The Board of Adjustment for June 13. Please take a seat if you can find one. If you can't find one, you're welcome to stand in the back if there's no room. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? No? I want to make sure everybody can hear what I'm saying. Is my microphone working? Is it working now? Everybody take a seat. The first item on the agenda is to approve the minutes of the meeting from May 9th. All the members of the board should have received a copy of the minutes from that meeting. Anybody that didn't receive a copy? If if you got a copy and you've read them and approve them, I'll entertain a motion. So moved. All right. Brandon moves. Jones seconds. All those in favor indicate your vote electronically. Thank you. Anyone who might testify today, we can only hear you testify. You can't hear me. How's that? Is that better in the back? Can you hear me in the back a little bit better? No? Yes, no? No. I can't get any closer to this microphone, and it doesn't extend any further than it does. The microphone is on and the volume is up, so we just need you guys in the audience to be as quiet as possible since there is some distance between him and the mic. That's as high as it goes. If you'll... We started over. We don't know what you spoke about. The only thing I spoke about was I called the meeting to order. We had a motion for the approval of the minutes, which carried. And I reminded people who intend to speak, or if there's a possibility they may speak at this hearing, make sure that you are signed in on the back. If you're not signed in, you can't speak. So make sure, if you intend to speak, that you have signed in on the sign-in sheet in the back. The next thing I'm going to do is to swear in all potential witnesses, Anybody who intends to speak today, would you please stand and raise your right hand? You solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Thank you very much. You may have a seat. You can continue signing in on the back, if you will. we're going to go ahead and proceed with the next item of business. The next item of business is sounding the agenda, and what that means is we go through and make sure that anybody who has an application pending is present, and we also identify the people who may want to speak either in favor or in opposition to that item, or if there are procedural matters to be heard, such as postponing or other matters like that, we will hear those during the sounding of the agenda. And I'll go through the cases individually, one at a time, and we will call them now. The first case is PLN BOA 22-21. Keith Jones, is the applicant present? Thank you, Mr. Jones. Is there anybody who wishes to speak in favor or in opposition to this application? I see none. You'll be first on the docket, Mr. Jones. The next is PLN BOA 22-22 Harper Woods. Is the applicant Harper Woods present? I see a hand in the back. Is there anyone who wishes to speak either in favor or in opposition to the application of Harper Woods? I see no hands raised. The staff has recommended disapproval, so that application will be heard last. It's a contested application, so we'll view that. Hear that at the end of the docket. Mr. Chair, the applicant has indicated that they wish to postpone this request. Okay. Is that correct? Yes. One month to July 11th. Okay. Postpone to July 11th. um that will require a motion of the board uh what's what's the reason for postponing i'm just kind of curious because we've already read through the staff report well staff's against it so we need a little more time to work with them that seems like a valid excuse to me so i'll entertain a motion to postpone is there anyone here in the audience just in case yeah anyone here who wants to hear it today who'd rather hear it today we can hear from those also I see no. Nobody. I move to postpone. Okay. Mr. Grossman, I'll second. Mr. Needham seconds the motion to postpone, and that will appear on our voting screen momentarily. All in favor, indicate your vote electronically. Motion carries. You're postponed to the July meeting. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is PLN VOA 22-25, Oscar and Julie Vargas. Are the applicants present? Okay, I see an applicant's hand raised. Is there anyone who wishes to speak in favor or in opposition to this application of Oscar and Julie Vargas? I see no hands raised. You'll be second on the docket to be heard. The next matter is PLN VOA 22-27, RLV Ventures. Is the applicant present? Applicant is present in the back. Is there anyone who wishes to speak in favor or against or opposed to this application? I see no hands. You'll be next on the docket. The next item are conditional uses, and the first item on conditional use appeals is PLN BOA 22-15, Little Caesars, amended. Is the applicant present? Applicant is present. Is there anyone who wishes to speak in opposition to or in favor of Little Caesars? I see several hands raised. We will mark you as being opposed, and we'll need to hear from those people, and you all will go to the end of the docket. The next item on the agenda is PLNBOA 22-20 New Life Baptist Church. Is the applicant present? In the back, applicant is present. Is there anyone who wishes to speak in favor or against that? I see one hand raised. And this has been recommended for disapproval by the staff, so we will hear you last anyway. So you'll go to the end of the docket. The next item is PLN BOA 22-26, Anderson Communities, Inc. Is the applicant present? Applicant is present. Is there anyone here who wishes to speak in favor or in opposition to the application of Anderson Communities? All I need to do is see your hands. I don't need any vocal reports right now. Thank you very much. This also has been recommended for postponement by the staff. Mr. Murphy, are you aware of the postponement recommendation by staff? It looks like you should be. Yes, sir, and we have taken care of most of the issues the staff has. We filed a plan making some modifications to correct those. Excuse me. We're asking to go ahead and proceed today. The staff, as I understand it, received those modifications on Friday, which is really only one working day from today. So I think it would be probably prudent for us to postpone that on the staff's recommendation. Staff, have you changed your mind about that? No, we have not. We're keeping with postponement. Okay. Staff recommends postponement, and on matters like that, I generally go with the staff's recommendation. Mr. Murphy? I understand the concern. We received the staff report a few days before we filed our revised plan. We quickly made those revisions. The changes we've made are not to the fundamental portion of this. In other words, it's the same location, same number of fields, same amount of parking spaces. We've just refined some of the matters on the development plan in response to their concerns. It's very important for us to go ahead. This is the foundational part of Lexington Sporting Club's plan for their youth athletic facilities. As you know, they're also bringing a professional team to town, which is not part of this application, but it is wrapped up in all of this. We have a number of hearings we have to go through after this relating to the stadium, relating to lights. And it's very important for us to be heard today to get forward. The stock and Mr. Gabbard, the president of Lexington Sporting Club, was on the front row. We need to have this operational by February to get the fields up for what's coming with the professional team and with our youth sports team. You have not a lot of people here today. We don't want to have to bring them back. And so for those reasons, it's important for us to be heard. I hope if you want to start the hearing and see where we go, that'd be fine with us. But it's of great importance. I understand the staff's recommendation, but I'm very confident you'll have enough information before you from both sides in order to make an informed decision on this. Let me see the hands again of the people who are here to speak either for or against Anderson Community's application. There are a number of hands in the audience who have indicated they wish to speak about this matter. However, I almost always am in favor of following the staff's recommendation because they're the ones who advise us on the appropriateness of hearing an application on a particular hearing day. I know it's a hardship for anybody to come back to another meeting after it's been docketed on one meeting. but i'm going to leave that up to the board if there is an indication from the board about whether to hear it today or whether to pass it a month there seems to be some preference on both sides so i'll entertain a motion either way I don't know how everyone's feeling. I'd prefer to hear it. I mean, we do have the information. We have so many people here. If we do get to the point where we need a continuance, of course, we could do that, and we could be mostly done. but as the attorney said, the meat of it doesn't appear to have changed or to be changing. So I think it's pretty important to be heard today. I would probably say the same. Okay. Why don't you make a motion and let's put this on the record. I move to hear PLNBOA 22-26 Anderson Communities. incorporated requests for a conditional use permit for outdoor recreational facilities on property located in an agricultural zone on property located at 2501 Russell Cave Road. Is there a second? A second. Mr. Needham seconds. Motion is on the floor. Indicate your vote. It looks like the motion to hear it today has carried the day. We will hear it today. You'll be last on the docket, Mr. Murphy, so far. The last case on the agenda is PLNBOA 22-23. It's an administrative appeal. Wayne Michaels Properties and Walter P. Glover Enterprises. Is the applicant present? Applicant is present. Is there anyone who wishes to speak either in favor or in opposition to this application? I see several hands raised. So you will be at the end of the docket. That concludes the sounding of the agenda. We'll now go to the first case, and Ms. Carter has indicated that she's going to recuse, so we'll give her a chance to clear the room, and then we'll call that case. All right, the first case is Keith Jones. Would you state your name for the record, please? Keith Jones. Thank you, Mr. Jones. this is a request for variance to reduce the required front yard setback from 30 feet to 20 in order to construct a single family residence on whitney avenue yes sir any questions uh to the applicant from the members of the board Mr. Glover, I don't have any questions, but I would like to support this application, but I'd also like to mention that I appreciate Mr. Jones taking on these type of properties that are infill properties that are not easy to develop. Mr. Needham knows a lot like how that is, so I appreciate you doing the effort to take on these type of projects. All right. Thank you, sir. Any other comments or questions about this application? And because of that, I'm going to deny your application. No, I would be in favor as well. Well, I'll entertain a motion. I'll move. Mr. Chair, I move for approval of PLM VOA 22-21 Keith Jones' request for a variance to reduce the required front yard setback from 30 feet to 20 feet in order to construct a single-family residence on property located within the defined infill and redevelopment area and the R2 zone on property located at 765 Whitney Avenue based upon the staff's report and subject to the two conditions set forth there. Thank you, Mr. Gross. Is there a second? I second the motion. Thank you, Ms. Whitman. Ms. Whitman seconds the motion. All those in favor, indicate your vote electronically. Mr. Jones, your motion carries. Good luck with your project. All right. Thank you all. Welcome back, Ms. Carter. Good. And we postponed Harper Woods. Next item on the agenda is PLN BOA 22-25, Oscar and Julie Vargas. Applicants, please come forward to see if any members of the board have any questions about your application. Any members have any questions about this application? I think my only question was how that carport, in line with the front porch projection of the adjacent property, that seems to stick out a little bit, but it is a corner lot, so I'm understanding those issues. just kind of i'm not sure if i've ever seen what that looks like i believe the the carport projection lines up with the porch next door um and uh the we are setting part of the building back right now currently i guess the way it exists it's it's beyond that the 25 or the 30 foot setback because it is that corner lot yeah yeah we yeah it's a corner lot so you You've got to work within that, and I get that, so I'm fine with that. If you as the architect feel like that's the right look. And I've got a handout here if you all would like it. I don't know what they've provided to you with some of the picture of the existing and picture of the 3D model of the proposed. Oh, yeah, that might be nice to see. Would you like to see that? Yeah, just show us that. While they're getting that up, I've been told by the fire marshal that we cannot have people standing in the back. there is an overflow section set up on the mezzanine out the door and down the two steps. So if you are standing in the back and cannot find a seat in the hearing room, would you please file out the door. You can find a seat in the mezzanine area if there is a case to be called in which you wish to speak. we will indicate so indicate and somebody will fetch you okay what are we looking at I provided there it's a there's a photograph of the existing house and there was an addition built on the back and the carport on the back of the existing house that the addition in the carport we want to demolish and then go back with an addition in a new carport essentially actually the the new the new addition is going to set back further from the street than the current one for a part of it and and I think there's three different issues we're contending with here the side yard that the existing buildings already there and then the rear yard we got a 25 for over 10% of the overall depth and I think there's three different setback kind of tweaks we we need for this to work provided the kind of the floor plans of the addition and then there's some images of the 3d model that's just computer generated of the design Thank you. Does the fence stay or does that? The fence is between the neighbor and there exists right now, yes. Yeah, but will the fence stay between the yard or between the sidewalk? There's a fence, yes, sir, between the yard and the sidewalk and between the neighbor on the side there with the neighbor. All right, thank you. That's a pretty unique design, I think. It's a pretty unique design. I like to do this. We think it's an improvement. It very well could be. It's certainly unique. Not for me to say. Okay. Any other questions to the applicant? Applicants. No. Mr. Chair, I move to approve PLN VOA 22-25 Oscar and Julie Vargas' request for a variance to reduce the rear yard setback from 25 feet to 2 inches, 25 feet and 2 inches to 1 foot 6 inches, B, to reduce the side yard setback from 30 feet to 19 feet 6 inches, and C, to reduce the side yard setback for a deep building from 8 feet and 4 inches to 6 feet in order to construct additions on property located at 2 in a two-family residential R2 zone on property located at 255 Urban Road based on staff's approving reasons and subject to the two conditions outlined by staff. Thank you Mr. Needham. Is there a second? I second the motion. Ms. Whitman seconds. All those in favor? Electronically indicate your vote. Motion carries. Good luck with your project. Thank you sir the next on the docket is RLV ventures mr. Needham has indicated he's going to recuse on this case he will step outside we'll let him clear the room before we take it up Next case on the docket is RLV Ventures, PLN BOA 22-27. The applicant is here, I'm told. Would you come up to the podium in case we have any questions? And while you're doing that, I want to indicate to the people in the overflow segment on the mezzanine that there is about a 20-second delay from what we say in here until the time you hear it out there. We're aware of that. We know that. And so that if and when it's time for you to speak, we will give you an additional time to come up and speak either for or against the case that you're here on. But I just wanted to let you know that we're aware of the fact that there is an electronic delay of about 20 seconds for you all who are seated in the mezzanine overflow area. Okay, state your name, please. Good afternoon. Darren Taylor, 239 North Mill Street. Mr. Taylor, thank you very much. Are there any questions from the members of the board about the application of RLV Ventures or the variances that they requested? Mr. Chair, I'd just like to ask, the Smith Street was listed on this, And I didn't see that property down in the discussion. Yes, we have one property that's divergent, and I'm not sure if it's 451, I believe it's listed up there, Smith Street, which is only a single property as part of the sort of proposed plan of houses that we're planning to do. So there's the six on Jefferson Street and then one on Smith. All right. I think by my confusion down in project description, it lists 541 Jefferson Street. So I think that's got it. There's a lot of numbers that are similar. I think no doubt. Thank you. Yes. Smith Street. Thank you. These are awfully thin lots. How wide are or how narrow are the lines? Well, they vary, actually. They vary from 30 feet to 20 feet on Jefferson, and then we have a 20-foot lot as well on Smith. So they're very long, long and narrow lots. Yeah, long, narrow shotgun houses. Yeah. Okay, staff has recommended approval. If there are no other questions, I'll entertain a vote or a motion. I move for approval of PLN BOA 22-27 RLB Ventures' request for variances to reduce the front yard setback from 20 feet to 13.5 feet and reduce side yard setback for deep buildings from 6 feet 5 inches to 3 feet in order to construct single-family homes on properties located within the defined infield and redevelopment area in a high-density apartment zone on property located at 430, 434, 438, 440, 444, 446, 448 Jefferson Street, and 451 Smith Street based on the staff's recommendations and subject to the two listed conditions. Thank you, Ms. Carter. Is there a second? Second. Mr. Gross seconds. All those in favor? please vote the motion carries good luck with the project thank you very much The next case is Little Caesars. Little Caesars has opposition, but so do the remaining items. So Little Caesars, you are next on the docket. BLN BOA 22-15, Little Caesars' request for conditional use to establish drive-in facilities. please. Will the applicant please come forward, see if we have any questions for you. This is a carryover from last month. We continued the, or we postponed it. Did we postpone or continue? I can't recall. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We're going to hear it today. And I wonder before we, I know there's opposition to this. We're going to hear from some of the people in opposition and the neighbors. Is there anything you wish to say that might enlighten us from the time that we heard last month? Is there anything else you want to say? Yeah, my name is Julian Gorham. This is my son, Robbie Gorham. we spoke some after last month's meeting with some of the neighbors and I think we're pretty clear on what they want and hopefully after discussion we'll let them bring their concerns to you and I think we can address most of those concerns Okay, why don't you have a seat and we will hear from some of those people who are in opposition to your application Okay I understood from the people in the audience that there are people in opposition who wish to speak in opposition to this application. Let me see the hands of the people who wish to speak in opposition. Let me ask you to do this since there are several. Would you just form a line here behind the podium and we will take you in order? Do we need to check outside? also uh i know there are thank you miss whitman i know that there are people who did not have room to sit uh in that are in the overflow area so while the while people here are queuing up if there's anybody uh in the overflow area on the mezzanine who wishes to speak now is your time to come into the hearing room and we will let you line up as well behind the speaker's podium, and we will hear from you. So those that are on the mezzanine that have concerns about Little Caesar's application, please come on into the hearing room, line up, and we will hear from you. Okay, we will hear from the first one now. Please tell us who you are. My name is Margaret Seeley and I live at 158 Goodrich Avenue. And I, do I just ask you to go ahead or is there a clicker? Is this it? Yes. Oh, wonderful. Click to the right. That? I think I just turned it off. Here, can I see the remote? Okay. All right, so I just wanted to give a quick overview of what we're looking at. This is the most recent plan, and the border on the far right abuts my backyard and the backyard of 156. So this is the latest plan. It was revised, and I just wanted to start with that to give you all an idea of where we are. I hope you can see that. I wanted to put the plan in context of the neighborhood, so the blue rectangle shows what was the cat hospital. And then the two yards on the back, you can see, I hope, 158 and 156 are right up against the property line. That's my backyard, and the white building in the back is what I keep calling the cat hospital. and that is from the backyard of my neighbor and the white building is the cat hospital assumed to be the Little Caesars with their where they keep their recycle bins now. That's a view from the parking lot. It's overgrown right now with honeysuckle and from there it looks pretty dense. That little tiny bit of wooden fence is my backyard fence and that right there is a chain link fence that I believe was put in by the owner with the permission of my neighbor Joe Walker who I hope is here on her property and I want to point out that the the boards are not a dilapidated fence they are boards that she put up to try to provide herself with a little privacy and the pavement of the parking lot is shown there too. I haven't measured it, but it looks like maybe it's one foot away from the chain link fence that is on my neighbor's property. So there's not very much space there. So my understanding is that, I guess I want to say I've been advised that it's not wise to say that we don't want this and that what we should do is nicely ask for as much buffer as we can possibly get. So that's the approach that I'm taking. I'm speaking for myself. So I've read the application, and it kind of sounds like there's already a fence there, but there isn't. It's just my fence, and there is no planned vegetation. It's honeysuckle, and all the things that like to grow here in Lexington. So I would like to see the tallest fence possible, which I understand is an eight-foot fence, and as wide a vegetation buffer as possible. I tried to read Article 18 many times, and I gave up because it just didn't make any sense to me. So I'm putting myself in the hands of all the experts and the Little Caesars franchisees to try to get as much of a buffer as we can get. We do want to ask for down lighting. I would like it to not be very high, but we would like it to be facing down and, of course, away from the neighborhood. No neon or glowing signs that face us. no outdoor speakers and right now the dumpsters or dumpster is up against or close to the backyard fence and we would hope that you all could find that Little Caesars could find another place for that that wouldn't be so close to our property I have a printout of this with a lot more details in it that I would like to ask my friend to to give to you and it also has oh that's an email that I sent to planning info I think on the 29th of April basically saying the same thing it's a little less than what I said today and also saying personally I I think that it's a good idea to have the building used by a business, and I'm hoping that we can be good neighbors. And then I put my contact information there, and that's it. Thank you. I would, while she's passing this out, I want to make sure that the people that are scheduled to speak have read the staff report. Have you read the staff report? You all read this down. I have. I see everybody nodding. Thank you. Just about your concerns, there are two of the last conditions. Just for example, condition number five, and this is a condition of approval, is all exterior lighting shall be directed away from any adjoining residential property. That was one of your concerns. And the other one, the applicant shall maintain a six-foot-tall solid fence at the rear property line. So I think those two conditions that are on the staff report probably answer some of your concerns, not all, but some of them. Would you agree? The word that was throwing me off is maintain because there is no fence. So I would need to be installed and maintain, but maybe I'm being too much of an editor. Well, I think, yeah, this is a new application. The owners, these are new owners of the property. They are seeking a conditional use for a different use than there was there before. So maintain doesn't simply mean maintain what's there. It means what you would think that it would mean to install and maintain. Oh, good. Okay. Thank you. And I wanted to say that to put it on the record as well. Thank you. Okay. Anything further? Not from me. All right. Thank you much. And thank you for keeping your remarks to three minutes. I usually don't have to say that because people tend to do that anyway. And I also want to remind the people that intend to speak that not to repeat any of the issues that we've heard before because we only need to hear them once. We will remember anything that's said up here, the board members. But just so we don't repeat ourselves. and next speaker is who? Tim Whalen, 160 Goodrich. So I'm her neighbor. A couple of things that I want to bring up. There's been a lot of money spent recently on Southland Drive to beautify it, to make it more pedestrian friendly over the last couple of years. This, with the request to put a drive-through and bring all this extra traffic in seems to kind of go against what we've done. Our neighborhood had voted a few years ago and got passed to be an historic district. We're in a quiet neighborhood. It's very peaceful. All the businesses that are behind us work well with us. They close 4, 5 o'clock, maybe at late at 6. This applicant is asked to stay open until 11 o'clock every single night and midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, basically 52 weeks out of the year. This is in our backyards. Even a six-foot or an eight-foot fence isn't going to control the noise that we're going to hear, the traffic, the car exhaust. All of that is fuming into our backyards. So while we love the idea of having pizza, it maybe isn't the best fit for it to be backed up to a residential. In fact, that's why we're asking you guys, they are asking for an amendment to this. so they can put something that it's not zoned for and put that in there. My other request that I want to talk about is the traffic, and I know that you guys have gone through and said there should be no effect to traffic. I would beg to differ that there's going to be a lot more traffic, and if you've been around rush hour on that street and coming off of Nicholasville Road, and while we change the lanes and the lights, and so we have all this traffic coming from the north going south between 4 and 6 o'clock, and we change all the lanes to only one lane can get through. People trying to get to them for their pizza during the drive-through rush are going to be forced to take back roads, and that back road is Regency Drive. And now that is going to be bottlenecked for at least the peak hours of their pickup. They're going to have a noon rush, they're going to have a 4 to 6 rush, and then whatever evenings they have on the weekends and whatever else. This is a college town, too. We're a mile away from the U.K. so there's going to be a lot of business there and a lot of young people there and that side street there's only one way in and one way out one light and southland drive only has two lanes as opposed to nicholasville road which has six lanes so is there been a study that would show that the traffic can be contained and that won't bottleneck and it won't be so bad for the people in the community i mean it says that staff thought there would be no impact yeah the staff uh said that they didn't think there would be an adverse impact yeah well and i think maybe a study needs to be done just to see how much of an impact during that time all right so my two points are the traffic and of course all of this activity going on in our backyards up to midnight most days of the year well one one one night a week till midnight. Well, it's Friday and Saturday night to midnight. The rest is 11, but you know it doesn't stop just at 11 and the lights go out. They've got to close up shop and feed the last few people and all of that. So and we're used to businesses being done by five o'clock. Mr. Whalen, this proposed use, it's not the only commercial property on Southland Drive in this area is it commercial no there's other businesses on southland drive yes are there any other restaurants nearby there have been there are further down but not by us all right because they don't back up to a residential this one does yeah anything else that's it thank you you hi my name is francois pomerlo i live at 163 goodrich avenue so i'm a little further from where it's all happening i'm the current president of the wgpl neighborhood association with that business is backing up to that neighborhood. I'm also captain of the Pensacola Park Neighborhood Association, which brought the H1 overlay over all the houses located on Goodrich, Pensacola, Lackawanna, Willis-Mont Garden, and Suburban. So I guess you made a point about other businesses being on Southland, but that business is very different than the business that are presently located there which are 9 to 5 type of business this is going to be much more extended hours so the neighbors who bought their houses didn't expect to have such type of business located there La Rosa Pizzeria is located not behind or directly behind neighbors. Tagotico which has also a drive-through is located on the other side of the street but we still hear the noise from these businesses. So I from my porch can hear all the noise going on on Southland Drive so I was just wondering if we can do more to try to mitigate the noise the possible noise coming from that new business. I would like to add some in your conditions. I read the conditions. I would like them to be a little more precise. I think a eight foot fence should be warranted. It would try to dampen the noise even more. Vegetation would be also important. And also regarding lighting, I would like to, if If it's possible to be written that the posts should not be higher than 12 feet and all the light obviously be directed down for die skies type of lighting. And I have one more comment. Have you considered the flooding that occurs in the back of the houses and in the back of the Southland Drive of those businesses? I haven't seen any consideration in your conditions or in your planning. Has that been looked at? It is a floodplain. There is flooding in the back of those houses. I'll let staff. If you put the dumpster back there, there is a chance that the dumpster will flood. Yeah, I'll let staff respond to that. So this is an existing site. So there is floodplain located on the property. No portion of the structure is located within the floodplain. And as this is nearly all existing impervious surface, the applicant's proposed change shouldn't really impact the flooding on adjacent properties. What about the dumpster? The areas proposed in the site plan most recently submitted, I believe, are currently impervious surface as is. So that's what staff looked at during our consideration. Okay. I guess one last question. If the pizzeria leaves or fails, do the condition go away automatically, or does it have to be written in the conditions that they'll become null and void if the pizzeria leaves? I'll let staff respond to that, too. Sir, could you repeat the question? If the Pitseria leaves, do the conditions stay there, or are they automatically revoked? Is there a sunset clause on the conditional use? If there's no sunset clause, can it be written that there's a sunset clause? We could add a condition that the conditional use would be null and void if the ownership? Because I think Little Caesars is currently leasing it. Yes. But if they leave, yeah, it would leave with them. Can we do that with the lease? It's optional. The board can add that condition if they so choose. We can certainly add that condition to it if the board thinks it's a good idea. You've raised it, so we can bring that up with the board after we've heard from all the speakers. I'll make a note, and we'll take it up. Okay. Well, thank you for listening to me. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. My name is Tenley Terrier, and I live at 99 Goodrich, which is at the— I'm sorry. Would you mind taking your mask off? I will try. I didn't hear your name. My name is Tenley Terrier, and I live at 99 Goodrich, which is the other end of the street. I'm not going to try to actually repeat everything that Francois said, but when i look at the restaurants on that side of southland i look at el toro that does not have any speakers i look at la rosa's that came in pizza place drive-through no speaker they have parking they have twice as much parking they have you know people have to call in ahead of time or or go in and order and then go through the drive-through. Tzatziki's, no speaker. Columbia's, no speaker. You have to get all the way down to Marika's, and they don't have a speaker either. So there's nothing with a speaker on that side of Southland. And I also wanted to address the water. Yeah, we're in a floodplain, and we know that. But there is, I called the Cat Hospital this morning, and they said there is flooding in those spots. So we're talking flooding where the dumpster is and the four parking spots in the back. I've talked to Ms. Walker, and she has flooding in her backyard as well, which is the property that's the longest stretch of the fence. So there is active water, and I'm not sure the dumpster company is going to want to have their dumpster in a place where there can be a foot or two of water, you know, it's not every day, but it's enough. And the other thing is, because I walk the neighborhood a lot, anybody in the neighborhood would tell you that, there's a downspout right where the drive-through is, where the window is, and that whole area freezes. So there's times when I usually walk through there, it's just a variety of ways to walk through the neighborhood, and that whole section of where a lot of the drive-through and into the back parking lot is often ice. And I also have a question about the canopy that is there right now. It's nine and a half feet wide. I don't know if there's any plan to take the canopy down that's over part of the drive-through. I measured it the other day. It's nine and a half feet wide. It's only eight feet tall, and I'm not sure if you have a larger vehicle, if the vehicle could get through there without scraping a roof. So I'm asking for you to consider no speaker since we have no speakers on our side of Southland all the way down to I don't know I don't know that there's a speaker anywhere on Southland on this side of the road and reconsideration of where the parking the dumpster are so that they're not you know people don't come out find their car it's got a foot of water underneath it because when the rain comes I don't know if you all have been on Southland when it comes it comes it comes fast and it comes high. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. I think several interesting and worthy points were raised by the people we've heard so far. Anybody else who wishes to speak in opposition or in favor of this application? If not, will the applicant come back and Mr. Gorham, you heard some of the comments there. Do you have a response to some of their concerns? Well, other than I think they're all reasonable. I mean, if I was a property owner, all of us are, you know, probably property owners or have homes that you have the same concerns with, and I don't discount any of those concerns. I don't think we're asking for anything that's, you know, just because it's a variance, there's an existing drive-through there. The speaker that she just mentioned, that's integral to our business. You know, and there's, and I think she brings up good points, there's things you can do to reduce speaker noise as well. There's types of speakers out there that use a sound reducing system. It measures the ambient noise and adjusts the volume accordingly. So if it's real noisy outside, it's going to be a little bit louder. It never goes above the point of what you said. So, I mean, they make systems out there to help that. And, you know, as far as the fencing, of course, we were going to do fencing. The fence that was showed up there, the dilapidated fence, obviously, I don't know whose property that one's on, but until we get in there and shoot the lines and actually get the building plan. It's the building security system. Safe waiting. Alert. Yeah. It's the Gong Show. It's the beep show, not the Gong Show. It's too hot. It is lit. It's the danger peak in this. All right, we can proceed, everyone, please. Quiet. Thank you. It's just for the heat. Thank you all. It's a heat advisory. That was a weather alert. Apparently, we're having weather outside. That's new. It's called summertime. That's what it's called. Summer weather. Summer heat. Summer heat. That interrupted you. the last condition says that you're going to build and maintain a six-foot fence. You're planning to do that, right? Well, I mean, that was the recommendation. I mean, we would do what the city would ask us to do. And, I mean, to go eight feet is two more feet is long. The only thing we can't do is we can't do whatever the city doesn't approve us to do. Sure. So if the city approved an eight-foot, we'll do eight-foot. But we want, somebody mentioned we want to be good neighbors. Well, we do too. I've been in Lexington all my life. I want to make sure you understand the conditions are conditions of approving your application. So it's not simply a recommendation. You're required to build a six-foot fence behind. And you're required to have all the lighting pointed downwards. Correct. And because you're in a sensitive neighborhood, or you're near a neighborhood, a residential neighborhood, it would be politic of you to please those neighbors. Yes. And those neighbors are also going to be your clients. I agree 100%. Yeah, so I would take heed of what they are saying if I were you. there was mention of of a canopy are you going to do you intend to modify or replace the canopy that's over the speakers no I mean I've got a large truck and nine and a half feet I would think is is fine I mean I've got a full size pickup truck that I've driven through there many times and height is certainly not an issue you know now if somebody pulls a trailer through or pulls a u-haul through they're going to struggle but sure um but but no um now um there was also a suggestion made that there be a sunset clause and we've done these before and staff tell us uh tell us what that means uh that's not what we've called it in the past we typically call it something else but i don't recall what it is yes so the the board has the option to let this conditional use only apply to the current either owner or the current occupant or the tenant. That's at the board's discretion, but we do see these from time to time with conditional use requests to make sure that it's specific to this use or this particular owner. And I would recommend to the board that we do that, that very thing. I don't know how the board feels about it. We'll see when the board speaks or ask you any questions. Anything else you wanted to respond to? The concerns with the dumpster, the dumpster per the Health Department is going to have to be enclosed as well, so there'll be a fence, but then there'll also be a fence with the full enclosure around the dumpster. As to the flooding issue or the one to two feet of water back there, I can't speak to that. It's not my property. We haven't been there. I haven't witnessed that I'm not sure that I don't know what to say to that Okay Thank you Anybody from the board have any questions for Mr. Gorham or to Robbie? Gorham? Am I saying that right? Is that Gorham? Yes, sir Any members of the board have any comments, questions or observations about this or whatever you've heard during the testimony we've heard about this application. All I would say is I'm fine with the conditions. You know, maybe I'm also fine with a condition that used to be null and void after vacating. If we want to add that, I'm fine with that. I will say this. We got a letter from Pensacola Park, which listed fairly succinctly most of the comments that were made in here and in today. So if you don't have a copy of that, see Donna Lewis, who's the first person there, and she will give you that letter. I thought it was pretty clear and concise about the conditions of the neighbors and the neighborhood. and listed in short order what sort of a summary of their concerns. So I recommend that you take that with you. Any other questions of the applicant? If not, I'll entertain a motion. I don't mind to make a motion, but I didn't see the particular need for the conditional, the sunset thing in this particular case. I mean, if we decide it's a good use for it, it's a restaurant. I mean, I don't know why we would say it's, I don't think this particular property is unique enough that we would just be approving it for this particular Little Caesars. I think either we would approve it, that it's a suitable property or not. So if I make it, I'd make it without it. but if someone else wants to make it with it. Well, there's any member of the board. Well, let me ask you, what about the eight-foot? It sounds like if you move, would you move to revise that from six to eight since the applicant said he would do eight? Okay. Yeah, I'm in agreement. As most people here know, I grew up on Southland Drive. This was the least famous recipe for decades. It's been a drive-through fast food restaurant more than it's not been. so I'm comfortable with it converting. Without the last condition, as Michelle said. I'm sorry. Were there people outside of the mezzanine who wished to speak that didn't get a chance? I see one hand, so have a seat. I didn't hear what you said because your mask, I'm sorry. And that's fine. I am willing to testify if I had to. It was a case. It was a least famous recipe when I was a kid. My family was just a case for the least famous. Which one's next door? And which one's that? Audiology Associates. Next door? Yeah. Okay. Closer to Southland Drive. It's not backing up to the neighborhood. What was this before the cats? I think it was a liquor store. Liquor store at the drive-thru? Okay. In either case, I'm comfortable with your motion, even if it was not the least finished recipe. I mean, the conditional use, just speaking about the Sunset Law, the conditional use is issued to this applicant. Does it stay with the property if the applicant goes out of business, for example? We can word the condition so that it's with the occupant, not the owner, while we being the board. Does it normally stay, or each time someone else comes in, they would have to get a conditional use? I mean, without special wording, when we approve a conditional use on a property, isn't that each time us approving it for that particular use? I think it stays forever unless we say it's not assignable. I would say typically with a conditional use application, a sunset clause is a very special case. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Our discussion with you, Mr. Applicant, has raised some issues and comments from the board. I see other people lined up behind you, so why don't you have a seat for a minute, and we'll hear from those folks. Just another quick question about the 8-foot. Is that allowable in that space? Okay. An eight-foot rear privacy fence is permitted within that zone, so yes. Yeah, thanks for clearing that up. Mr. Gorman, have a seat, and we'll come back to you. I see people lined up. Do you wish to speak? Is it concerning this application? Yes. Okay, tell us who you are. Rebecca writing. I live at 160 Goodrich, which is right behind it. and the clause that you guys are talking about including or not including, there was a conditional one with the cat hospital, and that's why we're asking for it to come back because the cat hospital does have a drive-through, but they didn't have a speaker, and they hardly ever used it. They used it only during COVID to drop off animals because that way people didn't come in and out. So that's what we're talking about. Okay. So there was no speaker ever. Okay, thank you. Yes, ma'am. And tell us your name. My name is Lori Rodriguez Padilla, and I'm at 152 Goodrich, neighbors with everybody that's already spoken. And kind of piggybacking what Rebecca said, we would like it, the sunset clause is important for us because if or when they do move, we would like to give the option to not have a speaker in our backyard, because we do hear it, we will hear it. So that's why the sunset clause is important to us. Thank you. You're welcome. Is there anyone else in the audience who wishes to speak about this case, either for or against? Does the board have any other questions or comments or suggestions or observations before we fashion a vote or fashion a motion? I'm ready to hear a motion. I move for approval of PLN BOA 22-15 Little Caesars' amended request for conditional use to establish drive-through facilities in a neighborhood business zone on property located at 269 Southland Drive, a.k.a. 271 Southland Drive, based on the staff's recommendations, and subject to the listed conditions, including the amendment of Condition 5, that the applicant will maintain and install an 8-foot-tall solid fence at the rear property line. Thank you, Ms. Carter. Do we have a second? I second the motion. Thank you, Ms. Whitman. Let me get my... Let me get my electronics back up here. I apologize for the delay. It's difficult for me to switch between screens. Yeah, I did that. I've got a technical issue with my computer. I'm signed out for some reason. I'm trying to sign back in, and it's not letting me, or it's not recognizing. I've had this issue before on this screen. I don't know why. You try to close that gal. Try it all in. Yeah, let me try that. And let it reset. You can just announce your vote and they'll record it over there. Yeah, but I want to see everyone announce this vote too. Trust me. Try it every more time. I had to do mine about four times. Yeah. What is it? Okay. Okay. Looks like I'm the only one that hasn't voted. I vote yay. Motion carries. Mr. Gorham, good luck. with your project. Thank you very much. Let's see if you can keep signing it. Yeah. Put me four times to get in. It's not responding. Yeah, that'd be helpful. We need a new member. Stand by. I'll get a different screen here if I can't get this one to work. Thank you. All right, staff is going to work on this technical problem that only I'm having. So I'm going to call the next case. I don't want to delay this any further. The next case is 2220 New Life Baptist Church. This is an application which the staff has recommended disapproval, and so we will hear from the staff first, and then we'll hear from the church after that. So, Megan? Good afternoon. Megan Jennings with Planning Staff. Before you today is the case PLNBOA 22-20, New Life Baptist Church. They are requesting to amend an existing conditional use for a place of religious assembly in order to modify landscaping conditions on property located within a single-family residential R1C zone at 33 Redding Road and 3457 Belmead Road. This is an aerial photo of the general vicinity. the property is highlighted in red. The subject property is located along Reading Road which is east of Nicholasville Road over here and I'm sorry yes that's right and west of Harrisburg Road which is off the screen over here and of course south of New Circle Road which runs right here. As you can see here Lansdowne Road cuts through the site here and then Reading connects this way Kirk Levington Park just for reference is off screen here in the bottom corner and just south of the property is Lansdowne Elementary School next photo is just a closer zoom in on the site itself it's located at the northwest corner of Reading Road and Bell Mead Road and is the current site of New Life Baptist Church. Its associated parking is here on a separate parcel and along Bellmead Road here. Together the properties are 1.64 acres in size and contain a church that's just under 4,000 square feet. It is adjacent to R1C zoning on all sides, just for reference. I'm sorry, say that again. R1C zoning. On all sides. Yes. Thank you. The applicant states in in their justification letter that they have given permission to Lansdowne Elementary School, which again is right across the street here. You see their access road. They've given permission to the elementary school to utilize their parking lot during the week for special events, faculty and staff parking, as well as student drop-off and or pickup. Just a little history on the BOA cases associated with this site. A church has located on this site for a number of years, and a conditional use to expand their facility was approved back in August of 1973. The proposed site plan associated with that case included a landscape buffer of a three-foot-tall privet hedge around the perimeter of the parking area. The condition of approval for this case was for a three-foot-high evergreen hedge with a maximum two feet apart along the perimeter of the parking area. The applicant the next year filed an amended conditional use application to change the type of planting required from an evergreen hedge to a privet hedge, and that was approved in August of 1974 so the site plan was the same they just changed the type of hedge that was required do you know the difference I don't an evergreen hedge stays green all year round it's kind of like you're a typical evergreen tree I guess of sorts and then a privet hedge is more deciduous than the leaf type but it is very dense and provides the opacity at that time it met a certain value of opacity to buffer the headlights from the surrounding properties in November of 2021 the division of planning received a zoning enforcement complaint from a neighbor stating that the required hedge had been removed planning staff then issued a notice of violation to the property owner informing them that they had to reinstall the required three-foot hedge per their site plan that had been previously approved back in 1974. In response to the notice of violation, the applicant filed this current application before you to amend their existing conditional use in order to remove the required landscaping condition. This is the new site plan that they have submitted. Here they have indicated the hedges that used to be required here along the perimeter, and these are the ones that they are asking to amend to be not required any longer. And I just want to point out, it appears that the applicant based this site plan on the original plan from 1974, which depicted an access drive here to Bell Mead Road. We have asked the applicant, and they have indicated that they do not plan to construct this access point. It was just an error in creating the site plan. The applicant states in their justification letter that in August of 2019, the hedge along the frontage of Reading Road here was removed, and that the rest of the hedge along Bell Mead Road was then removed in October of 2021. 2021 and is and that is when the neighbor then called in and we issued the notice of violation the applicant opines that the that since the removal of the hedges several safety issues have been alleviated in their letter of justification the applicant states that there were several safety concerns about visibility into the parking lot they state that with the elementary school utilizing the parking lot for drop-off and special parking events they both removed on or agreed on removing the hedges in order to address some visibility concerns they both were experiencing with the hedges the school was hearing concerns from a crossing guard that was stationed at the intersection at Redding Road in Bell Mead that they were not able to see kids walking into their cars in the parking lot. Show us that on the other screen. So the crossing guard is here at the intersection you can kind of see it. We can't see that that's behind us. Okay here. Thank you Tom. I think at the intersection. Yes. Okay and so they're stationed at that intersection and they were having issues seeing into the site here from there because of the hedges. they said that they were not able to see the traffic coming out of the parking lot why would the crossing guard need to see inside the parking lot say that one more time I'm sorry I'm curious of why the crossing guard needed to see inside of the parking lot they stated in their justification letter that because the school uses it for overflow pick up and drop off the crossing Guard just wanted to make sure that they could watch the students getting into their correct cars. Just be aware of activity that was going in, happening in the parking lot during that time. Okay. Okay. So then besides the school's concerns and the crossing guard's concerns about safety, the church was also experiencing some, the use of the parking lot by people not associated with the church. or with their services and that the hedge created a place to hide that is what the applicant stated in their letter the applicant also said that the hedge had not been kept up well over time it had become overgrown filled with poison ivy stated there were some snakes in there and honestly just collected trash over time and so they included you know cleaning up the hedge as a part of of their justification. By taking it out, it wouldn't become a nuisance for their site. Just a quick overview of the zoning ordinance text that relates to this case. Religious assemblies are conditional uses in the R1C zone, and the board has the authority to impose conditions of approval to any conditional use as well as hear amendments to those conditions. Staff is recommending approval for this application for the following reasons. We believe that the previously required three-foot tall privet hedge is still needed in order to mitigate the visual impact of the parking lot on the subject property and it is typical for the board to require landscape buffering for conditional uses located in residential zones in order to ensure that a use does not have a negative impact on the surrounding neighborhood or become a nuisance. Requiring this hedge is in keeping with the current vehicular use area or VUA perimeter requirements as listed in article 18 of the zoning ordinance and that states that a three-foot on average height continuous planting hedge fence wall or earth mound is required for any VUA that adjoins any public street right-of-way staff believes that proper maintenance of the hedge and also maintaining it to a three-foot height will allow for clear sight lines into the parking lot and should not create visibility issues or safety concerns for the church or the school while providing appropriate screening of the parking lot to the neighboring properties. Does the board have any questions for staff? Any questions to staff? I think you answered it, but my question or concern was, with it being the corner lot, But, you know, there were other times we had actually not allowed certain things that would block the vision. But in this case, yeah, the sight line. But in this case, it would not block the sight line. We deemed it. The parking lot is set back far enough from the road. It will not create a sight line issue. Okay. Any other questions for Megan? Thank you very much. Okay, turn the lights up a little bit. We will hear from the applicant of the church. Do you represent the church? I don't represent the church. I'm opposed. You're opposed, in opposition. Okay, well, it's appropriate for us to hear from you now. Sure. Okay, I have some pictures before and after. I'm sorry, I only have two sets. and they might put them up. If you'll save one for our video tech, they can put it up on the screen. Give us one and we'll, oh, you've only got two left. Sure. That's all right. My name is Jane Chaput. I live at, oh, I'm not going to the line. Jane Chaput, C-H-A-P-U-T. I live at 3456 Bell Mead Road. What you're looking at is a view from my living room window. We've lived at this address for 21 years. We've never had a problem. We've had three churches in that property. When we moved in, there was a Presbyterian church that had an after-school program. It never bothered us. The kids were outside. They were playing. They were happy. We didn't see them. It was fine. The next church was a Korean church, and they were very scrupulous about keeping the landscaping up. We never had a problem with that. Then New Life came in, and the first thing we knew was that the bushes separating the church from us were torn down. Prior to this, we had a lovely view. now we have a view of the parking lot and the outbuildings you can see and there's a playground today we look at a parking lot when we look out about this is the view from our living room window and it just nobody wants to buy a house in a residential area who gets that view it has really I think put a big kibosh on our property value the church says that they bring up the crossing guard I don't think that the crossing guard has anything to do with with this issue the crossing guard issue is between the crossing guard and the school and the church. We've always had a crossing guard there. Nobody's ever had a problem. He's been a lovely man. We knew him. It was just fine. They say that they have poison ivy. They can remove the poison ivy. They say that they have snakes. They can get rid of the snakes. No one, like I said, wants to buy our property and we request that they redo the landscaping to restore the property to its previous state thank you very much thank you ma'am any questions any questions from the board thank you very much thank you yes sir I am also in opposition I'm also a neighbor of Jane my name is Caleb Woodard I live at 3464 Bellmead Road and I do have a three minute timer that I'm starting right now just so that I will abide by that. But me and my wife or my wife and I bought our house back in April while the hedges were still there and one of the big reasons that we loved the neighborhood was that it felt private and secluded but also just very green and full and so that was one of the big reasons that we decided to purchase this property in this neighborhood we felt that it was really nice there and then when those hedges were torn down it changed the feel of our neighborhood I did send an email with pictures of our house directly across the street so I don't know if you guys received that or not but it is also very much the same view of that parking lot but we do have a newborn as well that we just had back in March and so we have lights that kind of stream into our house which during the winter time make it more difficult to to keep that out of our house as well. But one thing that Jane said as well is that the property value of the house that we just saved up and bought for could have been taken down from anywhere from 10 to 15%. And being a young couple, we worked hard to try and save that money and build our equity to buy this house and then for this to happen and reduce what we've invested in is difficult. So So that is all I have to say. Thank you very much. And we also acknowledge that you, a copy of the letter that you wrote. Yes, thank you. Yes, ma'am. I'm Susan Lamb. I'm council member for the 4th District, and I appreciate chair and board members for allowing me to speak today. It's kind of odd to stand on this side of the podium. So I do appreciate the opportunity to address and be here on behalf of my constituents that have reached out to me. I know that the – I won't rehash what's already been stated. The houses on Bellmead were built in 1973. It seems like that that existed before the conditional use that was put in place in 1974. So I would like to say that I am strongly opposed to the removal of the buffer, the three-foot buffer, and I would like for it to be replanted. I think it does provide a good screening, and I'm familiar with that area, and I have not heard of any problems with people parking in that lot. and not being able to cross. The sidewalks are in really good shape there, which is really good. So there's good infrastructure, and we have wonderful crossing guards that are there for the safety of the children that go to the school there. And so I'm hoping that you all will follow the staff recommendation for disapproval of this so that they can replant the buffer and that that property will be able to be properly screened from the residentials. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak in opposition to the church's application? We've heard from the staff and from several neighbors. We'll now hear from the church. New Life Church, who's representing the church? Good afternoon. Sounds like I've got a stacked deck. You certainly have some people in opposition to your application. Right. Including the staff. Tell us your name. My name is Steve Wainwright. I'm the pastor at New Life Baptist Church, and I think Ms. Jennings gave a good report. So I think she was very thorough in some of the things that I was going to say, so I'm going to try to omit those things because she covered it so well. and I am appreciative of her and her work as far as helping me because there was a lot of things I did not understand. She was very accommodating and I'm very appreciative of that. So we have rented or leased for 22 years and we just moved into this property in 2019. So it's the first property we've owned. It didn't come with any instructions. It just come with a title deed. So we had no clue what all we were getting into. Our main purpose as far as this body that and there's about 12 members here from our church And I think I had a petition signed there was probably about 50 names on it And that was without any effort trying to go around getting names from people in the neighborhood But our main purpose is to make Christ known our main purpose is not to push our faith upon people and not trying to to force people into believing, but we would desire people to believe in Christ because we believe that's truth. So we've established a good relationship with Lansdowne Elementary School. I think Brother Spotswood or Matthew Spotswood, I'm not sure if he's here with us today, but he told me he was coming. He was the assistant principal and the principal, so we worked well together, and I'm so thankful for that. We opened up our parking lot as soon as we purchased that property because it was pretty much closed off to the school and so we wanted to be accommodating to the school and to the kids, faculty, and so we've got a good working relationship with them. One of the problems we had when we first came there is that the bushes and I had no idea there was a certain requirement as far as the height of bushes or anything like that, but when I would drive in the parking lot there were multiple occasions where people were parked behind the bushes. Now when I go to knock on the window to see what though they were doing behind the bushes that might not have been a safe thing to do but I would still do that. They said they were playing Pokemon. Now if I don't know if that was legit or not but I did get that more than once so I think Pokemon is a culprit for them hiding behind the bushes but I we opened up that front part so there be an openness and we have police officers that often park in the back of the parking lot so we're very thankful for that and I try to show them my appreciation because we're for that and we want to be as open as we can and so having said that and that's why we moved the frontage hedge so it can be open so people could not be carrying on doing things when the hedge was up we also had one vehicle broken into we've also found some drugs on the parking lot that's in I'm assuming it was drugs I don't know all my drugs so anyway it was in small packets and we just threw it in the garbage we didn't know what to do with it so it you can hide behind bushes real good and that's to me is a very big concern we never had a complaint when we removed just that short edge of the frontage of the hedge facing the school. So a couple years later, because we had no complaint about that, we had no knowledge of the ordinance which was on record, in 2021 we moved to shrubs facing Bell Mead. There are many issues concerning those shrubs on Bell Mead. There was a lot of overgrowth, just as the previous person had mentioned, that's common in lexington uh and there's there were there's a lot of poison ivy poison oak growing in that area and it's been in that area for at least 25 years i know somebody that has lived in one of the houses across the street and they their kids got poison ivy poison oak from the property 25 years ago so we wanted to get rid of that and i think that would be something everybody would want to do if they had poison ivy, poison oak on the property. So that is one of the main drives as far as why we remove those shrubs. I understand that ignorance of the law or ignorance of ordinance does not nullify that ordinance. Believe me, God's law is the same principle. People who are ignorant of it does not nullify it. So therefore, I respect that and I respect what y'all do so i'm not trying to say i want you to overturn the law just on uh at a whim or anything like that but i do wish that you would consider what we're saying because i didn't know we were in violation until april the 11th and i got a notification in the mail said it was a notice of violation the main reason i look at it as far as we remove those shrubs which for safety when you go down and I'm not sure if the staff considered this when you go down to where you cross across a street to the school or back to the parking lot there is an incline there of about three feet so if you had a hedge which the hedges were even higher that we removed if you had a three-foot hedge that would make it around five or six feet as far as looking over that because it's on an incline, which makes it hard or difficult to see who's in the parking lot. With all the violence that's going on in our society, school shootings, I'm just trying to create a safe environment, an open environment. I understand the ordinance, but I was totally ignorant of the ordinance. So, you know, my apologies. We've not tried to offend any neighbors. I did hear that there was a house right down the street on Belmede sold over 420-some thousand, which is a record sale as far as on that street. So as far as devaluing the property, the property has gone up. Other issues as far as like why, as far as opening that parking lot up, would be like if a parent or guardian is not in that parking area and somebody is, that doesn't supposed to be there. Those that are responsible, especially a crossing guard, If he recognizes somebody's not there, he's got caution thrown up. And so we want to try to keep it as open as possible. I do believe the only complaint I've heard was that somebody was missing their beautiful view of the shrubs. I've caught the poison ivy from trimming those shrubs. It's no fun, and we had to get rid of it. So we are treating the poison ivy, poison oak so we can get rid of it. If we have to reestablish the shrubs or the hedge, the one good thing's coming out of it is getting rid of that poison ivy, poison oak, and all the trash and debris and all the stuff that was in it. So my biggest argument would simply be openness and safety for the children, as well as for the staff, as well as for our congregation. So I just want to thank you for your time and your effort and all you do and even whatever way you rule. I respect you. I thank you for all the work you've done. Thank you for working with me and helping me out. And I've had a lot of questions and I'm sure I have a lot more. So thank you. Anybody from the board have any questions? of uh master wayne wright yeah mr wayne wright i'm still i can't quite understand why a three foot hedge would block views of people in the parking lot if it was on level ground it wouldn't because three foot would be only be about that high but if you add the incline to it there's about a three foot incline as far as where the crossing guard is at i'm not sure about the incline on the side going down Bell Mead. It's roughly about 240 feet, linear feet, going down Bell Mead where the, what we took out. But with, with the hedge or without, as soon as somebody walks away from the road toward the middle of the parking lot, you still couldn't see that person, whether it was a hedge there or not. Seems like to me, because with the elevation, the further they get away from the road the less visible they would become so I don't see why the hedge itself would would make much difference if the hedge was not there you'd have about a three foot you could see the parking lot pretty good you had three foot on top of the three foot which is the incline you have a six foot which makes it a little bit more difficult it wasn't three foot that was there previously previously. Yeah. I understand that. And so three foot is a lot less than what was there originally, was it not? Right. I have a quick question for staff and maybe just for my information. So how does a person know when they purchase a property the conditional use or the guidelines with, you know, the requirements that are running with the property? Thank you. I had that question too. A certificate of land use restriction is filed with the county clerk's office, and that's on file there, and I believe it should show up on the property title. I think that's... And that was my question. I was just concerned, like, is that in a regular property, a title search? I should ask my attorney friends up here. Like a regular title search would pull up that type of information? I'll let Brandon answer that. He was trying to turn his head. He didn't want to give me any free advice. It should. I'll be honest with you. This one's old. I can't recall when the land use, certificate of land use restriction statute was adopted. But generally, that would show it. But usually for my clients, I request this information from the city when I'm buying it. OK. Just curious. Any other comments or questions? Pastor Wainwright? Very none. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other comments or questions from the board before we vote? If not, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move to disapprove PLNBOA 2220 New Life Baptist Church request to amend an existing conditional use for a place of religious assembly in order to modify landscaping conditions on property located within a single family residential R1C zone at 333 Redding Road and 3457 Bell Mee Road. based on, I guess, staff's recommendations. And I can read that, but the requiring that a three-foot-tall privet hedge is in keeping with the current minimum VUA perimeter landscaper requirements as well as the previous approved conditional use. The required hedge will provide appropriate screening of the vehicle use to the neighborhood's surrounding or the neighboring property maintenance of the hedge to an average height of three feet will mitigate visible issues and safety concerns. Thank you, Mr. Needham. Is there a second? I'll second. Mr. Clark, seconds. All in favor? Indicate your vote electronically. And I vote in favor as well. the motion to disapprove carries and that means the church will be required to maintain the conditional use that it was granted which means you'll have to put back the hedge that was approved and the hedge was a privet hedge and you're certainly welcome to not put back the poison ivy or the trash that was there before but you are entitled to maintain that at three feet because that's a requirement. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. Come on up. Sure. Yes, just kind of curious with the time frame. Well, that's a good question. Daniel, Megan, what's... Okay. Yeah, talk to the staff after the hearing. She's good at answering them. And she will talk to the answer people. Thank you very much. It's 3.15. Let's take a 15-minute break before we hear the next case. We'll stand in recess for 15 minutes. The End Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. so Thank you. so Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I'm calling the Board of Adjustment back to order. Thank you very much. We have two cases left on the docket, so we're probably halfway through. With our seven case docket. The next case is PLN BOA 22-26, Anderson Communities, Inc. The board has recommended postponement. We decided to hear it today instead. So Mr. Murphy, I'm going to let you come up and give a presentation. And then we'll hear from the opposition. and perhaps you can address some concerns we've got some handouts we're passing out right now i'm going to give copies to the staff as you're getting those thank you I'm Dick Murphy and I'm pleased to be here today representing Anderson communities. We are Dennis Anderson from Anderson communities is with me on the front row today. we're very pleased to be working in conjunction with lexington sporting club vince gabbard is here with me also on the front row vince is the president of lexington sporting club the principal owner of it is bill shively who's also the owner of dixiana farm rory cayley from ea partners is with us in the back he's our designer there he is on the very back row and we thank you for hearing us and as you all know we are asking for a conditional use permit for outdoor recreational facilities which are soccer fields on this property in the AR zone at 2501 Russell Cave Road. As you all probably know for over 20 years there's been a great need for a youth soccer facility here in Lexington. You've heard a lot about it, various groups have tried to do it. Youth programs have been somewhat fragmented, practices on fields here and there as fields can be grouped together season by season and the fields are often widely separated and of substandard quality. Our city's comprehensive plan, which I'll show you in a minute, has made it a goal to create a youth sports complex. It's mentioned a number of times in our current comprehensive plan. It's it's important for youth development and for economic development as well. With all that in mind, Lexington Sporting Club has merged Lexington's two youths sponsored soccer organizations and has made it its goal to provide a quality competitive facility which will benefit both our youth and the city of Lexington. They have the expertise and the financial backing to do this. Let me interrupt you for just a second, Dick. I want to, I just want to say as a, if there's anybody out in the auxiliary area who wishes to come inside of the hearing room and not be subject to that 20 second delay, please do so. I don't think, I didn't think I saw anybody in the chairs outside, but if there is anybody who is outside and watching it on TV and would rather be in the hearing room, they're invited to come in. Thanks. And sorry for the interruption. Thank you. Wanted to mention, too, you may have heard through the media that Lexington Soccer Cup also plans on bringing a professional soccer team to Lexington. They have obtained agreement from a professional soccer league to do that. That is not part of this application today. Our application today is for the sports, the 12 fields we are proposing on Russell Cave Road, We do have our trying to get approval of a soccer stadium nearby in the economic development zone, and we have filed a text amendment with the planning commission to do that. But that is not before you. What's before you today is the soccer facility. You may have read in the paper yesterday also there was a story about Lexington Sporting Club, And their goal for the professional team is to have 70% of the players on their professional team to come up through this program here. It's a real interesting goal, real important one, I think. So you're not considering the stadium right now. You're considering our recreational complex here. What's going to happen here is we will have a youth program for, what, 7 through 19 or so, I believe, here. and even before we have a home field, Lexington Sporting Club has signed up 1,500 youth members to participate in their programs. They're doing it at other sites this year. Next year, we want to have it up at this facility. The youth teams will compete among themselves. we will have tournaments there once or twice a month and at those tournaments we'll have teams from Lexington and we'll have teams from out of town as well who will come in to play here. As I said that happens once or twice a month. Now the location for this facility is ideal if you have a understand there's aerial up on the next slide. I'll see if I can do that. The next one. Using this aerial, it does have one I pointed out because the location is important and our traffic routes are important. Here's I-64 and 75 coming through the south here. It's right here. Here is the Newtown Pike Interstate Interchange, which is right there. To get here from the interstate, you get off the interstate at Newtown Pike, you travel up the widened portion of Newtown Pike to Providence Place Parkway, and you turn here, go in Providence Place Parkway, down, and discuss in a minute. we have revised our plan to eliminate a circuitous route into the property and we'll have a direct route into the property the fields will be located here i'll show that up on this one too we're coming off of newtown pike we're turning on providence place parkway going down and our entrance will be here these are all in the economic development zone so all the traffic we have coming in here will be coming through the economic development zone, not through rural roads or in front of horse farms, but we'll come in here. The facilities will be here. Now this area is zoned AR. The property on the other side is zoned economic development, which is so referenced. We do want to have a stadium down here. This is Destiny Way. will connect up here down going to the stadium and our other uses in the property so our traffic will be coming in providence place parkway which is a newly built street built up to all city standards to a proper width which will take the traffic in and out we won't be bringing it up further on newtown pike it won't be coming on russell cave road the as you all know the hotels There's hotels, restaurants, service stations in this area that can adequately serve the out-of-town visitors that do come in for our tournaments once or twice a month. There's a need for these fields to be in one location. As you know, there was discussion at one point about having a soccer complex a few years ago at Cardinal Run. That did not work out. The plans that the city has now for Cardinal Run do not include this soccer complex like we're having it. But it's so that when parents bring their children to soccer, if they have more than one child, they don't have to go to multiple fields. It's so we can have tournaments here with the out-of-town teams because our teams will be competitive with out-of-town teams from this part of the Midwest. best. One of the other reasons we'd like to have this here is because we are, as I said, hoping to have our professional stadium in this area. By having our professional stadium here, we'll be having the offices for the coaches, referees, that sort of thing in the professional stadium. So they will not have offices on site up here. will be in the stadium down here and they're having that close proximity is important to that. Our professional team will use these facilities occasionally to practice and we think that's a plus to the youth program. I think it's very inspirational to have a youth team practicing next to a professional team. It shows them where they can go with their career if they want to do that. We'll have a lot of people who just want to do it for more recreational purposes, but we'll also have some who aspire to getting a college scholarship for soccer or going on even further as I mentioned to you. Our development plan I've handed out to you and that is on on page two of our handout. I've numbered these at the bottom right corner of the page. And our old development plan, the one we originally filed, is page one. And the one we just filed is on page two. Is that on a slide? It should be on the very last slide. there we go our development plan we've made three changes in response to the staff's concerns on this number one we were always planning on doing buffering along the boundaries which are not owned by mr. Anderson So again, here's Newtown Pike, here's the interstate, here's Providence Place Parkway, here's our road coming up. And we always plan to do buffering. We didn't show it on the original plan. We have specified on this plan with a detail that we will have along the west side, which is owned by Ashford and is in support of our petition, by the way. and on the north side with Mr. Kenny McPeak who is in support of our application we passed out a letter to you today and he's very much in support of this we will have three rows of trees, we will have two separate rows of evergreen trees and a third row of deciduous trees along those two boundaries these other two boundaries are owned by Mr. Anderson There. This is the economic development zone. This is also the AR zone. So we'll have the 35-foot landscape buffer along those two sides. It's this side here and this side here. And here's the detail on that. Another change we made was just to remove a circuitous access road we had shown on our original bike. Our original plan had us coming in Providence Place Parkway, coming up here, circling down a road here, coming back here, and back in. And that's because there was an existing development plan that showed development on this stretch. After the staff pointed out that that added a lot of mileage, it actually adds about three quarters of a mile of roads going in there, Mr. Anderson said we could revise this. So a direct access in there. So instead of three quarters of a mile from here and here and here, we have a straight access point in there. And that's right, right in here. Instead of going this way, this access point. The third change on it was to just change slightly the location of the parking. Our original plan had shown the parking up along the Ashford boundary to the west. We have moved that to be oriented to the economic development land down here, so you come in and have the parking right there. I want to address Russell Cave Road because I know some of the neighbors living on Swigert and that area have concern about traffic going on Russell Cave Road, I suppose, because if there's traffic on Russell Cave, there's some possibility it might turn on Faulkner and then get on Swigert up here. Our access point is off of Providence Place Parkway. However, what we will have is an emergency access out to Russell Cave. You can see we have a paved roadway along the perimeter here. This paved roadway is not going to be available for people who are parking here to drive through. It's for pedestrian access up to the fields here where people be playing, and it's for emergency access in. There is this road connects with a farm road, which comes through Mr. Anderson's remaining property. These are all paved roads coming out to Russell Cave Road, which is a gated entrance. That gate will not be used except for emergency access if there's a need for a fire or ambulance or something like that, and they can't get through this way. We have another way in and out through there. Other than that, we're not going to be using Russell Cave Road. Now, I saw one letter which indicated that, yes, but there's a plan to eventually connect Providence Place Parkway all the way over here to Russell Cave Road. And that is in the plans of the city. That's in the long-range comprehensive plan because the Providence Place Parkway has always been planned to connect from Newtown Pike to Russell Cave Road. there's about a third of a mile or a little more from this point to Russell Cave Road which is not built and not connected. We do not plan on building that at this point. We plan on having the, we want to establish travel patterns for people to come to our facility, get their habit of how they get there, to come down from Newtown Pike to the interstate. When this property develops, which has not developed yet, eventually Providence Place Parkway will be built through to Russell Cave Road. We're required to do that. That's part of the city's plan. When we develop, we're going to be required to build Providence Place Parkway over to Russell Cave Road, but we will not do that at this point. And regardless of what's developed here, at some point that'll be connected, but we're not going to connect that. We do not want to make that connection now because we want people to establish their habits on how they get here. And I'll also point out to you just down here that Russell Cave Road, of course, crosses Interstate 75 and 64, but there's no interchange there. So for our traffic coming from out of town and also for a lot of people coming from in town, they're going to be using the interstate to get to Newtown Pike to get up to Providence Place Parkway and in that, even after that connection is connected at some point in the future. There's been discussion, the staff had mentioned, do we need this amount of parking for the facility? We're showing 750 parking spaces here. And the staff has pointed out to you we're required much less for an outdoor recreational facility. So why are we showing 750 spaces here on this property? Well, if you do the math, you know that we have 12 fields here. And on our rosters, we're going to be averaging 18 young people per team. So if we have two teams playing, they'll have 36 players on their rosters. If you do the math during a tournament, as I mentioned, once or twice a month during a tournament, if you do the math, that would result if every player came on separate car, that would be 432 cars. Now, it's people carpool, people carpool in from outside, so we're not going to have that many. But the issue we have is the overlap. And that is that when the teams are playing, during that one or two times a month we have tournaments, as the current games are ending, the next teams have to be there to be warming up. So there's going to be a time when, say, the players from the 9 a.m. game are going to be parked there, and the 10 a.m. or whenever the next one is, 10.30, are going to have to be coming in to park and let the players off so they can warm up so there'll be an overlap when both sets will be there. We need that parking for that. The parking is needed for this facility. We have discussed the possibility, which we'll explore in the future, of possibly sharing the parking for the stadium down here, of using that as overflow when we're not using it, but we need the parking for the youth sports facility for the reasons I mentioned to you. Talked to Mr. Gabbert, too. As I said, he has talked to the neighbors, and he has submitted a letter from Kenny McPeak, who had horses in the Derby and the Belmont here, who is strongly supportive of what we are doing here. He's talked to Ashford, who is supportive, and said they'd be submitting a letter after the hearing in support of it. But Fasig-Tipton is up here, sort of catty corner to this. And Mr. Gabbard can coordinate when the tournaments are held so they don't interfere with the horse sales at Fasig-Tipton. Lee. I just want to touch on lighting on the fields on whether we have lights on the fields or not. Your ordinance right now says we can't have lights. So we're not asking you for lights at this hearing. And we are asking the Planning Commission, we are initiating a text amendment to allow lights in the AR zone for recreational fields. That's going to have a six or eight month route through the Planning Commission and the City Council. We recognize as this ordinance is now, we cannot have what your ordinance, your action today will not grant us permission for lights. So that's not really another matter that's in front of you because the ordinance right now says we cannot have lighting. We are asking for your approval for what we're showing, which is our 12 soccer fields. I might add that the fields are large enough. They can be used occasionally for lacrosse and field hockey. I want to mention to you our comprehensive plan. I said our comprehensive plan supports what we're asking for. On page 4 of my handout, I have livability policy number 3, which is on page 118 of Imagine Lexington, which is our comprehensive plan. And the plan mentions there they spent a page discussing the need for this very type of facility. The goal, Livability Policy No. 3, is to create a large regional athletic field complex for economic development and to enhance Lexington's existing facilities. They mentioned that the earlier attempt at Cardinal Run was not successful, but they say unquestionably there is a need in the community, and the economic impacts could be significant. They say a tournament complex may be advantageous to Lexington for its potential to promote tourism, benefit local businesses, and generate additional tax revenue. And the action item coming out of that is to work with parks and recreation and private organizations to facilitate the creation of a regional sports complex. And that's exactly what we're doing, and we're doing it with private financing. through Mr. Shively and his group to finance this. They have an outstanding team organized to do this. The next page, page five of my handout, is the Creating Jobs and Prosperity Goals of the Comprehensive Plan, which again says Policy Three, Create a Large Regional Athletic Field Complex for Economic Development and to Enhance Lexington's existing facilities. I have a couple other pages. I won't take time to read those. page 6 and page 7, which are pages 121 and 106 of the Comprehensive Plan, which just mentioned the cultural advantages of having facilities such as this and also the fact that having cultural advantages like this is what helps to attract a diverse group of people who want to work here in Lexington. I want to mention too, you may know that the Sare School has an outdoor athletic facility in the AR zone currently out next to the Blue Sky Industrial Park, next to the Blue Sky Rural Activity Center. When they came in, I think at page 9 of my handout, which is the list of conditional uses in the AR zone, when Sarah School got that approved, it does have lighting. It has football fields, I think baseball fields, soccer fields out there, if you've been out there. that does have lights because the council passed a special ordinance saying that if you were a commercial or non-commercial outdoor athletic facility and next to the Blue Sky Rural Activity Center, you can have lights. So I'm pointing that out for a couple of reasons. One is to show that, yes, there are outdoor athletic facilities operated by an organization now in the AR zone under a validly issued conditional use permit. and the fact that they are allowed lights. That's why they have lights out there is because there's a special ordinance relating to that athletic field. Mr. Chair, I'm going to ask Vince Gabbert to come up and testify. I will have a 30-second conclusion after he talks, but I'd ask Mr. Gabbert to come up here. As I said, he is the president of the Lexington Sporting Club. He's been doing a lot of the legwork on this, and I'm asking him to tell you about his search for a place for this facility here in Lexington and his contact especially with the neighbors to this property. As I said, our two immediate neighbors are supportive of this, And I hope you'll read the letter which came from Mr. McPeak because he is very strongly supportive of this facility. He thinks it would be good for the area as well as good for Lexington. So with that, I just ask Mr. Gabbard to come up here. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Mr. Chairman, I'll be brief. I do want to give you a little bit of background on Lexington Sporting Club. We were fortunate enough last October to be awarded by the United Soccer League, a franchise for a professional soccer team here in the Lexington market. And that team will actually be kicking off next spring. So we'll be playing in a temporary location until we get our stadium sorted. But beginning next spring, our men's professional team will start. As a part of the growth of the Lexington Sporting Club, we were able to work with the two main local youth clubs and integrate those. As Mr. Murphy told you, we've now got nearly 1,500 youth from mostly Fayette County, but some surrounding areas as well, that are now part of our youth club that kicked off last week and will begin play this fall as well. So part of the need for the expediency and the things that we're doing is not only to take care of our professional team, but also to be a resource for those 1,500 families and truly have a home base for training within that standpoint. One of the things that makes this site particularly attractive, as Mr. Murphy indicated, we've combed the county and the city wide trying to find a parcel that fit all of the needs, both in the proximity for the stadium, but to be able to have enough acreage and the topography to be able to handle what we need from a training standpoint and putting those fields. And this site is unique within the county to be able to provide that mechanism that we need with the land and the proximity to the main arteries as well so that we can host tournaments and do all the things that we need to to be able to attract tourism and be the economic driver that we hope that this club is for the community as well as being hopefully a very successful franchise. So we're excited about what the future brings. We understand the commitment that you all are making. You all can sure empathize and sympathize with the site planning as you are literally planning the county six inches at a time in some cases from setbacks. So I know that you all know the unique nature of what we're dealing with from a site design. We have talked to the neighbors, all three neighbors that immediately adjoin the site. As Mr. Murphy mentioned, both Ashford and McPeak Racing are very supportive of what we've proposed. We've sat down with Faisie Tipton, who joins up on the upper corner and assured them that we would work through the screening. They've not taken a position on it, but we've told them that we would do our best and be good neighbors and good partners with them, as they know that we will be. As Dick mentioned, Mr. Shively, he and his wife Donna, who are the principal owners, along with Stephen Dahlhair in the franchise, own Dixiana Farm, Bill and Donna do, which is just out Russell Cave as well. So I can assure you that they want to be good neighbors to themselves from a franchise standpoint and doing all those sorts of things. So we're very appreciative of the input and understand and respectful of all the concerns. But we want to make sure that we're good partners and good neighbors. But we feel like that this site is uniquely situated to provide the best product and be a great home for the thousands of youth that are part of our program as well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Chair, as Mr. Gabbard mentioned to you, he has extensively looked around this area for a facility that will work for him. This is 60 acres, which we need for this. And he's got a location here that works for it. Here we have a facility that people have been looking for for over 20 years. You've heard about it for probably 20 years as well, about the need for a facility like this. And now we have the need for it. We have the best location for it. I'm sure Mr. Gabbard could go through all the locations he's looked for, looked at here in Lexington in this area, which are not suitable for this. And why, if you need to go into that. But we have the location. Dennis Anderson owns property on two sides right now of it. The other two sides we're going to buffer. And as Mr. Gabbard mentioned, the two sides on the north and the west are strongly in favor of it. We have about a 40 or 50 foot adjoining boundary with Fasic-Tipton, and they are neutral on this. But the comprehensive plan recognizes the need for this and has for many years. There is a great need for this in this community. So we have the need, we have the location, and we have the team that has the expertise and the financial backing to get this done. And we're asking you to approve our application for conditional use permit. We thank you for hearing our presentation, and we'd be happy to answer questions you all might have. I have some other information I could present to you, but I'll save that in case I need it on rebuttal. Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Gabbard. Any questions from board members to either Mr. Murphy or Mr. Gabbard? I understand there's some opposition to your application. Mr. Chair, does the staff want to say anything before we... Well, that's a good idea. The staff had recommended postponement. So I do want to hear whether or not you're still recommending postponement or if you've heard enough this morning that you can feel like you can go forward. Yes, the staff report that's in front of you is based on the previous site plan that was submitted with the application. The applicant has since revised their site plan, as you can see in front of you. So staff's recommendation, their review, and the content of the staff report in front of you is based on that. So with that in mind, staff is still recommending postponement on our end, as we haven't had time to substantially review what you have before you at this time. Okay. Thank you very much. There are people in opposition. How many people wish to speak in opposition? Keep your hands up. Let me count. I count 21 people who, with their hands raised, let me say this about speaking in opposition. It's a policy of the Board of Adjustment to require speakers on both sides, either in opposition or in support, to not repeat what has been testified to before. when we hear it once, that's really all that we need to. And that being said, that may cut down on some of the length of some of the comments, but we want to give everybody a chance to speak that wants to speak. So I don't have a plan for how you want to present your opposition. So may I have a matter to speak for the divorce trade in the dashboard? We've all been in the meeting. If you want to respond to what I just said, come up to the podium. Thank you for letting me have this opportunity. My name is Avery Faircloth, and I'm a horse trainer. and we've appointed Minister Moore to speak on behalf to help eliminate some time. How many people does that represent? Just about this whole side of the room. We're going to let him speak on... Okay, that's fine. Why don't we hear from you first since you are a group? Well, I'm just... You know, I'm just a little amazed with how little time us as horse trainers have been given notice when this has been going on since last year. We just heard about this in May, and this is not an easy move for us. When you say us, who are you talking about? Us as horse trainers. We're the occupants of this property that they're wanting to take over. There's about 250, 300 head of horses there and about 50 trainers. And this is going to displace every one of us. And we just heard about this in May. And I'm a little amazed with Ashwood being in agreement with this when Mr. Anderson owns it. and that's the front part of the property. Can you meet Pete? I can realize Kenny, you know, agreeing with this, but with Ashwood, Ashwood was part of this training facility, and it's owned by Mr. Anderson, so naturally he's going to be in agreement with it, but our problem is we have not been given enough time to, we've missed all of our applicant dates at the racetracks to where we can move our horses to. This is this place and lots of families. It's just a real stressful situation on all of us because, again, we just found this out in May. And we were given an eviction or not eviction notice, but a termination of our lease without any explanation. So we're going to let Mr. Morris speak. Okay, let's hear from Mr. Morris. That'll be fine. Well, tell me what group you're representing. Well, we're all from Ashwood. We all train horses over there. Myself, I've been there 13 years. Tell me your name again. My name is Mort Shirazi. I've been training horses a long, long time. I trained, or I started the affiliate of one of the Kentucky Oaks in 2019, Serengeti Empress. And we buy horses at Keeneland, do all kinds of stuff, but break a lot of babies. And like he said, if Keeneland was involved in this deal, and Keeneland knows the protocol of giving people enough notice to put install applications at other places because we get emails from Keeneland all the time hey, install apps are due in February the race meet starts in May or April or install apps are due in January whatever the rules are so every racetrack has a set of rules you've got to follow install apps start in February they start for Indiana in February They start for Belterra in March. They start for Mountaineer in March. So we put applications that give you a chance to move your horses through those racetracks. But we've missed all those deadlines, every single one of us. And we race. The reason we come to a training center is so we have the liberty to run horses anywhere. And the other thing, we buy horses at Keeneland, a lot of horses. We all buy horses at Keeneland. and take them to training centers to get them started, to get them started, because racetracks don't allow green babies in there. We get them started, get them going, and then, you know, we move on. And from the 1st of February, 1st of March, you're allowed to take some horses into the racetrack. And it's not just the horses for us. Like they talk about families. We have employees that have families and housing and things like that, that it's not just picking up one horse and moving. It's moving the operation. It's moving those families. I've got people working for me that have signed on your leases in February on apartments right around the training center. And some of them are living in, you know, in low-income housing, places like that. And they talk about Kenny McPeak is in acceptance of this, an agreement of this. Kenny McPeak trains horses for the owner of Dixiana Farm that owns the franchise. So of course he's going to be in agreement with it. And we were just not given enough notice. Every single one of us, every one of us. He runs horses at Mountaineer. This guy right here, he's had horses at Keeneland at the training center. Those guys right there, they came up from Florida with horses. And there's so many horses, it's close to 300 head of horses. It's not like putting a horse in a trailer and taking them away for a day. You've got to move the entire operation. You've got to move the help. You've got to move the help. You've got feed. You've got blacksmiths. You've got veterinarians. All that stuff has to move. When you go to these places like West Virginia, they don't have those facilities. The track is there. They've got one veterinarian. One veterinarian. Indiana, I run in Indiana all the time. Guess what? Sorry, buddy, you missed your stall deadline. They said, I thought you were always training in Kentucky. Yes, I do. I didn't really realize I needed stalls until this came into play. If Keeneland was involved, which of course he was, they know all these people were at Keeneland at the training center. They cut down the barns. They went from 600 stalls. They cut it down to 300 stalls. And they said, hey, you put in stall laps and we'll get you back in. Well, they didn't get us back in. So they know we're still at Ashwood. They know we're at Ashwood. So when this thing is in the works, why doesn't Keeneland come to the rescue of their horse people and say, hey, these are our horse people. They come and buy horses from us. Keeneland is supposed to take care of its horse people. They have 45, 46 barns over there. We can't get a stall. We're all displaced. Sorry about your luck. We're going to build a soccer complex. And, of course, we're going to talk about the youth. But, really, behind the youth, we're going to bring the professional team, and that's the focus of it. That's the focus of it. Let me make sure I understand what you're saying, because all this is new information to me. You're saying that the property on which the proposed soccer fields are going to be proposed to be built are currently being used by you and your people. Yes, it's a horse training center. It used to be right next to Phasic Tipping. Phasic Tipping used to have that two-year-old sales over there when it was 505 Farms, when it was owned by... It's the Navy and all these people. It's a working operation. It's a working operation. Now, what interest do you have in that piece of property? Well, we're just renting the property. All we're trying to say is you should have given us more notice so we could have made other plans. If this thing was in the works, this didn't just come up overnight. It's been in the works for a while. You should have thought about your horse people and said, hey, you know what? This is something we're thinking about six, nine months down the line. We think it might happen. So we don't know if it's going to happen before March, but it could happen after March. So we're giving you guys enough notice where you can actually go in and apply for stalls elsewhere so you don't get caught blindsided. Man, I say something. Since last year, we've been hearing rumors about this. And more of myself and a lot of us would go to management, which is managing the property, and ask, well, is this true? oh no no this is just something that they've talked about you guys are going to be fine don't worry about it and they always assured us all of a sudden in may of this year we get a termination of our lease and we've missed all the well y'all just tough luck y'all just gonna have to find you another place to go no explanation no nothing sure so we've been misled by this group I didn't hear anything in Mr. Murphy's presentation about time scheduling. Well, we're just asking, you know, we need time. We need at least a minimum of 12 months. And, of course, they're going to break it down and come back with something, and then we'll have to go back to the racetracks because with Arlington Park shutting down, with Arlington Park shutting out. Horses are being displaced. Our due date to be down is the 27th of this month. We are to fix the property. And it's like they don't care about the horses. They've got nowhere to go. And we're actually afraid that they're going to turn the water off. We're actually afraid they're going to turn the electricity off because the last management did that to us, which was managed products. Okay. Any questions from the board to Mr. I'm sorry I can't pronounce your last name. Mort Shirazi. If you drink wine, Shiraz wine, you just add an eye to the end of it. I don't own the company. I wish I did. I would have bought this property. I'll be drinking wine after this hearing. I can tell you. Okay. Thank you very much for your comments. Any questions from the board to this group of folks? Have a seat and we'll hear from other people in opposition. Yes, ma'am. Hello, Chair, members of the board. My name is Brittany Rothmeier. I'm the Executive Director of Fate Alliance. Here on behalf of the organization, I'm also joined by multiple members of the Fate Alliance board. Hopefully you all have a letter in your file from the Fate Alliance in advance of this hearing as well. We do. also joined very good by our co-chairmen of the board Don Robinson and Greg Goodman. So thank you to our board members for being in attendance. As you all may know, Fayette Alliance is a nonprofit dedicated to achieving sustainable and equitable growth here in Lexington and Fayette County through land use advocacy, education, and research. We believe that preserving our unique and productive farmland, advancing smart growth, innovative development, and improving our infrastructure are all essential to our continued success as a community. Since Fayette Alliance was founded in 2006, our goal has been to focus on policies that have countywide impacts, advocating for those which grow and support development in our thriving city, as well as promote our agricultural economy, which is the factory floor of our community, accounts for 1 in 12 jobs in Fayette County, has a $2.3 billion economic impact, and supports our community's brand and identity, setting it apart from cities across the country and the nation. And you all, of course, just heard from some folks that represent that as well. Our concerns with this particular proposal are threshold concerns about the long-term impacts and appropriateness of permitting intensive commercial uses unrelated to agriculture in any way, shape, or form in our agricultural rural zone. The primary intent of the AR zone is to encourage production agriculture and protect the rural character of the bluegrass. Considering permitting conditional uses in our AR zone, which would operate as intensive commercial businesses and which are closely tied with intensive commercial uses, as you all heard, in a nearby zone, threatens the integrity of our zoning ordinance, of our urban services boundary, and of our rural area. Whether a 12-field soccer complex is an appropriate and compatible use in the agricultural rural zone is a significant threshold question. And the answer to that question has the potential to have significant county-wide impacts on the types of uses that we permit in other areas of our agricultural rural zone, as well as in other zones altogether. In making determinations about conditional uses, the ordinance reads, conditional uses may be suitable only in specific locations, only if certain conditions are met, and which would not have adverse influence on existing or future development. and I think this relates to a point that was made by the applicant about the Sayre athletic complex and needs to be mentioned as well that athletic complex out near a rural activity center was evaluated on those same merits and planning can likely speak a little bit more to what the conditions were about that particular use but we of course are talking about a completely separate location so the precedent and unintended consequences of permitting this type of use cannot be overstated The impact of an operation on this scale on other agricultural operations in the AR zone must be considered, along with the impact that this use might have on the location of future agricultural operations in the zone, which contains our most prime soils. The considerable impact of traffic and noise, as well as a proposed parking facility five times larger than what the ordinance itself requires, is of significant concern to surrounding ag operations, a number of which are represented here today. Considerations of uses in any zone that on their face work against the express intent of the zone deserve careful discussion, as well as an understanding of the full picture of the use. In this situation, revisions to the proposed plans were submitted as late as this past Friday. This proposal is clearly, as you've heard, tied to other applications for other uses in other zones that have also been postponed. and another zoning ordinance text amendment that was of last week newly filed, which actually directly pertains to the conditional use before you. It's difficult to understand the full scope of this project without an outline of how all the different pieces fit together, as well as confirmation that we actually do have all the pieces for the project that you all are hearing about today. And the community deserves that kind of responsible approach. The applicant has indicated that the fields are directly tied to the stadium use, which has also been postponed by the Planning Commission unanimously and won't be heard for another month. Consideration of such a precedent-setting changes to uses in our agricultural rural zone deserves a discussion about the full scope of the project, including the moving pieces that continue to be added to it at this time. Fate Alliance supports the staff's recommendation for postponement and additional discussion on this proposal. Thank you, Ms. Rothmeier. Good afternoon. My name is Lisa Lorry. I'm the owner of Spy Coast Farm at 3700 Newtown Pike. I'm also a member of the Fayette Alliance. I moved to Kentucky and started my farm because of the agricultural nature of this area and because it was horse friendly. when I hear the way that these trainers were treated, it literally brings tears to my eyes. It's just greed is what it is. And I just can't believe that the horse capital of the world would ever support anything that would affect people who are hardworking like that and who actually are on the ground training horses, which is our main calling card to the country. And we all know how difficult it is to get workforce housing right now, and you're asking these people to move and find workforce housing. Let me assure you, they are being paid probably under minimum wage as it is. That's going to be very difficult. I also wonder, whatever happened to community play, to actually being in your own community? Is there really a reason why there has to be a home base for all these activities? Why can't we have playing grounds in people's own communities? This facility isn't located on the bike path, is not in the middle of the town where most of the kids are. This is being placed in a rural community where people are going to have to drive cars to get to. They are already going to the horse park, Masterson Station, and over by the Legacy Bike Trail. I'm not exactly sure why we need more here. I'm not opposed to soccer. I'm more than happy to hear kids playing. But the amount of traffic that this will generate, especially once it's built out, is prohibitive. We all know that that intersection at Newtown and 64 is nothing short of dangerous if you want to go east on 64. If they do do this proposal, and I heard from the developer himself that he proposes to build a stadium that will have concerts, well, that means drinking, and that also means that people are going to find ulterior routes to getting home, which will go up Newtown, down Ironworks, up or down Russell Cave. all of those rural scenic vista roads are not none of them are suitable for people who have been drinking and driving I can tell you I have cars that go through my double fencing on average of once a month and we have had fatalities there and I know that they have the same situation on Russell Cave. So there's no way that Ironworks and Russell Cave, much less Newtown where somebody flipped their car right in front of my house about three weeks ago can take it. I already wish they'd lower the speed limit there. Let me just look at my notes here. There's a reason why Anderson Communities is selling us this plan for youth sport first, but it cannot be considered without considering the stadium and any other additional future developments. We need to think about lighting, we need to think about traffic, and extending Providence Place onto Russell Cave, and there is no way that that project for youth is financially feasible without all the other developments. So if it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, guess what it is? It's a duck that's designed to make way for future development that's not appropriate for this zoning. This is meant to be horse country. This is why I moved here, why I started my farm, why I provide employment to over 60 families. And this zoning is set and supposed to maintain the rural community that I call home. Thank you very much. What's the name of your... Tell me the name of your farm again, please. I'm sorry. What's the... What? Spy Coast Farm. Spy Coast. Yes, ma'am. Hi. My name's Stacy Mitchell. I live on Ironworks Pike. You mentioned Mr. McPeak, who had horses in big races. I, too, had horses in big races. The difference between me and Mr. McPeak is I live and work on my farm. I'm sorry, what's the name of your farm? Bryland Farm. Thank you. I'm in the middle between Newtown and Russell Cave. We're already impeded by the Newtown Pike traffic and the events at the horse park and the bicycle races and the marathons. Our only way to town, really, is Russell Cave. If the projected plan comes out with Providence Place and the Russell Cave, we'll have no way to get to town. From a historical perspective, about 15 or 18 years ago, Mr. Anderson bought the property between the subject training center and the interstate. His plan at the time was to put high-density residential there. We fought it. Our major help was the person who owned the training center. Because you don't want to take other people's horses out next to a high-density residential area, you never know what's going to happen. Then when Mr. Pash sold the training center, guess who bought it? Mr. Anderson. So now he is now his own neighbor, so he can do what he wants to. So if we don't get his stadium, are we going to get apartments? Are we going to get high-density? He even tried to sweeten it for the county by offering them property for a school. He'll give them property to build a new school. So we're faced with, at the time, the city decided to go with economic development and not residential, which was a good equal plan. But they had said at the time that the interstate was a great buffer between a residential city and agricultural county. So we don't need a stadium. With stadiums come concerts, comes traffic, comes late night lights. With concerts comes fireworks and loud noises. And as my neighbor from Spy Coast mentioned, this is farm country. Look what we've done to our trainers. You know, they had like six weeks. They were like, you've got to go. I know people that work there. It's wrong for the horse capital of the world to do this to our horse people. And you can change the big signs downtown and put big soccer balls on it. My kids played volleyball. We went to all over different states. We played at schools. We do the bluegrass games on different locations. Why do we need to upset the agricultural area with Russell Cave and Brine Station being the two major veins left in our whole town that hasn't been taken over by urban sprawl? So think about that. Think about the farms that are left and all the other hazards that come with the urban sprawl. You've got it on the east, the west, and the south, and now here we come north. It's the only place we have left. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the Board of Adjustment, I'm Mike Owens. I'm here as part of the equine community, horse owner, farm manager for 35 years, and also myself as a citizen. Like you, I've served on the Board of Adjustment for three years, and I've finished up 12 years with the Planning Commission. So first and foremost, I want to thank you for your time and your patience in this. Let me start by saying I'm not opposed to soccer. I did not play soccer, but youth do play soccer, and quite frankly, if it gets them out of the house, then it's a good thing. I want to talk about the land first. You've heard from the trainers that's being displaced. This is AR zone land. It is agricultural land. It has a viable training center on it now. And has been there for as long as I can remember. It's not vacant land. It's not underutilized land. There's a training center there. It's important to the equine industry. As you've heard, these guys are being displaced. So goes the horses, so goes taxes. There's not other training centers that's available. They're all full. Simply put, they're all full. The applicants suggest that the remaining land on this would remain agriculture. There's two training barns on it right now. No training track, no training, no horses. Yeah. We need the training track. I heard earlier, and I thought I heard Ashland, Ashford State Farm, Ashford Farm to the west of this property. They lease land there, which is agricultural land. They have no horses there. zero. They lease the land as far as an equine operation. They have no liability. They can do what they want to. They can save what they want to. Ms. Rothmeier in her position statement very appropriately points out that athletic fields are not listed as an example in the AR zone for conditional use. They are listed in the AB zone, the buffer zone, outdoor recreational fields. They are listed in AB for a specific reason. It's intensity. Intensity in the AR zone is not good. AB is a transitional zone as you all know. it's transitioning back to the urban lifestyle. Next door also is Fasig Tipton, which is the oldest thoroughbred sales company in the country. They bring in million-dollar horses. Million, they sell them for millions, I'll put it that way. And, you know, we have to consider that in these situations. Horses and intense other non-agricultural activities simply do not mix, okay? I have seen a horse run through, get impaled with wood by a fence simply because of a floating balloon. You know, it's serious stuff. I would think if you all had one of those million-dollar horses, you'd want the same consideration. As a good friend of mine would say, you know, unintended consequences occur when you open up Pandora's box. That's what would be occurring here. What I came down here to ask was that you take a step back and look at this carefully and collectively. There's many balls in the air here. You've heard. You know. We've got a situation of having the cart before the horse, simply put. We've got athletic fields here. We've got a Zota that's been postponed for a soccer stadium. There's a new addendum to that now asking for concerts and other activities. We don't know what the other activities are. That will be discussed later. There's also a second ZOTA that has just been filed asking for lights and concessions on this. All I'm asking is let's get everybody together and talk about this collectively. Let's talk about it collectively first. You know, I'm sure they will say they need the youth athletic fields for their youth. But I really believe the driving force, what everybody's heard, is a soccer stadium. Will they still be this enthusiastic if the stadium – I'm not saying I'm opposed to the stadium. We don't know anything about it. So we've got to hear about it first. That's where I'm coming from. The staff, postponement mode. You've heard that. You know, for valid reasons. Several concerns. You know, several. I heard them for 12 years preach about connectivity on a development plan. Two ways in and out. Important reasons there. There's not connectivity here. There's only one way in and out. So, as was said, if it walks like a duck, you just heard that. This request, one ZODA that's currently in postponement mode, an addendum to that, a second ZODA now. The staff needs time to collectively look at these things. So, Mr. Chairman, members, I will not go on. I appreciate your time. However, there are simply too many unanswered questions here right now. Too many unintended consequences to let this go forward at this time. I came down here to ask for postponement, simply to let this happen. Postpone, continuation, you know, that's verbiage. I would urge you at least, at the very least, to do that. You have one other option as far as I'm concerned. You can disapprove this and send it back to the drawing board to get it all together and hopefully get it done in a collective and correct manner. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Owens. I want to remind the speakers that we typically allow three minutes per speaker when there are this many speakers, so try to keep your comments to three minutes. We'd appreciate it. Thank you. Carolyn Oldfield, I'm here today. I have some of the same concerns that the other trainers spoke about. My trainer cannot be here today, but my trainer is based in Lexington all year long. Also works a job at another farm here, so going to another track away from the core Lexington area is not possible. as an owner, a small breeder and owner, I just found out that my horse was going to have to move. So, you know, I have a few foals, bred some mares back, hoped to sell some yearlings, and my one horse in training at Ashwood I have great hopes for. May not be a derby winner, but I'm hoping he's going to do something. So I guess I'm just no disrespect to anyone here. If not Ashwood, where are we going to go? There's just no stalls. And I based a lot of my decisions on the hopes my horse is going to do something, at least have a shot to train. So I just don't know. I don't have any other comments beyond that. But just that's it. Thank you. Thanks for allowing us to speak. Thank you, ma'am. Chairman, board, I own a property on Ironworks Pike. Tell us your name. My name is Ryan Bean. I'm sorry. Ryan Bean. I own a property here between Russell Cave and Newtown on the south side. My property goes back fairly far. I would say where they want to put this is about 6,000 feet, which isn't too far. My main concern about this is that for me to find information that this was going on or this was even planned and being in such close proximity to it is there's nothing. I wasn't given anything. I wasn't sent anything. I had to find out from neighbors. So that was fairly upsetting. I didn't know anything about anything until I came to this board meeting today. You know, my main concern is that this is a opening to the unknown. It's the first key. After they get this little bit, how much are they going to step and grow through agriculture? We have horses. If they're building a stadium and they plan on having concerts, they plan on having fireworks, they plan on having all of this coming down the road, I have half a million dollar animals in the summertime because of the heat. They go outside. Some are owned by me. Some are owned by owners. If they're lighting off fireworks at the end of a concert or the end of a game, and it spooks one of my horses and it's injured, am I supposed to be liable? You know, those are questions that bother me. The other question that I have is there's 12 fields here. there's seven soccer fields on the corner of ironworks and berea road that is an estate those are barely ever used so if they think that they are the youth needs this how come those aren't constantly filled constantly being played on constantly everything there's barely anything that happens at that park as far as soccer or sports is ever concerned um you know so that That's a question that I have. Why do we need 12 soccer fields when six are never used right down the road? Literally not even three miles. And those are just some questions I have. And, you know, without, I think I speak for a lot of us without knowing what the full game plan is, I feel that this is just going to blindside most of the farm owners on this street for time to come. affecting the way that we do business, affecting our businesses from the noise, the traffic, the late night things to come. That's just my worry. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is Tommy Hearn. This is my wife, Dr. Barbara Poole. We have 10 acres of land, 2300 Newtown Pike. Is this thing a pointer? Can I have the? Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. Oh, I don't know. I'm trying to get it. Yeah. The map that was. But I'll go ahead and talk about that. Yeah. From the other one? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's fine. We live at 2300 Newtown Pike, which is right there. and we have a 20 stall barn, 10 paddocks. We board horses, people traveling, going north to south, east to west. They lay over for several days, sometimes a week with us. We have a horse hotel. people from the horse park come in several days and they'll lay over with us before they go to the horse park to show oh i'm sorry our concern is a couple things one is obviously like everybody else just been talking about is traffic. The biggest thing is the traffic. We can't get in, we can't get out. Semi-trailers come in our place and unload horses or pick up horses. They can't get in, they can't get out. Sometimes we can't, we have to get out and stop traffic to get some horse or a trailer in, a trailer come in or go out. This right here, horses. Horses. Back here's horses. Basie's tipping is up here. Of course, there's the soccer fields. Buffer zone. They're talking about the trees. Those are immature trees they want to put there. Five, eight years for maturity. So there ain't going to be no buffers. It's It's going to be loud noises. It's going to be cars. There's going to be celebrations, so forth. But the biggest thing for us right there on this is the traffic. The traffic. Has there been a traffic impact statement done? Could you answer that, Mr. Murphy? I'll answer it in a minute. Okay. Absolutely. So I've seen there was, I think, a traffic impact done out there maybe last week. But our biggest thing is those, the traffic. Thank you. Hello, I'm Dr. Poole. Just to reiterate, we own New Town Station Layover. It's a horse hotel. I've lived on that property since 1992, had horses on that property since 1992, and we have run this layover station since 2008. I wanted to show you some pictures of some traffic. this is the interstate going south at four or five o'clock between four and six you cannot get south on i-75 and because of that the traffic backs up north and south newtown pike there that's a picture i took just the other day that was around 4 30 and that traffic is almost at a standstill That's every day. That's every day. This picture was because there was an incident on I-75, and they rerouted traffic down Ironworks and then down Newtown Pike. This happens two or three times a month, and this is the time he was talking about you can't get out of the driveway. For my semis to leave, sometimes we actually have to go out into the street and stop traffic to allow the horses to come in. This picture is facing north. And that's standstill traffic after a wreck. There's another picture of the standstill traffic north. And there's a picture of it south. There's no way to blow this up. I don't know if you'll notice on the interstate. What intersection is that? That's exit 115, I-7564, and Newtown Pike. Okay. That, just to where the car coming north is, that's the entrance to province place. The traffic there is at a standstill on the interstate. So this traffic going down Newtown Pike, it's a slow progression. And these types of standstills have lasted all day in certain instances. So I don't see how you can add 750 cars to this mess. There's the interstate backed up. Very typical for 4 to 6 p.m. every single day. And I actually had a video, but it's not necessary. My other big concern is this stadium that they're saying is coming and the light pollution. The city council allowed the development of a hotel on Stanton Way called The Glow. And at the time did not consider any law pollution, I mean any light pollution. And this is what I live with every night. That's The Glow Hotel behind my barn. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when they have a stadium right there. Right now, from the baseball field downtown, we can hear their fireworks. We can hear their speaker system. So I can't imagine what it's going to be like if you put a stadium back here. And I understand the stadium is not for discussion right now, but it should be because that's what all this is leading to. I have on the July 4th my barn is full with very expensive horses who don't tolerate fireworks. And we've had that service since 2008 and there hasn't been a July 4th that my barn is not full. If you put a stadium back there and you put fireworks within half a mile of my barn, I'm not going to be able to do that for people. Same with the light pollution. That's just from one hotel. So we are, again, we appreciate your time and we are in agreement that this needs to be further discussed before it's. Thank you, ma'am. Appreciate you. How many more speakers do we have that have not? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Okay. And I'm reminding you we have a three-limit time limit. Thanks. I promise you, Mr. Glover, I'll be short. My name is Bill Justice. I have Justice Real Estate. I have the largest farm brokerage firm in Kentucky. I have clients from all over the world who come to visit our special place. I appreciate all you all are doing on this board. You are responsed with keeping this Lexington, Kentucky, that special place in the world. Why are we not postponing this hearing? I've not heard anyone say they're against the soccer fields or the stadium. Your staff has said repeatedly the fields and the stadium need further classification. It's essential to request uphold the integrity of the USB, the urban service boundary. These are far, far reaching implications to our zoning laws. I don't believe we have enough, and I don't believe you have enough information from the applicant to make a decision today, and I implore upon you to postpone this hearing. Good afternoon. Thank you for your time. Kirk Wyckoff, 228 Ironworks Pike, Three Diamonds Farm. I moved here from Philadelphia nine months ago to move to a rural farming area. I have 40 horses on my farm, all thoroughbreds. I walk the farm at night and I can see the lights that we have now. I had a horse run through a fence last week because of an accident. We had to euthanize him. The idea that we're going to build 750 parking spaces, frankly, is a contrived presentation to you. The code calls for 136 parking spaces. We don't need 12 soccer fields. Give them three if they want. There's no rationale or proof that the Youth Soccer League needs to be located near the soccer stadium. It's contrived. Everything they have asked for here is contrived. I sat on a planning commission in Philadelphia for 20 years. I know what's entitled under the zoning code. Give them what's entitled under the code after the planning commission has ruled on whatever other things they want to put in. But the idea that I moved to farm country, to thoroughbred country, we resources. Mr. McPeak is one of my trainers. I talked to him during this meeting. We're all in favor of this property being developed in accordance with the zoning code that exists. If you give them what they want, I can build a hunting preserve with 100 parking spots on my farm on Ironworks Pike and bring in hunters and trap shooting and shoot around thoroughbreds. It's not appropriate. This use is not appropriate for this zone, and it should be turned down in my opinion. And I would add that the first thing I did when I moved here was I sponsored a youth soccer league team for all the people in the community in which I live called the Three Diamonds Farm team. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is John O'Meara. I have a farm on the other side of Kenny Mac Peak's farm. It's less than 150 yards from my place to where they want to build these soccer fields. This plan will be detrimental to my farming operation, which I moved here from Ireland 25 years ago to be in horse country, in the horse capital of the world. And this is detrimental to everything I've done ever since I've been in America, and I don't agree with it. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for your time. My name is Dr. De Pedro. I have the property across the street from Ashwood Training Center. I just want to bring a different point out than everybody else, just the credibility of what Anderson Development has presented. I have not been contacted by them to see how this will benefit or affect my property. I do have a horse farm. And in top of that, I want to point out how Anderson Development has maintained the property adjacent to the training center. The property is open and we have people shooting guns in the area. And as you can see right now, if you go into Russell Cave, you will be able to access Newton Pipe. So if the police are called, the criminals will exit through Newton Pipe. So that's a major problem we have currently and should be taken care of as they are saying that they will take care of everything else for the neighbors in this area. Thank you. Thank you. Chairman and board, my name is Jay Engel. As some of you know, I'm an attorney with law firm of Jackson Kelly. Today, I'm here to represent Fasig Tipton, who you've heard mentioned several times, located at 2400 Newtown Pike. As you've heard and seen, Fasig-Tipton abuts this property to the west. We saw the aerial earlier, and as you can see, these soccer fields are in almost literally the closest proximity to Fasig-Tipton as possible. And on the aerial, you should probably also see the barns. So this isn't a remote part of the property. It is very close to the agricultural use in the barns where horses are stabled at Fasig-Tipton from time to time. Fasig-Tipton's main concern today is the rush to approve. The rush to approve without all the necessary information, and frankly with constantly changing and updated information, and frankly with information and changes that if anything become more intrusive on neighbors, not less. The staff, as you know, recommended postponement and we believe for good reason. One of the things you heard from Mr. Murphy was that the changes made, I think at 5 o'clock on Friday, literally one business day on a weekend before today's meeting, address the staff's concerns. I want to walk through what some of those concerns were. One was the proximity to Fasig-Tipton, specifically mentioned as a concern, with no screening, no landscaping. The response was a new site plan, where amazingly the fields are actually closer now because the parking got moved. No detail on what the buffer is. There is a buffer now. It says 35 feet. I don't know what that means. I don't know if that includes trees, bushes, grass, anything. No detail on landscaping. No screening. The concerns of the staff were not met from the little bit of information we received today. Parking was another concern of the staff. The change on the site plan, there was no reduction from the 750 they were concerned about. Parking was simply turned sideways, the best I can tell. And in fact, it was moved closer to the stadium, which as you remember was a concern of the staff that the excess parking at least signaled to them that this may be just being developed as part of the stadium complex and not something separate. So if anything, the parking moves closer to the stadium. With regard to that concern, it was mentioned as well, including the overlap of use. Importantly, as we know, this is going in an AR zone. AR precludes lighting, precludes loudspeakers, precludes food and beverage. None of those are currently allowed. So the change made in response to that concern was a text amendment. So this property could have lighting. So this property could have food and beverage, which only further evidences the intertwined nature. Access to the property was another concern. There was a minor change. We'll acknowledge it looks like the road goes in at a different angle, not as far into the property. But literally no time to assess that. Getting that Friday at 5 o'clock and expecting your staff to assess that and provide a recommendation is unreasonable. I mentioned lighting. That is a significant change in an agricultural zone. That is a significant issue to Fasig-Tipton. It's one that Fasig-Tipton brought up in the conversation it had with representatives of this development. And it is not a small issue for the developers. In their text amendment request, it states lighting is important to the success of the facility, especially in February, March, October, and November. All of those are months that are critically important to on-site operations at Faison-Tipton. February is the winter mixed sale. October is the closing yearling sale of the year for the thoroughbred community. 1,500 to 1,600 horses will be stabled at Fasig-Tipton in October when lighting is most important on this property. November. In November, in one day last year, $100 million worth of horses were sold. on the property that abuts this property that now is expected to have lighting without any discussion of what kind of buffer, what kind of screening, how tall the lighting is, is the lighting taller than the screening, is there any screening, are we going to push the fields back, why are they as close as possible to phasing Tipton? None of that has been developed among the neighbors, with the staff, nor any conditions placed by this board because the staff has not had time to recommend any. The discussions haven't had time to happen. In conclusion, this is not a small change. You're not being asked to make a small modification to a small property. This is a major change in this area. And you heard the very first speakers were the trainers. And Mr. Chairman Glover, I heard you ask. What property interest do you have? And I don't think the question was, do they have a right? Are they affected? Do they own this property? No, what that evidence was is this is a significant departure from a true agricultural use. And that is evidence from who is here today. We're not here to say, as Faisic-Tipton, this could never be done or never should be done. What we're saying is this shouldn't be done lightly. This shouldn't be done quickly. It shouldn't be done piecemeal. It shouldn't be done without full consideration. And frankly, it shouldn't be done without significant conditions and restrictions placed on any approval if it were ever granted. there has not been the opportunity for consideration of this development or what those restrictions might be. Not for the neighbors that showed up here today, not for the neighbors that didn't even know about this meeting today, not for Fasig, Tipton, and the developers. There hasn't been the opportunity for that consideration by your staff, and frankly, there hasn't been that opportunity for you. If this is ever done in this area or anywhere else in Fayette County, it needs to be done right. It is more important that it is done right than it is simply done. And for those reasons, let me make it abundantly clear on behalf of Faisig-Tipton. We are not neutral today. Faisig-Tipton is opposed to moving forward today as in favor of postponement as recommended by your staff. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. I'm Carrie Davis. I live at Russell Cave Road. I'm a high school agriculture teacher, landowner at Russell Cave in an agriculture zone. and I actually used to serve here in Fayette County on the Soil and Water Conservation Board, and I know how we all have to work together to figure these things out. But as an ag teacher and a landowner here in Fayette County, I have concerns. Concerns about protecting agriculture spaces, conservation practices. I have concerns about ecosystems and soils that can't be replaced that take hundreds of years to develop, such as Amorebee silt loam. You know, Fayette County is number two in agriculture receipts out of all 120 counties, And while it's poultry that is Kentucky's number one agricultural receipt, it is not poultry that puts Fayette County at number two. It's horses. So what is Lexington selling? What have we always sold? It's those horses. We are the horse capital of the world. You can't claim that and draw people into that and then not take care of those people and push them out. One of my favorite things about Lexington is you've got city life, but 10 minutes in any direction you can be out in the country. And so I want to encourage this board to protect this niche brand that we have, protect what we have that makes us special. I believe that the long-term plan of Fayette County protects agriculture, and the PDR program shows just how important that it really is. And besides the PDR, our agriculture zoning protects that. So it's hard to believe that. Here we are having this conversation, and I know on short notice, my heart goes out to these trainers and all the people and these horses that are affected by this. It's hard to believe we're having this conversation about taking another piece of that away when the Kentucky Derby winner was trained at exactly the same kind of pocket training center just right down Russell Cave Road, not five miles. And now we're wanting to dismantle another little section. So you've heard about the unintended consequences and the real jobs lost, how many jobs go on to each one of those 300 horses at the training center there. I'd argue at least 10. And so filling races, if you like to go to horse races and see races with horses in them, you need these little pocket training tracks to train horses to fill those races up. Not to mention the horse has got to have a place to go, or it's going to end up in Canada or Mexico being butchered. and then the traffic and our charm, but I would just implore you to vote to keep this agricultural zoned before we do equitable and irreversible damage. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Hannah Windham. I own Windforce Thoroughbreds, which is right down the street from Spy Coast Farm. I'm here today because the horse training that's been in Lexington has been growing smaller and smaller. And I know each one of these guys employs 5 to 10 to 20 people in their own right. And they have nowhere to go. And those jobs are going to leave because they're going to have to go somewhere else. They're going to take those horses and they're going to go somewhere else because there's nowhere to stay in Lexington. So taking this and repurposing it, I don't see how it's going to be good for the economy versus hurting the economy because you're pushing people out that produce jobs. Each racehorse produces jobs for grooms, trainers, riders, jockeys, veterinarians, farriers, as well as multiple other people. And I don't see how soccer fields are going to bring in that same amount of jobs and the same amount of jobs as well as the traffic that is already there at Newtown and 64 and 75, as well as Ironworks. Whenever there's traffic that needs to be taken off of those interstates, it just absolutely blocks the ironworks in Newtown. And you sit there for 45 minutes to an hour just trying to get through that four-way intersection or trying to get down to the interstate at Newtown Pike. I don't see how building up a traffic flow that will be able to support that And that's really that's that's it, but all right. Thank you. Thank you Hey, my name is Lydia Epner. Oh, can y'all hear me? Are we doing this right? I've never done this before. I am located on 4550 Newtown Pike, about a mile up the road from the proposed entrance for the Sopper Complex. I own multiple thoroughbreds, and each one of my thoroughbreds sees one of two farriers, one of two veterinarians, a nutritionist, a dentist, sometimes a podiatrist. I have a rider who comes out to work with them. I also ride them myself. If I have to take them anywhere, I normally need a groom who is with me in order to handle things because I can't go everywhere just leading a horse around. I don't have active stabling at a training center. I know there's a little bit of communication or a lack of understanding between horsemen and people who aren't horsemen about what a training center is. In order for a horse to race, they need to log what are called registered works. These can only be done at certain locations. you can't take your horse out to the backfield, time it, and say, okay, my horse is fast enough to race. They need to log two in the Kentucky jurisdiction. This varies state by state, and what time is required is also variable. And there's only three places in Lexington to do it. Keeneland, which offers seasonal training, the Thoroughbred Center on Parris Pike, which has a wait list seven miles long right now from people trying to move in there after they reduced their stall count last May. And there's Ashwood, which has been kind of on a conditional situation of whether or not they offer registered works. currently they do. Otherwise you have to leave the state or you need to own a private complex. I know that Judmont and Windstar are places that are active private complexes, same with Margo. You can't take your horse there. The people who are being displaced aren't millionaire farm owners. They aren't people who have their own job and are isolated from the rest of the community. People at Ashwood are renters who are operating on a shoestring budget to employ multiple people, most of whom are low income and some of whom actually reside on site. I'm not sure if anyone's talked about the fact that Ashwood has active residential tenants. They do. They live in the rooms off of the barns, specifically barns one through five have rooms off of either end that are rented for $250, $300 a month to these people. Don't know if we've talked about tenancy situation. I don't even know the legality of that tenancy situation. That would have to be something discussed with current manager Mark Ricker. I don't believe he's here today. overall I think that the impact to the local community is going to be painful and it's going to cause people to lose the jobs that they have have to relocate if relocation even exists right now which it might not with parks like Beulah and Arlington no longer existing and Valterra has limited capacity compared to its predecessor River Downs finally I have some questions regarding the relationship between the stadium the recreational plan and parking I looked at the previous plan for the stadium that was proposed in front of Rupp Arena. It was supposed to have a capacity of 6,000. The parking plan for this complex includes 750 spaces. I don't know if there is any type of plan regarding where overflow parking is going to go if the stadium goes up because that hasn't been communicated to any horsemen or neighbors in the area. And it's a constantly variable and changing plan with a lot of moving parts. And it's very hard to know which are still active, which are under consideration, which are set in stone, and which have been discarded because we've seen many different versions of this. I'm cognizant of the fact that I only get three minutes and I've grossly overrun that. And I know that a lot of people have raised valid concerns today that I share. I just don't feel the need to reiterate them since you've heard them from many people. I want to thank the council for being here today and for listening to an extended period of time about something that for a lot of you is far outside of the scope of what you have dealt with in the past. And I appreciate you listening to everyone, especially the horsemen. Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak in opposition at the moment? Okay. Mr. Murphy, you're back up. How would you like to respond? Mr. Chairman, I would request five minutes for me to talk to my folks here. There's been a lot of information given. I want to talk to them so I can respond to you appropriately if that would okay let's take a five-minute break thank you thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. So Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody take your seat, please. Let's get started. Mr. Murphy. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for allowing me a couple minutes to confirm with my clients. We wanted to listen to everything that was said rather than us talking among ourselves and missing what was being said to you. So we appreciate that very much. I want to start out with a couple things. One is the first time we spoke to Fayette Alliance and others, the first thing we said is no fireworks anywhere, okay, whether it's at the new stadium that's going to be built, whether it's at this facility, no fireworks. Obviously, you're not voting on lighting today. We're not allowed lighting from your action. You're not making a decision on lighting. You're not permitting us to do fireworks on this property. the uh you're not voting on the stadium the state we have a long process to go through the stadium we have initiated that through the planning commission as many people have mentioned to you the uh i want to talk about traffic just a second i'm glad the plan is up there i had failed to point out to you that we have a another connection to providence place parkway through through stanton way. There's a, it's not shown on this plan, but there's a way to get to Providence Place Parkway not going on this stretch of Newtown Pike as well. Just so you know, there's a second roadway way in and out, as well as the emergency access that I outlined to you coming out from this pedestrian way, which is suitable for emergency vehicles coming out through Newtown, out to Russell Cave Road at the gate. So there's a third way which I had not mentioned to you on that. And as far as traffic goes... Where is that other way? Yes. Please, please, please folks, let Mr. Murphy answer my question and we'll let him talk. Dennis, if you'd look up here, I think the connection to Stanton Way is at that. There's one there. And then there's a track barrel. There's a little button. So the sand way comes through here. It takes a light and then it flips. It connects the right way there. It also comes through here where it goes right from. The track comes. So it's right there. and also i mentioned no fireworks you're not voting on loud on on lighting we're not planning on on loud speakers either at this field you're voting on whether we can have these these fields in this location you're not we're not going to have fireworks you're not giving us lighting you're not giving us loudspeakers we're not asking for loudspeakers even in our text amendment for this property. The want to discuss a little bit about the, you had a lot of discussion about the trainers that are located on this property right now. And talk to Dennis about that. There's been a running legal dispute between him and the person he leases the property to and that person in turn rents spaces out to various trainers. had a couple years of litigation and agreed orders and that sort of thing. What is happening right now is going to happen whether you vote to approve this or disapprove this or whatever. That has nothing to do with the application we have before you. Unfortunately, due to the issues over the lease, this is like if you lease a building to somebody and somebody doesn't you feel somebody's not complying with the lease whether it's timeliness of payments or whatever that is an issue about whether the person can continue to stay there what's happening there is happening unfortunately unfortunately there's been an issue over that lease which has had some history to it but your vote has no impact on that whatsoever because it unfortunately for the people who are leasing from the person who is leasing from mr anderson that is going to occur he's given notice to him that he has to notify he has to be out and he has to in turn notify the people that they have to be out well that can be taken up with issues about that that issue that issue is not before us us. Mr. Murphy is correct in that. There's nothing we can do about that issue. That's not the question before us. Go ahead. Mr. Goodman came up to us during the pause and wanted us to communicate that he had talked to a different person at Ashford, our neighbor to the west, than Mr. Gabbard had and the person at Ashford was not expressing support for this so i do want to communicate that to you as well the the issue was has been made by by a lot of people about well let's just let's just wait and do all this at once well that's sort of a common sense thing to do but i tell people unfortunately i've had told people clients all the time anyone comes in to see me that common sense often has no place in the zoning process And unfortunately that is true in this issue here. And that is because we would think, we would think, we would think that this could all be dealt with at one time and one vote. Yes, my people would like to have a stadium here. Yes, we need to talk to them about amending the ordinance. But this is a, somebody said, this shouldn't be a piecemeal system. I agree with that totally. But unfortunately, the reality we have to live with is this is a piecemeal system. You have the authority over whether we can have our youth recreational facility here. You do not have authority over whether we can have the stadium here. We have to deal with those in two different forums at two different times, whether we want to or not. Meanwhile, we have a youth league that wants to start up here in February. That's why we're here. This is the first part of our journey to what we'd like to do here. We have to take this first step. We have a youth league that wants to be out here. That's why we're here and unfortunately it is a piecemeal process. You have authority over part of this. The Planning Commission has authority over part we want to do with the stadium. The City Council has authority over that as well. We're going to be going to the Planning Commission a couple times and the City Council a couple times over what we do with the stadium right here. They can't give us, they can't approve this field. Only you all can approve that field. That's why we're here today. That's why we're here to take what we hope is the first step. And as I said, we have a youth league that wants to start here in February. That's why we're here. the uh a couple other issues i'm trying to go through i get as i said we've designed this is the the reason this site works so well is because traffic does not go up newtown pike and other places if i-75 get backs up backs up at the rush hour we don't have any control over that but i would point out that our soccer tournaments are done on weekends not during rush hours the I think as well if we came in to you to ask for the stadium approval which we couldn't do or ask for that first and the people's position would be the same as they're expressing to you today the can't emphasize too much that we we agreed early on no fireworks we're not having loudspeakers here, you're not voting on lighting as well. But I've been around the community for a long time, and you all have too, and it's an exciting possibility of what this group is wanting to do. Mr. Murphy, can I interrupt by asking a question? One of the points that was raised by the opposition was that there are other soccer fields, and And I'm particularly aware myself of the fields at Berea Road off Ironworks Pike. My son played soccer there. So why aren't those sufficient? I asked Mr. Gabbard about this, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but those are leased to the adult portion of Lysa, and it is used as adult recreational usage. They're under lease to LISA, and they cannot be under lease to our group as well for this use. As I said, we've had discussion in this community for years about having a youth soccer complex. It's to the point that it has been expressly called for in our comprehensive plan. it's important for the youth of the community to have this. That's why Mr. Gabbard's group is doing this. Now, it does have economic benefit due to travel and tourism and that sort of thing. They're doing it to have the youth league here. And I think to their credit, as I mentioned to you, their goal is to have, if they do ever get a soccer stadium approved, to have 70% of the team members who are in a professional league come up through this soccer system. As I said, the comprehensive plan calls for this. This location works, and it works well. We did show our detail of the landscaping here, what it's going to be, the three rows of deciduous trees, and we can continue to work with our neighbors on that in the process to refine that down. But overall, we understand the horse industry is important to Lexington. As I said to you, your decision today is not going to impact the future of the facility that is on that property one way or the other. But it's important, we recognize in this community that it's important to have space for our horses to exercise and grow. We feel also it's important to have spaces for our children to exercise and grow. We think it's important. Ladies and gentlemen, you are here at the invitation of the Board of Adjustment. And I won't broach any outbursts from the audience. If there's any more of that, I can clear the room if you're not respectful of those speaking. We've been respectful from the Board of everybody that's talking up here. We haven't interrupted. Nobody's interrupted you. and we don't want anybody to be interrupted by outbursts from the audience. So if you have comments, keep them to yourself. We gave you a chance to speak before. It's Mr. Murphy's time. We're going to hear from him, and then the board is going to take up this matter itself. But I don't want any more outbursts from the audience. Thank you. Only thing else I'd add, Mr. Chair, is I did prepare some findings in case you all want to vote approval of it. That's the last page of my handout to you. and one sentence to summarize this is the time we need to do this this is the place and this is the group that has the expertise and the financial backing to do it we hope very much you'll vote in favor of approving this proposal to you thank you thank you mr murphy i've got some questions oh okay yeah go right ahead we have questions from the board thanks um what's the urgency on us not just continuing this for 30 more days? Normally, if someone were to have filed amended development plan or amended site plan before the staff had an opportunity to review it on Monday, we would often postpone. Today, I voted to hear this because the citizenry was here, and a lot of times I find that listening to them helps flesh out issues. but is there any harm in us continuing this for 30 days to allow you to meet with staff address some of these items i agree with you that some of the items that are outside of our purview such as the zoda and the planning commission and some of the other items that the staff brought up i think can be handled by the development plan process with the staff at that time but is there i need you to convince me why i shouldn't vote to continue this for another 30 days number one i i don't i think we can work out these issues with the staff we still have to go through the building private we have to go we'll have to file an erosion control plan and a creating plan building permit plan and there'll be a lot of instances when that we're going to be dealing with a lot of those issues through the process as well so i think those issues will be dealt with that way i'm not sure anybody's going to anybody's position is going to change vis-a-vis the issues you heard today and as i mentioned we have a youth league that wants to start in february this is this is prime construction season right now every every month every week during good construction season is extremely important it's this time right now is worth a lot more than it is in november when it's going to be raining all the time and you don't have as many construction days so So that's why we need to go forward right now. Any other questions for Mr. Murphy from the board? No? What's your pleasure? What's your pleasure, board members? You know, based on – there's a lot of information here. I think we – you know, I voted to hear this, and I'm glad we heard it. I do think I'm not convinced just because it's the grand building season that one month's going to change that. So I'd probably vote for a continuance just to kind of let the staff kind of work through it with the attorneys. And then we can hear this based on all the information you've already heard. We don't have to hear it again. We can make a decision when we come back here in a month. That's my view. Mr. Chair, I would agree with that. I think there's a lot of issues here, and I've heard all these issues before. And I'm very concerned about the relationship between the stadium and this issue. And I even wonder if the Planning Commission decides that the stadium is not a good idea, and the reasons are sound, even though I know we're not talking about the stadium, but I just wonder if the soccer fields would then have a place if there was not a stadium. I have grave concerns about that. And I think there's a lot of issues that need to be settled before we can make a decision here. And I probably would be leaning toward disapproval. And so my vote would maybe be in the minority, but I would say that I would vote for a postponement rather than take an up or down vote at this point. I think there's a lot more that needs to be discussed. The staff needs to be involved. it's premature at this point to make make that kind of decision up or down i tend to go along with uh with the with the staff's recommendation on matters uh specifically pertaining to procedure i don't like to to force things on the staff since they're the ones that do all the work we take the credit, but they do the work. And I'm also in favor of postponing this for 30 days. Now, with the understanding that Joan and I won't be here next month, our terms expire at the end of today. So you will be talking to at least two new board members. That gives me a little pause, because we've heard all the testimony today and if it's the board's decision to decide this issue i mean i will i will certainly uh cast my vote one way or the other but certainly to decide the issue but you're going to lose two of the board members who have heard have sat through all the testimony that has been presented today so there's that downside to postponing it but But those are just my thoughts. Well, being one of those that won't be here the next time, did I get that? I did get it on. I am not for postponing it. When I came to the hearing today, I was very open-minded about it. But I think we've gotten a lot of issues confused with what we're really here for, and that is the approval of the youth sports complex. And frankly, I know several youth that enjoy soccer, that have done well with soccer, that are getting scholarships to various colleges and how much the program has meant to them. And I think it's wonderful that we're, excuse me, that we have the opportunity to have this for our youth. A lot of work needs to be done for all the rest of what's being discussed here. We don't have the information about a stadium. We don't have the information about commercial restaurants, et cetera. That's going to take a lot more planning. but I don't know what else there is that needs to be discussed on this issue that we're here today. And I am in favor of this issue. I think it will be a real asset to our county, to our city, and surrounding counties. Thank you. I recommend to the board that we take a vote first on whether or not to decide the issue today. In other words, whether or not to postpone it. That seems to be the first issue at stake. So, um. And in any case, it would be a continuance, right? It would be a continuance. Yes, I'm sorry, it would be a continuance. Except that having two new board members would mean we'd have to, I mean, for them to vote, We'd have to listen to testimony again, correct? Mr. Chair, may I take 30 seconds of your time, please? No, sir. We've heard from you already. We're discussing procedural matters. I'd like to know why you're not listening to staff recommendations with the further amplifications of the decision you want to make today. Tracy, what do you think? Well, first off, I wanted to, but Ms. Carter already addressed it. It needs to be a continuance unless you want to hear everything again, which I don't think you probably do. Probably not. Because if you postpone, you would have to do that. No, we understand that. A continuance would be in order. Secondly, as you've noted, you will have two new board members should you choose to do that. Maybe. I mean, they have to be confirmed by the council, appointed by the mayor, in time for your next meeting. So that would mean a couple of different things, options there for you guys. You could, at least four of you that are here would have to be here because you'd have to have a quorum. And then if a fifth one was here, then you all could continue it and make the decision with those five people should you choose to continue it. If your new board members are appointed by that time, they have the option to go back and listen to this tape in its entirety, and then they can vote. But, you know, the timing on that may or may not be. You all would also have an option, which you don't do this very often, to set a special meeting just for this purpose, if the staff would have time then to process what they've been provided. So those are pretty much your options with a continuance and in light of this changeover that's coming on July 1st. Tracy, tell us more about that special meeting. That's something that, as far as I know, we haven't done in my tenure. I don't want you to be – I don't want to throw the staff out there on this, because I would want them to weigh in as to whether or not, you know, if you set that sooner before the two of you all leave this board, if that would give them time to do what they need to do. But when this board has the authority to set a special meeting, you have to do that. You have to give notice, but it's within a specific amount of time. Would they be able to make a mail notice? There may be some issues with notification, but you all do have the authority to do that. We typically don't send mail notice again for a board meeting, considering those who chose to come today already spoke. And they would be, if you've made a decision to postpone or identify a date for a special meeting, everyone present would be aware of that and could attend. We do need to provide notification in the newspaper via a legal ad. and then by state law you have to at least notify each other a minimum of seven days ahead of a meeting. So the chairman can call a special meeting, you notify all the members, and then we do a legal advertisement with that agenda item. And the agenda in a special meeting is limited to whatever is on that agenda item. It can't be anything else. Yeah, okay. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you. So, Chair, I agree with both Chad and Joan. I'm usually a little more decisive, but as Joan said, I do think that the issue before us is simpler than all the conversations have, because we are just one small piece in it, and I do know, you know, we have all these other components. So I would have otherwise thought we may have enough information to make that decision today on that one singular piece, except without having the, I do have some concern without having the findings and the staff report attached to it. I just do like to be on solid footing for those things. It is just one particular issue. I'd say, Ms. Carter, for findings, we could always go into recess and have those worked out if they were needed. Well, I'm tempted. Because of the fact that we have no staff report recommending approval and no proposed conditions from the staff or anything like that, I'm more inclined to either postpone this for a month, which creates problems because it reduces the number of people that have heard all the testimony today, but I'm a little intrigued by this special meeting idea, just to address this issue. But I have to ask staff, if we do call a special meeting, it would have to be called before the end of this month. And so my question to the staff is, do you think there's enough time between now and the end of the month for you all to do your review of the revised proposal that's before you in order for us to resolve this issue at a special meeting. So the end of the month is 17 days away, and the legal ad requires 7 to 10 days notice before it's, or I guess, ahead of the meeting itself. So we would need to kind of back date off of that ahead of the meeting a week. that gives us 10 days from today to revise our site plan and also get the legal ad drafted and pushed out and to work with the applicant on any of the other discussion items today. Would June, May 20, I mean Monday, May 27th, is that far enough out, Mr. Glover and staff? Two weeks? I don't think city council usually has things on Mondays, so it may be our best time to get the room to. That's true. I think the Mondays is a good day for the council chambers in general. I do believe two weeks would be sufficient for the staff to have a revised staff report to the board. Okay. I'm not sure that that's my prerogative in calling a special meeting. You said it was, or Tracy, you said it was. I'm unclear about what my responsibilities and duties are. As the chair, it can be your prerogative to call a special meeting. Okay. If you prefer to put it to a vote, you can, but you have the authority. to call special meeting. No, boy. Chair, I know. Go out with a bang. Go out with a bang time. But just I did want to say, we keep saying that the staff doesn't have a report, but actually the staff does have a report. They just couldn't conclude, you know, they expressed their concerns within the report. So we do have some parameters, you know, that we're already working with, with outlines specifically what the staff is concerned about. So if we failed to move forward and look specifically at the staff's concerns, I guess we could do that and get it done today or not. I'd be more comfortable having a staff report with specific recommendations before going forward. I hate to blindside the staff because they do the work, like I said before. So my inclination on this is to call a special hearing. Mr. Glover, real quick, Mr. Chairman, do we want to go ahead and put off your resignation and new votes for that special meeting, too? That way you could chair the meeting. Ask me that question again. I think since we're doing a special meeting, we could also postpone our agenda item related to electing a new chair with you stepping down at the end of today's meeting. We can wait until the end of that meeting. Yeah. You could chair again, so we may want to include that. I think that would be appropriate. Sure. Yeah. Who knew it was going to be this complicated? Everybody knew. Yeah, everybody knew. Sure. Well, look at your calendars for the 27th. I have a question. Yeah. Was the staff report done, was it written before or after the meeting that you all had on, what, Friday, Thursday, Friday? Oh, our staff report was finished last Monday. So they're required to be ready. This staff report is required to be ready by ordinance a week ahead of the hearing. And so we didn't receive feedback. That's also when the applicant receives that staff report. So we didn't receive feedback from them until late Thursday that they were working on a revised site plan. We received it after 5 o'clock on Friday. Right. That's what I'm getting at is that this staff report was before the information that you got. Correct. From them. Okay. Okay. That's what I thought. Thank you. So I'm inclined to continue this matter to a special meeting, a special meeting with the specific purpose of concluding our business on this one application, which would give staff time to prepare a more detailed report, which would include some of the information or all of the information that you've heard today in testimony today. That kind of compromise, of course, pleases no one, and no one gets exactly what they want. Everybody is inconvenienced by it, especially us if we have to come back in two weeks, but especially the staff if they have to prepare another report. So that's my inclination. is to continue this. My recommendation is to continue this to a special meeting called on the 27th of this month specifically to decide and conclude this matter. So, Tracy, does that require a vote? Do I need a vote, or can I do that arbitrarily? I'm happy to do it arbitrarily. You can do it. Not arbitrarily. but you can do it based on your authority in the bylaws. But if you want to poll your members to make sure you're going to have a quorum on that day or something else, you can do that. Yeah, that's my concern is that we get everybody back. You what? I'm out of town today. You're out of state? Is there another date that's convenient? Any other date. No, no. I'll actually be in the town like that evening. So it would be Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Then I know that creates scheduling issues for the, I guess, location. But Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of that week. Okay. Chad, about you? You're good? Missing for the world. Yeah. Joan, how's your calendar? I can't wait. Can't wait? How about you? You can make yourself available, Chad? Brandon? I can be available on Monday but also on Tuesday if that's what's needed for Ms. Carter to be able to come. We would have to locate it in a different location on Tuesday because of the council work session. They have priority over everyone in this room. Could we find a room on Tuesday if everybody's available? Maybe. I don't know. We have to check the calendars for the other. It would probably most likely be in the Phoenix building, but we don't know without checking. Okay. And also, while you can set a special meeting should you choose to do so, you all will still, if you are going to continue it, you need to vote to continue it. Right. Okay. Mr. Chair, let me also say, I want to be sure that the staff can do what they need to do. I'm going to depend a great deal on the staff and their recommendation for whatever we decide. I want to be sure they have the time to do what we are asking them to do. Can we be sure about that? Are you all comfortable in that period of time? We would be able to review the revised site plan and compile a new amended staff report ahead of the meeting on the 27th, or 28th, the meeting at the end of the month. Okay. The 28th sounds like the best date when we can all be present to take up this matter again, and 1.30 seems like a convenient time since we're all here and available today. So the remaining question is, can I call a special meeting for a location that is yet to be determined? That's a legal question. I mean, you can call the meeting and say, and we will have to determine that in time to make the ad for the paper. Yeah. um you know and say that it'll be at a location that is available um but i know but this room will not be available okay but it will be on the city calendar though so people could look on the city calendar and find out where we've designated the room yes special meeting on the city calendar it's not was not show up as a regular meeting but it was a special meeting right okay 1 30. Okay, then I will call a special meeting. Let's see. We need a vote to continue this. So moved. Second. Motion made by Mr. Gross and seconded by Ms. Whitman to continue this matter. And we will continue it to, let's see, let's vote on this. Okay, we voted to continue the meeting. We will continue it to a special date on the 28th at 1.30 at a location to be determined by staff. Is that fair? Okay, motion passed. This matter is continued. Thank you, everybody, for attending. We will see you again sometime. Those of you who testified need not come back again because we've already heard your testimony. Excuse me. Excuse me. We still have items on the agenda, and so we need the room to clear if you are not associated with another case. Excuse me. We still have another item on the agenda, and so you need to clear the room if you don't want to be associated with that case. We have one more case on the docket, so if you were here for this case, Please vacate the room. We have one more case on the docket. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Are we still voting after this? Are we still voting after this? No. Oh, we could, yes. We could. We could. the last item on the docket is to election of officers. We could make it effective July 1st. Oh, yeah. We could. Look at the big brain on Tommy. Well, that was down here. Look at the big brain on Carter. Yeah. So what do we do? I'm staying or I'm leaving? I'm staying. Okay. I was trying to help you, Raquel. Oh, I know. Hey, Raquel, I was trying to help you get out. But you did. But I did. I did. Thank you. I guess we'll get special recognition. Yeah, baby. We're doing something we never. Yeah. Oh, brother. Appreciate it. And who are you with? What's your name? I'm Howard. Oh, nice to meet you, Howard. I hadn't met you yet. Yeah. So how's Bruce? He's training you? Ladies and gentlemen, the last item, the last application on our agenda is not an application at all. It is an administrative appeal. It is PLN VOA 22-23, Wayne Michaels Properties, and LLC and Walter P. Glover Enterprises. No relation. And let's see. You're going to recuse, Raquel. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. Why don't you step out for just a bit? This is an appeal to contest the Division of Planning's issuance of a zoning compliance permit for a rehabilitation home. And is the applicant present? Yes, sir. The applicant is here. We will hear from you. All right. Mr. Simpson? Yes. And there was opposition, I understand, to this application or to this administrative appeal. I understood. Is that correct? Is the opposition still present? Yes. Yes. Okay. Will the staff be presenting or are we just relying upon the report? From what I understand from staff, they are taking no position. Is that correct? Can that be possible? You can't take a position on a decision we already made in the past that's now being appealed. And the decision was the issuance of the – yeah, gotcha. Okay. Hold on just a second. All right. Okay. Okay. Okay. I understood, Mr. Simpson, that Al Grash was going to make the presentation that you are not going to be here. I was counting on that. He is standing by in case I falter. Go right ahead. Good. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. My name is Bruce Simpson, along with Al Grash and Howard Ball, represent the appellant in this particular case, Michael Williams. and I would also say it's fair to say a number of other residents, neighbors in the vicinity of the property located at 866 South Broadway. Let me try to zero in to the critical point as to why we're here. I know that you all have heard a lot of testimony about a lot of cases. It got a little complicated in a few of them, which is understandable, and I understand your patience is nearing an end since it's suppertime or past. So let me tell you why is it that this appeal was taken. This particular property, 866 South Broadway, actually came before your predecessors in 1976 for a conditional use permit. 1976. They requested a, really a halfway house for inmates who were getting out of the main prison, who were kind of reintegrating into society. And so this particular site was chosen. Now, the actual definition that they applied to seek this conditional use permit was a rehabilitation center. However, if you, and I'll introduce this into the evidence, if you examine the zoning ordinance, which was in effect in 1976 in February, when this came before the Board of Adjustment, a rehabilitation center is not specifically defined. Now, KRS 100-237, which is the guiding Kentucky statute that gives this board the authority to act on conditional use permits, specifically states that you have that authority so long as the conditional use is specifically defined in the zoning ordinance. The only thing that was in the zoning ordinance at the time that the Board approved this request in 1976 was simply the term rehabilitation center, but with no explanation of what did that mean and what did that include. Well, it is abundantly clear from the application, all of which I'm including in the record of this case. It's part of the record, the application, the decision, the minutes of the board, the staff report, etc. You all have been forwarded that in your packet, and I'm referring to it here in our presentation. with no definition on rehabilitation center. It is clear from the application and clear from the minutes of that meeting that what was sought by the applicant was a place for inmates who were transitioning from the main prison to a halfway house until they served out their sentence and then released into the community. There was no request at that time in the application. There was no discussion in the minutes. There was no elaboration upon anything that had to do with drug treatment whatsoever. It simply was not part of the request. It was not defined in the zoning ordinance that Rehabilitation Center included drug treatment. So it was entirely focused on the application and the hearing, the testimony, and all of the evidence on a halfway house. That much is unabundantly clear. In fact, it's undisputed. So after listening to the presentation, the Board of Adjustment did approve a halfway house for 866 South Broadway, the same subject property that we're talking about tonight and upon which this appeal is addressed. That facility became known as St. Andrew's House. It was a halfway house, as I said. And it started sometime around after it was approved in 1976. And it continued up until July of 2010. And I will show you some evidence that highlights this in a minute. At which time it ceased operations. The halfway house ceased operations. It is my understanding that the state of Kentucky, which had a contract with the then-owners of the home that operated the facility, that that contract was not renewed, and those inmates were put in a different location. but the operation at 866 South Broadway for the halfway house, the conditional use that was approved terminated in July of 2010, almost 12 years ago. And it's been vacant since then. There's been no use of that property for a halfway house or a drug treatment facility or anything else. It's been vacant to the best of our knowledge. And we have two property owners who own property in close proximity to this site, 866 South Broadway, who can respond to any questions you have about what things were going on there. So, as you might guess, being vacant that long, now 12 years, and this is particularly important to the people who live in the vicinity of this neighborhood, because it's primarily rental property. And the property itself has radically changed from 1976 until the last 10 or 15 years, where it's been more focused on residential housing. It used to be tobacco warehouses. For those of you who are from Lexington, you can recall going down South Broadway, on the tobacco warehouses and the tobacco trucks and the tobacco spilling out on the road. This area was dominated by tobacco warehouses. In any event, the halfway house stopped 12 years ago. Nothing happened in 2010 up until this year when the property was purchased by the current owner. And then some work was observed being done on the property, and one of the neighbors was curious as to what was going on and made inquiry, and that led to our discovery that a proposal was to put in a drug treatment facility here. Again, when the conditional use came before the board in 1976, the only reference was to a rehabilitation center. And the board took it upon themselves, apparently at that time, to define rehabilitation center as being a halfway house. There was no discussion or mention or any kind of debate about drug and alcohol treatment at that time, nor at any time since. It was then we discovered that a zoning compliance permit had been issued for a rehabilitation facility. Now, in our zoning ordinance currently, the actual correct nomenclature is rehabilitation home. And rehabilitation home, under the new definition, not the one that was in play in 1976, but the one that's in play now, does make reference to halfway houses and drug treatment. But that was not reviewed by the board when the conditional use was approved. They only approved what they interpreted rehabilitation center to mean, which was a halfway house. So we contend that the zoning compliance permit, which purports to allow drug treatment, was improvidently granted, that that was not something that the board approved as a conditional use in 1976, and therefore that part of the permit for drug treatment ought to be denied, reversed, in other words. Now, this is not to say that the property owner is left out in the cold because, as you all well know, all he has to do is to file an application for a conditional use permit, come before the board and present testimony and evidence about what his plans are, how it's going to operate. Is it going to be 24 hours a day? Is it going to be a methadone-type treatment? Are there going to be drugs administered there on site? What is actually going on? Because that evidence as to what the proposed use is intended to be based upon this zoning compliance permit, this board has never heard any of that discussion. The public has never heard of any of that discussion. There's been no conditions as a result placed on the use of the property or how it's to operate, which gives this board its stewardship authority, if you will, as the Board of Adjustment, because you all have a constant supervision over every conditional use permit. You can modify conditions as time goes on. You can revoke conditions. you can revoke permits, but with no standards, no criteria relative to the operation of a drug treatment facility, which there is none now in the records because that issue has never come before the board, you have no authority to do anything in terms of controlling should a problem arise, if neighbors complain about whatever that might happen, you don't have any ability to institute corrective measures, except, I suppose, you know, revocation of some sort, but again, based on what criteria. So it's really a benefit to the board to simply say this zoning compliance permit was improvidently granted, that the applicant should simply just file a new request for a conditional use permit, come before the board, file the application materials, explain what your program is going to consist of, let the neighbors have a full appreciation of what it is you're going to do and how you're going to operate, who you're going to serve, and all of these things that are just basic questions, so that they have an understanding and can make a more informed decision about what position they want to take, if any. And again, you all need this information in terms of future stewardship of this particular conditional use permit. So it makes sense on several different levels. I know a question came up earlier in another hearing relative to, well, who gets notice of conditional use permits? Well, if you engage Mr. Gross, certainly his client, he will exercise due diligence and he will say, these are the things in the area where you're going to be living. Now, it's very rare, quite frankly, in my experience, from doing residential work, that most people buying a house, and particularly people renting a house, they never get notice about this stuff because they're just renting the property that's there. They're not buying it, and they rarely, if ever, pay an attorney to do a title search to see what kind of conditional uses are in the vicinity of where I'm going to be living. And I maybe want to live there a long time because I like the area in which we found this rental home. They never find out until there's some big event that surprises them that, oh, I didn't know that was even here. And a lot of times even the residential buyers, unless they engage legal counsel to specifically look for deed restrictions and conditional use permits and the like, most of the residential purchasers rely upon mortgage company attorneys to just make sure their collateral is free and clear of any lien so they can get a mortgage to help pay for their home. So a lot of purchasers just simply get caught unaware of conditional use provisions like this. And, you know, conditional use restrictions are there for a reason. You know, the statute says these uses are allowed in certain zones, but only under certain conditions, because they have the potential to have an adverse impact on the existing neighborhood. And we don't want that, so we want to find out what is it you're going to do, and let us hear your program, how it's going to operate, how many hours you're going to operate during the day, are you going to have drugs on the site, are people going to be getting methadone treatment, is that going to be part of it, exactly tell us what all is going on, how are you going to supervise the people, how many people are going to live here, All those basic questions that you all want answers to in every conditional use application that comes before you. It's only fair. And it's the law, because that's what conditional use language in the statute says. these are uses that have the potential to create adverse impact on existing neighborhoods that we need to find out more about and maybe have to impose certain conditions to make sure that these potential adverse consequences don't happen or they happen to the minimum extent possible. That is why you have jurisdiction over what are called conditional use permits. So the applicant, the current property owner, he has every right to file an application for a conditional use permit, and for the first time, before any land use decision-making body in this county, have you all, as the appropriate land use decision-making authority, as the stewards of conditional use permits and grantors of same, to present their application, this is what we're going to do, this is how we're not going to hurt people, these are the measures we're going to take, this is our supervision, hours of operation, et cetera, et cetera, respond to questions, you all make an informed decision, the public's better informed, and the conditional use permit language that the statute enables you to perform your duties is satisfied. That's what we are seeking in this case. But to get there, we need to have this board determine and issue a decision that the decision that was granted in 1976 by the Board of Adjustment approved a halfway house. I'm sorry. Approved a halfway house. And they defined rehabilitation center to mean that. It wasn't anything about drug treatment. There was no discussion about drug treatment. And so that's why we're here. We found out about this. It was a surprise. We don't know the answers to these questions. We're concerned that if there, perchance, does develop adverse consequences, which we hope that we don't, obviously. You know, nobody wants to have problems to have to deal with and call lawyers and all of that. But if problems do happen, this board at least has some criteria that it can review and institute recommendations for correction. This is how this process is supposed to operate. So that's why we're here. What I have told you is the facts are not in dispute. There's never been any discussion about drug treatment on this site. It's strictly been for halfway house use, and that hasn't been used in 12 years, and that also is not in dispute. So let me go through just a little bit of the presentation to give you a little bit of a perspective about the neighborhood and what it looks like. This is the language that I mentioned to you just a few minutes ago. So this is the language that gives you all the jurisdiction to decide conditional use permits. And this is verbatim from the statute. The board shall have the power to hear and decide applications for conditional use permits, which are to allow the proper integration into the community of uses, which are specifically named in the zoning regulation, which may be suitable only in specific locations in the zone only if certain conditions are met. So you will note the word specifically is mentioned several times there, and the first time it makes reference to, as I mentioned to you in my opening remarks, conditional uses are only those uses that are specifically named in the zoning ordinance. Well, the use that was applied for in 76 was rehabilitation center. That's as specific as it got. There was no clarifying language about anything other than those words. Now, the board does have the authority to interpret the language that it is delegated to utilize in instances such as this. It should have been more specifically crafted. That's been changed. but when this came before the board for a decision on the conditional use permit, it wasn't clear. It just said rehabilitation center, and the board interpreted that to mean halfway house. Nothing about drug and alcohol treatment whatsoever. There's no dispute about that. And that is the definition of apparently some confusion happened when the zoning compliance got a letter. They didn't check into the records to see if this was actually a conditional use for drug treatment that was included, and that's why we brought this to your decision for two purposes. Number one, it was an error because nothing about drug and alcohol treatment was ever heard, discussed, applied for, or decided. And secondly, if the current property owner wants to proceed with that endeavor, drug and alcohol treatment, he has every right to file an application to come before the board and we'll have a hearing on that. and you can weigh what you need to weigh and make decisions that you need to make, and the folks that live around the property, the neighbors, will have the opportunity to come down here, as they always do today in perfect example, and offer their comments. That's the way it works. It hasn't worked yet. It needs to be corrected, and it can only be corrected by this board deciding to set aside the zoning compliance permit and just have the applicant file an application, come before you, and let's hear the case. It's pretty simple, really. So that's the statute. That really is the principal seminal statute that governs conditional use permits and your all's authority. This is a copy of the Herald Leader article. I've got a handout. It didn't come clear the date, but it is in fact July of 2012 is when this St. Andrews halfway house, 866 South Broadway, the property we're talking about right now was closed. So it's been 12 years empty. There's two streets. This is Bacota Court. As you can see, it's entirely a residential street. This is the property sits between Becota Court and Broadway Park facing South Broadway. So the property that's proposed for the drug treatment facility is bracketed by two residential streets exclusively. There's some businesses that are on South Broadway. This is South Broadway Park. You can see it's got a nice little island like Cherokee Park. On the other side of Nicholasville Road, very similar in terms of ambiance. This is the site of 866 South Broadway. This is Facility itself. You can actually see it better in the close-up pictures that I gave you in my handout. Current condition. It's obviously in need of significant work because it has not been occupied for many, many years. Not used. I think they paid the electric bill and so forth and so on, but in terms of actually complying with the conditional use that they were approved for in 1976, nobody's been in this property and consistent with that approval since 2010. and 10. Again, these are just some additional shots of the current conditions of property that 866 South Broadway. Mr. Simpson, quick question. Yes. My memory has already been called out once by the audience, so I may be wrong again. But I think this property has been used over the last 10 years? Like it seems, as I come down South Broadway, has it been empty and not used for 10 years? You know, it could just be people sitting on the stoop. I don't know. Brandon, I've got the people that own both sides of the property and they can come up and attest to that. Okay. So they live right next to it. Okay. Anything else? Okay. Bruce, I just have to ask, who does all the painting on this property? I'm sorry? Who does all the painting on this property? You have it, it looks beige there, and then one picture is pink, and what we have is green. I'm kidding. Well, I just couldn't resist. Just couldn't. If I put the, if I assemble the photographs, my vision is not exactly up to par. It's just a cheap camera. That's all right. Okay. I've got another. Again, this just shows the residential theme that surrounds. Bruce, I've got another question for you. It looks to me that the owners did the right thing. They got the zoning compliance permit. Now we can dispute whether or not it falls, but what do you tell the owners who bought this property. We're told by the government you can use it for this use. And now you want us to say, no, you can't. Well, that's the purpose of, you know, these administrative appeals. And, you know, the truth of the matter is, I mean, the I have to be careful, but drug treatment is a necessity, right? In our community. And nobody wants it, right? I mean, nobody wants it. I mean, I haven't found anybody that wanted it. No one's ever called me and offered to hire me to represent a neighborhood and said, by all means, you have to get this next to my neighborhood. Because there's issues with people with drugs, but they need help. So they got a zoning compliance permit. That doesn't mean it can't be challenged, which is why we're here. And it doesn't mean they can't come before this board and get what they want, because they can. They absolutely can. So that's my slide presentation. I do have the night. I'm sorry. Before you leave, I have a couple of questions, or just at least one question. The Herald-Eater article looks like it's from 2010. Is that right? Yes. It mentions in the body of that article from the newspaper that the last paragraph says many of the former inmates had been imprisoned on alcohol and drug-related charges. So I'm assuming that rehabilitation, even back then, if it didn't specifically mention alcohol and drug-related rehabilitation, that that would be understood. I don't know. It wasn't defined in the zoning ordinance as to what a rehabilitation center consisted of. so without that specificity that was really required by the zoning ordinance the only conclusion I believe you can draw reasonably is what was the discussion about and you will not find any discussion in the minutes or the application about providing drug or alcohol treatment. You will find discussion about we're supervising these inmates, they're on parole or probation, we'll help them find jobs. But that's it. There's nothing about drug or alcohol treatment whatsoever in there. But this is the zoning ordinance that was in effect at the time. We have a copy. Okay. Good. And so in terms of our legal position, I think it's very solid. I know it is. The ordinance wasn't specific, so the board made an interpretation, and their interpretation, which can only be gleaned by the discussion, the decision and the application, was for a halfway house. And the other thing is this. You all would still, even if this appeal wasn't taken, we could come in here and ask for this board to review the conditional use permit because of this new use drug and alcohol treatment, which before has not taken place, to the best of our knowledge, in order that you could determine is this an appropriate use under this definition of rehabilitation center because that's no longer in the zoning ordinance. Their approval of the conditional use permit, the occupancy, the zoning compliance permit, was for a rehabilitation facility. Now, I will share with you, after doing these cases for 30 years, when it comes to planning and zoning, words are extremely important. And the law says, as pronounced by the courts of appeal and the Supreme Court of Kentucky, that you have to be specific in terms of these kinds of measures. And you have to define your terms, and those are the terms that have to be complied with. and there was no definition, no reference to rehabilitation home in the 1976 application and decision. The zoning compliance permit talks about rehabilitation facility, which doesn't exist at all. What did exist was rehabilitation center. And you can say, well, isn't all the same? Well, no, it's not. No, it's not, because there can be different kinds of rehabilitation centers, and if you don't define them, the board does have the power to do so, but they've only done so with respect to a halfway house, because there's nothing to indicate that drug and alcohol treatment was ever part of their consideration or evidence or anything, nothing, absolutely conspicuous by its absence was anything in reference to drug or alcohol treatment. So the owner can come forward and file the application for the conditional use permit. You all have heard these before. You've approved them before. You've put conditions on them before, and that's as it should be. This one was not done the way it should have been done. It is now you have the time to correct it, to give yourself the authority to review this ongoing drug and alcohol treatment program should you decide to approve it, because you don't have anything now. You had nothing. The only condition that was imposed on the facility back in 1976 was they had to pay this area for parking. And you will hear the residents talk about what a precious thing parking is nowadays because of the increase in residential activity that's taken place in this neighborhood as well as the small businesses along South Broadway. So we believe our suggestion is eminently fair for everybody. It's fair for the board. It's required for the board. It's fair for the neighbors to be informed about these kinds of uses that renters never get informed about. One of the beauties of the 2018 Comprehensive Plan is that for the first time in my knowledge, they finally started to pay attention and give some importance to renters, because before it was all property owners. They got notice of the zone change. They got notice of conditional use permits and the like. But renters, people that can't afford the home, but still want to live in that neighborhood because it's a nice neighborhood and I can afford to rent, but I can't afford to buy, they ought to be entitled to the same due process notification as everybody else. and this process, because we will make sure that everybody that was in the required notification zone, rent or own, gets notification of this, just like we notified people about it today. But we think it's fair on so many different levels. It's an issue you all need to remedy because you have no authority to do anything going forward if you don't. and more significantly the permit was issued improvidently, it can be corrected and the gentleman and his family or whoever corporation can come before the board and make their case and you all make a decision the way it's supposed to happen. That concludes my presentation. I do have several people that would like to testify. I'll let them come up and introduce themselves and share with you their history of how long they lived in the neighborhood, how long they've lived next to this property, their observations about it, their concerns about it, so that you have a full ambit of information upon which to make your decision. Thank you. Mr. Simpson, do you think your witnesses can limit their remarks to three minutes each? Okay. Bruce, I have a question. If this property has been vacant all this time, it would appear to me, staff, too, that you would need a new conditional use. A new what? A new conditional use permit for it. Well, that's my point, is to file for a new conditional use permit. I'm sorry to make that clear, but that the applicant can file for a new conditional use permit. So thank you for making sure that's clear. I'm sorry. Obviously, I wasn't clear. No, I wasn't. I'm sorry. Thank you. We're going to have some questions for the staff later. Yes, sir. Hello. Thank you all for hearing us today. I really appreciate it. I know you're all tired and you've had a long day. My name is Michael Williams. I'm, of course, opposed to the issuance of the zoning compliance permit for the 866 building. I'm a hairdresser, and I'm a salon owner. I've been there for about 21 years now, and my location is two doors down from the halfway house, which is 866, and I'm 860. My neighbor is with us today. His name is Mr. John Glover. He owns the Glovery bookstore. next to me, which is 862. I believe John's been there for more than 30 years. 1980. 1980. So John knows a lot more than I do, I'm sure. But I'm just going to give you some of my experiences as a salon owner and a business owner and a hairdresser. We've had so many problems in the past with this neighborhood. It's been a nightmare. It's been really tough. we were so surprised to learn that well actually not me not only me but the residents the renters and the the property owners were surprised that this was issued and they were going to reopen it's been vacant for many many years i mean when i say vacant i mean there there's no activity there just absolutely run down, weeds, nothing there. We were excited that someone would buy the property and redevelop it for something nice. We had no idea this was going to happen, so we're all still in shock. We spent many, many years in the past cleaning up the neighborhood, fixing up the properties, talking to the owners, cleaning up the streets, Renovating, it's kind of hard to describe what John and I and other neighbors have done to the area. The original facility permit was like 73, 74, 48-something years ago. It was a completely different environment. It was surrounded by tobacco warehouses, bars, storage facilities. Now we have, 50 years later, we have all student housing rentals all up and down all the streets. It's all new. We have family homes. We have an elementary Montessori school on the opposite end of the halfway house. A school, little children. They play outside in the back all the time. We hear them from the salon. Many, many new businesses. Lots of young adults that run up and down the street, walk their dogs. They're UK students, they're children. I think allowing this without a fair hearing to let the neighborhoods and the renters and the property owners hear exactly what they're going to do there, I don't think it's fair to the property owners and the neighborhood. It needs to be outlined specifically exactly what they plan to do. We've spent a lot of time cleaning up this area. We have nothing against a treatment facility. But in the past, we've had so many problems. This is not the time or the place for this sort of thing. It's not an area for it. I ask that you all reconsider this and think about it and let the neighborhood, the property owners, and the business people have a fair shot and able to know exactly what's going to happen to us again. So it happened once. When the halfway house was there, I had people sleeping on my porch, doing drugs in my parking lot, harassing my female clients as they walked from their car to the front of the property, coming in asking for money, watching the females leave, following them into the car. Never ended. I would have called the Department of Corrections and begged for help with no relief left up to me by myself in the salon by myself hushing, rushing people away. It's not fair. There's no authority. There's no one watching these. There was no outline of who was there, what time they were coming in, what they were doing. But just asking for a fair shot at letting the neighborhood know what could happen to them. I think it should be heard again. This was 48, 50 years ago. This was a totally different environment. If you could drive down the streets in the evenings and see all the new restaurants and all the new rental properties and the Starbucks and the upscale living and the hotel and motel, we need to know what these people were planning on doing. I think it's fair that you can just buy a building and then assume a permit that was 50 years ago and there's no plan of what you're going to do. It just doesn't seem fair. But anyway, I do thank you for your time, and I appreciate it, and I wish you would consider that. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman and board, thanks for hearing us. My name is John Thomas Glover. No relation, I believe, sir. Even though we've got a great name. Some people have accused us of being related, but we're not. I am the property owner directly next door to the property that they're trying to put the drug treatment center into. I've been there since 1980. I represent Walter P. Glover LLC, which is my LLC that property actually falls under. Back in 1976, when this permit was originally issued, Broadway west of the tracks was nothing but tobacco warehouses, bars. The only other business that was really viable in the area was the old Coach House restaurant. And that's because it was sitting right next to Red Mile Racetrack and all the horsemen went there. Everything else was tobacco warehouse. You had the Little Bacota Court and South Broadway Park that were residential. They were completely run down, and they were completely just, it wasn't a very pleasant area to live in at all. Over time, that whole area has just completely rejuvenated into really nice student housing. There are large-scale apartment houses with hundreds of apartments all up and down that whole corridor now. Restaurants, shopping centers. Back in the 80s, we had nowhere to go eat. Now we've got just tens, 20 different places right there in the area. Basically, it boils down to it's absolutely not the same neighborhood that was back in the 70s when this original permit was issued. And so that permit should not apply to the situation that we live in today. I have been next door to that structure since 80, almost every single day. And if you need evidence, I can attest that there has not been a resident in that structure since it closed down in 2010. Nobody. It has sat empty. It has gotten dilapidated. As you saw from the pictures, it's in terrible shape. I cannot understand why somebody would want to put a drug rehabilitation center where they charge thousands a month into a building like that. And back when I was in it, back when it was the halfway house, it was a dormitory. So I don't understand why they even would consider that building for this project. Mr. Glover, can I ask you, does the property next door to you, does it run all the way from South Broadway to Poindexter Alley? Yes, sir. It's actually two separate structures that have a passageway in between. Yeah. There are 1900 vintage Victorian houses. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Let's see. As I understand it, the 1976 permit has been reissued by your planning staff three times over the last decade. I guess planning had determined that there was some type of continuous intent being put forth by the property owners of those. I have been next door nearly every day, and I can tell you that it has been sat in there empty. The building is still empty to this day. In my mind, intent must be established there needs to be at least some type of usage of the property. Something going on, some type of usage that was the intent of you all when you gave the original variants. And I just don't understand how it can be, anybody can conceive that it's being used, the intent was being used all this time and 10 years it's been vacant. I agree with Mrs. Whiteman that it just doesn't make sense. In addition, on the property, this property is located, as you said, on Poindexter Alley and South Broadway Park and South Broadway. On the other side of Poindexter Alley is another facility that's being used to house psychologically affected people. I think they're mostly schizophrenics. It houses about 15 individuals. And why would somebody put a drug rehabilitation center right next to a group of people that are already having serious problems? problems. And on the same token on that, we're dealing with where we are getting a concentration of this type of usage, where we already have, you know, we have enough for our neighborhood already with the halfway house that is already in existence on the other side of Poindexter rally. So what we would really like to be able to do is hear out what this drug rehabilitation center is, what they're going to do there, how many occupants are going to be in that building and how they're going to run an operation that we in the neighborhood can live with. At this moment, we know nothing. There's no conditions. We don't know if it's going to be a methadone clinic, whether it's going to be outpatient, whether it's all going to be residents. And if it comes before you folks as a new application, we can go through that process and we can find this information out and be able to absorb it and make decisions and know what we're getting into in our neighborhood. So I just hope that you will see that we need to actually rehear this application. And as the attorney said, get all of this out in the open and get a new hearing so that we can all make good decisions. Thank you. Thank you. One last little thing. Not knowing how many residents are going to be in that building, it's a 5,500-square-foot building, we don't know whether the all-street parking is going to be adequate and whether they're going to be able to meet today's zoning requirements of four beds per, I mean, one parking place per four beds and also the parking for their staff. So again, if we had another hearing, we could find out how many beds they're going to have, how many staff members are going to be on shift, and then you all can also determine whether there's enough parking on site in order to do it. Thank you very much. That was three minutes. That was a little more than that. Mr. Simpson, it seems to me this is basically a legal question. I'm not sure why we need to hear more testimony about the growth of the neighborhood and things like that. It seems like we basically have to decide the issue of whether or not the permit was improvidently granted. And that seems to be more of a legal question, which I think you presented very well. Do we really need to hear more witnesses? I get the message, Mr. Chairman, and I would say no. Okay, thank you. I have a few questions for staff, and I think because it seemed to me that Mr. Simpson makes a compelling case about the fact that this permit was, or I'm sorry, this zoning compliance permit, whether or not it was properly granted. So I'm anxious to hear from staff about why the permit was granted and what the staff took into consideration when they were deciding to support the issuance of the permit. I'll hear from you later. And after the staff speaks, we will hear from you all. I'm not going to run through my presentation because Bruce covered a lot of the material that's in that, and honestly it's just a duplicate of the staff report. Which, first I do want to clarify just the specific wording in the 1975 zoning ordinance. We have a copy of it here that Daniel's trying to operate that little zoom camera thing. Okay. If you could zoom in a little bit. We'll see how the quality is. Okay. Can you go down a little bit? Thank you. Okay. So this column here, this is old school zoning ordinance where it's laid out in a table. This is for the R3 zone. This column is for conditional uses. In the blurry text there, rehabilitation centers are listed as a conditional use. And then at the end of the zoning ordinance, there's a definition. Rehab centers do not have their own specific definition, but they are included in the definition of another use. We're getting there. Here, institution for human care. A building or a group of buildings providing health, medical, or rehabilitation services to individuals such as hospitals, convalescent homes, nursing and rest houses, orphanages, and rehabilitation centers. So I just wanted to clarify that up front. In the 1975 ordinance, rehabilitation centers are addressed. They just don't have their own separate definition. So explain that to me. They're lumped in with other similar. They're used listed in the definition for institution for human care. Okay. And then they are called out specifically as a conditional use in the R3 zone. Okay. Other things I wanted to discuss, you know, our staff report covers the permitting history on site starting back in the 70s and going up through the 2010s. I just want to reiterate the more recent history for the site. We have a certificate of occupancy issued to Lexway Housing in 2011. This references the BOA case and the application is for a rehabilitation housing facility. We also have a copy of a, and I don't believe I actually was able to include this in the staff report, so I apologize, but I can show it on the camera if you need. The applicant here did get a copy of this. This was in the Friday data request that they came into the office for. We have a letter issued by Building Inspection. It's a stop work order issued in 2013. They had someone had called in a complaint about some remodeling work happening on the site, and so Building Inspection issued a stop work order for them. following up we have a copy of a commercial permit for remodeling in 2014 seems in response to that stop work order the property owner did file for a remodeling permit in the notes here I just have well I'm reading the building inspections notes that it was a roof structure upgrade and that no CO was required for that type of work. I also and I was not I did not include this in the staff report so I apologize but there was a certificate of occupancy in Acela filed in 2018 for Lexway housing. They were the applicants for that 2011 certificate of occupancy and they reference again in the special instructions or conditions that the conditional use as a rehabilitation facility, they mention the BOA history, essentially. And Dave Jarman did, I'm sorry, planning staff at that time did review that certificate of occupancy. And then just two days later, we have an electrical permit that was filed on this site. there's not much information on the electrical permit but I just wanted to cover that more recent permitting history that probably would have informed and led to planning staff's decision in 2020 to grant the zoning compliance permit to the commitment house they have according to PVA They officially became the new owners for this property at the beginning of 2022. And before that, Lexway LLC was the property owner. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the zoning compliance permit was filed early February of 2020, and not a few weeks later, COVID shut everything down. there were you know executive orders at the state and locally that let me get this wording right local deadlines were suspended until normal operations would resume so there's a little bit of grace there in the owner getting work done on the site they didn't have deadlines that they would have to meet according to those orders and I can let legal speak more to those I'm not super first in the executive orders. It wasn't clear. It was not clear from a staff report to whom the zoning compliance permit was issued to. In 2020, the zoning compliance permit was issued to the commitment house. Okay. And they were the new owners that got it from Lexway Housing? Yeah, they officially became owners of that property this year in 2022. Okay. All right. Do you have any additional questions for staff? We may have some later, but not right now. Thanks. Now it's appropriate, I think, to hear from the property owners. Good evening, Dennis Barnett, owner and CEO of the Commitment House property and new owner of 864-866 South Broadway. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Board, for hearing this case. And just I want to appreciate, you know, show some appreciation for you hearing, you know, the concerns of both parties. When I came, when I initially filed for the zoning permit, I came down in 2020 and I've done as directed. you know I was following you know as I was directed to do I I thought I was gonna they told me that I didn't have to change the use so we don't have to go before the board so that and that's the reason why so when I noticed there's been a lot of references to 1976 night the the the actual terminology that was used in 1976. The actual term that was used in 2020 when I actually filed is what I was under. Does that make sense? Yes. You know so so to actually go back and I feel that it is it is not fair to us that we talked about fairness a lot And I feel that it's not fair to us to go back and repeal that zoning permit. So I'm asking to keep that permit in place, if you will. Also, I heard some testimony about some people living next door to the property and how well they know the property. Our question is, do you know the homeless guy that sleeps on the step of 866 South Broadway? Jesse. Jesse. Yes. Yeah, Jesse lives in the property that was referenced back in the Canaan house, the property right behind 866 South Broadway. So he lives in that property, but he doesn't sleep there. He sleeps on the property that I just purchased. And I've tried my best to get him to go to his property. It's actually a mental health facility. My facility, the Commitment House, is a state-licensed national accredited facility. We abide by over 2,000 standards. We do. and I am very proud of that and it is also staffed around the clock. So I am proposing to have what was already in place, which was a 32-bed facility. We're trying to get the property to be upgraded to be able to house those clients. So if I would really like for that zoning permit to be to stay in place, if it pleases the board. If not, you know, we'll do whatever you recommend. But I followed the recommendation when I came down in 2020. The only thing that stopped me was COVID hit. And if I may add, I went to go file for that zoning permit before I purchased the building. Because I didn't want to actually purchase the building if we weren't going to allow that to happen. You see what I mean? So now when I came back, they said we could go ahead and keep that one in place. because I had already filed for one a couple years ago before COVID. So I am asking the board to keep that in place. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. I'll keep this brief. My name is Jim Duke. I'm the executive director at the Commitment House. And I, too, am asking that you allow us to move forward and continue with the project that we've started here. I understand the concerns that people have. I understand the fear that exists in people when you are working with a population that you're unfamiliar with. But we have been doing this. We've been doing this successfully. and the fears that exist are understandable, but allowing us to move forward and get this property in shape so that we can get the people, instead of them being homeless, instead of them being behind their businesses, instead of them being behind their building, allowing them to come to treatment to get better. And that's what we do. We are state licensed. we are nationally accredited and we are good at what we do and i would just ask that you allow us to move forward uh with our project thank you thank you very much um a question for staff um if if if you know the answer uh in the staff report you uh you cite article 1-11 Do you know when that article was adopted? That's the definition of rehabilitation homes. I'm kind of curious about when that went into effect because we're talking about timing here. And if it was, well, the timing of that is important, I think. I do know that the whole zoning ordinance was rewritten in 1983, and so that's when Article 1-11 in its current form would have been created. I'm not 100% sure that I don't think we brought that ordinance with us today of when that particular definition went into effect. Okay. Mr. Simpson may know. Do you have that? Do you have that? I'm putting that definition. The dollars? Yeah, but sometime in the mid-80s. He also thinks it's sometime in the mid-80s. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Any questions from board members to any of the people we've heard speak this evening? It looks like it was part of the 83 adoption. Okay. It reads pretty similar. I was on the Muni code. Got me there pretty fast. I thought you might be. Yeah. Any other questions by the board, board members? Are you prepared to decide? Yes. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Mr. Simpson. Just out of abundance of clarification, if you will, mention was made that the phrase institutions for human care was listed as a conditional use permit back when this particular conditional use permit was approved, and that's simply not the case. You'll pass out the definitions. It's very tough to read, but the conditional uses that attach to the R3 zone at the time this application was approved, also applied to the R2 zone, but it talks about nursing homes, convalescent homes, rest homes, orphanages and rehabilitation centers, hospitals, it's like nursing home again, religious and charitable institutions, community centers such as YMCA, YWCA, etc., and number four, community garages. There's nothing in there about institutions for human care being a specific conditional use. in the R3 zone at the time this property was approved for its conditional use. And in fact, if you, the staff report, when it makes reference to the, this is in your packet, and I'll put it in the record just to double up, if you will. So the applicants, specifically the staff, makes reference to the rehabilitation center, parentheses, halfway house. It's very clear in the staff report and in the minutes, which I also include, that we're talking about a halfway house here. We're not talking about institutions for human care. We're talking about a halfway house as a specified conditional use in the material that I just passed out to you. That's what the statute requires that the Board of Adjustment refer to in approving a conditional use. Again, it wasn't specifically defined what rehabilitation center was. So the board interpreted on its own to include and limited to halfway houses because the staff makes emphasis of that in their own report, which certainly the board relied. And there's no discussion about drug and rehab services whatsoever in the record when this conditional use was approved. Again, I think fairness dictates that this board at least have a hearing, which you can do on your own, to say, well, you know, it looks like we're going to have a new use here, clearly from the record, and what's the harm in us holding a hearing to see if we need to impose new conditions since this is now not going to be a halfway house, for sure. It's going to be a drug and alcohol treatment facility. What's the harm in you all being informed about that and making determination for the benefit of the community and certainly the neighbors that are going to rely upon your decision to say are any conditions necessary for this applicant going forward? Because if you don't, the only thing that you have of record as a condition is whether or not the parking lot is paved. That's it. That is grossly insufficient because it doesn't match up to the use that's now going to take place in the future. That's undisputed. Thank you. Let me make sure I understand what you just handed out to us. Yes. What are we looking at? In the highlighted portion at the bottom? Yeah, I can read the language just about as well as you can. Okay. Those are listed as the conditional uses for the R3 zone in 1976 when this got approved. Okay. And included in that is rehabilitation centers. Right. Okay. Which is not defined in the zoning ordinance. Which was not defined then in the zoning ordinance. That's correct. So, Mr. Simpson, can you hear me? Is that coming through? When was the first time that halfway house was actually mentioned in any of this? I don't see anything mentioned about halfway house until, oh, when was it, 2011 or something like that. It was mentioned in the staff report in 1976. It was discussed in the minutes. Halfway house. Halfway house. It just said rehabilitation center, though. It didn't say halfway house. The staff report said rehabilitation center, parentheses, halfway house. That's in the staff report in 1976. Okay. Didn't say that. It seems like to me that, frankly, I agree with you. It's not clear at all, and its rehabilitation center is so broad, it covers just about anything. And so I think the question is, did the staff err in giving this? And I think that's our question. I don't disagree with you at all. I think it needs to be more specific. I think whether you agree with my position on revoking the certificate of zoning approval, you can accomplish the same objective now that you've informed that this is exclusively going to be a drug rehabilitation facility. you have the power, based on that information alone, to say, you know what? We need to hear what's going to be proposed, how they're going to do their job. It's clearly not going to be a halfway house anymore. How are you guys going to do your job, and do we need to impose any conditions and let the public have the benefit of that knowledge when they file material for you all to review in advance of the hearing? You can accomplish the same thing for the applicant to come forward and present their case, which to me seems more than abundantly fair for everybody. It seems to me that if a conditional use was granted for a rehabilitation center in 1976 and that the definition is not narrow, then the opposite of that would be the definition is fairly broad. So that the lack of specificity in the term rehabilitation center, which was granted, would include anything that one might consider under a rehabilitation center. and whether or not they treated drug addicts is kind of a question that to me was partially answered by the Herald-Leader article that you attached that said that some of the inmates had been imprisoned on alcohol and drug-related charges. So I don't think you can say that because the definition was imprecise that it didn't include drug and alcohol treatment centers. What the Herald-Leader wrote in 2010, 14 years after the facility was closed, has nothing to do with what your predecessor board made a determination on what was an appropriate conditional use and what was meant by the term rehabilitation center because at the time the decision was made, which is the critical time, that's the critical time, there's nothing mentioned about anyone getting drug or alcohol treatment, the need for it, a discussion about it, at all. It's just conspicuous clearly by its absence. What was talked about was a halfway house for inmates leaving the main prison that they were going to resettle into the community. And that permit that you're talking about was issued in 2020? The zoning compliance permit was issued in 2020. That's correct. Right. And that was based upon an erroneous interpretation of what the board determined in 1976, which was approval of a halfway house for inmates, not drug and alcohol treatment. But see, you can accomplish the same thing by not even revoking the permit. You can say, well, you know, I believe I'm right on that, so I am making an argument in the alternative, if you will, that even if you don't want to revoke the permit, I don't know how you can ignore the fact that as you are informed tonight, this is going to be a drug and alcohol treatment facility, and you have no clue how it's going to operate. You have no clue if it's hours of operations. You have no clue on how many staff are going to work there, How many residents are going to be there? Is it going to be open 24 hours a day? And yet you all are in charge of monitoring conditional use permits, but you have none of that information. What I'm suggesting is under 100 to 37, you have the power to modify conditions on your own. On your own. To say, hey, I'm now aware we've got changing conditions. We need to hear what's going to happen here so we understand it. So if there are adverse consequences, we have some ability to address them because you have no ability right now. Mr. Glover, should we listen? I mean, not listen. Sorry, it's been a long afternoon. It has. Have the law department confirm whether that is true, that we could modify the underlying 76? Well, it seems to me that the conditional uses are reviewed annually anyway. Isn't that true? Staff, that's true. Conditional uses are reviewed annually anyway, so one of the questions is what would be reviewed for this conditional use? What's under review? Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Sure. So our zoning enforcement officers every month go out and review all of the BOA history that was approved or in that associated month. And so this case would be approved by a zoning enforcement officer every year in the month that it was approved, which was in February of 1976. During their inspection, they would look to see if their interpretation, the building is still being utilized as a rehabilitation center and the conditions, yes, that the conditions are still being met and aren't being, yeah, that they're still being met. Well, would that inspector review anything other than the conditions that were issued in 1976, the paving and parking issues? Aye. Okay. Just whether or not the use as a rehabilitation center is still in operation, or not in operation, but this site is still associated with that use. Mr. Chair, they keep calling the rehabilitation center, keep saying that it is limited to a halfway house. It can't be when other facilities in Lexington are considered alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers and they are defined as rehabilitation centers. So if they are defined as rehabilitation centers. The board and the city planning and zoning had to fit me underneath the rehabilitation center. It wasn't me who said hey, I want to be a rehabilitation center. We understand that. Right. It wasn't me who done that. It was planning and zoning who said hey, you are deemed as a rehabilitation center. You're making really an argument for detrimental reliance, I think, it seems to me, that you relied on the issuance of the permit to start your operation. Right. And we understand that. So thank you. Thank you. And I think the question is, is this a rehabilitation center? Is it? no matter how we define it now, and I still agree with Mr. Simpson in the sense that it would be nice if we had a more definition, but in this particular case, it is a rehabilitation center. It just seems like to me there's hardly any way to get around that. And that's the reason I want to know, is there a way for this use to continue with us putting additional conditions on it? Or whether it's just an up or down? And that's a legal question. That's a legal question. Tracy, that's a fair question. I'm sympathetic to both sides. I am too. And I'd prefer not to drop a hammer on either one. Well, one thing we heard from Mr. Barnett was that he's subject to federal requirements to operate his business and state requirements as well. So it's not like he's operating under no conditions at all. So can the board impose conditions ex post facto? If we issue a conditional use permit, can we thereafter impose additional conditions at our choosing? Well, that's not what you're doing today. Today you're determining whether or not the zoning compliance permit was properly issued by the staff. We know that. And so, no, you cannot impose additional conditions in regard to a hearing on whether or not that compliance permit was properly issued. We know that, too. Okay. So the answer is no. I mean, if they have to come back, if that's the decision that you make, and you have a conditional use permit hearing, like you do with all your other ones, then you can impose different conditions. But currently, you either have to go up or down with the zoning compliance permit for today. Okay. Okay. If you uphold it, then that means they will continue to operate as a rehabilitation center. and what rehabilitation center means or what it was meant back in 1976, I don't know that anyone in this room can tell you that. And just by way of knowledge, halfway house wasn't defined in 1976 ordinance either. So it's a difficult question, which Mr. Clark has already made the comment, that it would be nice to know those things, but we're all sort of trying to shoot at a target that we don't really know because, you know, that was in 1976. So you do have the minutes from that hearing. However, you know, you have to look at the zoning compliance permit that was issued at that time and what was recorded at the clerk's office, and then you have to look at, you know, what was looked at by our folks when it came in 2020 for the zoning compliance permit. And your task is, do you think that what the staff did when someone came and ask for zoning compliance permit for a rehabilitation center in 2020 was a to issue or should it not have been issued and if you determine that it should not have been issued then it's going to be revoked and so they they'll have to take some action in order to continue to operate at that point because they won't have any kind of permit could like my department is going to be used. Like for example, let's say we say no, the permit, it says rehabilitation center, the permit says facility, but we understand. Center, if we say no, that permit was issued perfectly, could the appellant still, or Mr. Sepsis-Files still say well, okay, but it's still not falling within the condition of the permit. from 7-6, there's a fall within that. Like, how was the district for all reasons only? Well, in other words, you're saying could there be a different type of third-party appeal file, not just an appeal of whether or not the staff appropriately executed this issuance of the zoning compliance permit? I mean, potentially, yes, I guess there could, but the staff would certainly look at whatever got filed with that. I mean, if it was the subject matter, which is the same exact thing of this hearing to say they're not in compliance because that was wrong and you know in 76 it didn't mean that and then i don't know that we would accept it if there was some other evidence of you know it's supposed to be operating as a rehabilitation center right now it has a zoning compliance permit right now but that's not what they're doing they're doing i don't know what else it might be but it's not consistent with the rehabilitation center then yes i guess potentially someone could file that and it would come back in front of you all as one of those types of third party appeals that neighbors sometimes bring saying you know they're not compliant or a complaint to the zoning you know typically those come through first as a zoning complaint that our enforcement section investigates the modern the modern definition is is rehabilitation house or houses. So are they, if we grant, if we say that the staff was correct, or the inspection officer was, or that the permit was granted properly, would they have to comply with the requirements of rehabilitation homes? And if so, are there any others other than what they've been granted already? It's my understanding that the way these things are handled in zoning enforcement and zoning compliance is that they, when a conditional use permit has been issued on a piece of property, and that use is, you know, although the owners may change, the use continues to be the same, that we don't go back in and change anything unless there's some reason that it comes before us to do that, such as a zoning violation complaint or as part of an annual review of the conditional use permits, the enforcement or zoning compliance staff sees something that's not appropriate. But generally, we don't impose just by issuing a zoning compliance permit all new conditions. We just don't do that. Right. Okay. Okay. All right, Board, what's your pleasure? Any further questions? The issue before us, as I understand it, is, as it is phrased in the staff report, whether or not the zoning compliance permit for a rehabilitation home was properly issued. The staff says it was. Mr. Simpson and his clients say that it was not. It's really a legal matter that the holders of the permit, although they have a great stake in the question that we're going to decide, it's not so much a fact-based question as a legal question. So I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I'll make a stab at this. Relative to PLNBOA-23-23 Wayne Michael Properties, LLC, and Walter P. Glover Enterprises, that the contest that the division of planning's issuance of a zoning compliance permit for a rehabilitation home based on an existing conditional use permit on property located within the defined infill and redevelopment area in a planned neighborhood residential zone on property located at 866 South Broadway was properly issued. Thank you, Mr. Clark. Our granicus is not working. I think you're going to have to have findings as to what you're basing that on, which we can help you with. Based on the staff report? Is that legally sufficient? It should be. Based on the staff report. I'm not really sure that that's going to address it because the staff report is just factual in terms of, but we can help you with findings. Curse you. Shall we take a 10-minute recess? Like a two-minute recess. How many? You can have like a two-minute recess. Let's take a 10-minute recess. Two-minute recess. Two minutes. Let's take a five minute recess. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Wade, can I ask you one more question? I mean, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm getting my, Tracy's mixed up. Yes. I've got a legal question. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm just so used to saying Tracy Wade. It does run a lot of tongue. Well, you should be glad I got married because my maiden name was Webb. Yeah, okay. So quick question. If the vote is to revoke the permit, the conditional use permit still stays. Is that correct? Like we're not revoking the conditional use permit if we revoke the zoning compliance permit. Well, I mean. Because the language, the reason I'm asking is the permit language says rehabilitation facilities, which isn't in our zoning ordinance. But technically, I mean, I'm assuming if you find that you're going to revoke the zoning compliance permit, some of your findings or rationale may be based on the fact that that conditional use permit's either been abandoned or it's not complied with. So I can't answer that question for sure, but it could still be in place, but it just depends on what the findings were if you were to choose to revoke the zoning compliance permit. Okay. And the second question, I know you and I discussed this, and we may have a difference of opinion, is even if the compliance letter is upheld that the conditional use permit still exists, I think there's still a question of whether or not their particular intended use coming forward falls within the conditional use permit since the report talks about parolees and other things, halfway houses. So in either case, I think that they could possibly come back through another route procedurally where we can look at the conditional use permit itself directly rather than this kind of ancillary documentation. and I just want to know what you think. Well, I mean, I understand what you're saying potentially, but I think that part of your all's conclusions today, either way on the zoning compliance permit, go directly to whether or not what you think was included in the original zoning compliance permit or the original conditional use and whether or not this use falls within that. you know so if it came back as a different third party complaint which is what I think you're talking about I think there would have to be some differentiation other than just what we've talked about today in other words it couldn't just be it says this we think they're doing this I mean it would have to be I'm trying to not make extremes here but it would have to be something like You know, it says rehabilitation center, and it's an orphanage. I mean, you know, or it's a house for, you know, I don't know, single mothers. Okay. Something that's totally not encompassed in rehabilitation centers that you all have pretty well vetted today. It couldn't just be this. In other words, what I'm saying is it couldn't just be the same thing in a different form. It would have to have some different component to it. to say they're not, because you're technically, if you were going to approve that the staff issued the zoning compliance permit appropriately today, you would more or less be determining that you think there was adequate basis to believe that the original issuance of the conditional use permit included the definitions. So you've talked about that today pretty much at length. So I don't think it could be just based on that. Does that make sense? Yeah, now that makes sense. My concern is if I say the staff did appropriately issue the permit, then really anything goes at this particular facility. It could be walk in, walk out. It could be, I mean, what is the limitations on if they're just allowed to have a drug, an alcohol center? Well, and that is true in these cases where there's existing conditional uses that are issued on properties because over time, obviously, definitions do change. However, there is going to be an annual review to determine what's going on there, and there's also always the option of, you know, if somebody believes that there's some noncompliance with what is permitted there, they can always make a complaint, and that gets investigated. But you just said that we're kind of solving that issue here. Well, no, you were asking if somebody came back to you on a third-party complaint. you wouldn't have a whole other hearing on what you just had a hearing on today. But if somebody complained that, you know, they were acting in accordance not with their standards or not with a rehabilitation center in some form, something completely different, then that would have to be investigated. Tracy, have we had this issue before this board in the past? I don't recall that we've had similar issues. So I wonder if historically there are other rehabilitation centers that are in operation in Lexington that have gotten their permit in 1976 or even earlier that are operating now as drug and alcohol abuse centers that we don't know about. So specifically the rehabilitation center question? I can't recall any. I don't know, you know, if any of the staff or anybody else can. I can't recall it for the time I've been doing this. Thanks. Okay. We had a further motion by Mr. Clark. Well, let me say it's clear to me that this rehabilitation is not clear. It's too general, and the ordinance really needs to be more specific. But we're faced with this one word, and I think that's our problem. And I certainly understand. I think Mr. Simpson is exactly right. No question about that. We're going with what the law says and what the word means. It's just too broad. But I don't think we have any choice but to assume that the decision was correct. Well, anyway, in addition to the motion that I made, these three findings will be attached. Number one, and this kind of sets the stage, The conditional use was not abandoned as the records indicate that in 1989 a permit was issued to remodel. In 2004, a permit was issued for a new HVAC. In June 2011, a certificate of occupancy was issued to operate a rehabilitation housing facility. In May 2014, a remodeling permit was issued for Shepherd's House and the sale was made to current owner in March 2022. Number two, the zoning ordinance in 1976 included rehabilitation services and rehabilitation centers. Number three, the definition includes medical services and rehabilitation services, which could also include drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Thank you, Mr. Clark. Is there a second? I'll second. Thank you, Chad. Motion has been made and seconded. You ready to vote? Our electronic voting is not working. So all in favor of Mr. Clark's motion, raise your hand. One, two, three, four. Motion carries. We don't have to ask for any further. So as I understand it, we have determined that the permit was issued properly. Thank you very much. That concludes all the issues on our – that concludes all the applications before us. Good luck to you all. Good luck, everybody. Good luck. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, you're right A lot of places Very limited definition All right All right, that's the end of that one. All right, we have, that concludes the items on the agenda. We have two board items. One is appointment of a new member to the Landscape Review Committee. How do we do that? We just need a motion to appoint Mr. Kelly to our Landscape Review Committee. He's volunteered, so that's always positive. I think they'll attend when they volunteer. I'm sorry, who volunteered? Mr. Kelly, who's the person that you would be appointing. No, it's not a member of the Board of Adjustments. Oh, okay. Everyone's like, not it. You are actually appointing, you frequently reappoint people to the Landscape Review Committee. And it's someone with experience in landscaping. So this person is a horticulturist. What's his first name? Nurseryman. Todd. T-O-D-D? Yes. Todd Kelly. I just make a motion that we appoint Mr. Todd Kelly to the Landscape Architecture Review Board. No architecture. All in favor? Landscape Review Board. All in favor, raise your right hand. Motion carries. Thank you very much. The last item on our agenda, well, it's a penultimate. Well, I would ask, since it's on today's agenda, that we go ahead and have elections and make them effective July 1st. That's a wonderful idea. Then we don't have to put it on the special meeting agenda. Sure. Is that okay? We figured that out. That's a good idea. I think since Raquel stuck around, we should. Yeah, we're having it now. Sure. Okay. So are there nominations for chairperson of the committee? I'd like to nominate Raquel Carter. Okay, motion has been made and seconded to elect Raquel Carter as the new chairperson of the Board of Adjustment. All in favor, raise your right hand. Congratulations. Just in case I need to back out. Is there anybody else that we have to elect? I think we need to fill a hurt spot, maybe, as secretary. That's right. that that's right we have to fill Raquel spot so the floor is open for nominations for secretary Harry Clark Harry Clark the the requirements are very difficult you have to sign the minutes approve the minutes every month without fail all in favor of Harry Clark being secretary raise your right hand motion carries and and for the record mr glover's correct all you're doing is signing minutes all of the other secretary secretary duties are transferred to the staff so it better be Are there any staff? I'm sorry. Was there a second for the motion for Mr. Clark? Okay, I'll second it. Are there any staff issues? Not today. No staff issues. Thank you much. The next meeting date is June 28th at 1.30 at a site to be determined. Yes, we will confirm probably tomorrow a location. Okay. Well, I know you're chair, and you don't want to do this, but we do want to acknowledge, as it says, on the agenda. It is on the agenda. Yep, the service for both of you and Joan. Probably each of you sucked out longer than I'm going to be able to. Did I say that out loud? But you've been great leaders, and we really just had the time to serve with you guys. It has been an honor and a pleasure and a joy, and you will be missed, except you squoze one more in this month. So I appreciate that. Okay, there being no further matters, we stand adjourned. you