# Urban County Council Zone Change Public Hearing - April 18, 2023 > Auto-transcribed civic record · April 18, 2023 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5799 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5799?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2023-04-18 - **Last revised**: April 18, 2023 - **Length**: 19,268 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government held a meeting on April 18, 2023, at 5:00 PM in the Council Chambers in Lexington, Kentucky, with Vice Mayor Wu presiding. The meeting addressed one agenda item, Ordinance 0244-23, which was approved by the council. During the session, council members took one official vote and heard from six members of the public during the public comment period. The meeting focused on the consideration and passage of the single ordinance on the agenda. ## Attendance The meeting on April 18, 2023 had twelve members present and three absent. **Present:** • Vice Mayor Wu • F. Brown • J. Brown • Ellinger • Elliott Baxter • Gray • LeGris • Lynch • Plomin • Sevigny • Sheehan • Worley **Absent:** • Fogle • Monarrez • Reynolds No members arrived late to the meeting. ## Votes and Decisions The council conducted one formal vote during the April 18, 2023 meeting. **Ordinance 0244-23** [timestamp: 7:12] The council voted on an ordinance modifying a conditional zoning restriction for property located at 2400 Versailles Road. Ms. Gray made the motion, which was seconded by Ms. Plomin. The ordinance passed unanimously by roll call vote with 12 ayes, 0 nays, and 0 abstentions. **Council members voting in favor:** • F. Brown • J. Brown • Ellinger • Elliott Baxter • Gray • LeGris • Lynch • Plomin • Sevigny • Sheehan • Worley • Wu The approved ordinance includes prohibited uses and other use restrictions as specified in the legislation for the Versailles Road property. ## Public Comment Six residents spoke during the public comment period, with opinions divided on a proposed development and zoning change. **Dottie Bean** [timestamp: MM:SS] expressed concerns about traffic flow on Versailles Road and voiced support for the rights of other opponents to comment on the proposal. **Paula Singer** [timestamp: MM:SS] opposed the zoning change, citing safety improvements and neighborhood services already present in the area as reasons against the development. **Francisco Castro** [timestamp: MM:SS] spoke in support of the development, highlighting potential improvements and beautification benefits the project could bring to the area. **Austin Wilkerson** [timestamp: MM:SS] opposed the development, emphasizing the residential character of the neighborhood and raising concerns about increased traffic impacts. **Bryan Mullins** [timestamp: MM:SS] supported the development proposal, sharing his personal experience with property improvement efforts in the area to illustrate potential benefits. **Zachary Skubitz** [timestamp: MM:SS] expressed general support for the development, specifically appreciating the proposed pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure improvements. The public comments revealed a community split on the development proposal, with traffic concerns being a primary issue for opponents, while supporters focused on potential area improvements and infrastructure benefits. Three speakers supported the development while three opposed it, creating an even division of public opinion on the matter. ## Contested Items The meeting included one contested item that generated community opposition and debate among council members. **Zoning Change for 2400 Versailles Road** The primary contested issue involved a proposed zoning change for the property located at 2400 Versailles Road. The proposal faced significant opposition from community members who raised concerns about the potential impact on local traffic patterns and the broader effects on the surrounding neighborhood. Community members voiced their objections during the public comment period, expressing worries that the zoning change would lead to increased traffic congestion in an area already experiencing transportation challenges. Residents also raised concerns about how the proposed development would affect the character and quality of life in their neighborhood. Despite the community opposition, the council ultimately voted to approve the zoning change. The decision suggests that council members weighed the community concerns against other factors such as development needs, economic considerations, or compliance with broader planning objectives. The approval of this contested zoning change demonstrates the tension that can arise between community preferences and municipal development decisions, highlighting the challenges local governments face when balancing neighborhood concerns with broader city planning goals. ## Ordinance 0244-23 [timestamp: 5:11] The council considered Ordinance 0244-23, which would modify a conditional zoning restriction in the Neighborhood Business (B-1) zone for property located at 2400 Versailles Road. Key speakers during the discussion included Traci Wade, Branden Gross, Clay Johnson, and Tony Barrett, who presented information and participated in the debate regarding the proposed zoning modification. The ordinance addressed specific conditional restrictions that currently apply to the B-1 zoned property at 2400 Versailles Road. The modification would alter these existing conditions, though the specific nature of the changes and the rationale behind them were discussed by the speakers during the meeting. Following the presentation and discussion among council members and staff, the ordinance was approved by the council. The approval allows for the modification of the conditional zoning restriction to move forward for the Versailles Road property. This zoning change represents an adjustment to the regulatory framework governing the use of the property within the Neighborhood Business district, potentially affecting how the property can be developed or utilized in accordance with the city's zoning requirements. --- ## Decisions - **0244-23** — passed (12-0): Ordinance modifying a conditional zoning restriction for property at 2400 Versailles Rd. --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. All right, good afternoon or evening. Thank you all for coming out. This public hearing is now open. Clerk, may I have a roll call, please? Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Council Member James Brown. Here. Councilmember Ellinger. Yes, ma'am. Councilmember Elliott Baxter. Yes, ma'am. Councilmember Fogle. Councilmember Gray. Present. Councilmember Legree. Here. Councilmember Lynch. Present. Councilmember Menares. Councilmember Plumman. Here. Councilmember Reynolds. Councilmember Sevigny. Here. Councilmember Sheehan. Here. Councilmember Worley. Yes, ma'am. And Vice Mayor Wu. Here. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And clerk, may I have second reading of the ordinance, please? Yes. An ordinance modifying a conditional zoning restriction in the neighborhood business B1 zone for 0.92 net 1.15 gross acres for property located at 2400 Versailles Road, Color Properties, LLC, Council District 10. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So first off, I'm Dan Wu. I'm your vice mayor, and I will be chairing this meeting tonight. I'm going to lay out how things are going to work as much for myself as everybody else in this room. This is my first zone change hearing as it is the first one for a lot of council members up here. So I'm very grateful to have our experienced council clerk, staff, and legal team to help us through this. I will be looking over there a lot tonight. A few quick notes. Council members, because this is a zone change hearing, if you leave, you essentially can't come back and vote on anything. So if we do at some point need to take a break, we will pause the proceedings in order to do that and then come back. So if you do have to leave for any reason, basically, you're out of this process. Secondly, council members, please write down and hold all of your questions towards around the end and we'll be able to ask them after all of the different presentations go through. And I'll give a quick rundown of basically how this procedure is going to go. I am very happy for council clerks or legal over there to wave at me at any point and let me know if I'm skipping over anything or getting anything wrong. So we're going to start off by swearing in all those who are going to speak or present today or might speak just to be safe. That includes people giving public comment. So everyone can either rise or just raise your right hand please. Do you swear or affirm that any testimony you give at this hearing will be true and to the best of your knowledge? Thank you all. So I'll also mention when you come up and speak, whether it's as a presentation or as a public comment, please state your name and your council district. Those of you who are sworn are also asked to stay for the duration of this meeting, please. My job here as the presiding officer is to facilitate this hearing and it is within my purview to make judgments about whether or not the evidence being introduced is relevant and or repetitious. So those are calls I might make if I need to. Let's see, have all printed materials that are going to be presented tonight provided to the clerk and council members up here? Okay. Do you mind if we get those? Yeah, yeah, thank you. The petitioner is going to be first up here in a little bit. While we get those up, I'll continue. You'll excuse my, I've got really bad allergies at the moment. And then we also would like a witness list from anybody doing presentations as well, please. All right, so we're going to start off tonight with a presentation from planning staff on behalf of the planning commission. And they are subject to cross-examination. That will be followed by a presentation by the petitioner or the petitioner's representative. similarly subject to cross-examination and then presentation by organized opposition, if any, also subject to cross-examination. And then we get into public comment. Public comment works very similarly to our other public comment. You will have three minutes and we ask that you state your name and council district for the record. And then there will be an opportunity for rebuttal from petitioner, opposition, and I guess planning staff in terms of maybe reiterating or explaining things. And then there will be an opportunity for summation as well. At that point, that will be the opportunity for council members to ask questions of any and all presenters and any and all folks who are adding information to this proceeding. and if there's an opportunity, if there's new information presented, there's an opportunity for rebuttal as well. At that point, once council members are done with their questions, we will declare this hearing closed, and the council members will deliberate amongst ourselves up here. We will then take a vote regarding the finding of facts. That will be a roll call vote. And then after that vote, we will vote on the underlying ordinance by roll call as well. Easy peasy. Did I miss anything? Okay. Great. That's a good start. All right. So unless there are any particular questions or comments or concerns from council or staff or anybody else in the room, seeing none, let us get started. May we please start with the presentation from planning staff. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Vice Mayor Wu. Pleasure to be here. Tonight I'm here to represent the Urban County Planning Commission's recommendation to the Urban County Council for a zone change, or what we term a zone change, but it's really a change to conditional zoning restrictions for the case numbers, actually MAR22-22. The request is caller properties LLC and this is an amended application. The planning commission held a public hearing on this in January and so now the council has the opportunity to also hold a second public hearing to consider the request. This particular request is already or the site is already in a neighborhood business zone and that's our B1 zone. It does already have conditional zoning restrictions on it, and the applicant is requesting to modify those restrictions, and we'll get into what those are and how that happens throughout the hearing. Before I get too much further, though, I think I've met everyone, but for the record, my name is Tracy Wade, and I'm the Planning Services Manager for the Division of Planning. I do need to enter a number of items into the record tonight for the hearing, and then that will be in addition to what the applicant enters as well. So first I have a copy of the legal advertisement that was put in the newspaper and is required to be published also on our website for tonight's hearing. I have an affidavit from myself because our division reviews the notice letters that are sent out for every zone change. And that includes notice letters that are going to a 500-foot notice area around the property. And then in addition, we notify nearby neighborhood associations. So in this case, 50 property owners were notified, and then an additional three neighborhood associations were notified of this public hearing. Third item is your final report, and that's the report from the Planning Commission to the council indicating what the recommendation was. That also includes the minutes of the public hearing. This one's pretty much blank. It also includes minutes of the Planning Commission's public hearing, the application, and a staff recommendation and report from that particular case. The next item is the 2018 Comprehensive Plan. Then the fifth is our zoning ordinance, and number six is the land subdivision regulations, which are what govern development in Fayette County. Number seven, I have a traffic study that was prepared by Prime AE, which is an engineering, local engineering firm, and they submitted this traffic study to the Planning Commission. The last item, which you already, or second to last item, which you already have at your seat as well, is a copy of the staff's presentation tonight. And then Exhibit 9 is a few documents from a previous zone change for the site from 2016. It includes the ordinance that the council adopted in 2016, as well as an application page and justification and minutes from that particular Planning Commission meeting, and then Council 2016. And then there's one other item I did put at the council seat, and that is just a printout of one article of the zoning ordinance. So I've entered the entire ordinance in the record, but I've given you Article 6. And Article 6 is the portion of the zoning ordinance that deals with amendments. It talks about what is the process to rezone a property, but more specifically for tonight's hearing, it discusses the conditional zoning restrictions and how those come into play and then are also modified. And that appears on page six of that particular handout. Okay, so we'll move on to the nuts and bolts of this. so what well actually let me show you a couple pictures of the location of the property first so the subject property is 2400 Versailles Road and this is a more generalized map of the area the subject property is in the center of this map and this colored area is indicative of the zoning that surrounds it and also the number of properties that were notified in that in the 500 foot notification area so 50 properties the light yellow colors are single family residential zones the orange and red are indicative of more business zoning in the area so you can see the subject property is is currently in a business zone to the east along versailles road this is really the break between residential zoning to the west and commercial zoning to the east. In the vicinity, though, we also have single-family neighborhoods to the north, as well as the colony to the west and south. Also, Williamsburg and Parker's Mill. So the subject site is just to the west, one lot to the west of the intersection of Parker's Mill and Versailles Road. If we zoom in a little bit closer on that area, again, the site is in the middle. The yellow zoning is single-family residential. The orange and red are business zoning to the east. The aerial photograph shows a little bit more context to this area, not just the zoning, but there is on the property a floodplain, and that is related to property that's directly to the west, and this is generally called the Fox property, owned by the Fox family previously, and this is almost entirely within the floodplain. Then the subject property is about two-thirds in the floodplain, and that's because there's a tributary that runs through that site and then cuts underneath Versailles Road and continues to the north. And that tributary is Garden Side Tributary, and it feeds into the Wolf Run Creek to the north side of Versailles Road. You can see from this area, though, the site is currently vacant. Just to the east of the site is a commercial development that is a combination of a coffee shop and a retail location. And then from this point along Versailles Road to the east, you have just a general business area, mostly neighborhood businesses, restaurants, some service providers, gas stations, and that sort. In terms of on the ground photos, these pictures show the corridor, Versailles Road corridor, and this one is looking into downtown. And then on the right-hand side, this one is looking out towards Versailles and New Circle Road. And then these two photos in the middle depict the subject site. and I believe the area just to the east of it with the floodplain or across the road with the floodplain. Now I'm going to head back to what we're here to discuss. So as I mentioned in 2016, and I've given the council some historic information, in 2016 this site was rezoned from a single-family residential zone. there was a single family home there, to a B1 zone. At that time, the planning commission and the council both recommended approval of that zone change. The conditional zoning restrictions that were put in place at that time are listed within the ordinance, and they include a prohibition on drive-through facilities at this site. So conditional zoning restrictions, I think we maybe step back and ask what are those, because I know we have a few new members today or this year on the council. So a conditional zoning restriction is a binding restriction that the council, the urban county council, can put on a specific property. And there, as referenced in this slide that's shown, they are meant to, or in Article 6 of the ordinance, they are meant to restrict the use of the property either to a particular use, a particular class of uses, or to restrict density in the case of a residential development. Conditional zoning restrictions can also impose architectural or visual requirements, but only in a historic zone. And then lastly, they can also impose screening and buffering restrictions for a subject property. So Lexington is the only county in Kentucky that uses conditional zoning restrictions. And that's because KRS 100 grants urban counties the ability to do this. And we are, in fact, the only urban county in the state. So this is sort of a unique privilege that the council and the planning commission have in Fayette County to take a zone and almost tailor it some to a particular situation. acknowledging what maybe other land uses are in the immediate vicinity, what uses might not be appropriate because of environmental concerns, those sorts of things. So it is, I would say, a unique privilege for our county to be able to do that. The zoning ordinance does outline how the application of these conditional zoning restrictions should be used. It should be used sparingly. And in fact, that is how I believe the Division of Planning and Planning Commission utilize it. Not in every case, but where they deem appropriate to protect and where necessary. The ordinance to change or in order to change or remove a conditional zoning restriction, the application goes through a very similar process to an actual zone change. So although today we're not changing the underlying zone of a B1 zone, the process is very similar. People make an application, the Planning Commission holds a public hearing, notice is sent out, and then the council makes the ultimate decision. So when the site was rezoned in 2016, the Planning Commission found that limiting the use and also requiring additional landscaping buffers on the property was necessary and appropriate in order to ensure the property was developed consistent with the comprehensive plan and to protect nearby residentially zoned properties. As I mentioned, there's three sides that are residential in this area. The applicant in this case is requesting that a drive-through facility be removed from the list of conditional zoning. And they submitted a development plan to demonstrate how the site could be developed with a drive-thru facility and also not be imposing on the neighboring properties. They opined that the traffic along Versailles Road was not studied in 2016 and that this particular use will not have a negative impact on the property or on adjacent properties. The applicant submitted a traffic impact study in association with their application to demonstrate and really rebut the stated concerns about the potential traffic and conflicts that existed in 2016 and then were also expressed earlier in their application process. The Division of Traffic Engineering and also the Metropolitan Planning Organization both reviewed the traffic study and found that they agreed with their conclusions, which meant they both agreed that a drive-through facility in this location under some conditions would not cause an additional impact on traffic to Versailles Road. So they both did request that the site be developed with a condition, that is, that no left turns be allowed out of the property. So again, this site is on the south side of Versailles Road. So if someone were leaving the property, Traffic Engineering and the Metropolitan Planning Organization both thought that it would be difficult for people to turn left out of the property on Diversailles Road, in essence across two, or perhaps in this location, three lanes of traffic. And the applicant agreed to that limitation. So during the Planning Commission public hearing for the site, they heard about an hour's worth of public comment. And at that time, the staff did recommend approval of removing this particular conditional zoning restriction based on the evidence that the applicant had provided about the traffic impact and it not being a significant change to Versailles Road or to the immediate area. However, the neighborhood or individuals within the neighboring area did speak at the Planning Commission hearing, and they expressed concern about the consistency of this improvement proposed with other improvements that had occurred along Versailles Road, like new senior housing and affordable housing, corridor improvements that have recently been constructed, a new library that's under construction. In addition, there were expressed concerns about traffic, specifically at the nearby Parker's Mill intersection and Versailles Road, and the conflict of this proposed use, which is a restaurant with two drive-through lanes, the conflict that that might occur with other uses in the immediate area. So at the end of the public hearing, the planning commission mentioned one other concern that was mentioned at the hearing. Citizens spoke about how the drive-through would become the primary use of the site since there wouldn't be anyone allowed to enter the coffee shop, and they felt that the B3 zone was really a more appropriate zone here than B1. for that reason. So ultimately the planning commission heard those concerns and made a finding that there had not been a major change of an economic, physical or social nature on the site since the conditional zoning restrictions were put in place that would allow for that restriction to be removed. So the planning commission voted on that and in essence they recommended that that condition not be removed from the list of prohibited uses so they're recommending to you a disapproval of this request and their vote that night was a five to three vote that was the finding that they proposed to the planning that the planning commission proposed to the council just go over really quickly the development plan because i know that usually comes up with questions. As I mentioned, the applicant did submit a development plan with their request to demonstrate how a drive-through would not impact or could not impact the site or the immediate area. And they've showed on-site parking. They've left a significant area of the site undeveloped because of the existing floodplain. and then what we call a bypass lane meaning if you enter the site or park on the site and then you want to leave but not go through the drive-through you can drive all the way around the building and leave and then two lanes of stacking to order at the order point behind the building and then circle the building to get your food or drink and then leave onto Versailles Road and as I mentioned the applicant did agree not to or to construct the site so that left turns would not be possible out of the site. So you could leave going right, you could enter coming left and enter coming right, but you would not be able to leave and go out of town. You'd have to figure out a U-turn somewhere else. And they did indicate they had 20 spaces of stacking on the site to alleviate any stacking or blocking of the public roadway. And then the building shown here is about 1,700 square feet. Since the Planning Commission did recommend disapproval of the zone change or the conditional zoning restriction change, they indefinitely postponed the development plan. So if the council does approve of the change, then this plan goes back to the Planning Commission and they would review it based on that change. I believe that covers everything for tonight. And you'll notice we didn't talk about the comprehensive plan, which normally we will. So tonight's hearing is all about what has changed, because the finding that you're making is what has changed since the restriction was put in place. And, again, the Planning Commission found that there had not been any social, economic, or physical changes on the property or in the immediate area that were since the restriction was put in place in 2016. Thank you. Thank you, Tracy. Does the petitioner want to cross-examine the staff? Okay. So we'll be here, myself as well as the Law Department, if there are any questions throughout the hearing. Great. Terrific. Thank you so much. All right. Next up is presentation from the petitioner. Is that Mr. Gross, right? All right. Welcome. Good evening, everyone. I appreciate taking the time. There we go. It's working perfect. This evening for hearing this case, I have the pleasure of representing caller properties on this project. And when I say the pleasure of representing them, I mean I really do have a pleasure representing them. They are an establishment. They've been in this community now for decades. I think they're on maybe their third or fourth generation here. They have worked in commercial real estate now since the 60s. So they have been instrumental in a number of different developments throughout this community, throughout this region. And so the great thing about working with them is they are professional, they are responsive, they are thoughtful, and we've been able to put together what I believe is a really good project that should satisfy the concerns related to whether or not a drive-through should be here in this location. But before I get into the details, I would like to go ahead and state for the record that I have given the clerk a copy of the zone change sign affidavit, evidencing that we have put the appropriate signage out on the property, notifying the public of this hearing tonight. We have also, I've delivered part of the discussion at the Planning Commission was, well, what if a coffee shop leaves here? What if you bring in, I don't know, a taco drive-thru place? What would that make a difference? So we went ahead and we engaged Prime AE to update our traffic impact study. We have delivered that to the clerk as part of the record. And, of course, I'll have Clay Johnson here. We'll be able to talk about the update to that study. But ultimately what he found was there was no difference, Whether it was a coffee with a drive-thru or if it was another type of drive-thru, fast food or restaurant, given the size of the building, it made a negligible difference. So we have supplied that. We have also, Tracy and her items, one of her items was the justification letter that I submitted for our amended application. I referenced my original letter by reference in a corporation, and so I went ahead and gave that to the clerk. so that would be officially in in the record and then i've given you a packet of information sitting in front of you some of these items i will put up on my slide deck so you can flip through some of them are bigger photos because if your eyes are as bad as mine anymore it's helpful and that way you can kind of flip back also so what i have in the pack in front of you is my presentation deck i have proposed findings of fact and i have taken the findings of fact that the staff prepared related to their recommendation of approval of our request. We have several maps that I will show this evening. Also, as part of this application and part of my discussion is the difference between the 2013 comprehensive plan and the 2018 comprehensive plan is a major change that this community has adopted between the original request and today. And so as part of that major change, we went through the place builder exercise with staff and answered a number of questions to show how this design supplements the 2013 comprehensive plan and works on that transition. So number six is just kind of the place builder for corridor. You can see the 73 different items we have to address with staff, and we did address with staff as part of this application. I included number seven, the agenda from the planning commission hearing. Number eight, and this is one thing that's interesting. So an applicant has the obligation to go forward and meet with various stakeholders in the community. And we do that very often. And we did that in this process. And so before we filed our application, we talked to the Friends of Wolf Run. We talked to representatives of the Colony Neighborhood Association. We talked to the Holiday Hills Valley Heights Neighborhood Association. We talked to the neighbors to the immediate east and the immediate west of this property. We attempted and were not able to contact the owner of the southern property at 1527 Parker's Mill Road. And we were not able to, at that time, get a hold of the Saddle Club Homeowners Association. So we were a little shocked when we had opposition at our public hearing, given that no one had ever reached out to us. Nobody had ever told us that they were opposed to the plan. And that's really not how this process should work. It's a two-way street. If neighbors have concerns, they should reach out to the developer and the applicant. We can talk through those concerns before we come to a public hearing. To show up at a public hearing, the objectors have that right. But literally, they could be here at the Planning Commission, decide to object to your hearing, whether or not they are there for that purpose or not. There's no obligation for them. I'm okay with that. But in this instance, we were a little surprised, caught off guard. And so we thought to ourselves, well, maybe we missed something. Maybe there is a groundswell of opposition out in the public that we're not aware of. So after the planning commission hearing, we went and we made more phone calls. I talked with the former council person, Peggy Henson. We talked with the Cardinal Valley Neighborhood Association. We were finally able to reach the Saddle Club homeowners. We talked to neighbors up and down, owners, various parties all over the area. And what we found is most people supported this project. I don't think I found any objectors in all the meetings that we had except for the ones that are in this room right now. So what we did is, having had feedback from Ms. Henson, who I deeply respect, and she said, well, why don't you have a neighborhood meeting? So that's what we did. So on number eight, that's our letters of support that we received from various parties that live, work, and travel along the Versailles Road corridor. Then on number nine was a notice of our neighborhood meeting. And I will say we invited all the people we had previously talked to. Plus we added the Hamilton Park Westgate Neighborhood Association and the Cardinal Valley Neighborhood Association. In my experience, and like most public meetings that we have, five or six people showed up, which is okay. That's five or six people I didn't know had an interest in this project. But except for one of the objectors who was an original objector, all five or six other people who left that meeting left that meeting comfortable with our project. And as you can see, none of them showed up today to object to this project. Now, to make sure, in addition to the regular notice, our client emailed them to let them know this hearing was going to be today just in case they wanted to speak. So we have really tried to reach out in the community. We've really tried to find common ground, what are concerns, how can we help, and then ultimately we're here today in front of you. So that's number nine. Number ten is the trip generation analysis. I just took the tables from the two plans. They show the number of anticipated trips we'll have at this site, both as a coffee user and as a non-coffee user with the drive-through. I believe the maximum during the peak hours would be 50 cars will come through our site. Tony will talk about this later, but we have stacking for 20 cars at any given time. We only expect a max of 50 over a peak hour. Those passing by traffic is what we're going to capture. For the most part, we're not going to get primary travelers. We are capturing people that are already on the highway and traveling, and they're going to come into our site, and they're going to purchase their copy, and they're going to go back out of our site. We will not be adding any substantial number of traffic to this area. And then lastly, on number 11, I've got a list of potential witnesses along with their credentials for the records. You guys have those. So briefly, I want to kind of talk before I get into some of the specifics of how we got here. We filed this application and we worked for months with the planning staff and with traffic engineering to prepare and submit a traffic impact study to work on a design that would work, that would be safe, and that would not negatively affect Versailles Road. And so we worked on that for months and we were able to, in early January, get the staff's recommendation of approval to remove the drive-through restriction on this piece of property. Thereafter, we went to the subcommittees of the Planning Commission. There are two subcommittees. One is the subdivision subcommittee. It's made up of one half the Planning Commission members. The second one is the zoning subcommittee, and they're made up of the other half of the Planning Commissioners. They heard our case, so the subdivision committee is tasked with reviewing our development plan, and that's the plan that Tracy showed you up on the slide. and they recommended approval to the full planning commission. So now we've got staff approval. We've got one subcommittee approval. So in the afternoon, we go to the zoning subcommittee. And once again, we presented our evidence to the subcommittee. And the subcommittee unanimously voted to recommend approval of our project. Now here's where things go off the rails. I'm thinking pretty good about myself. I've got all the approvals I generally need. This is a slam dunk. We're going to get this done in three weeks. We feel good. But the tires come off the cart at the planning commission meeting. First, only eight of 11 members were present. So we didn't have a full panel. Two of our members who supported us during the zoning subcommittee were not present. So we lost two votes right out of the gate. Then we lost by a 5-3 vote. two of the members who voted against us voted against their own recommendation that they voted on three weeks earlier with very little explanation of why they changed their minds. No new evidence was presented. We didn't change our plan. I think this was a result-oriented decision made by the Planning Commission on this particular day. Now, unfortunately, we were there on the same day as the soccer stadium. Sometimes you've got a sacrificial lamb. Maybe we were that. I'm not sure, but it was very unorthodox to get approval of all the planning commission members at the subcommittee, and then they changed their votes in the public hearing, short of some substantial new evidence presented, and none was presented. So that gets us to today. Now, Tracy showed you what the standard of review is, but ultimately this is really a more simple question. The question is, should my client be allowed to have a drive-thru at this site? Now, I'm going to go through the legal part of it, but that's really what we're asking here. We're asking you for permission to build a drive-thru at this site. Now, Tracy's right. Underneath the zoning ordinance, we need to show that there was a major economic, physical, or social nature that was not anticipated at the time that the restriction was in place. But you can't look at that in a vacuum. You've got to go back and you've got to look at why did they put that restriction in place. What was then in 16, what is there today? So in 16, the Planning Commission put this restriction and this body approved it based upon the need for further compliance with the 2013 Comprehensive Plan. There were concerns about traffic and safety. There were concerns, what I'm going to call the nuisance concerns. That's concerns that our use of our property would somehow interfere and diminish our neighbors' use of their property. So those are the reasons they were put in place. So what's changed since then? A lot has changed since then. Like I told you before, 2013 comprehensive plan in the garbage can. No longer exists. In 2018, we reworked the entire concept in Lexington of how the comprehensive plan works in zoning issues. And what we found was, and what the staff found, and we agree, is that the adoption of the 2018 comprehensive plan provides for greater guidance for development to appropriately transition from more intense land use to less intense land use. That is a major change. That is a difference. That is an item. That is what you can hang your hat on. But I'm not done. I've got more. There are several things you can find. You don't need to find any. You just need to find one. So the second item is traffic and safety concerns. At the time, I was not representing the applicant because I would have handled things a little bit differently. But traffic impact studies are not cheap. You're looking at $5,000 or $10,000. So if an applicant is told they need one, sometimes they take the path of least resistance. Don't ever underestimate the power of cheapness to get in somebody else's own way. So there was no traffic impact study. There was no evidence. There was no data presented to either the Planning Commission or to this body. We have now done those studies. We have submitted those studies to the staff, to MPO, to traffic engineering, and everyone has agreed, that underlying assumption to restrict this use was in error. The data shows you did not need this restriction at that time. That is a change. Other changes we've seen. I've got a slide. I'm going to kind of show you here. This is what we look at today. As you can see, I always forget which button to hit. There we go. So here's our property right here. We are part of a half-mile commercial corridor that runs this direction. Like most historic corridors in Lexington, we are on a major arterial. That's not my opinion. That's the classification of the state. 26,000 cars travel in front of our property every single day. This is a major highway. But some things have changed. Number one is since 16, at 16, there were six drive-through restaurants in this one-half mile. Today, we're down to four. We've lost the KFC. It's now a cell phone place. We've lost the Long John Silver's, which is now being used for the library. Great improvement, but once again, we've had a diminishment in services in restaurants in this area since 16. That's one-third. Third, that is a major change. 30% is a lot. Now, some people will cheer that. They don't like fast food restaurants. I understand that's their opinion. But ultimately, these are services that are no longer available to this community in this area. We had another quick service restaurant here. We are still one less than there were in 16. Once again, impact. Is there a concern? Do we have too many drive-thrus in this area? We have less today than we did in 16. another major change in the area. This doesn't include the fact that the least famous recipe is gone. Now, all these stores, for those who don't know me, I grew up, I've spent my entire life pretty much between Bursell's Road and Nicholsville Road. And I've seen things come and go. But all these, KFC, Long John's, I think they've been there my entire life. And they're no longer there now. Things change. That happens. It's okay. Change is scary, but it happens. But as you see, that is another major change in this area. And while we are on the tip corner here of the commercial area, and you are correct, there is residential here, but look at this buffering. That is a huge area, a floodplain that buffers these houses who don't have access to Bersales Road and the street. Same thing here. Huge buffer. There is over 500 feet from our property to the neighbor's house to our west. Technically, this is residential. I don't know anyone who is on a six-acre lot inside the city, except for maybe one objector here tonight. This neighbor here, Ms. Noe, very sweet lady. We are finally able to reach her, and in your packet, in number eight, you will see an email from her where she supports our project. She would be the most affected residential property next to us, and she supports this project. And lastly, I'm going to mention this. I know planning staff and I disagree with this. I'm sure the objectives of this disagree with this. But COVID-19 changed a lot. People want to say, no, it didn't change that much. It changes the way we work. It changes the way we live. It changes the way we interact and get services. It changed a lot. Now, people may forget pre-COVID, post-COVID, memories fade. Things are different now. Number one is consumers have gotten used to having more convenience. They want quick service takeout. They don't want less. They want the ease. Working parents want to be able to pick up their kids from school, drive through somewhere, on their way to take them to soccer practice, golf, piano, wherever else they have to go. We are a very fast-paced society. Quick service restaurants provide a need. They provide help for people who have very busy, busy lives. A second person who benefits tremendously from quick service restaurants, and I'm talking life and death benefits are people with compromised immunities. I've got a letter from Avall in the packet in which John has graciously supported this project. And one of the concerns he has is, number one, is there aren't enough restaurant options in this area. Number two, he has residents in his development who have mobility issues. They cannot easily get in and out of a car. Without a drive-thru, they are cut off from simple services that you and I take for granted. He's got residents who have compromised immunities, and they cannot go into a restaurant in this environment. Having a drive-thru gives them the flexibility and the opportunity to have access to services the rest of us take for granted. Once again, COVID has changed some of these compromised immunity citizens that we live with. And they need and they have a right to the same services you and I take for granted. A drive-thru will provide that service. Now, that's kind of what has changed. I would like to do real quick because I want to get my other guys up here to speak for a second. As Tracy said, this is the property. It's a one-acre track. Once you take out the floodplain, once you take out the 100-year floodplain, we were able to get a permit that will allow us to put parking, of which we're putting pervious papers. Any parking that's in the floodplain area setback, we're putting pervious papers. The city has a 25-foot setback from here to this area. So once you put that 25, we can actually build on only a third of an acre. So we have one acre here, and we can build on a third of an acre. That's all we can build on. It's good and bad. It's bad because there are a lot of users who can't come to this site. It's good because the users we will attract will have smaller facilities, which will attract less intense users. For example, a Chick-fil-A will not come here. I will drop dead if a Chick-fil-A ever came to this site. They need an acre or more minimum for their prototype. They won't even consider this. The Scooter's Coffee, on the other hand, they can get away with a third of an acre because they have so many fewer cars that come to their site on a daily basis. Here is the existing development plan. We could, today, pull a permit for this particular development right here. But we're not going to. No one's going to. You know why? Because it's a horrible plan. It's 6,000 square feet of retail. The Bersales Road corridor does not need 6,000 square feet of retail. Rent in that corridor goes for $10 to $15 a square foot. That is $60 to $75,000 a year in rent. You cannot build a 6,000 square foot building if you're getting that kind of rent. The building itself, no matter where you are in the city, is about $200 a square foot to construct a commercial building. So we're looking at $1.2 million to build this building. not land cost. Land costs are going to run, in this area we're looking at $750 to $1 million for land costs per acre on the Versailles Road corridor. So now you're looking at maybe $15,000, $17,000. To maybe get $75,000 in rent, your banker will lap you out of the building. This plan will never get built. It's going to sit vacant unless it gets changed. Tracy has gone through my plan. I'm going to leave this one up because I want to now introduce, for the record, Clay Johnson. Clay is our traffic engineer for Prime. He did both of our traffic impact studies, and he's going to go over very quickly what he found with his study. We've got seven and a half minutes. I'll make it quick. Gladly. Thanks, Brandon. Like I said, I'm Clay Johnson with Prime AE. I just wanted to hit the highlights of our traffic study now. I do want to give some context of where this data comes because when we do a traffic study, we have to base it on real-life data. So what we did for Sales Road was literally sit out there for 14 hours counting cars during the morning and the evening peak. And that allows us to see how many cars come through for Sales Road, and then we can compare that to how many cars we're going to see through this development. And so with this development, we found that in the morning, the busiest time of the morning, you're going to have 46 cars come through. But of those 46, only half of those are new trips on Vercel's Road. The rest, they're already on Vercel's Road. They're coming on their way to work. They're leaving on their way to work. So when we look at how many cars currently come through the site versus what we would see in an increase, the maximum increase that we're going to see based on a quick service restaurant concept is 2%. You are not going to see major impact for Vercel's Road from that. This building is too small. It's too small to generate enough traffic to really upset Versailles Road. And so the coffee concept was even less. It was 0.4% of an increase and 0% increase in the evening. But what I do want to mention is with this, we did look at crash data because we did have some pushback on the safety. And so what our developer has done is that that three-quarters entrance doesn't allow left turns out. So we can't predict crashes, but we can reduce the number of conflict points that there could be a crash. And so he has done that with this concept. We looked at five years of accident data around this intersection from our site all the way up to the Parker's Mill intersection, and there were 29 crashes in that five-year period. The majority of those are people getting rear-ended because they're not paying attention. There were much fewer issues with the left turn, so we felt left turns into the site would be safe, and we felt like they have taken traffic engineering and planning staff's recommendations on that and limited left turns out to take that conflict point away. That's all I've got. Thank you all. Next up is Tony Barrett. He's our landscape architect, and he worked on the design. He's going to walk you through the design and also some of the items that we adopted to mitigate some of the concerns and to enhance this project for the corridor. Good evening. I'm Tony Barrett. I'm a landscape architect with Barrett Partners. And I prepared the development plan as been presented. And I'm going to, which one is the pointer? Okay, thank you. I just wanted to kind of go over some of the highlights of the plan. There's improvements to Versailles Road include the, what we've done is we've moved the sidewalk away from Versailles Road so that it's not immediately adjacent to the curb. It's pulled back as has been done to the north on Versailles Road. as part of the corridor improvement plan. Our site is outside of the corridor improvement plan, so it's stopped at basically Parker's Mill. So we're going to take that concept and implement it on this site, so that's a little safer walking opportunity there along Versailles Road. So there's actually a 10-foot utility strip along as a buffer to the sidewalk. Of course, the street trees proposed along Versailles Road. we have a opportunity for public art at this location at our entrance and as clay mentioned we have a restricted left turn so you cannot turn left out of the site you have to turn right out of the site that's a kind of a what we call a pork chop that that median there to direct traffic is kind of a pork chop shape so that you have to turn to the right as you're coming out We have a potential to strike for bike lane on Versailles Road, as is part of the corridor improvements. We're agreeable to allowing that to happen across our property as well, frontage. And then we're also providing a bike parking right on the property at our entrance there. So some improvements that would be right up front on Versailles Road. The drive-through itself has two lanes, and as was mentioned, about 20 cars of stacking. And as Clay indicated, there's 45, 46 cars anticipated during the a.m. peak time periods. So the likelihood of cars extending out and blocking Bursell's road is very minimal. We were proposing an enhanced speaker system for the drive-through to minimize noise in the area. And then also Tracy mentioned the bypass lane to help improve circulation. So some of the improvements for the concepts for the drive-through. And then the overall site plan, we're proposing a covered patio in the front with a walk-up window to engage the street. So Versailles Road, so that you have addressing the street at that location. uh again that bypass lane would allow the uh this is the dumpster location would allow the garbage trucks to to circulate through the building so that they don't have to back up as was proposed on the on the prior plan it's a the solid waste has a real issue uh with with backing up their vehicles so this would minimize their their need to back up and to turn around in kind of a dead-end parking lot with a continual circle circulation pattern we're proposing to have a little stub opportunity here to for potential cross circulation to in the future to the adjoining property if that property were to redevelop at some point or change. Otherwise, that could be an opportunity that would be made available and we would be agreeable to that. The I think Brandon mentioned I believe the. How much more time do you think you might need? Two minutes. Okay, go ahead. Pervious pavement in the parking lot along the floodplain to help with water quality and then increased landscaping overall. Again, the street trees, as I mentioned, we have the increased VUA, vehicular use area setback buffer of increased 8 to 8 feet as required now. The trees along the perimeter upgraded now to 25 feet spacing. The increased interior vehicular use landscape up to 30% canopy requirement now, so we're required for that. The tree preservation area in the floodplain that we're respecting. and then just in general additional trees planted in the floodplain to to improve the floodplain character and then quality of the floodplain itself so that's all I have to add Brandon did Do you want to kind of close? Thank you. And lastly, these are the changes I talked about during this hearing. I think we have shown and the planning staff had agreed with us that there were major economic, physical or social nature changes in this area that were not anticipated in 2016. And that staff recommended, and we opine, that it is appropriate for you to remove this one particular restriction that we've requested from this property. Thank you. I'm here if you have any more questions, and so is my team. Thank you very much. Does planning staff want to cross-examine the petitioner? Okay, I'm good there. As far as I know, we don't have a presentation from organized opposition, is that correct? Yes, ma'am. I think we've got you down for public comment, so that'll be coming up. Thank you. All right. So that will be our next piece for public comment. So let me pull up my list here. Can I clarify, is it the case that the opposition gets equal time with the applicant in this kind of a zone change hearing? Not that we'll use it all. Right, no, it's three minutes. Heavens for a friend. Yeah, if you're here for public comment, it's kind of like the rest of our council rules as well. It's three minutes unless you have people yield time to you. So we've been discussing with one another. Are we not deemed an organized opposition? No, not if you're here for public comment. If you had, go ahead, will you clarify that for me? Thank you. If you are organized opposition, then there would need to be some sort of legal representation or some sort of spokesperson that's been a part of this process the whole time. Just a group of members of the public who equally disagree are not an organized opposition according to the way that our rules work. So you're entitled to speak as a member of the public. And you can speak certainly in opposition, but you are not what we consider for our rules organized opposition that is typically awarded the time to give a presentation with an attorney typically. So that makes an adequate record of both parties considering the zone change, addressing the zone change. Vice Mayor, I believe you've made a decision that we've now moved on to public comment. There was no organized opposition. Yeah, that's correct. Thank you. Council Member, Amy, are you planning to speak? Amy, are you planning to speak in public comment? I'm speaking to Ms. Clark. We had organized that Paula Singer would speak first. Okay, are you signed up to speak and are you planning to yield time? We don't have you on the list is what I'm saying. I need to sign up. Okay, we have a sign up system. And probably swear in. Yep, please, thank you. Yeah, and we actually do need you to swear in as well. If you want to sign up and then when we get you back, we'll swear you in as well. Okay, so we're going to go in order on the sign-up sheet here, and as we do our public comment, as usual, give your name and your council district, and you will have three minutes. We're going to start off with Dottie Bean. I have no vested interest in this. My name is Dottie Beaton. I'm from Council District 8. I have no vested interest in this, but I do travel for sales road. And I'm here as a Lexington resident and driver who wants to see better traffic flow in this city. I do not think this property will help traffic under sales road any more than any other fast food use would. I also support the other opponent's right to comment on this proposal and object for her right to object for whatever reason and have her comments entered into the record. I oppose any effort to intimidate or persuade her not to comment publicly. Thank you very much. Next up is Paula Singer. Good evening council members. Welcome back. Sorry, Ms. Singer, can I pause you for a second? I don't think our iPad is out there, is that correct, for signups? So I want to make sure if anybody is intending to yield that we're honoring that right now. Ms. Clark, you mentioned that you were going to yield to Ms. Singer. Is that correct or no? She's up here now, so we need to figure out how much time we're giving her. I'm sorry. I had a different understanding. Traditionally, what has in the past happened is that the vice mayor invites any group to say, do you have a spokesperson? I think of her as the leader because she's been a community leader for 15 years or so, at least. And so I thought we could share the 40 minutes. That is not my understanding. Exactly. So Paula has her time and we each have our time. Okay. Fair enough. All right. You may continue, Ms. Singer. Thank you. Thank you. Paula Singer, 11th District. I live off for Sales Road and have done so for almost 40 years. This property sits just 300 feet west of the boundary for the 2015 Cardinal Valley for Sales Road Small Area Plan, which is included in our current 2018 Comprehensive Plan. This neighborhood corridor study emphasizes the strengthening of neighborhood services and the implementation of safety improvements for vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists. When in 2016 the property was upzoned from R1A to B1 with conditions of no drive-thru, those conditions were imposed to uphold this regard for safety for all who use the corridor. Now, we understand it takes a little while for government to implement safety measures recommended in a study, but remarkably by the end of 2021 the first phase of the Versailles Road corridor project from Parker's Mill to Mason Healy was completed. Millions of city dollars were spent on pedestrian bicycle and vehicular safety measures including wider sidewalks set back and protected from the roadway. To further accommodate the needs of neighborhood pedestrians additional funds were procured from the city budget at the urging of our mayor to among other improvements provide benches at the corner of Versailles and Alexandria for the benefit of neighborhood pedestrians. Recognizing the needs of this Versailles Road neighborhood's growing community, a new village branch library, again costing millions of dollars, is under construction at 2185 for Sales Road. To support this neighborhood service, City Council voted to spend one million dollars of the COVID relief funds to support this neighborhood library. Mayor Gorton has allocated over $5 million in the current budget for a redesign of the Versailles Road Mason Healy intersection. Ms. Singer you're out of time. May I continue? I know that you've If you have during public comment you can have more than three minutes if someone yields you their time. Those are our council rules. In previous public hearings, Vice Mayor Steve Kay very kindly granted me an additional two minutes. I ask you for the same. I yield my time to Ms. Singer. Thank you Ms. Clark. Go ahead. We have three minutes please. To To further accommodate, I don't know where I was, Mayor Gorton has allocated over $5 million in the current budget for a redesign of the Versailles Road-Mason-Healey intersection with a view to the future elementary school at 2160 Versailles Road. Versailles Road is no longer a highway serving commuters. That was the Versailles Road of the past. Versailles Road now and of the future is a hub of community activity and services for the Cardinal Valley Versailles Road neighborhood and the surrounding Westside neighborhoods. This is wholly in accordance with the goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan. As further proof of our residential neighborhood status, I provide you with residential properties currently under construction. An expansion of senior housing at Christian Towers, 1511 Versailles Road. The aforementioned recently completed Stonewall Terrace at 1812, which provides affordable residential housing for those with health vulnerabilities. LFUCG's Housing Authority has apartments, duplexes, and townhouses under construction at 1604 Versailles Road. In addition, please consider that properties recently granted upzoning from residential use continue to be used as residential properties. I reference four homes at 1501 to 1509 for sales road, which in 2016 was granted B-1 status. And sadly, in some cases, restrictions removed from the B-1 zoning to accommodate vehicular movement within a property development proposal have not resulted in new business property development. For example, I referenced 1318 to 1320 Versailles Road, a well-cared-for 12-unit apartment building that was granted accommodations for use as a mega-speedway gas station, only today it sits unoccupied, unused, and homeless camps are in the backyard. Our current comprehensive plan includes the crash analysis findings of the Multimodal Alternative Evaluation U.S. 60 for Sales Road study. It states the crash rate on the corridor exceeds the average crash rate and is effectively equal to the critical crash rate, indicating a statistically higher than average crash occurrence on the corridor. Congestion with stop and start traffic from vehicles entering and exiting the traffic stream is listed in the study as a major contributing factor to these collisions. Thank you, Ms. Singer. I have more to say. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Francisco Castro. Come on up. Give us your name and council district, please. My name is Francisco Castro. I think I'm in District 11. I am the managing partner of JCC Insurance, and I'm also one of the partners of CMCC Properties, which is the building that is on 2351 Versailles Road. We sit right behind the central bank right there on Versailles Road. So we do have a vested interest in all this because that's our neighborhood. That is where during tax season, believe it or not, that's where we live. We were there from very early in the morning until very late at night and sometimes even weekends. So I'm here not only because of that, but I am also the president of the Greater Garden Site Association. I just was elected this year in January. And one of the goals of our association is to bring focus on improving our area. And so if you guys give me just a couple of seconds, I'm going to tell you our journey in our building on 2351 Versailles Road. When we bought it, it was full of grass, full of weeds and all that. The first thing we did is before we even moved in, we went in there and cleaned it up. What that did is that also got our neighbors. We have an apartment complex right on our side. We have an apartment complex on the back. They started cleaning up their areas as well. And so we went in there one day and we cleaned up the creek. creek. I would love to have the opportunity to call it the JCC Creek, but I don't think I'm allowed to do that. So we cleaned up the creek, and now we have all that water flowing, and we actually see turtles, and we see fish. Why I'm telling you all that is because I am here basically to urge you guys to consider doing this change, because any type of improvement, in my opinion, is going to bring great improvement to all of us. When I was speaking to different members of, different of our clients, believe it or not, right in that area, we have several clients that are part of our business. El Gran Taco, El Mango, Sabor Pupusas, you name it. There are several stores right behind the new library that's being built. So in our opinion, in my opinion, this will actually bring a beautification to our area. So if we did, if we went there and we cleaned up and we made it look incredible, trust me, I think there's gonna be excitement around there. And you know what, guys, if you get the chance, I wanna be at your groundbreaking and I wanna be at the ribbon cutting. I'm a member of the chamber, I'm an ambassador. So I would love to do that. And if you come in, I would love to bring you into the Greater Garden Site Association. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Castro. Next up is Austin Wilkerson. Good evening, Council. My name is Austin Wilkerson. I'm District 11. I would like to echo the statements of Ms. Springer. I am the tenant of the adjacent property, 2484 over Sales Road. The house includes this 10-acre floodplain, which you've heard spoken about. And I can confirm that that property will never be developed. I'm the future owner of the property as well. And it is my vision, as well as the vision of members in the colony and the surrounding neighborhoods, that for Sales Road has been primarily a residential area and will remain a residential area. Mr. Gross suggested that during the Planning Commission meeting, the commission was somehow bamboozled by the public and that we pulled the wool over their eyes and convinced them that this development was a bad idea. I contend instead that they just recognized that it's a bad idea. I won't, in the interest of time, I won't go into the traffic. When they discussed the traffic report, they mentioned 29 accidents. That doesn't sound insignificant to me, and just rear ends or whatever don't sound insignificant to me. certainly not in terms of traffic congestion, which you would see in the area. But traffic and logistical qualms aside, there is a deeper issue at hand, and that is the fact that this area for Sales Road from the colony and the neighborhoods inside New Circle all the way in remain primarily residential. The reason the fast food drive-thrus are disappearing is because we don't want them. And they have resulted in conditions that are already untenable, trying to get to school, trying to get to work. And as someone who, again, lives and enjoys this beautiful space, I can't bear to see more of our quiet neighborhoods and our green space go. So, again, in the interest of time, I'll be brief. Traffic issues aside, the bottom line is this. This proposed development does not serve the needs or the wants of the residents of Lexington's Versailles Road neighborhoods. We don't want our precious, quiet neighborhoods and our vanishing green spaces buried under yet another fast food restaurant, of all things, let alone one that will complicate our lives. And crucially, this proposed development does not promote our values, nor does it serve the residents' visions for our community going forward. There may be room for yet another fast food chain in Lexington, but it's not at 2400 Versailles Road and not at the cost of our neighborhoods and our beautiful natural spaces. Once that space is gone, Council, you know that it does not come back. And when it goes, all that makes Lexington unique and special goes with it. Our neighborhoods will be diminished. So, I implore the council to consider the kind of growth they want to see in Lexington and whether or not the current proposal contributes to the Lexington you want to live in. I yield no time, but I thank you very much for yours. Thank you. Next up is Brian Mullins. Good evening. I'm Brian Mullins and thank you for allowing me to speak. I speak in support of the development. I own the property at 2284 Versailles Road, which is the Dollar Tree right now. But initially, we bought that property 21 years ago. It was a thing from basically 9-11. Our business went off a cliff after 9-11, and we're like, man, we've got to have something else to do. So we decided we had been looking at that property, and we went in there and bought that to basically have a development and built a car wash. And so we were a small business owner and went in there, and initially it was a boarded-up gas station with knee-high weeds, and it had been like that for years. So we as well thought, you know, us going in there and developing this property, making something that would help the community. But it was a head scratcher, too. We didn't think there would be much opposition, but there was. And it was out of the blue. The Planning Commission, it was a head scratcher because we had a beautiful development plan like they do here to try to beautify that corridor. and we had opposition as well. And we had to spend a considerable amount of money as a small business owner to be able to come here and present what we needed to. Luckily, we got it and we were able to have now a property that we're going to have the rest of our lives and be able to hand down to our kids. So why am I here? Well, the city's already spent a considerable amount of money to develop public dollars into those corners right there. They put in, you know, the nice, we've got the secretary corner, which that sounds great. And so we want to continue that process of developing properties along that that would benefit. I'm a little confused by how a coffee shop is something that somebody doesn't want, but that was the same way back there, you know, trying to beautify your property, and the Planning Commission voted, you know, there's a lot of opposition against it. So I think basically what it is, I mean, any of us are allowed to oppose things, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. So that's all I got. Thanks. All right. Thank you, Mr. Mullins. District 5, by the way. Thank you. I was going to ask you. Next up is Zachary Skubitz. And am I pronouncing your last name correctly? Please correct me if I'm not. You are not, but it's not your fault. There's an invisible T. My name is Zachary Skubitz. I'm from district 8. Thank you very much. I am kind of just a rando here. I try to get more interested in zoning in the city in general. My main thoughts here are that I am a huge fan of the pro-pedestrian and pro-cyclist infrastructure that this proposal has, though it's not part of the amendment. I am a person who drives from Versailles fairly frequently, Not for my main job, but for a secondary one that I have. And I usually come in pretty late. Having a coffee shop on the way back would make my nights a lot less miserable. And I also appreciate the small land use. I think they mentioned it's only about a third of the lot is end up getting used. The rest gets to remain in that flood plains, that grassland, that little bit of nature. Brief statement, thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Skubitz. All right, that is all the public comment we have. Does planning staff like to rebut or add additional comments? I place information in the record. You won't have an opportunity to hear about it. Thank you, Ms. Clark. Tracy, did you have anything additionally? Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Wu. The two things I would mention that Mr. Gross added in addition to really what was presented at the Planning Commission are found in tab 2 of his notebook under his proposed findings. and I would reiterate what he said, which was the applicant and the staff do disagree related to some of the reasons that you can put forward to justify a change. If we recall back to what Article 6 says, there are required findings, and it specifically says that the change must be of an economic, social, or physical nature and have occurred on the subject property or in the immediate vicinity. I would argue that COVID is not something that only impacted this property. It impacted our community, state, the nation. It's an equalizer for everyone, so it's not something that I believe should be cited as a reason to change a condition for this particular site. So if the council is considering making a change for the site, I would not utilize that finding to do so. The second would be finding number seven listed on that sheet also talks about, and perhaps it's just the wording, that the site is located within a compromised place in the community. Again, this is part of a floodplain. that has not changed. It has always been part of a FEMA floodplain and environmentally sensitive area. So I would suggest that that's not a reason that would meet the ordinance. So those are my two comments tonight. All right. Thank you very much. Does the petitioner have a either rebuttal or additional comments. Thank you very much. I'll make these comments brief. As was the case at the Planning Commission, so is the case here today. The objectors have not provided you with any evidence that rebuts our traffic impact study. The traffic impact study shows There is almost no effect on traffic for this use. I think primarily there was a lot of talk about the public money and taxpayer dollars that have gone into the corridor. I think that's great. But the whole reason the government went in and spent that money was to increase the likelihood of private money to follow in after. That's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to beautify this area. we're trying to bring a new service to this area. Lastly, there was some talk about some plans. I'd like to put these up on the screen one at a time real quick. And now, then they'll be entered into the record at that point. The first one is, we'll see which one they put up first. And I purposely, I'm attempting not to bring any new evidence in so there's not a counter rebuttal to save you guys time. So this is all just response. And this is one of those cases you don't know what you need until you're here. So this here is the, I'm going to put this in the record. this is the Cardinal Valley Small Area Plan. It's a great plan. It travels a whole lot of mileage. We're not in that plan. We're not affected by that plan. We don't have to comply with that plan. Now, we have voluntarily adopted a lot of the recommendations because we do want to be a good neighbor. We do want something that coincides with this project. But if you see, here's Parker's bill. There's the Starbucks. We're right next to it. We're not in this plan. This plan has no bearing upon today's hearing. The second plan I want to show, if you don't mind, put the next one up. And this one was a little confusing of what exactly they were getting, but I believe they were talking about the multimodal alternative evaluation that was done in 2014 on the Versailles Road corridor. Once again, an important plan. The city and the state have made improvements on the corridor based upon this plan. But once again, it's hard to see, but I believe that's Alexandria. And that's High Street. Once again, we're not in this plan. This plan doesn't affect our property. We don't have to comply with this plan. But once again, we are adding multimodal. we are following recommendations in this plan because we want our property to look like the rest of the property on this corridor. That's really all I have to say on rebuttal. If you guys have any questions, once again, I'm here, and so is my team. Thank you. Mr. Gross, go ahead and stay up there. We're going to get to summations. Can you sum up in three minutes, you think? Oh, I can sum up quicker than that. Perfect. Thank you. Can we put my slideshow back up? The 2016 underlying restriction was based upon the need for further compliance with the 2013 comprehensive plan, traffic and safety concerns, and nuisance concerns. My client has shown that the 2018 comprehensive plan superseded the 13 plan, and we are in compliance with the greater guidance for development that was put forth in that plan. We have proven through a traffic impact study, the data shows that the impact along Versailles Road by drive-through facilities will not negatively impact the health, safety, or welfare of those utilizing Versailles Road. We have shown that there's been a reduction in quick service restaurants on Versailles Road. I'm going to skip the last two. I'm comfortable with the staff's objections on those last two items. If that's what it takes to get this approved tonight, I'm comfortable. But I think we can rely upon the first three as enough. And my findings of fact show those to you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gross. Oh, that's it? No, you're good. Thank you. Appreciate it. Ms. Wade, would you like to summarize? You're good? Okay. Okay, we're good with summations then. All right, so we are opening up the floor to council members to ask questions of any of the presenters or witnesses. Please sign in to speak. We'll start with council member Plowman. Thank you, vice mayor. And thank you, Mr. Gross, Mr. Barrett, and participants in public comment. Appreciate your comments. I had never heard of scooters. Is that the name of this? Okay. Is it a franchise? Mr. Gross, I'd probably recommend that you just stay close. Okay, that works for me. Yes, Scooters is a franchise. The local Scooters franchisee is based out of Somerset, Kentucky. But there are no others in Lexington, correct? There are currently, to my knowledge, none in Lexington. Is Winchester? One in Versailles and one in Winchester. So they've been looking for a site in Lexington. What will the hours be? Generally for a coffee shop, you're looking at operational six. And normally I think now what, 8 p.m.? Is that when? 6 p.m. That's usually when they're starting to close down. Okay. And then in terms of food items, muffins, what's inside? If somebody wanted to come in and sit down. Yeah. I think it's going to be very similar to Starbucks offerings. It's going to be prepackaged food. There will be a little kitchenette area that will preheat prepackaged food or reheat prepackaged food. I really like the green space element on there. But one other thing, what's the square footage? I probably should have. Right now, we have proposed 1,750 feet for the building. It was mentioned that 30%, I think that was the figure, of the former restaurants on the Versailles Road no longer exist or have gone out. What has replaced them? Are there empty lots? Yeah, currently the KFC was replaced, I believe, by mobile telephone. I can't recall which one, maybe T-Mobile went into that one. That was the Kentucky Fried Chicken. In the Long John Silvers, that building was actually demolished to make room for the new library building. Okay, that makes sense, yeah. And then you also mentioned the Traffic Impact Study, which has been done now, correct? It had been done, yes. The traffic impact study has been done and reviewed. But it was not done in 2016? It was not done in 2016. And you said that was the reason that it was? That was one of the Planning Commission and this council's underlying reasons for the restriction, was there was a concern about traffic and safety, and there was no data for them to look at to evaluate whether that was a concern or not. Was that not a request for that to be done? I was not involved with the 2016. Generally, in my experience, I come forward with a plan to planning staff, and the planning staff says, heck no. And I said, well, how can I get there? And they said, well, do a traffic impact study. And then my client says, I want to pay for it, or I don't. If they don't, then we move on, and we accept the restriction, and that's how it is. And if they want the restriction, like in this case, we want to drive through, we went ahead and prepared a traffic impact study. But that study is not required at the zoning ordinance. It is an extra additional item that is often requested politely from planning staff when we're dealing with quick service restaurants. Okay, great. Answered my questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Council Member. Just so we clarify a little bit, and I want to make sure legal is on board with me here. In these considerations, we are talking about this specific use, and we are not to consider the development plan as part of our considerations. Is that correct? You all can't act on the development plan. Development plans during zone changes are usually presented to you all in order to inform you and to see if it helps you understand what the use is, which is controlled by the zone. But you won't be making any decision on the development plan itself. Okay, so it can be part of our... It would go back to the planning commission if you all were to choose to approve what's being asked for. Okay, so it can be part of our discussion, but we are making no decisions that impact in any way the development plan. That's correct. Okay, thank you, I appreciate that clarification. Up next, Councilmember Baxter, please. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I have questions and I don't know who to direct them to. We'll start with you, Bernard. How long has this lot, whoever, how long has it been vacant? As to the vacancy, I can't specifically speak. I know it was rezoned in 16. At that point, my understanding was it was an abandoned residence. Jason, do you know when they took it down or other Jason? I was trying to look back through PVA records, and it did go from the Foxes to... Oh, well, at this point, we're not 100% certain. Okay, but it's been a while. It's been several years. It's been empty for a while, right? Yeah, it's been several years. Okay, and then, Tracy, do you know or can you explain to me again why that conditional zoning was put on this piece of property? Just trying to wrap my head around it. And I'd say Tracy probably hang out out here for a little bit too. Thank you. So I asked her to put my PowerPoint back up. The site is already bordered by an existing use that has a fairly steady drive-through. And that was true in 2016 as well. And then it's also bordered to the west and the east by single-family residential zoning. And so the thought in 2016 was how do we protect this residential area from the most intense B1 uses? So it was essentially creating a buffer. Yes, right. How do we transition from what's occurring here and also along the rest of Versailles Road and make it kind of the stopping point for the business use before it gets to the rest of the residential? And so the planning commission and staff usually consider what's noisy, what might have a lot of lights, what might be things that people might not want to have in their backyard, that kind of thing. So typically drive-thrus are things that can operate at later hours than some of our other uses. And so that can be a noise issue and lighting associated with that. So that's typically why when it's a transitional property, the Planning Commission will suggest some restrictions. Okay. And then looking at the findings from the Planning Commission and their disapproval based on a no major change. Yes. Do we have a typical definition of major? That is really up to. Subjective. Yeah, it is subjective. It's up to your discretion. Sure. I'm just, you know, if you're looking for a major change, how do we justify if it's major to me and you and everybody else? So I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. So I'm going to wait and see what other people have conversations about, and then we'll go from there. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you. Council Member Worley, please. Vice Mayor, would you mind to pass me and come back? No problem. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you residential neighbors and business neighbors for coming and sharing your thoughts and inputs to this, on this hearing today. Tracy, was it you that said something about, so it's B1 and there was some conversation about B and B3? What's the difference and what was the rationale between the different zones? The applicant originally, when they filed their application, asked to change from the B1 zone to a B3 zone. And the staff recommended disapproval of that because of the, it's really an increase in intensity of the allowable uses in between those two different zones. Our B1 zone is a neighborhood business zone. It allows restaurants, retail. It does allow accessory drive-thrus. your pharmacies, all the office uses. But a B3 zone is really a step up, and it's called our Highway Service Business Zone. It allows, in addition to those B1 uses, car sales and rental establishments, hotels and motels, adult businesses, some of the uses that car washes that maybe aren't as acceptable near residential department. So the staff recommended disapproval of that, and that prompted the applicant to modify their application. And instead of asking for a zone change, they asked for a change to the restrictions on the property, acknowledging that they were accepting B1 was perhaps the right zone here, but allowing it to have the drive-thrus because that was the one thing they really were looking for. Okay. So I guess part of the point is it's been vetted internally and the uses or the proposed use was something that our internal staff thought was complementary of the neighborhood and surrounding areas. Generally, a restaurant with a drive-thru can be something that is acceptable in our B1 zone for sure. where it crosses over to be a B3 type use is typically where a restaurant doesn't have indoor service at all. So like a Sonic drive-in is strictly a B3 use because there's nowhere to go inside and order or be served or sit down. Everything is operated with people coming and going. And so when that happens, you do have a lot more traffic movement and potentially traffic impacts with that. And then you also said that the MPO as well as the planning staff reviewed the traffic study and were in agreement with the findings. Traffic engineering and then the MPO is situated in the Division of Planning, but they are the transportation planning section. And they were both okay with the traffic study and the conclusions that resulted from that. In essence, agreeing that it would generate 50 new trips to this particular site, acknowledging that some of those trips would be pass-by trips. In essence, what Mr. Johnson mentioned, you are acknowledging that people are already on that corridor, and they'll stop here and then get back on Versailles Road. But that the overall impact of the development of this site would be pretty mind-free. Okay, and then the, so if there were concerns about the stacking, that's not any, do we have any purview to put any restrictions on the stacking or make any requests to make sure issues were addressed? Or is that something that the Planning Commission will do once the final development plan comes to them? Is that under their purview and not ours? Correct. It is under the Planning Commission's purview because it's a site-specific requirement that can be reorganized, redone on sites to meet those requirements. Is there any guidance that we can give them in regards to that, or is that strictly out of our purview? I mean, is there a notation or something that we would ask them to seriously look at, you know, if this was to go forward, the drive-through and the stacking of cars? I don't think that there's a method by which you can, on the record, recommend something like that, at least in terms of your decision about the zone change or the conditional zoning restriction. I think that the Planning Commission does take into account traffic engineering recommendations for those sort of things. And their plan does meet the requirement, which is five spaces. Okay. They actually exceeded, and we've debated internally about whether five's enough for some uses or not enough for others, and it's a balance. Was the other Tracy going to weigh in? Were you going to say something? Well, I was just going to say there's probably not a mechanism either through conditional zoning restrictions or the ordinance, is what Tracy said, for you all to address stacking because it is addressed as part of the development plan, and there are regulations that apply to that. But that doesn't mean that they can't hear this conversation or can't hear from you all specifically on a development plan, because that's not going to be coming to you all in the form of a zone change. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Vice Mayor. To that point, for both our Tracys, I think while that is a development plan issue, certainly what's being proposed by an applicant in order to justify their requests and the record heard here, in my experience, the Planning Commission certainly is aware of that and that it would be difficult for an applicant to come with something completely different and say, see we got the council to say yes with this but we want this. That's typically been my experience. I don't think you see that too often. No the the planning staff and the planning commission don't see what we sometimes call that the bait and switch right. We promised one thing and came with something else that does. It's not well received. No it's not well received so then applicants know that so they don't try that. Yeah. Thank you and Mr. Gross So to that point, and I'm really getting more towards the traffic impact study than the development plan itself, but you say you're proposing 20 stacking spaces within the property itself, correct? That is correct. We're required to show five, but we're showing four times as many. We're showing 20. And your traffic impact study, did I hear you say that that says in the peak hour, not at any given time, you have an opportunity for 20 stacking spaces, but across a full peak hour, you're looking at 50 generated trips, tops, is what your traffic impact study said? That is correct. So at any given time, you would have half of, almost half of what would be your peak hour for the full 60 minutes. Exactly, and that's why we designed it that way, is to make sure there's almost no chance of cars backing out of this site onto the public right away. And so I assume that that's, with your traffic engineer, that that's probably part of what they looked into in coming with the, that this would create a negligible safety impact or traffic, you know, material change in traffic to Versailles Road. That is correct. We've heard that the justification for the not having a drive-through was potentially light and noise concerns for surrounding neighborhoods and then traffic. And I think the traffic impact study that wasn't a part of the plan last time, but this plan addresses that in my opinion. But are you also asserting then that the 2018 comp plan better addresses how we buffer and transition from one use to another? And so therefore there's guidance available now that your clients would have to follow that adequately protect any surrounding neighbors. That's exactly right. In addition, if you look at our development plan, we have added more items to the development plan. We have agreed we will use a menu board with a sound system that has an automatic volume. So when times are quiet, it's quiet. When it turns up, when things are louder, we've also increased the tree canopies and other buffering to separate the residential from this use. And you're saying that despite just trying to be good neighbors, these are all changes that came about that would be required by the 2018 comp plan. These are all changes, yes, that are consistent with the staff's request based upon the 2018 plan. Thank you. And then would you, can you get directed up here your, I think this was exhibits, it was one of your exhibit ones. It's showing the different quick service. Oh, yes. Would you mind? And unfortunately, let's see here. And for those at your desk, that is one of the tabs within your deck. Here it is. So I want to make clear that as we were talking about adjacent property in the Starbucks, so the blue box directly next door to the property at issue is a Starbucks coffee shop, correct? That's correct. That's a Starbucks and a Bank of America. That's my understanding. And the Starbucks coffee shop has a drive-thru? It does have a drive-thru. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lynch, did we lose you or did you? Okay, good. Thank you. Council Member Legree, please. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So just to be clear, my understanding is that the major point that we're discussing is the prohibited use of drive-through facilities that were put on in 2016 during the zone change from a residential to a B1 zone. Is that correct? That's our major thing we're discussing here. That is correct, yes. Okay. So, and I'm not sure, this might be a question for Tracy, but we've called forward a couple of different, in our discussions, a couple of different small area plans or the comprehensive plan. And something that was brought up was the lack of inclusion of this property in the small area plan, which was done in 2015. Is there any reason that this property was not included? Does it have anything to do with the fact that it had not been rezoned from a residential to a B1? Or I just want to make sure I have the full context there. So for our small area plans, there's usually a boundary, you have to establish a boundary, a starting point, and an ending point. And in this case, they picked Parker's Mill as the starting point as you're coming into town. So this property and the adjoining Starbucks property both are not included. Okay. That's the 300 that Ms. Singer mentioned, that you're 300 feet away, we're two properties away. So at Parker's Mill going into downtown, that was the area that was studied. Okay, so Parker's Mill was the cutoff, not the Starbucks. I just wanted to make sure. Right, it didn't include Starbucks either. I understood. And then the Starbucks does have a drive-through, but it's not a stackable drive-through. It's not a two-lane drive-through. It is not a double drive-through, and their stacking is situated so so that it can curve around on site. I know that doesn't always happen, but that's the way it was designed. So in common parlay now, when we're talking about drive throughs, just are we talking consistently about stackable, like two lane drive throughs? Is that the norm now or? Good question. Recently we've seen more of that than ever before. In the past, it's been one lane that maybe split, and you could have two order points, and then they converged back together. Just in the last, I would say, two years, have we seen two distinct lanes. Okay. That is a newer model. Does that model create friction with the 2018 comp plan's guidance about greenhouse gases? I suppose it could. Obviously, most vehicles, if they're gas-emitting vehicles, or gas-utilizing vehicles, they're emitting emissions while they're idling. Generally, there's also some restrictions or suggestions that we minimize drive-throughs, especially in our downtown core, based on kind of that pedestrian-oriented area. And then also some recommendations that we intensify our corridors. And my experience is when it's a restaurant with a drive-thru that's often not meeting that threshold of intensification of the corridor. So there are some conflicts that have occurred. When something is designed with a drive-thru, are there different pedestrian or bike requirements than there would be if there were just a simple parking lot with an ingress and egress? The difficulty usually comes with how do you maneuver a pedestrian from the principal structure out to the right of way. And those are ADA requirements. So if a drive-through exists and it's able to circle the entire building, that means that that pedestrian would have to cross, at some point, a drive lane of traffic. And there's always a concern if the person in the drive-through is paying attention or if the person entering the site is paying attention to be able to avoid the pedestrian. So that creates another conflict point. In the past, some developments have been allowed to have two access points to a corridor. And they can come in and then leave without there being that conflict. But more recently, we've restricted access to our main corridor so that properties really just get one access point. Okay, thank you, Ms. Wade. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. I just have a quick question. You mentioned planning staff that, just because it is in District 10 and I kind of do know that area pretty well, it sounds like we actually can't do anything to limit the left turn. Because that's really, whatever we do here, if they were to go back, they still go back through planning for their site plan. And we have to count on planning to make sure that they say no left turn. Correct. Yes, and I believe that that is on the record for the planning commission that the applicant agreed to, they called this like a three-point intersection. Basically, you can enter right or left, but exiting only right. So the applicant has agreed to that. The commission, I believe, understood that they agreed to that. And I also believe traffic engineering would probably work with the District 7 office to ensure that that occurred if the site develops. Okay. And then my second question is really about just process. And if something is entered into the record, what's supposed to be done with that? That's a great question. So the information that we submit here is now available for you all to look at during the hearing. So if there's something you would like to look at in more detail, we're happy to provide time for that to occur. And also, if this case were to be challenged or appealed to Fayette Circuit Court, anything that was entered becomes part of the information that that judge can consider. So is there anything that you'd like to review that we entered in the record, I'd be happy to bring it to you. Yeah, I'm going to pause right there. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. All right. Thank you. Does anybody else have anything before I go on with my questions? Okay. Thank you all. Ms. Wade, I'm going to start with you. I've got a handful of questions for you. The Starbucks when you're exiting it, do they allow a left hand turn? They do currently have a left hand turn, yes. Okay. That street, Versailles Road, basically right in front of the proposed site and the Starbucks. So let's say hypothetically I'm leaving Starbucks or this new development taking a right. At the intersection of Parker's Mill, if I'm facing downtown, am I allowed to make a U-turn at that left turn lane if my intention was to go out of town on Versailles? I'm trying to remember. I believe there was a conversation about that, whether it was internally with the applicant or at the Planning Commission hearing. I don't think you can do a U-turn. Well, I don't think there's a sign. I'm not giving a U-turn there, so you might be able to. Right, okay. Not on the police force, I don't know all the rules. This is not legal, but that's how I come to work every single day. Okay, she's got to be. And there is a turn signal at that location, both going left on Parker's Mill and left into the bank. So I don't think there's a prohibit sign, but it would be very difficult. Right, okay. That makes sense. Thank you for that clarification. And then also relating to that street, if let's say I am coming out of downtown, Onverse Sales Road, and I want to turn into this coffee shop. Onverse Sales Road there, is there a dedicated or one of those like anybody can use a turn lanes that I can get in without blocking straight traffic? Yes, there are five lanes in this section. So two in each direction and the shared middle. Okay, great. In 2016, after this initial zone change was requested and approved, did no development happen out of that? The only thing that I'm aware of that occurred, well, only, they demolished the residential structure. They applied to FEMA to change the floodplain. They have to do an application that's called a conditional letter of map revision. That was approved. Now they'll have to do another step after that if once anything's developed. And then I believe they were storing some soil or dirt there for a period of time. Do you remember what the original proposed business was for that site? They just indicated retail. It wasn't a specific business. Okay. And then this last one is a little trickier of a question. Since we weren't, I presume most of us were not at the planning commission hearing for this originally, what was your sense of why planning commission turned it down, especially given that it seems like half their members via the subcommittees seem to approve it? What was your sense of what their objections were in that hearing? Well, I think I would start with the committee meetings are open to the public, but they are not part of the public hearing itself. So the commission members in each of those two committees hear information and they make a recommendation to the full planning commission. But the full planning commission hearing is the opportunity for the commission to speak with one voice and to hear from the public in a hearing manner. And that's when they make their decision. So those recommendations are not, they're from an open meeting, but they're not binding on the commission in any way. I believe that the planning commission just heard what the neighbors in the public said. that day and they're concerned about making any change to this particular site and they were concerned about the potential changes. Thank you Ms. Wade. My last two questions are from Mr. Gross. Sure. I have a, let's see, first question is very easy I guess. The proposed coffee shop, is it only drive through plus pick up window? Are there seats inside? Can you go inside? Well initially we had proposed only pick up window but after discussions with planning staff and commission we have put in a patio type area this would be if you if you're familiar with the andy's custard it'd be something similar to that but it would be a cover patio and we'd be able to put up the plastic during the winter so there's no seating inside but there is no seating inside proposed in your experience being before planning commission how often have you had the experience where subcommittee members approve of a project and then the larger whole planning commission turns it down or vice versa, that kind of reversal? How many times have you experienced that? I can say from my experience, this is the first time I've had someone approve in the subcommittee and then vote against me in the planning hearing itself. Okay. I think that's all I have. Thank you, Mr. Gross. Thank you. Councilmember Sevigny. Yeah, I would like to see the things that were submitted for the record. Well, at least while we deliberate, I'd like to at least see what was submitted. Thank you. Do we have any other questions? If I'm trying to figure out how to do this then. If Councilmember Sevigny wants to look over materials, I assume we would not be able to take a break or for any of us to leave the room while he's looking at materials or no? You all can take a recess and whoever wants to can look at documents that are in the record. I would just encourage you not to have discussions about those with each other. Just look at them and then if you want to talk about them when you come back, you can. Okay, thank you, I appreciate that. Let's go ahead. Okay, let me just double check real quick. So this portion of this hearing that we just had is the public portion of it, as in we are engaging with presenters and other folks to get our questions answered. So I am at the point where I'm going to close the hearing, which means at this point is discussion amongst council members only. So I want to make sure with everybody up here, do we have any more questions for presenters for planning or the petitioner at this point before I close it? Okay, I'm going to go ahead and close this here. Yes? I just want to make sure if there are any questions that come about based on review of the information submitted that Councilmember Civigni would be able to ask those. Okay. You can't ask those, you just would be limited. There will be no new evidence coming into the record at this point. Gotcha. Okay. Great. It's like a recess, I think. Say again? It's like a recess. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and declare this hearing closed. Let's go ahead and take a 10-minute recess, and when we come back, we'll come back to closed council deliberations. Thank you. We'll come back at, let's say, 722. Thank you. All right, thank you all. We're coming back in. So at this point, we are going to open up discussion here on the horseshoe among council members. We're not taking in new evidence at this point. So, please sign in to speak for any discussion. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member, so as I listen to this, I have to think I tend to agree that there has been an economic change in the character and the economics of the area. I think the traffic impact study, one of the concerns was that there was going to be a traffic problem, and there was no evidence to rebut that at the time, and there is now. And one of the concerns was that there was going to be light and noise potential problems for surrounding neighbors, and the evidence is now that the comprehensive plan should prohibit that, that we've thought through that better. And so I think those are two pretty significant changes amongst some of the other things that we've heard. and then I also think there's just a bit of fairness. The Starbucks has a drive-thru. It's a coffee shop with a drive-thru literally next door and what's good for the goose is good for the gander, in my opinion. Just my thoughts and happy to hear what my colleagues have to say. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And, you know, I tend to agree with some of the comments that Council Member Worley shared. I think this potential development has been vetted by our staff. I think the developer has done their due diligence in regards to doing a traffic study, being responsive to the concerns about the right-hand turn only out of this business in regards to the traffic issues, turning left calls. And then I just, I probably told some of you this before, but I know we had a similar type of zoning issue in the first district on Third Street. When a business was coming in that neighborhood, they wanted to drive through. The small area plan was real proactive about encouraging walkability in a neighborhood type business. But the type of business and the fact that allowing a drive-thru was going to give an opportunity for this property or this parcel to be redeveloped. And this business be a community resource. I think the Planning Commission saw fit to allow a drive-thru. And I think this is a similar situation. I think that area that I'm referring to was a little more walkable. I think it was a little more urban. And I think most of the traffic that's going to occur at this site and at this location is vehicular traffic. So I think you can have both. I think you can have a drive-through. I think you can have a business that is inclusive of the community, the neighbors, and not be something that's going to be problematic in regards to traffic. But everything that I've heard here today makes me believe that the developer is going to be responsive to that issue and that our planning commission and staff are responsive and will be responsive to those issues that folks have shared in regards to this development. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Any other Council Members wish to speak on the topic before we move on? Okay, seeing none, I just wanted to reiterate or iterate that our job at this point, we have two things that we need to do. First thing is we're going to make a motion on the findings of fact by either supporting what the planning commission has sent to us in the recommendation or to offer an alternative finding of fact. once we make that vote and go through that whole process, then we vote on the underlying ordinance in question. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. So at this point, I will entertain a motion regarding the findings of fact. Council Member Civigni. Thank you, Chair. I want to make a motion of findings for FACT to support the approval of the zone change. I move to adopt the following findings of FACT in support of approval of zone map amendment request PLN-MAR-22-00022 Caller Properties, LLC, AMD, located at 2400 Versailles Road for the removal of the conditional zoning restrictions prohibiting drive-through facilities. One, the evidence related to the impact of traffic along Versailles Road shows that the proposed use will not negatively impact the health, safety, or welfare of those utilizing the roadway. Two, the road ingress and egress point is designed to limit dangerous left-hand turn movements out of the subject property. Three, the inclusion of large buffers and new technologies reduce the impact that drive-through facilities have on the adjacent residential land uses. and for the adoption of the 2018 comprehensive plan provides for greater guidance for development to appropriately transition from more intense land uses to less intense land uses. So moved. Do we have a second? Second. Council Member Gray seconded. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, can I have a roll call vote, please? Councilmember Fred Brown. Yes. Councilmember James Brown. Yes. Councilmember Ellinger. Yes, ma'am. Councilmember Elliott Baxter. Yes, ma'am. Councilmember Gray. Yes. Councilmember Legree. Yes. Councilmember Lynch. Yes. Councilmember Plowman. Yes. Councilmember Sevigny? Yes. Councilmember Sheehan? Yes. Councilmember Worley? Yes, ma'am. And Vice Mayor Wu? Yes. Thank you. All right, so that motion passes. Next, I will entertain a motion to approve the ordinance as proposed, and I want to clarify real quick, and I'm going to stare right at legal as I say this. A vote of yes is approving the change to allow the drive-through. Yes, but I think that Council Member Civigni may have a motion about conditional zoning restrictions that we need to do before we do the vote on the ordinance. Okay, well. But when we get there, we can go back and review, but the answer is yes. Okay, cool. My clarity still stands. Council Member Civigni. Yes. Thank you, Chair. and I think I've got this right legal. I move on to the provisions of Article 6-7 of the zoning ordinance to adopt the following use restrictions to apply to this property. Prohibited uses. One, sale or provision of wine, beer, alcoholic beverages other than by the drink. Two, live entertainment and or dancing. Three, cocktail lounges, brew pubs and nightclubs. Four, automobile service stations. five arcades including pinball and electronic games, six sale of firearms other than by federally- Let me stop you there. Number six, that's an error. That needs, that should not be in there. Oops. We can't regulate that. We cannot regulate the sale of firearms. Seven will become six. Six car washing establishments, seven pool tables within an establishment even as an accessory used, 8 automobile and vehicle refueling stations. Other use restrictions. 1. A landscape buffer of at least 25 feet in width shall be provided along the southern property boundary, with plantings as specified by Article 18-3A1-2 of the zoning ordinance, including the retention of any tree that's at least 4 inches in diameter at breast height, DBH in size. Any tree four inches dbh or larger may only be removed if diseased or dying and only with written permission of the urban forester. Two, outdoor lighting shall be shielded and directed away from any adjacent residential zone. Lighting attached to a pole or any structure shall be a maximum of 20 feet high. Three, any freestanding sign erected shall be a maximum of 10 feet in height. These use and buffering restrictions are appropriate and necessary to ensure the great compliance with the 2013 comprehensive plan and to provide protection to the adjacent residential land uses. So moved. Second. I'm going to make one more correction. The last thing you read, it should be the 2018 comprehensive plan, not the 2013 comprehensive plan. Oops, yeah. Friendly amendment of 2018 comprehensive plan. That's how I understood it. Yeah. Thank you. And we have a motion, we have a second. I'm going to say all that again on the mic. We have a motion by Councilmember Sevigny and a second by Councilmember Ellinger. I ask for discussion, seeing none, we are now about to do a roll call vote. Thank you. Councilmember Fred Brown? Yes. Councilmember James Brown? Yes. Council Member Ellinger? Yes. Council Member Elliot Baxter? Yes. Council Member Gray? Yes. Council Member Legree? Yes. Council Member Lynch? Yes. Council Member Plumman? Yes. Council Member Sevigny? Yes. Council Member Sheehan? Yes. Council Member Worley? Yes, ma'am. And Vice Mayor Wu? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. That motion passes. We're moving on to the underlying ordinance, yes? Okay. May I have a motion to prove the ordinance as proposed? So moved. Council member Gray moved. Do we have a second? Second. Council member Plowman seconds. I will entertain any discussion on this item. All right. I got, so- Yes, go ahead. Just so I understand, are we supposed to vote? Is the proper, because there's always a yes and no's and I just want to make sure I understand what we're. Yes, this ordinance is written in the positive, which means all ordinances are. And so it is written to approve removing the drive through conditional zoning restriction. And so a yes vote on this will be consistent with the findings you just adopted and the other conditional zoning restrictions in place, but removing that one. All right, if everybody is clear on that and there's no discussion, let's get a roll call vote, please. Council member Fred Brown? Yes. Council member James Brown? Yes. Council member Ellinger? Yes, ma'am. Council member Elliot Baxter? Yes. Council member Gray? Yes. Council member Legree? Yes. Council member Lynch? Yes. Council member Plowman? Yes. Council member Savigny? Yes. Council member Sheehan? Yes. Council member Worley? Yes, ma'am. And Vice Mayor Wu? Yes. Thank you. That motion passes. Thank you everybody very much. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All right, without objection, we are adjourned. I'm going to go to the next video.