being our toughest traffic during the day. So there will be slowdowns. This is adding traffic, but from a planning perspective, the roadways are able to carry that capacity. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions, but that's all staff has for any clarification and final remarks. Ms. Wade? Yes. I appreciate Mr. Bailey hitting the specifics for this case with his rebuttal, but I want to be sure to address the objection that Mr. Martin raised regarding the public notice. Obviously, we have public hearings every month, and during this time with our COVID restrictions, working in a video teleconference setting, it's a bit more difficult. And so our regular notice letters tell people to go to 200 East Main Street, which is the time or the place of the hearing and a time. Unfortunately, with the teleconference set up, we have to set up a new webinar ID every single time we have a meeting. There's not a static address. And so our notice letters do not include the web meeting ID or password. but those are made available on the agenda for each meeting and included in the mailings we sent out is a form for every mailing that it changes colors but it says the same information about how to participate in the hearing which directs you to the city calendar and the division of planning website to get the information to participate in that particular date of a hearing and so we're We're glad that Mr. Martin was able to follow those steps that we've identified in the notice letter and participate today in our public hearing. Thank you. Is there any petitioners? Do you have anything else you want to add, Ms. Woodall? No, sir. Thank you once again. All right. Thank you. Citizen objections. Does any of the citizens want to have a comment before we close this out and bring it back to the commission? Mr. Walsh has some points. Mr. Walsh, we'll allow you to speak now. I would just like to add that some of the tall buildings that were being referenced in the immediate vicinity, specifically 1031, 1055 Wellington, they also started a much lower elevation. They were built to a residential scale. And the 3581 office building is not really visible until you get to the very top of Palomar Trace Drive. And that building was done with complete involvement with the community. And that applicant involved every single person on the property. This particular property, I've been involved in public hearings since the first one in 2012 that Mr. Woodall referenced. And I had one-on-one conversations with Christine Westover about some of the same issues, traffic, tall buildings. there was another plan where Jacob Walburn acknowledged that a three-story building was out of place with the neighborhood and that a one-story building was more in character I reached out to him I got a call back from somebody in his office with a message just saying that I needed to talk to the planning department. No one from this particular plan did as good a job reaching out and involving people that are going to be impacted this plan. They could have done a much better job. That was done when Sedona Taphouse and 3581 were built. It didn't happen here. One other comment about the pedestrian median block, a reference was made to Southwind Drive. This street, Wellington, is shorter, curvier, and hillier and narrower than Southwind Drive. I don't think it will be effective. and there's a different set of rules if a community member had gone to the traffic engineering department and suggested this they would have to follow the much more detailed set of procedures i don't know that that has been done and the best way not to require a pedestrian immediate block is not to put a high density apartment building on that property in a commercial corridor. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Rupp. All right, staff comments? Are you okay, Al? No, we've covered all that we needed to clarify and Ms. Wade clarified some other things that I think are very important. All right, fine. Then we'll close this part of the hearing. We'll bring back to the commission for any comments and or motions we'll do the zone change first carol thank you mr chair um i certainly empathize with the neighbors of this is a thorn thorn in their neighborhood at this point um i also see the staff's recommendations as being on target. So this is a difficult decision. I think all the participants at this point were coming forth and expressing their opinion. Again, it's tough for the neighborhoods to digest what just needs to happen in certain parts of our city as we do in fill and redevelopment. Thanks. Any other comments? And or motion? Mr. Wilson? Yeah, Mr. Chairman, I'll preface my motion by saying that I'm sort of in line with what Mrs. Plumlee was saying. You know, there is a difference between the theoretical and the practical. When someone does traffic studies, of course, they do it from a theoretical perspective. But when you're sitting in the middle of that mess, it does have a tendency to have a tremendous impact on you. That's the first observation. The second observation is that the issue of traffic is always a relative thing, depending upon where you are, where you live, and where you work. But I'm respectful of the comments that have been made about the traffic situation, as well as the crossing over that path where people have to cross over the pedestrians to get to the Palomar Center. But we also, as a part of the Planning Commission, put ourselves in somewhat of a bind by emphasizing as we have the infield development. And thinking in terms of that, this is very much consistent with what we've put forth in our 2018 comprehensive plan and in previous plans. But with that said, I'm going to make a motion to actually approve of RTA Family Trust Zoning Map Amendment of Shora Properties Lots 3 and 4 Zoning Development. That is PLN MAR 21-1 RTA Family Trust. For the reason provided by staff? Yes, that's what I was getting ready to say. For the conditions provided by staff. Okay, is there a second to that motion? Mr. Bell, thank you. All in favor of approving Mr. Wilson's motion, raise your hand or wave at me. All opposed? Thank you. Mr. Wilson, would you do the development plan, please, sir? Sure. I move that we approve of PLNMJDP 21-5, Shore Property Slots 3 and 4, for the reasons provided by staff. Second, Mr. Bale. All in favor, wave at me. Thank you, Mr. Woodall. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all so much. Are you voting, Carolyn? No, I voted against it, actually. Okay, thank you. Just to clarify, on both the zone change and the... Yes, yes. It was tough, but that's what I'm doing. Thanks. That's fine. Thank you. All right. Mr. Bailey. Y'all have a great weekend. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll go ahead and we'll move on to our next application. One second. I'm just pulling up my PowerPoint right now. Bear with me. And Mr. Penn, I just want to make sure I feel as if we've lost a few people on screen. And I don't want to start before I know that we have a quorum. Well, Ms. Barksdale had to leave. Our chairman had to leave. But currently we only have five on screen. Do we just need a break? What happened to Mr. Plumlee and Mr. Davis? What happened to Mr. Plumlee and Mr. Davis? Let's take a five minute break. Can we do it? We can get everybody back on. Can we do it in three or four minutes? Let's see if we can get them back on. I'll go ahead and share my screen and get through this PowerPoint for you. All right, sir. On what page are we on? Oh, I'm sorry about that. We are heading over to, I believe that it's our, close to our last page. This is page eight, item number four. This is the Miller and Collins property, LLC, PLNMAR 21-00004. As much of the conversation that we will be having is focused on some of the conditional zoning restrictions, as well as the variance request. I will try to move quickly but still hit all the points that are important through this application. We are looking at a proposed rezoning for two properties located at 804 through 808 and 805 Newtown Circle. The applicant is seeking a zone change to shift from the B1 for the property that's located at 805 to the I1 and the B4 for the property that is located at 804 through 808 to the I-1 for approximately 4.82 net and 8.80 gross acres. The applicant is seeking to reuse the established buildings that are already there with all the established kind of accoutrement and go ahead and use it for an I-1 use. They're seeking greater flexibility. With an I-1 use, there is only one recommended place type and development type. That is the Industrial and Production Center and the Industrial and Production Center non-residential. Just getting a look at where we're located, we have Newtown Pike running here and then Newtown Circle. It is a small cul-de-sac that extends off of Newtown Pike just to the west. It's located between the Newtown Pike intersection with Nandino Boulevard located right here and New Circle Road located right down here. We'll zoom in. If you look at the various different type of land uses, we are focused on everything to the north and to the west as being light industrial, everything to the east as being more commercial. There is a small portion of agricultural urban land that is located to the north and east of the subject property, and that is currently owned by Lexmark property, and it was at one point in time connected almost to the zone change that you heard some months back. Just another look at the aerial. This gives you an idea of some of the land use that has taken place over time. For the properties located along Nandito, you are really seeing the warehousing operations and shops of specialty trade with the light industrial. There is some small production. But when you get over to Newtown Pike, you have the gas station or the BP station and the convenience store associated with it located on the north of Newtown Circle, a office building that is located just south of Newtown Circle that is owned by this same entity, and then these two properties that we are discussing today. The long zone line that takes us all the way out New Circle Road just helps us make sure that every part of our county has some zoning. Jumping into the site itself, you can take a look at the top photo. You can see the three different buildings, 805 located right here, 804, and then 808 in the back. The aerial view gives you a little bit better of an idea of how this site is being utilized. A fair amount of parking surrounding a couple of buildings that are currently being used for a mix of warehousing and office or primarily office. On this photo right down in the bottom left you can look towards Newtown Pike along Newtown Circle. Again this just gets into that this is the type of police type and development type that the applicant is seeking to utilize. It is really focused on trying to provide jobs and intense development. So those are some really important aspects of this application is that they are seeking to provide flexibility, but we are really focused with any type of application like this on making sure that we get the most amount of jobs from a ship to an industrial redevelopment. The app can stress that within their application, and that does impact some of the conditional zoning restrictions. So there is our recommended zone. It is within the recommended its own as a light industrial high one zone. The proposed development is seeking to keep things very, very similar. There is some moderate changes that they're proposing with this, which are tied, actually, mostly tied to the variance request. What we're seeing with this property is just the addition of some parking down here. There were some initial concerns as to why the applicant needed so much parking. The applicant clarified that they are seeking to utilize a lot of these as office warehouse type spaces, which are allowable within the zoning ordinance. And they kicked the requirement of the required parking up a bit. And it matches some of what they're proposing here. If you look at this section right here, this is actually the location of the variance request and has led to a fair amount of conversation as to why the applicant is adding some more tree coverage. When it comes to the conditional zoning restrictions that are being proposed for this zone change, staff was really concerned with three main aspects. The first being the Royal Springs Aquifer. As you can see right here, the Royal Springs Aquifer expense from Scott County into Fay County. There is a committee or a commission that looks at some of these developments and adds restrictions. The applicant will be meeting with that committee sometime next week. However, whenever we're looking at an industrial use coming into these types of areas, we are concerned about the potential infiltration into some of the Royal Springs aquifer. This has led to the establishment of conditional zoning restrictions. These restrictions that are being proposed here today are in line with the various other conditions that we have put on plans or that staff has recommended for zone changes over the past couple of years. It is consistent with what you have seen from late last year, and it was consistent with a fair amount of other, the restrictions that we're recommending are consistent with a fair amount of the other zone changes you've heard over the past 10 years. So I just want to hammer home the consistency aspect of that. The two other aspects of this application that we're really focused on is Newtown Pike as being a corridor or a gateway into our city. We want to make sure that those uses that are going in here are not negatively impacting our gateway into the city. We have, as a city and as a community, spent a fair amount of time and money trying to promote this as a beautiful entryway into our downtown. Associated with the Newtown Pike is also the fact that it is located along our identified freight route or freight corridor route. In the map on the bottom left, you can see under the 922, there is a red line that indicates that this is a type one category of freight corridor, which is our most intense. This is meant to bring individuals or freight from our highway system, 75 and 64, into the city and access those lots that are appropriately located as well as appropriately zoned. You can see it cuts over to New Circle Drive, which is just south of here. We want to make sure that any type of industrial development that is occurring on this site is going to be promoting some of that freight network, connecting and making sure that we're utilizing that land that is located appropriately to the greatest extent possible. With the recommendation of conditional zoning restrictions, which I will touch on in just a second, and with the applicant's justification, the staff is recommending approval for this zone change to a restricted light industrial zone, as it is in agreement with the 2018 comprehensive plan, as it is focused on creating jobs and prosperity and allowing for the creation of a variety of different types of jobs. which can lead to the prosperity for all. The proposed rezoning will improve opportunities for small businesses that can move into the space that is being provided here and exceed the intensity that is typically found within a B4 or a B1 use. Finally, the proposed rezoning will also reduce the pressure on the urban service area by allowing for a greater utilization of the subject properties, which are currently underutilized for their location along the Newtown Pipe Freight Corridor route. In association with the development criteria, staff finds that their rezoning is in line with the development criteria for site design, building form, and urban layout, as well as the location, as well as the transportation and pedestrian connectivity. The proposed rezoning meets the criteria for green space and with the proposed increase in canopy coverage will really meet the essence of what is required by the zoning ordinance as well. As I said before, staff is recommending the utilization of conditional zoning restrictions. This is to promote those jobs that are really sought for in this area, protect the Newtown Pipe Corridor as a gateway into Lexington and protect the wellhead or the Royal Springs aquifer as laid out in the joint agreement between Georgetown and Lexington. So those prohibited uses that fall under these categories or the rationale for restricting them are the self-storage warehousing, outdoor storage, billboards, all above and underground storage tanks, which Mr. Murphy will talk about in his presentation, on-site disposal of any hazardous waste materials, mining of metallic minerals, and or radium extraction. Staff stresses that all, this also includes that all establishments and facilities that store or transport hazardous materials shall be designed to provide special containment facilities and shall have emergency response plans approved by the hazmat regulator as necessary. As per all zone change cases, this is contingent upon the certification and approval or the approval and certification of PLN, MJDP 21-13, Newtown Distribution Center, Lots 1 and 2 as amended, which Ms. Hedge will talk about in just a second. That was a quick overview of just the zone change. If you have any questions on that, I'd be happy to answer them now. I'll also be coming back to quickly discuss the variance request. Any questions for Mr. Bailey? All right. Thank you. I'll turn it over to Ms. Hedge. Okay, thank you. Good afternoon. So this plan is on page 10 at the top of that page. MJDP-21-13 Newtown Distribution Center, Lots 1 and 2. Al's already said that this is located 804 through 808 and 805 Newtown Circle. And you can see the three existing buildings shown in purple on the plan. Of course, this plan is dependent upon the county council doing the zone change to the I-1 zone. And we do have a few of our typical sign-offs, the county engineer, traffic engineering, and urban forestry, and the landscape examiner. There are a few cleanup items on this plan, two of which have actually been addressed by the applicant already. The purpose of plan refers to this as a minor plan that just needs to be changed to major. And we do still have some property boundary dimensions that are missing. They've just kind of not been copied well over the years. The driveway entrance widths, I believe, have been added to this. You can see that on the rendering driveways into each section around the cul-de-sac. And we do need that the note six corrected to include chapter 16 of the code of ordinances. Of course, the planning commission will have to approve the requested variants of the landscape buffer area. And on the plan, you can see those permeable pave, actually it's worded as permeable pavement has been added to this area per the zoning committee's recommendation in that kind of yellow green color. The word future has actually been already removed from the site statistics, so that's been done. And then we just have discussion about the place builder criteria. Okay, and I think we can have that removed at this time. And with that, I'll open it up to the commission any questions. Any questions for Lauren? Lauren, so we are we are removing number 13? Yes. Yeah. So 12 and 13 are being removed? Well 12 has been addressed by the applicant. I guess yeah I guess that can be also be also removed. So 12 and 13 can both be removed. Okay thank you. Any other questions for Lauren? If not, bring the Hal Bailey show back. You didn't let me talk for the first hour and a half, so I got to get it all in. Oh, don't worry, guys. I figured you'd get it. So with this application, the applicant did submit a petition for one-dimensional variance to reduce the required property perimeter requirements between a light industrial I-1 zone and a neighborhood business zone from 15 feet to zero feet and eliminate all landscaping materials. Associated with this, the applicant did have to meet with the Landscape Review Board, and they did make a recommendation of approval subject to a few conditions, which I will talk about here in a second. So just to clarify the location of this variance request, it's specifically between 804 and 808 and then 1051 right here. This is the Newtown Circle and this is Newtown Pike. It's this area right here. So what is happening is with the increase in the zoning intensity, it brought into conflict the fact that we have differential zoning between the two. Now, there is a bit of a complication in the fact that this land is utilized as their access easement between the two properties, allowing for access to the rear of this building, but also allowing for parking and access into the rear for 808 Newtown Circle. So what they are asking for is essentially the reduction to nothing of the buffer and then removing all of that landscaping material. The Landscape Review Board did say that this was appropriate as it is established. However, did have concerns that by eliminating all of the landscape materials, we were actually giving the applicant the ability not to have any real canopards. coverage or eliminating the need for some of that canopy coverage that is really necessary for industrial style developments and our parking lots. Specifically, they were concerned with the heat island effect that might occur from eliminating some of this tree canopy. So the Landscape Review Board did just say, stated that they needed to provide on this site the same amount of canopy coverage that would have been required with the landscape buffer. So the applicant has shown on their development plan that they are meeting that requirement. You can see the four large trees over in this area, and then they are seeking to include some trees in this area. And staff with that recommendation, and here's just a few photos of that area off to the side, And then also the aerial gives you a better view of what the kind of organization of the site is. Staff is recommending approval of the variance. The staff finds that it will not adversely affect the public health safety or welfare and will not alter the character of the general vicinity and will not cause a harm or nuisance to the public because the layout of the property is not changing as a result of this zone change. The variance will not be an unreasonable circumvention of the requirements of the zoning ordinance because the buildings and the parking on the property were constructed in the mid-80s and have successfully functioned since then. The need for the variance arises from the special circumstance of the proposed development due to the interrelated nature of the properties and the variable zoning between the two properties. Finally, the zoning, the request is not a result of a willful violation of the zoning ordinance. The applicant has taken care to go through the necessary process for this project and has requested the variance during the rezoning process. Associated with that, excuse me, the staff is recommending that this approval be made subject to the following conditions. Of course, it would have to be made subject to the fact that the urban county council approves the requested zone change to I-1. Otherwise, the variance will be null and void. The development plan shall be constructed in accordance with a final development plan, which this is. I do want to stress that this is a final development plan rather than a preliminary. So the applicant will have to have all of these things addressed within a two-week time span. And following the requirements of the divisions of engineering, traffic engineering, or building inspection. All necessary permits shall be obtained from the Division of Planning, Engineering, Building, Inspection prior to construction and occupancy. Action of the Planning Commission shall be noted on the development plan. And then finally, this gets us into E, the applicant shall provide, and that's provide, not proved, it's corrected in your staff report, 4,000 square feet of canopy coverage, which is the average of 10 medium-sized trees utilizing any of the the tree groups, group A, B, or C. During our zoning committee meeting, a motion was made and was recommended and moved forward that a sixth condition be added that should the area of the green space between 804 Newtown Circle and 1051 Newtown Pike be removed for parking, the area be replaced with a permeable pavement. Now, I'll quickly go back. That is this area right here. They are showing parking on their development plan. They have said that they might want parking. They might not want parking. But the zoning committee made the recommendation that should this be replaced with parking if you replace with permeable pavement so with that I'd be happy to answer any questions about the variance request the zone change and and Miss Hedge is also here to answer any questions about the development plan thank you Mr. Bailey now you've heard the the request. Is there any questions about this before we move on? Okay. Is there any people, the applicant, are they represented here today? Yes, sir. They are. Mr. Murphy and Mr. Kevin Phillips are available. We'll promote Mr. Murphy and Mr. Phillips now. Mr. Murphy, glad you could join us. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's been a long afternoon, hasn't it? I'm not going to repeat anything Hal said. We are generally in agreement with their recommendation. We appreciate their review. This is a B1 piece of neighborhood business piece of property without a neighborhood around it to serve. And this will allow a greater range of opportunities for use of the building, as Mr. Bailey mentioned. I'm representing Collins and Miller property. Robbie Collins may be on the call, on the Zoom as well. He's our client and owner of the property. Kevin Phillips and I are representing him. I only wanted to discuss two minor things with the conditions. One of them, the condition on the conditional zoning restriction and the other on one of the conditions on the variance. The conditional zoning restriction, the fourth one prohibits all above ground and underground storage tanks. I was a little concerned about that because I have some experience with working with a company that supplies gas to businesses, containerized gas to businesses. And one thing I learned from that client, he told me, he said, we deliver containers of gas everywhere. We probably deliver them to your office building. He said to me that we deliver them to offices. We deliver them to stores. We deliver them to restaurants. We deliver them to industrial uses. He said gas is used in a wide variety of situations. And we were concerned if we prohibit above ground gases, that would prohibit a number of businesses that might want to go in here, especially medical businesses. use gas. So I think the staff was agreeable if we change that to condition just to prohibit all underground storage tanks on that one. So that's my request just to take out the word above ground and just prohibit below ground underground storage tanks. The second one was on the conditions of approval of the variants. Mr. Pohl, I think this goes to something that you said at the subcommittee meetings, you'd requested that that area be permeable paving if we paved that area next to 804 for parking. And we agreed with that. And it is actually labeled as permeable paving on the development plan. However, this has to do the Royal Spring Wellhead Protection Committee. We're going, we've been scheduled to go there May the 3rd, and I had some preliminary contact with Mr. Chase Azevedo, who's the general manager of the Georgetown Municipal Water and Sewer System, and he also serves as chairman of the Wellhead Protection Committee, and he said that they generally do not approve permeable paving because in case of a spill, it makes containment of the spill much more difficult if it's permeable paving. And as I said, we are agreeable to permeable paving and we'll use it if allowed. I just don't want to get in a situation where we have a development plan approved requiring permeable paving. And we will explain the situation to the Wellhead Protection Committee that this is just a small area, and hopefully they will approve it. But I don't want to get in a situation, if they do not approve it, where we cannot go forward because of conflicting rulings. So I would ask simply that the additional condition that the staff proposed have the wording added to it that says, well, it talks about using permeable paving, but add the words, if approved by the Royal Spring Wellhead Committee on that. That will keep us out of a difficult situation. If they don't approve it, as I said, we are agreeable. We will ask them to approve it. Okay. So that's all I have. I mean, there's a lot more I can say about this, but that's all I need to say, I think, and we'd be happy to answer any questions y'all might have. All right. Before we go to the questions, Kevin, have you got anything you want to add to this? No, sir. Okay, thank you. Questions for the applicant, Mr. Murphy or Kevin, either one. Is Mr. Collins, is he on or is he not on? He is. Would you like to have him promoted? I think you should. Just if he's going to spend his time here, we might as well. Mr. Collins, you should be able to start your audio and video. Hello. Mr. Collins, welcome. Thank you. I don't really have anything else to reiterate other than what Mr. Murphy said, but I'd be happy to answer any questions. That's where I was going. It's time for questions now. I'm glad to have you with us. Maybe you can answer some of these. Any questions for the applicant, Kevin or Mr. Collins, either one, Mr. Murphy? I guess you all did a good job, but it's getting late. I can't figure out which it is. It's both. Okay. I would want to say Kevin has done a great job with the discussions with the staff on this, and Mr. Collins has been very agreeable to those conditions. Thank you all for working with staff. We appreciate it more than we can tell you. Kevin usually does good work, and we're sure glad to have him with us today. Thank you. Thank you. Do you think Mr. Bailey has a clarification? Mr. Bailey, you have a clarification? So, sir, I don't know if we ever stated that staff was agreeable to the above ground. The above ground storage tanks are different from some of the things that Mr. Murphy is describing with medical offices or contained gases. The above ground storage that has been approved in the past or where conditional zoning restrictions have been modified. Thank you.