Three, we do have quorum, so this public hearing is now open. Clerk, if I may have a roll call, please. Council Member Ellinger? Yes, ma'am. Council Member Elliott Baxter? Yes, ma'am. Council Member Fogle? Yes. Nope. Fogle. Oh, I'm sorry. Council Member Gray? Present. Council Member Legree? Yes. Council Member Lynch? Council Member Menares? Yes. Council Member Plowman? Yes. Council Member Reynolds? Here. Council Member Savigny? Council Member Sheehan? Here. Council Member Worley? Yes, ma'am. Vice Mayor Rue? Yes. Council Member Fred Brown? Here. And Council Member James Brown? Here. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, clerk may I have the second reading of the ordinance, please? An ordinance changing the zone from a highway service business B3 zone to agricultural rural AR zone to a community center CC zone for 8.36 net, 11.95 gross acres for property located at 4075 Old Richmond Road, Anderson Communities Incorporated, Council District 12. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so I'll introduce myself for those who don't know me. I'm Dan Wu. I'm the vice mayor, and I'll be chairing this meeting. I'm going to lay out how this procedure, this meeting is going to proceed. And I want to preface this with it's been a little while since we've done it and we don't do many of these a year. And I have a tendency to go fast. So I'm going to try to stick to the script and make sure we do it all right. So first off, this is the, let's see. So as the presentations are going, if the council members can write down and hold all the questions towards the end, And there'll be opportunities to ask questions when the presentations are finished. I'm going to start off by swearing in all those who plan to speak. Actually, let me pause for a second. Do we have overflow? Not yet, no sir. We do not? Not yet, no. Okay, thank you. All right, so I'm going to start off by swearing in all those who plan or wish to speak at today's hearing. So whether you're a witness for any of the presentations or whether you're here for public comment, Would you all please stand and or raise your right hand for me? Thank you. 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. Thank you. You may be seated. All right, so and I'll also mention when you come up and speak as a part of public comment that you tell us your name and your council district and then you are asked to stay for the duration of this public hearing if you plan to speak. So my job as the presiding officer of this meeting is to facilitate this hearing and is within my purview to make judgments about whether or not the evidence being introduced is relevant and or repetitious. So we're going to have three presentations, so I would advise everyone if the presentation previous to you has touched on points that you're about to touch on, we can kind of expedite and get to other points. Have all the witness lists been provided to the clerk? I have them. Do you have them as well? Yes, good. Thank you. All printed materials that will be presented, you all can lay them up there by Abby and McKenzie and they will get them to us. So we're going to start off with a presentation from the planning staff on behalf of the planning Commission and they are subject to cross-examination. All presenting parties will have up to 30 minutes. If you all know me by now, you know I do not extend time and that is an effort to be fair and equal to all parties. So please keep to your time. So following the presentation by planning staff, petitioner, and then the organized opposition, they are all similarly subject to cross-examination. And then we will follow that with public comment. Public comment will be limited to three minutes. And again, we ask that you say your name in council district for the record. Some folks have signed up to yield their time, so I'll note that as we get to it. And then there will be opportunity for rebuttal and then opportunity for summation for the presenting parties as well. And then, of course, there will be an opportunity for council members to ask questions of all who have spoken and an opportunity if there's new information that is introduced for rebuttal. So at that point, the hearing will be declared closed and the council members will deliberate. Then a vote will be taken to adopt findings of fact. That will be taken by roll call vote. After the vote will be taken to approve the ordinance, also taken by roll call vote. So I believe that is it, unless there are any questions, comments, or concerns from council or staff on the procedure of this meeting. If not, let's get rolling. We're going to start with presentation from planning staff, please. Good evening, Vice Mayor Wu, members of the council. My name is Tracy Wade, and I am the Planning Services Manager for the Division of Planning. I'm happy to be here tonight to present, along with my co-worker, Daniel Crum, to present the Planning Commission's recommendation on this particular zone change to the Urban County Council. So this application is PLN MAR23-5, and it's a request by Anderson Communities Incorporated. The petitioner has requested a zone change from our Agricultural Rural Zone, our AR Zone, and our Highway Service Business Zone, B3, to a Community Center Zone. And again, that's for about eight and a half acres of net ground or almost 12 gross. That includes half the right of way around the subject property. The property does have an address of 4075 Old Richmond Road. The application presented to the Planning Commission represented itself as a new complete neighborhood for a place type and a medium density non-residential mixed use development type. and again their application is proposing a community center which is a mixed-use zone and this would be a mixed-use development as well let's see before we begin the hearing tonight though I do have a number of items that we must enter into the record and those will be available to the council throughout the hearing if you would like to review any piece of that information so first we'll start with the legal notice that was placed in the newspaper and then also on the council's website for tonight's hearing i have a sworn affidavit by myself that we have mailed the required notification to all property owners within 500 feet of the property as well as our supplemental notice so that was it for a total of 68 parcels and then we also sent notice to five neighborhood associations near the subject property also submitting for the record a copy of our final report and that comes from the planning commission to the urban county council and believe you all have a copy of that at your seat this final report also includes staff reports the minutes from the public hearing a map of the subject property so you can review that during the hearing we have a copy of the 2018 comprehensive plan i will note for the record that when this application was filed the goals and objectives that were adopted by the urban county council were not yet finalized so we reviewed this application in its entirety with the 2018 comprehensive plan in addition an element of the 2018 comprehensive plan is our expansion area master plan and that was adopted in 1996 and has been included in comprehensive plans since then exhibit six and seven are zoning ordinance as well as our current land subdivision regulations exhibit eight is a traffic impact study that was prepared by ae prime they also submitted a parking mitigation study that the planning commission reviewed the council also has at their seat and updated what we call a development snapshot this is sent out with our mailed notice to property owners and it was updated for tonight's hearing so it does include a very small development plan on the back that depicts the signed preliminary development plan i believe there's some at the back of the room as well also exhibits from our august 10th planning commission hearing so this does include some information from neighbors that were submitted for the record including a petition so that may be of interest we want to circulate that and then lastly our presentation slides from the planning staff before we get too far though i want to orient the council to our subject property okay so i'm not used to presenting that often we got new new equipment here the subject property is shown in white in the middle of our display for the council in the audience and it is bound by three pieces of public right-of-way to the east is eighth and boonesboro Road to the west is old Richmond Road and then to the south is a fits way a A little bit closer in, you can see some of the existing zoning in the immediate vicinity, including some B3 zoning and residential zoning in the immediate area. But again, 8th and Spoonsboro Road to the east, northeast, Old Richmond Road to the west, and Aphids Way to the south. of interest and relative to the subject property is a transportation project and it's a highway safety improvement project that is ongoing in the immediate area that I wanted to bring to the council's attention I know a number of you do sit on our metropolitan planning organization so are aware of the project but there may be a number of you that are not completely aware of this project so I want to make sure we all understand it because it does in essence have some impact on the subject property. And that is what is called the Richmond Road R-Cut project. And this subject property again is this triangle in the center and Old Richmond Road is shown to the bottom left, Aphids Way to the bottom right, and then Athens Boonesboro on the top. can see in the aerial photograph existing developments to the upper corner in the left is jacobson park to the lower corner and the right is existing farmland so with this arcut project basically activities or transportation along athens bootsboro will change and that means that the side streets aphids way and hayes boulevard will no longer be able to turn left onto eighth and spoonsboro but rather do a right turn and then a u-turn and come back towards town so there's a series of these r cut project or r cut intersections proposed from squires and yorkshire ultimately out to i-75 and one of those what's called a loon will impact the subject property right here so when someone turns off of Hayes or down Athens Boonesboro Road and wants to enter the subject property they would actually do a small u-turn and then come into the property in addition Old Richmond Road where it's highlighted in yellow is proposed to be removed so that aphids way and old richmond road become one road and that ties in across from hayes boulevard so again this would be abandoned old richmond road would be abandoned and so that does impact the subject property since it is adjacent i'm going to leave it at that mr crumb again has um more information from for you about the planning commission's um public hearing and their decision and if we have additional questions, of course, the staff will be available later in the hearing to answer those. Good afternoon, everyone. Daniel Crum planning staff. Just bringing us back to a map of the property just to show the associated zoning. So the subject property itself is split zoned, as we indicated earlier in the presentation, predominantly agricultural rural AR, but with a small portion of existing B3 zoning that is present at approximately this location here. This is all existing zoning. There doesn't appear to be any indication that a B3 use or a commercial use ever occupied the subject property. But other zoning in the immediate vicinity is primarily comprised of residential. So this yellow color that you're seeing on your screen with the Ellerslie neighborhood, as well as the neighborhoods across the street with Walnut Creek and the tradition, both having EAR1 zoning. So that's expansion area residential. So that's dwelling units of up to three units per acre. And it's the predominant zoning for this particular area. Jacobson Park, shown in the north here, has existing AR zoning as well. So moving on, this is located within Expansion Area 2C. So this is land that was brought into the Urban Service Area in 1996 and was a part of the Expansion Area Master Plan. So as a part of this master plan, there was a future land use map. So at the time of adoption, this future land use map kind of laid out how we thought these areas should develop. It assigned relative densities and then kind of sectioned off the various uses. Section 2C is predominantly residential. So the EAR1 and the EAR2 both allow for residential development, predominantly characterize this area. So all of the areas marked with the EAR1 have densities of up to three units per acre. EAR2 is a little more intense and allows up to six. There is a small portion of the community center zone that was proposed on what is now Hayes Boulevard, But the location where that actually was established is actually on the other side of the road. So the area that we're looking at today is highlighted within this red circle shown on screen. And it was originally recommended for the EAR1. But this is just a recommendation. At the time of the 1996 expansion area, council opted and had the ability to rezone all of the parcels that were being included in the expansion of the urban service area to the respective zones. However, they opted to take a more piecemeal approach. So this is the recommended land use. However, they still have to go through respective rezonings and have the ability to select a different zone that is what is recommended. Here we have a view of the subject property shown on an aerial. So it previously or currently contains a single family residence as well as an agricultural structure. From this aerial view, you can get kind of an idea of the development that is kind of occurring around the subject property. So subject property outlined in yellow is bound by the three roadways that Ms. Wade mentioned, but is adjoining several different types of residential development. So within Ellerslie, we do have these larger single-family lots, a little bit of a denser townhome product here, as well as a little bit more dense residential as you're crossing over Athens-Boonsboro Road and going along Hayes Boulevard. To the south, we have existing agricultural land that contains that red line is the urban service boundary. So the subject property is located within the urban service area. Here we have views of the subject property. So this is as on your Athens-Boonesboro. As you're heading out of town, the subject property is shown in the center. So it sits a little bit above Athens-Boonesboro Road. Here we have a view from Old Richmond Road. So the subject property is on the right. development, the development within Ellerslie, single family, and then the more dense townhomes. Here we have a view from aphids. This is one of the roadways that is going to be improved and realigned, but this is the view kind of as it stands currently with the subject property having this vegetation on the right. And then this gives you an idea of the setback for that residential development. So there is a significant setback of a couple hundred feet from the residential within Ellerslie in that portion. Here we have the view from Aphids Way. So this is the intersection with Athens Boonesboro Road. This is going to be one of the areas where the R-cuts will change the traffic patterns of the site. Once those are installed, you will lose the ability to go straight across, and instead we'll have to do the traffic movement that Ms. Wade alluded to. This will also widen Aphids Way and realign its path. So when we're talking about the community city center zone, which is what the applicant is requesting. It's really characterized within the expansion area master plan and the zoning ordinance as sort of a mixed use village or town center. So this is where kind of the commercial component of the expansion area takes place. It's not a permitted use within the expansion area residential. So this is really where the commercial gets to take place. It's envisioned more of a main street feel. So having walkable spaces organized around public space or civic space, but really just providing kind of a mode for a mixing of commercial and residential that is accessible from the surrounding areas. To be integrated where possible with multimodal transportation, there are requirements within the zoning ordinance that require at least 40% of the land to be non-commercial uses. So they are not allowed to be strictly commercial. They have to have a residential or civic component and also have requirements for open space. So Main Street feel, mixing of uses, providing for some of the residents' day-to-day needs is sort of how the community center was organized. The development that we've seen within our existing community center zones really hasn't lived up to the intent behind the zone. So these are existing areas of CC and kind of how they've developed. On top, you have the development with Costco at Polo Club at Manwar Boulevard. Below in the same vicinity, you have a development consisting of a pharmacy, a gas station with gas pumps, and a residential component. So this is commercial activity, commercial development, but not really a Main Street feel, not really a mixing, a true mixing of uses, and really oriented more towards the traveling public and the interstate than really the surrounding residential areas. Here we have some more existing community centers. So this top is at Sperling Drive and Hayes. So this is the CC zoning that was kind of planned for in the expansion area master plan. However, it doesn't have a commercial component. They can have up to 100% residential if they want. So the developer in this case developed it exclusively as residential. So that mixing of commercial and residential that was planned for within the expansion area master plan really hasn't taken place for this entire, you know, one-third of the expansion area. Below on Todd's Road and Polo Club Boulevard is another CC zone that has been exclusively residential as well. So really that town center, that town feel really hasn't been accomplished with the existing CC development that we've seen. When reviewing this application, the applicant has decided to make a place builder argument using the place type and development type to help justify their choice and zone, as it wasn't recommended within the future land use map. So there is some language that comes with the comprehensive plan that talks about what do we do when we have the expansion area master plan saying one thing and the place builder or comprehensive plan is kind of leading another. And essentially the answer provided within the comprehensive plan is they both should be evaluated. So in this case, what the expansion area master plan is calling for, as well as what the goals, objectives, and policies of the comprehensive plan should both be weighed. And so the applicant has opined that while it wasn't planned for specifically within the map that was created in 1996, that their proposed development meets a lot of the community center criteria. So when we talk from the place builder side of things, the applicant has chosen to categorize this as a new complete neighborhood. So these are undeveloped areas that are being incorporated with a new housing product. So here it's calling for a mixing of housing types, providing for walkable connections, as well as specifically calling for kind of neighborhood-oriented, neighborhood-scale commercial uses. So it's calling for a mixing of uses, and staff in reviewing this application found a number of similarities between that new complete neighborhood place type and the applicant's proposed in the type of development that's proposed by the expansion area master plan for the CC zone. Within the development type, what the applicant is choosing to develop is firmly within that medium density non-residential. So this is development that's generally between two to four stories, but contains a mixing of uses, a residential component, as well as a commercial component. So within, as I go back, within the new complete neighborhood, it doesn't specifically call out the community center zone as a recommended zone because the community center is in the expansion area. So the applicant has made an appropriateness argument that a CC zone should be appropriate in these types of environments. Staff finds that to be accurate, and we are in agreement with the appropriateness in this particular case. So moving on to some of the comprehensive plan goals, objectives, and policies that are being accommodated with this particular request. deal with providing higher-density housing, providing these connected and safe neighborhood interactions, providing for mixed-use development that has some sensitivity to the surrounding context. There are specific policies that call for these type of neighborhood-supportive uses in a manner that wouldn't be permitted under the Expansion Area Residential 1 that's recommended in this area. And generally, we seek to locate these higher density developments along major corridors such as Athens-Winsboro Road. With regards to the development criteria, staff found that we were in agreement with a number of these criteria. Speaking to building orientation, parking location, there are a number of design criteria that are associated with the multifamily design standards that we found were being met. And then the development we found really minimized, used strategic location of buildings and varying the housing type product to create a little bit, reduce the context or the contrast and scale. Once again, the multimodal connectivity that will come as a result of closing Old Richmond Road, the on-site multimodal connections, as well as the safety improvements that will come as a result of the changes to Athens-Moonsboro Road creates a connected development. Here we have the development plan for the subject property. So it was shown kind of on a smaller scale on the development snapshot in front of you. But this shows a mixing of uses. So a little bit hard to see with the colors on screen, but shown in red are the commercial components of the site. So that's restaurant space as well as a convenience store along with a gas service station that's oriented kind of closest to that intersection. We also have a mixing of the residential types as well. These narrower structures here are two-story townhome units with these square structures representing four-story multifamily residential. So the applicant here is trying to kind of contain the multifamily, the higher scale, higher density, uses a little bit towards the center of the site. Closer to the adjoining residential development is where they use townhomes as a sort of transition. Access to this site from Athens Boonesboro, it'll have a write-in where it enters sort of this central plaza. So there's a raised pedestrian table in the center of this development with a four-way stop, along with corresponding open space, as well as kind of community amenities. So attempting to replicate some of that Main Street feel with a raised pedestrian surface, providing connections with sidewalks throughout the entire development, providing for some open space and amenities, and generally providing sort of a cohesive larger development. Primary access to this site is going to become off of Aphids Way here, although there is a write-in off of Aphids coming in this section. So essentially a mixing of uses, a mixing of densities, all oriented around this central kind of plaza and open space. Staff found very many similarities to the proposed CC zone, that new complete neighborhood idea. As far as the planning commission recommendation, the public hearing was held on August 10th. There was a number of citizens that expressed some opposition, finding some concerns with traffic, stormwater runoff, some issues with interpretations of the expansion area master plan, and changes in character. Staff at that meeting presented the findings in the staff report that you have in front of you, and found that it was in agreement with the comprehensive plan, as well as the expansion area master plan. The applicant at that meeting also reviewed the proposed development and kind of went over the development in total. The Planning Commission at their meeting voted 8-2 to recommend approval of the requested zone change. So with that, the Planning Commission recommended approval based on the following reasons you have on the screen, in that the proposed community center zone is in agreement with the comprehensive plan's goals, objectives, and policies, speaking to the provision of additional housing types, promoting growth and redevelopment, providing multimodal and pedestrian connections, and spoke to a number of policies, including providing for the multifamily design standards, providing context-sensitive transitions, as well as allowing for multimodal connections. Staff in the Planning Commission also found that it was in agreement with the development criteria, the comprehensive plan, so the specific criteria that relates to the applicant's choice in place type and development type, finding that they meet the criteria for site design, building form, and location, transportation, and pedestrian connectivity, as well as green space and environmental health. That recommendation was made subject to the approval and certification of the corresponding development plan. So with that, staff would be happy to entertain any questions you have regarding the zone change component and the planning commission's recommendation. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. At this time, does the petitioner or opposition want to cross-examine the staff member? Okay. You can go ahead and step on up. We'll start you off with five minutes and see how we do. Daniel, I just have some questions about the development plan if you could put that up. Yeah. Just so that the council has an appreciation of the location of the uses, particularly on the gas station, can you point out the current location of where the B3 property is? And I believe that's 1.62 acres, is that correct? So the location of the B3 portion of the property as it stands is this corner here. So it lines up essentially with the B3 that was shown adjacent on the zoning map. And I believe the existing acreage of B3, I believe, is approximately that. Yeah. And so the, and then the new site for the gas station has been moved up toward Athens-Boonesboro Road, and that's about 2.08 acres. Is that right? Can you point that out for me? The gas station, the automobile service station portion of the use is located in the top right of the development there. Okay. So the gas station has been moved down from the very bottom portion off Old Richmond Road and Aphids Way up to Athens Boonesburg. Is that correct? From what the zoning was? Zoning currently is at B3? Yes. Okay. That's all. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Mr. Murphy, did you have anything for staff? Sure. One question for Mr. Crumb. Do you think it is appropriate to put the commercial up against Athens-Boonsboro Road as opposed to against Old Richmond Road? So the B3 zoning that exists is the highway service business zone, and so those are generally most appropriate closer to the higher intensity roadways. The applicant isn't applying for a B3 zoning here, but generally those are more appropriate closer to the higher intensity roadways. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Next up is going to be the presentation from the petitioner. You have 30 minutes as well. Welcome, Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I'm Dick Murphy. I have some handouts, which I think are going to be handed around to you. And since my clock's running, I'm going to go ahead and start talking while the handouts go out. And I also note that we had an affidavit about posting the required sign, which I've already placed in the record. As I said, I'm pleased to be representing Anderson Communities tonight. Dennis Anderson is with me on the front row. Next to him is Lisa Corpus of Wawa. You'll hear more about Wawa later on. Tony Barrett is here from Barrett Partners. Here's our landscape architect and designer. We have Steve Albert of Albert and Associates, who's our architect. We have Clay Johnson and Steve Garland from Prime Engineers, who are our engineers. And we have Mike Kraft, who's our development director for Anderson Communities. He's toward the back. So we appreciate everybody being here. We appreciate you hearing us. Dennis Anderson purchased this property about a year ago from the Phelps property. When he purchased it, there was basically no use being made of the property whatsoever. No agricultural use has been made of this property for many years. The Phelps had rented out the house to a single tenant or a tenant until the house became unhabitable. And so when Dennis bought it, there was nothing on this property going on at all. It's an 8.3 acres. As Mr. Crum mentioned to you, a portion is zoned highway service commercial, a portion is zoned AR. This property has been inside the urban service area boundary for 27 years and we are not up against the urban service boundary. The urban service boundary is this property next to us, the green property, green holdings property is also inside the urban service boundary. The urban service boundary is somewhere down here. A portion of the green property right here is also zoned B3 right now. As I said, this has been inside the urban service boundary for 27 years, but the portion zone B3 right here has been zoned B3 for about 60 years, at least 60 years, as is part of the green property. We're requesting to shift the commercial area from the portion closer to the Ellerslie residence to a position away from the Ellerslie residence up here, up against 8th and Spoonsboro Road. And as Mr. Crum mentioned to you, also we feel it's more appropriate to put the commercial up against the major arterial, which is 8th and Spoonsboro Road. We're proposing a convenience store, restaurant, service station at this location. It's going to be, we hope it's a Wawa. There is a rumor going around the neighborhood that we were going to have 100 gas pumps on this property. It's going to be like Bucky's down in Richmond. We have eight gas pumps, not 100. We have position for 16 fueling stations. If you have 100, you have positions for 200 fueling stations. This has eight pumps, 16 fueling spaces, and it has an electric vehicle charging station as well. But Wawa is known for its food. They're known for their breads, their sandwiches, their dinner salads. You can order off the internet. You can come and pick up your dinner here on the way home. And they have a strong following for their food. There's no drive-through window on this property at all. We are also providing a sit-down restaurant. This thing keeps shifting around for type of pointer here. The sit-down restaurant is the red building in the middle right up against the walking path. People have asked us what type of restaurant that's going to be. We don't know because restaurants won't come in until they see some building activity on the property. But Dennis has a track record on what kind of restaurant he brings into his development. Townley, we recently got Drake's in to go along with Applebee's and El Mariachi on Great Acres. Also on Leastown Road, Ramsey's recently agreed to come in there. And on Todd's Road, Dennis is redeveloping the old Andover Country Club. And Carson's has agreed to come there. So we're hoping to attract a restaurant like that. We have an outdoor seating area next to the trail, which is on the side of the new sit-down restaurant. The bulk of the property is a residential community consisting of apartments and townhomes. We'll have a total of 139 units. 139 units. I emphasize that because when we started this plan through the process, we had 192 units. Through the process of discussing with the neighbors, discussing with the staff, we've reduced that down by 53 units. That's a 26% reduction we have done. How did we do that? We replaced a number of our apartment buildings with townhomes. Right in the middle of that circle is a townhome stretch development building which replaces one of the apartments. We have one up here at the corner. We have one facing 8th and Spoonsboro Road. We'll have one and two bedroom townhomes there. This will be a rental community. As you know, 40% of the people in Lexington rent. That's 125,000 people in Lexington rent. We will supply missing middle workforce housing for some of those 125,000 people. It'll be a workforce housing, a community which has an amenity package second to none. We're going to have a manager's office. It has on-site management so that there's a manager there every day during the week. So if there's a problem with plumbing, if the gate to the dog park isn't working right, or if the swimming pool filter is bad, they can fix it right away. We'll have the manager's office, on-site management. We'll have a clubhouse, club room in that building. We have an indoor fitness facility in the building. We have a swimming pool here. We have a central lawn here where you'll get your mail and meet your neighbors. We have a network of walking paths, which I'll show you in another slide. So we have amenities which usually aren't even available in single-family detached residential homes. Dennis has even been told he ought to charge higher rents, because they think that's the only way to get a good tenant is to charge a higher rent. What Dennis does to get good tenants, he screens them for job income and stability of income. But he builds a community here. He keeps his tenants by having the amenity package, which I told you about, the Swim Cool, Fitness Center, On-Site Management, Dog Park. And having the maintenance there, people get a sense of ownership in the community. And they like staying there, and they reduce the turnover. And that's how we get good tenants who stay here on Dennis' properties. Now, we're going to be heavily impacted by the RCUP project. If you could put up my exhibits and go to the second one. I have an aerial photograph of the property. And I need to go one back on that. One back. There we go. There we go. Okay. Okay. This is our property. Right in the middle, we're Athens Boonesboro Road, Aphids Way, Old Richmond Road. The arcud, as Miss Wade mentioned to you, is going to have a big impact on us. It'll have an impact on us in two ways. One is traffic, because if you're coming out Aphids Way, which will now be just Old Richmond Road, or if you're coming down Aphids, you can't turn left. You have to turn right. So all the people coming out of Hayes Boulevard who are going to go to the interstate and would normally turn left, they're going to turn right. They're going to take a trip up Nathan Spoonsboro Road along our property. They're going to go to the median where there's a light and they're going to come back along our property. So these people who used to not travel in front of our property at all will now be making two trips in front of our property. But the bigger impact is the elevation of the property itself. The state, as part of its project, is going to be straightening out and making aphids way much safer. Right now, it's a one-and-a-half-lane road. It has a crest of a hill. If you're coming up here, you can't see what's coming at you over the hill. If a truck's coming towards you, you don't see it quick enough. You have got to be careful doing it. They are going to lower. They're going to reduce the hill on the property by nine feet. Our main entrance is going to be right here, right at that high point. So what that means is, since the state is lowering aphids nine feet, we're going to have to lower most of our property nine feet because we have to meet the, we cannot exceed the maximum grade for our streets heading on to aphids way. So we're going to have a traffic impact, we're going to have a physical impact on this property. In addition, as Ms. Wade mentioned to you, this portion of Old Richmond Road will no longer be a roadway. Now, the good part of that is it has 4,000 trips a day, which will no longer be behind the property houses in Ellerslie on there. We will use that as a buffer area between us and their development. The thing that's closest to is the double diamond crossover over at Harrodsburg Road and New Circle Road. There's going to be advocates for us to do three houses per acre there. We don't think it'd be appropriate to have three houses, three single family detached houses per acre, up against the double diamond crossover, nor here. But we can build a full community. We don't want to build an isolated community of a few houses. We want to build a full community with a full amenity package. The RCUT, I want to emphasize, was not planned by Anderson Communities. We are adapting to the RCUT, which was planned by the state. The main reason for the RCUT is safety. What they've explained to us is that the RCUT moves a greater volume of traffic at a lower speed much more safely. It reduces fatal collisions, and it reduces the high-injury T-bone collisions by doing the RCUT. So it's going to be much safer. It's going to move traffic through there at a lower speed but in a much safer manner. I want to talk a little bit about changes to the development plan. And if we could go to the next slide, as I mentioned to you, in consultation with the staff through the process and with the neighbors, we have made a number of changes in the plan as we have gone forward. This plan, Tony Barrett did up for us just to show the walking paths through the property. On this slide, the purple paths are going to be eight feet wide, eight feet walking trails. probably asphalt trails and the reddish or pinkish ones are five to six foot sidewalks that are going to connect to our eight foot trail so through the spine of the property we'll have a eight foot trail going through here connected with others the staff has suggested we needed connectivity so we have added a connection to ellersley so the people in ellersley can walk here to our sit-down restaurant with the outdoor dining. We have connectivity up to Athens-Boonsboro Road, so our residents can go up. The state is providing a crossing through the Arcut to get to the bicycle and pedestrian trail, which they're going to be constructing on the north side of Athens-Boonsboro Road up to Jacobson Park. As I mentioned, we've We've made other changes, we've reduced the number of units by 26%. We have a public street, we had a public street going through here with a curve. Staff has suggested that that would allow too high speed of traffic to come through there. So we are adding, as Mr. Crum mentioned, a pedestrian table here and a stop sign so that you come to the stop sign to start up, you gotta drive up on the table, Then you got to drive down the table and that slows traffic so that our pedestrians can cross in here to the convenience store restaurant or to our sit down restaurant here as well. Also we'll have traffic bumps, speed bumps in the roadway here. All our traffic will exit onto what is now Aphids Way which will be Old Richmond Road and come up to 8th and Spoonsboro Road. We anticipate our prospective tenant will be a police officer, a firefighter, a teacher, an electrician, or a couple where one works in Richmond, one works in Lexington, and they value the closeness to the interstate system. One might be a sales rep who has a route going to eastern Kentucky or Cincinnati and Knoxville to come here. We provide parking to the rear of the units, as the staff has asked us, and we have varied our housing types. When we started out, we had all apartments. We've got town homes now, as well as apartments in the area to give people a housing choice. And these buildings, the apartment buildings, staff wanted to make sure that it wasn't one of these buildings where you have a brick facade on the front and vinyl on the other three sides. We're going to have the same architectural interest, the indentations, the same materials used on all four sides of the building. Steve Albert is here and can discuss that a little bit more if you need. He's our architect on the property. I want to go on to the next slide if we will. At this point, this slide I use for three purposes. One is to show the current B3 zoning on the property, which is at the corner of Old Richmond Road and Aphids Way. That's been zoned for 60 years, B3. It's not just on a plan. It's zoned so that, theoretically, the owner of the property could come in tomorrow and get a building permit for a service station or retail or whatever. But we think it's better to move that up to the intersection with Athens-Boonsboro Road, farther away from the residential area in Ellerslie. This shows where the B3 is, outlined by the red. The other thing we wanted to show you was the size of our apartment buildings. We've outlined our five apartment buildings in yellow, so you can see the footprint. Those are smaller footprints than Dennis usually uses. There are fewer units in these buildings than Dennis usually uses. But we wanted to compare the size of our footprint with the size of the houses over on Tatton Park. That's the road over here. So we've superimposed our footprint onto those houses just to compare. And you can see that the three houses on Tatton Park have a much bigger footprint for a single-family house than we have for our apartment house. And the height's very similar, too. These are four-story apartment units. The one's on Tatton. At least that one I know is a three-story building with a very steep roof that presents itself as essentially a four-story building. We have low roofs to reduce the profile of our buildings. The other thing we wanted to show was the distance between our property and the Tatton Park properties. You can see that two of these lots have very heavy screening, wooded lots in the back. In fact, one of them is pretty open with some screening along Old Richmond Road. But you can see in every case that the distance is over 300 feet. If you could move up to the next slide. I'd like to get a little thing, scale in my mind to see what that is. So it was starting football season, so we imposed the UK football field on the back of each of these. So see that in each case, these houses which are the closest to us are more than a football field away from our apartment buildings we're going to do some screening too if you could go to the next slide this is the view standing on our property looking across old richmond road which is going to be taken out of commission our our picture didn't say show any of the 4 000 cars a day which go by there but there won't be any after the state finishes the r cup project but But this is the screening in the back of those houses that I showed you on the last slide. So that screening is there for two of the houses, but we're going to do our own screening. And as this has gone through, we understood their neighborhood concerns about viewing into their property. So if you could show the next slide, we've done a cross-section to show what the viewshed is on the property. This is one of the houses on Tatton Park. This is a person standing in the backyard on Tatton Park. This is our four-story apartment building. Now, we've agreed to do berms or earth mounds along the rear of our property with trees planted on top of the earth mounds. So we've drawn here the sight line of this person standing in the backyard, And you can see the sight line is going to be well above the apartment building. We've drawn a sight line from the second floor of that same building. And as you can see again, that sight line is well above the apartment building as well. So we're doing screening, that's something we've added since we started the initial process with this to screen the people in Ellerslie from our development. Now, I need to discuss a little bit about the fact that the zoning issue and what plan we use. Because you're going to hear tonight that, well, let's essentially disregard the 2023 goals and objectives, disregard the 2018 comprehensive plan, disregard the place builder. And let's just look at the 27 year old plan, the expansion area master plan. And the fallacy with that is even the 1996 plan, the guiding principles of the plan, and there in my handout, which I have given you as well, the little 8 1⁄2 by 11 sheet. My first page after the cover sheet just takes excerpts from the guiding principles of the 1996 expansion area master plan. I'm not going to read them all, but some of them say neighborhood commercial uses should be available in the expansion area. Developers should have flexibility to mix uses and housing types within the expansion area. Mix uses. different land uses should be buffered through the use of design and landscaping which we're doing neighborhood commercial with expansion areas should be confined to discrete nodes or centers residential development of the expansion area should produce housing types and costs which support economic development initiatives in fayette county so even the guiding principles inside that 1996 37-year-old plan call for exactly what we're doing. Now you're going to be told, well, disregard that too, and just let's look at one map of the plan. And there is a map that shows proposed uses 37 years ago being three single-family detached lots per acre. And as I mentioned to you, we don't think that's appropriate, But you'll be told that there have been no changes in that plan since it was adopted. And in a way that's correct, the plan hasn't been changed. But the uses that have gone in there have changed. They have gone through zone changes, text amendments, and there are many uses, many changes have been made since that expansion area master plan was adopted 37 years ago. which there should be since it's been 37 years or excuse me 27 years i'm making making it older than it is it's 27 years old but on my next page i have listed a number of the changes that have been made since that was adopted 27 years ago number one was right in our area and that is is that Hayes Boulevard was initially planned to be connected through to DeLong Road. If you want to go back to the aerial, that would show back a little bit more. But Hayes Boulevard was going to extend through this property and right through Ellerslie here and go out to DeLong Road. When Ellerslie came in for a zone change, some of the people in the old Richmond Road area said they didn't want that connection to be made. Because they didn't want traffic to be put onto Long Road, which I understand, that was probably a good decision. But it was a change just a year or two after that map was adopted. We've had other changes in the expansion area too. Costco and Cabela's initially weren't shown where the map is and weren't allowed to go because they're much bigger than the retail which was allowed. Costco and Cabela's are there and that was a good decision to allow them in. Central Baptist Hospital, UK Hospital. Hospitals were initially not allowed where Central Baptist and UK are locating. But that was a good decision too and that was a change from what the plan provided. We've had increased density of Bridgewater and Home Place subdivision in the Childsburg area. The CC area up on Hayes Boulevard has been moved. And the RCUD itself, the RCUD itself is a major change in this area. So I'm just pointing that out to you because people are going to say, well, you've got to follow that map. It's never been changed. And technically that's true. The expansion area master plan maps haven't been changed. But the area has changed, and zone changes and other uses have come in, which are different from what that map has proposed and have been very, very good for this community. So we feel the current zoning, which is agricultural on part of it, this is an eight-and-a-third-acre tract. It's too small to farm. The Phelps couldn't farm it anymore. The B3, we don't think is appropriate there. We think it ought to be moved to CC, and CC is the more restrictive zone. The B3 allows some uses that CC doesn't allow, including new and used car lots, hotels, and the so-called adult uses. So we're changing the commercial into a more restrictive type of commercial and doing that. So I'm told my time has got about five minutes left, so I'm going to skip ahead to what I've got here. And we feel very strongly that the uses we're proposing are very good uses. I'm not going to go over the place type and development type. Mr. Crum and Ms. Wade have done that. We do agree with all the place builder criteria. We agree with the, I think we agree with your current goals and objectives, 2023 goals and objectives. We certainly agree with the 2018 comp plan and the place builder and we even agree with the principles guiding the 27 year old expansion area master plan. But the overriding thing on this property is that it is a community. If I can sum up your 2023 goals and objectives and your 2018 comp plan and the place builder and even the principles of the 1996 plan, it's in three or four words. That's about 500 pages, but I think we can sum up three or four words. That's diversity and housing choice. Diversity and housing choice. If you read our 500 pages of plans, those are recurring themes, diversity and housing choice. And that's what we're having here. We are presenting a rental option in this property. We're providing it to the missing middle, workforce housing. and we're providing an option for the people who live in our development to have a level of amenities which I think are probably superior to most single-family detached residential communities. We're very proud of this project. We're very proud to present it to you. And I have a lot of other people here who can answer questions for you. I have Lisa Corpus from Wawa. I have our architect, Steve Albert. about this and I can go on about this for another half hour too if you want to. But I'm afraid Mr. Wu would silence my microphone if I did that. So we got a lot more we can tell you about it, but I think we've hit the highlights here. And I hope you can see how proud we are of the end product that was a result of discussions with the neighbors. I know not all of them support it yet, but some of these changes were made in result of discussions with the neighbors. And our engagement with the staff and your long range staff and your pedestrian planners and your community planners through the planning division. So we thank you very much and obviously I hope you'll vote in favor of our zone change. And lots of us are here to answer any questions you all might have. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Murphy. Does planning have anything to cross examine or rebut? No, okay. Does the opposition have any rebuttal or remarks? No. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. All right. Next up is the presentation from opposition. So we have Mr. Bruce Simpson. Welcome. You have 30 minutes. I have some exhibits that will be passed out to you. Mr. Vice Mayor and members of the council. My name is Bruce Simpson. I'm here on behalf of the Old Richmond Road Neighborhood Association. I've been privileged to represent the Old Richmond Road Neighborhood Association since 1995. I've also been privileged to represent most every neighborhood in Lexington on various zone changes. It's come before this council since 1988. It's a privilege to be here. and what I'm going to share with you is that this is a seminal case for you guys. I know some of you are new, you're not that well-versed or experienced in planning and zoning matters, and you just heard Mr. Murphy's presentation of how wonderful this development will be, and how nice it will be. It will be for firemen and the police, and it may be attractive and have these amenities. but to get to the wonderful development, we do have to follow the law. And most importantly, from the standpoint of the community, we have to follow the comprehensive plan. Now, I'm disappointed and take strong exception to Mr. Murphy's conclusion that his application is in compliance with the plan, as well as our staff and the planning commission. And I'll share with you why. Unlike many neighborhood associations, Old Richmond Road has participated in every comprehensive plan update dating back to the 80s. And they were very much instrumentally involved, because I was representing them, in the 1996 comprehensive plan, which to this day is probably the most expensive and well-researched comprehensive plan in the history of Lexington. We hired an expert out of Florida, Charlie Seaman, who charged a couple of million dollars to come in and guide us on a new way of planning, they called it. And we spent a couple of years in meetings in this chamber, neighborhood after neighborhood, testifying, planning, looking at details, going over every square inch of data. We talk about a data-driven process. Vice Mayor Wu, that was a data-driven process. And at the end of it was the expansion area master plan that became part of the comprehensive plan. And as we stand here tonight, as I stand here tonight, the expansion area master plan for this area that we're talking about tonight has not been changed. It has not been changed. It has been readopted in 2001. It was readopted in 2006. It was readopted in 2013 and readopted in 2018 without any changes to any single word in that document. And I ask you to keep that in mind because this is my burden. I have to get eight votes to override the recommendation of the Planning Commission. And so I ask that you pay very careful attention to the evidence of the comprehensive plan that you all have to determine tonight whether or not it's being applied, that it's being complied with, because it's not. And the reason that's important is that as each one of you have neighborhood associations, that you encourage to get involved in planning and development, to come and participate, and to be a part of the comprehensive plan, which is now 700 pages long. 700 pages. and the staff will tell you that this is the culmination of citizen participation like unprecedented many many meetings and people come down and voice their objections and recommendation it gets culminated into the plan and the plan gets drafted the staff drafts the plan and it goes to the to you all for goals and objectives and it goes to the planning commission for final approval and words matter and what i'm going to share with you tonight are plain and simple words that you don't need an interpreter to understand and look at and ask yourself, on behalf of all the citizens that took place, is this plan being complied with based upon the plain words? Just based on the plain words. It's a very simple undertaking. And I submit to you, after you review these plain words, you will determine this application is not in compliance with the comprehensive plan. Mr. Anderson has another option. He can participate in the current comprehensive plan that's underway right now as we speak. You all had many hearings on goals and objectives, many hearings on adding land or not adding land. We're still a year or two away from that plan being finally adopted. It has to be adopted, I believe, at the end of 2004. And the process that ought to be undertaken by Mr. Anderson is that he ought to be pursuing an amendment to the comprehensive plan. And I will tell you that the 2018 plan, the one that's currently in force, recommends that Mr. Anderson do just that. Seek an amendment to the comprehensive plan in this particular area, based on the language of the plan, which I'll share with you momentarily. based on the language that's before you tonight that's currently in force, he's supposed to be seeking an amendment to the comprehensive plan that allows for this wonderful use that he would like to see placed on this property. But they're not honoring the process. They're seeking to get a quick fix to bypass the process, to ignore the years of participation by Old Richmond Road Neighborhood Association and every neighborhood that you all represent, even though this property is not in your neighborhood, if you ignore the plan on this case, how can you defend it in the next case? If you say, if the developer's attorney comes in, which may be me, because I will tell you behind the scenes, behind the curtain, how the sausage is made, the way to get a zone change passed when it's not in compliance with the plan is to dress it up with the following. What's the current buzzword that gets a zone change passed before you guys right now. Affordable housing. That's the current buzzword. I'm just telling you, being frank. Among the lawyers, that's what helps sell this case. And that's a good thing. I embrace that. I'm in organizations that advance that. But there is a process that's called the comprehensive plan that has to be followed before you can approve it. You don't just ignore it because, well, it's a good thing, and you ought to do it because we're going to make it nice, and we're going to have a place for firemen and policemen to stay. That's not planning. That's ignoring these guidelines that your citizens, your constituents, that put you in office with all due respect say, why aren't we following the plain language in this plan, which says for this property, three units to the acre? There's no dispute about that. Now, Mr. Murphy has cited, well, there's been changes and zone changes, and all that's true. Zone changes. And when you have zone changes not in compliance with the plan, you've lost your ability to control growth. I'm looking for these changes, these precedents. As a zoning lawyer who represents developers, I'm looking for you all to violate the plan so I can come in with the next zone change that's not in compliance with the plan, with the plain language of the plan, and with the map, more importantly, that recommends low-density residential, three units to the acre, and say, well, you made an exception here. under the law, under equal protection of the law, under the United States Constitution, section two of the Kentucky Constitution, I'm entitled to fair treatment. You can't treat me differently than you treated this other developer. That's what you lose when you violate the plan. That's what you'll lose tonight if you violate the plan and approve this development tonight. You need to turn this down and let Mr. Anderson go through the process that is available to him to make these arguments, to change the plan, to see if the planning commission will go along with it after the community can weigh in on it and the data can be looked at as this plan is being unfolded and our expert comes in, hadn't even looked at it yet, to make the case. Not in a zone change, not quick zone change before the council. All this evidence, multitude of information, information overload when we have simple language that says this property is recommended for three units to the acre. It has not changed. Now in 2018, and I will show you this language in a minute, in this comprehensive plan that's before you tonight, this comprehensive plan, you all and the planning commission gave the following direction to the community and to the planning commission itself. If you want to, we need to look at changing the residential, proposed residential uses that are set forth in the expansion area, which is this property and this property. We need to look at changing the residential uses to comply with the goals and objectives of the 2018 plan, and we do this by amending, this is the language in the plan, by amending amending the expansionary master plan. That is the language that's critical before you tonight. In order to get this zone changed, they should have amended the expansionary master plan to come before you tonight to have a zone change in compliance with that plan. And the expansionary master plan has not been changed, even though in 2018, that's what the comprehensive plan says. I mean, that's what the plan says tonight. It's not been done. The plan's not being followed. These residential land uses that recommended three units per acre has not been changed. There's been a lot of zone changes not in compliance with the plan. Mr. Murphy's right. As I just said, if you want to continue on the path of violating the comprehensive plan and losing your ability legally, and I would say this as a matter of being good stewards of this plan, losing your ability to have credibility with the community that's watching this case to see if this plan is going to be complied with, then you can approve this zone change and further erode the credibility of the millions of dollars and hours, volunteer hours that the citizens of Lexington have spent in voicing their recommendation and experts in drafting what is now 700 pages. This is the expansionary master plan. It's not been changed tonight. It's still in effect. It's not been changed, even though the 2018 plans had changed it for looking at residential changes and increasing density. We need to change the expansionary master plan first. It hasn't happened. It has not happened, and that's not in dispute. These things are not in dispute, what I'm saying with you, sharing with you. So I have got some exhibits I just want to go through quickly. I have 13 minutes. I mentioned the plain and simple language. The first highlight is under tab number one in your booklet, and I've highlighted the critical language. and it talks about the expansionary master plan. And the reason I take issue with the staff and the planning commission is that out of 700 pages, they're saying this zone change is in compliance with the plan because of the following sentence. The necessary regulations prescribed within the expansionary master plan is under table one, the bottom highlighted in yellow. should influence decisions made regarding place type, development type, and zoning preference for future development within these areas. These considerations should be considered in addition to and, big word, and, doesn't say or, and, not in place of, the place builder process and criteria. In this zone change, the applicant and the staff is basically saying the place builder criteria allows them not to comply with the land use element of the expansionary master plan, notwithstanding all the language I'm about to show you. Because in the context of the 2018 plan language itself and the expansionary master plan language, that position that their application is in compliance with the plan simply doesn't hold muster under any reasonable application, under any reasonable reading of the language. Under tab number three, excuse me, tab number two, the slide is up right before you. I've highlighted it, again, this language. When it talks about place builder, this is what it says in place builder. Consider your site, community feedback, and surrounding context. This includes whether or not your site falls within the adopted small area plans or the expansion area master plan, which is what we're doing tonight. What they're seeking to do tonight is within the context of the expansion area master plan. Yet they're looking at the place builder criteria, which wasn't adopted in 1996 or in 2001 or in 2006 or 2013 or not until 2018. And the 2018 plan gets into what I'm about to talk about now. Now, the expansionary master plan, before I get into that, under tab number three, says this with respect to the land use element. It used to be in Lexington, the land use element was pretty much it. If you had an application in compliance with the land use recommendation for the property, if it was low density or commercial or professional office, you pretty much got your zone change. It was pretty simple. And that got changed, except in the expansion area. It has not been changed in the expansion area since 1996. And so what does it say in the expansion area master plan that guides your decision tonight about the land use element? Under tab number three, it says this. The future land use element establishes the general location and intensity of future land uses. The future land use element is based upon the principles for guiding development and the following planning principles. Future land use is organized according to the natural resources of the expansion area. All this research that was done back then, more than $2 million was spent, including topography, vegetation, environmentally sensitive lands, stream corridors, and other bodies of water associated with floodplains, scenic vistas, and the like. Research was done to give the land use recommendation. Under tab number four, expansionary master plan says low density residential, three units to the acre for this property. Under tab number five, future land use. In the middle of the paragraph, it talks about expansion area to Cs. This is critical language. Expansion Area 2C talks about the property before you tonight. No one disputes that. Expansion Area 2C, this is what it says. Expansion Area 2C is envisioned to be low to medium residential district with a small community center. The small community center is not on this property. It is about a mile away. On this property, it's zero to three units an acre. As we talk to you tonight, all of us, that's not in dispute. That has not changed. On the next page, under tab 6, if you see that red dot in the middle, red little triangle, pie shape, that is the community center that was envisioned in the 1996 plan. That is not on the subject property. That is nowhere close to the subject property. But they want to take that red land use and move it over to the subject property, which undisputably recommends zero to three units per acre. Under tab number seven, talks about how this particular property, when it was brought in, is adjacent to the rural services area, and how carefully and low density it needs to be. That hasn't changed. Under tab number eight, it talks about community centers. None of that language applies to this property. It's never been applied to this property. And the comprehensive plan has never been changed to allow it to apply to this property. Finally, when we get into really the critical part of the exhibits that I want to share with you, and that's under tab number nine, and that is, this is what it says in the 2018 plan. This is the language of the plan tonight. Now, policy making number six. Amend the expansion area master plan to update the remaining residential area to reflect the 2018 comprehensive plan goals and objectives. I'll read it again. Amend the expansion area master plan to update the remaining residential area to reflect the 2018 comprehensive plan goals and objectives. That's what it said five years ago. And that hasn't been done. This is residential area that's in the expansionary master plan. They want to do it by zone change and not by amending the expansionary master plan directly in conflict with 2018 comprehensive plan. It's not only mentioned once to do this, but if you see all the subsequent highlighted pages, it's mentioned four other times. Four other times. Amend the expansionary master plan if you want to change the residential density of this property. Four times. That's the process that's to be followed. The process that Mr. Anderson ought to be doing is going before the Planning Commission and seeking an amendment to the expansionary master plan. Not do a zone change in violation of the very language that all my clients and neighbors have been relying upon for 27 years. They've been relying on this plan to have integrity, that this council will honor that integrity. Time after time, honor it, please. And you've done so with respect to this property. No one has sought to change it to flip the zoning until now. All their participation over 27 years, 1996 plan, 2001 plan, 2006 plan, 2013 plan, 2018 plan, and everything that's going on now for the current plan, all these folks have been there. Participating as you want them to be. You encourage neighborhoods to get involved. So their future can be protected by plain language in the plan. It says amend the expansionary master plan, not a zone change in violation of the clear language of the expansionary master plan, not some exception that's taken place on Todd's Road or some other exception that lawyers like me love to argue about. Well, there's a precedent. I'm entitled to it. Give it to me. No. No. So, if this plan has any integrity at all, if the process that you all encourage citizens to participate in this document is to have any respect in the community, you have to turn this zone change down. It's simply not in compliance. It's just not. Now, I have a couple of witnesses. First is Adam Kirk. I've got seven minutes. All right, Adam, will you state your name and address, your profession, and a little bit about your experience? What do you do? My name's Adam Kirk, I'm a professional engineer, primarily a traffic engineer dealing with traffic impact studies and traffic studies. Been doing that for over 20 years, have professional engineer in license in Kentucky and a PhD in traffic engineering and planning. And in terms of your past job experiences, what have those been? I've been doing traffic impact studies for 20 years all across the country. do training for Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and consultants on how to do traffic impact studies, and I'm a professor at the University of Kentucky. Okay. I ask you a pretty simple question to compare the traffic that would be generated, that is going to be generated from this proposed development that they're talking about, of gas station, convenience store, restaurant, apartments, and townhouses, and compare the trips to be generated from this development with the trips that would be generated if the property was developed in accordance with the land use recommendation, the comprehensive plan, which is three residential units per acre, correct? Correct. And so for eight acres at three residential units per acre, we have approximately 25 homes. using the Institute of Transportation Engineers trip generation manual, which is the standard for developing trip generation, each single-family home generates just under 10 trips per unit. So that would give us about 236 trips. That also would translate into about 25 trips per hour during peak hours. Based on the same manual, and that's the same manual that was used by the applicant in doing their traffic impact study, If you look at a daily total, we'd be looking at about 9,000 trips per day. Over half of that would be generated by the convenience store, so that you're looking at a convenience store with 16 vehicle fueling positions. That would generate, in the impact study, about 830 trips per hour during the AM peak. And then we would have, if you look at it over the course of a day, we'd be about 5,000 trips. The restaurant itself, we're looking at about just under 3,000 trips. And then the 139 residential units compared to single-family residential, about another 600 for that 9,000 trips. Okay. Just so we're clear, so the proposed development, according to the document that we have on the screen that you prepared, correct? You prepared this? Yes, correct. Okay. The proposed development will generate approximately 9,044 trips per day, correct? Correct. And if it was developed in conformance with the land use recommendation of up to three units per acre, it would be only 236 trips per day? Correct. Okay, that's all I have. I have one more witness. Bo? Four minutes. Bo has a presentation, a PowerPoint, very briefly. All right, Bo, introduce yourself, state your name, address, your employer, your profession, and how long you've been doing what you do. So my name's Bo Fisher. I work for Shield Environmental Associates. I've worked for them since 2011. Primarily work with water permitting, site remediation, and emergency response for spills. So jumping into this, I was going to talk about... Let me just couple things. When you say spills, what kind of spills are you talking about? Primarily petroleum releases. Petroleum? Like gas? Mm-hmm. Gas station stuff? Correct. Okay, go ahead. All right, so I was going to talk about how this primarily impacts everybody in Lexington. So Lexington gets their drinking water from two sources, either the Kentucky River or Jacobson Reservoir. So here you can see where the proposed site is located as well as the intake for Kentucky American water. And it's actually located within a source water protection area for the reservoir, which what is a source water protection area? So it's an area of land in which the activities within it can impact the drinking water source. And so, as I said, the proposed site is situated inside what they call the critical zone for the reservoir. So can I talk about zoning and what its purpose from my purview, which is to protect public health, protect natural resources, any other specific area within Lexington that needs special protections. This is the only drinking water reservoir located within Lexington. And I think that counts as something that requires special protection. So Lexington's done a really great job of buffering the reservoir with low-impact properties. However, you can see it's a little bit difficult to see with the text on that one. with the proposed property, they'd put a gas station close to the reservoir, and as you saw earlier, within the critical zone. Two minutes. Okay. So let's see what Kentucky American Waterhouse is saying. They even acknowledge Jacobson Reservoir is the most vulnerable to urban stormwater runoff. This comes out of their Consumer Confidence Report that they publish every year. So everyone thinks it won't happen to me. You all may remember, March of this year, they lost 1,400 gallons on Red Mile Road from a surface release, not from the underground storage tanks, from the surface. So what's the risk? In 2022, there were almost 400 calls from UST facilities in the state of Kentucky reporting release. 24 of those were located here in Lexington. So that's all I got. When you say 24, that's 24 spills? 24 spills or releases or suspected releases. Of gas, gas station stuff. Correct. Okay. These are specifically from underground storage tank sites. All right, we got 50 seconds. Let me ask you this. So what if this water goes into the reservoir? What's the big deal about that? Why should they be concerned? Why should the council be concerned? Or why should the public be concerned? Why? What's the big deal? The constituents of gasoline, what we're looking at primarily is BTECs. Once that gets into the water, it would be much more difficult to clean and treat. And it would be, you know, essentially it's the water source for all of Lexington. Well, what kind of stuff are we talking about? What's the chemical that's most concerning to you? For me, it's benzene. And what is benzene? So it's a carbon ring. Extremely, let's see, there's no safe level of benzene exposure. Is this in a critical area? We've got 10 seconds. Correct. It is within the source water area for the reservoir. The most critical area. The most critical. They call it a critical zone. All right. That's all. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Does planning staff want to cross-examine petitioner? No. Does the, or sorry, not petitioner, opposition. Does the petitioner want to cross-examine the opposition? Mr. Murphy. I have some cross-examination. Okay, go ahead. Mr. Chairman. Yeah, you've got five minutes. I have cross-examination of both Mr. Kirk and Mr. Fisher. Just a couple minutes here. Mr. Kirk would come back here, please. Mr. Murphy, who else were you planning to cross-examine? The last witness, Mr. Fisher. Okay. If you all want to just kind of hang out up by the podium, we'll be more expeditious. Thank you. Continue, please. On the numbers you gave the council, that didn't take into account the fact that a portion of this property is already zoned B3, which does allow restaurants, service stations, that sort of thing on the property. Yes or no? That was based on the residential. Based on all residential. not not the existing b3 sony and uh did did you take and it appeared also that you did not take into account or do a breakdown for the restaurant which you project to have like 2400 at a sit-down restaurant the fast food restaurant that you didn't break down what the division is between traffic what they call pass by traffic which is already passing by the property on the road anyway and would go there versus new trips generated from people who would not be on Athens-Brunsboro Road at that time. Is that correct? If you look at the issue of pass-by trips, and this is actually another issue that was pointed out in the slide but I didn't talk about, is that when we talk about pass-by trips, it's a vehicle that's on the roadway and it gets off and then it continues on. I always say that's like my Starbucks stop in the morning. The access to this property is via Old Richmond Road. And so when we talk about pass-by trips, we have, does that roadway have enough traffic to actually support what we're calling pass-by trips? And so I believe, I've got it on my phone here if I can look it up real quick. The total number of trips that we've got on Old Richmond Road is about 500 vehicles per hour. When you look at the traffic impact study that was completed for this, we've got pass by trips far in excess of the actual volumes even on Old Richmond Road. So I did not take into account the pass by trips because these would be more what we would call a diverted link trip. Because where's that traffic going to this restaurant and the Wawa station, it's going to be coming from Athens Boonsboro. It cannot be supported by the traffic on Old Richmond Road. There's not enough traffic to actually support the amount of traffic that we're saying is being gone through. Not enough traffic on Old Richmond Road. Correct. Are you aware we have a direct access on our development plan from Athens Boonsboro Road? am and i also looked at your trip distributions and how much traffic you had assigned coming into athens spoonsboro before and after and it doesn't support that you would have an additional 500 vehicles traveling contra flow to the the directional flow of traffic that would be accessing through that right in so i i'm aware of that but again it doesn't really support the total pass by trips that are being reported and you're aware that they're redoing old richmond road to accommodate additional traffic here at this point are you aware of that i'm aware that as part of this project or additional projects and i'm not i'm not aware of anything that would generate more traffic along old richmond road that would increase the volume to actually support this typically we'll look at pass by trip rates of about 15 of the total volume on a roadway so when when you exceed 15% of that total volume of the roadway, not everybody on Old Richmond Road is going to be stopping and coming into this development. And so we have to be really careful when we're looking at those pass by trips and really where that traffic is supposed to be coming from. Thank you. You're welcome. Mr. Fisher, just a couple questions for you. Are you aware that the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government has very extensive engineering manuals, which govern what can and cannot be done on every piece of property? Yes. Okay. Are you saying you do not have confidence in the Division of Engineering, Division of Water Quality here in Lexington to enforce those manuals? No, I'm not saying that. I just want to make aware the sensitivity of the neighboring properties. Are you aware that Kentucky American Water Company also reviews these things to make sure everything is okay? Yes. Thank you. All right. All right. Vice Mayor. Mr. Simpson. Mr. Simpson. During cross examination by the petitioner, I don't think this is appropriate. You'll have time for additional remarks and rebuttal after public comment. I'll need to bring him up for that then. That's fine. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you all very much for your presentations. Next up is public comment. We have a pretty sizable list, so I'm going to go ahead and call for a five minute break. Let's reconvene in here at exactly 645. Thank you all very much. Thank you. All right. We're going to come back into session here and begin public comment. If everybody could take a seat, please. We also have a few people out in overflow. So when I start calling on people, what I'm going to do is I'm going to call on the person about to speak and then I'm going to also call on the next person to be kind of lined up so that folks can hear us outside because there is a like a few second delay of our audio in here. So a reminder of how public comment is going to work. When I call your name, please come to the podium, state your name and your council district and you will have three minutes. We do have some folks who are yielding time to other folks and I will talk about that when we get to those. So we are going to start things off with Vicki Watkins followed by Elizabeth Jensen. So Vicki Watkins, if you're here, come on up. Welcome. Hello, ready? Okay. Hi, I'm Vicki Watkins. I've lived on Old Richmond Road for 68 years. And it's a beautiful road and beautiful farms. When you turn on Old Richmond Road, the space just opens up and it's just breathtaking, really, when you turn on Old Richmond Road. It's a very, it's just a great drive. Changing on Richmond Road entrance will create a traffic nightmare. Coming to Lexington, I will have to go to aphids, turn right, go down like a mile, make a U-turn, and go back to Lexington. And I do this trip at least once a day, usually twice a day, to go down and back. And if I go through Athens back roads, then that will add another 10 minutes to already a 20, 25 minute trip. So but it, the developmental bill will not be a, will not be in character with the surrounding land. There are horse farms, a park, there's a fishing club, and this would forever change the essence of the Old Richmond Road. I hope all of you have gone out and looked at Old Richmond Road and know what we're talking about and view it as it is today because if you all approve this zoning change, then it will be lost forever. If you want to change the zoning, you know, then you need to amend the plan. Thank you. Thank you. Elizabeth Jensen and then Edwin Beezinger. And feel free to correct me if I've mispronounced your name. Go ahead. Good evening, Elizabeth Jensen. I live at 1861 Evans Mill Road. I'm in District 12, Kathy Plumman's district. I am a farm owner, but I come to you tonight as also a small business owner and an employer in the district that's affected by this potential project. My husband, Mark Guilfoyle, and I operate a cow-calf operation. We purchased a farm off of Old Richmond Road in 2015, and we started out just raising cattle. During COVID, when there was basically a shutdown of processing facilities all over the country and supply chain management, we worked with local processing facilities to be able to process our products here in Kentucky and offer them to our community providing local meat during COVID. Since then we changed our business plan. We bought additional land off of Old Richmond Road and in the last two years have built a state of the art cattle operation facility at the end of Evans Mill Road. We currently sell our products to restaurants in Lexington and also through Market Wagon, which is a direct to consumer grocery store that has a distribution center in Lexington. The ARCUT project with this project layered on top of it will impact deliveries for our trucks going into Lexington, into restaurants, and I know there are quite a few other cattle operations in this part that directly access Old Richmond Road that will be impacted by the ability to load cattle trucks or take cattle trucks in and out of Lexington and also out and around to the stockyard. This project will impact our business, but more important than that, this is not the right project for this place in Lexington. I understand the importance of affordable housing, but we've listened to this wonderful presentation about how beautiful these apartments are going to be and all of the amenities that they're going to have and this doesn't sound like affordable housing we don't need a community with wawa as an anchor we're going to have another food desert which is about what we're trying to to change here in lexington i haven't seen on the plan where lextran is going to be offered to this community if it's affordable housing they should have access to public transportation and lextran ends about two miles before this project potentially would be. I haven't seen that part of that discussion or how having this project here will actually impact affordable housing. There's a whole lot of other places in Lexington where you could build 130 parking units and I don't, 130 apartment units and I don't think that this is the right place for that. Respectfully, I ask that you reconsider it once the bulldozer comes in and you take down those trees and you dig a big hole and you fill it with concrete, you can't go back. Thank you. Thank you. Edwin Biesinger followed by Edward Fisher. I'm a resident of a traditions at Park's Edge, which is the suburb just across the road from this proposed development. My main concern is that were 99 townhomes on 35 acres, And in the front of our first division, we have a major water reservoir which flows across the road and when there is water comes down, our reservoir gets filled and gets fed into Jacobson Park. With the, with building a Wawa and in the density of the proposed development, I think it's overkill for the size of the project. When tradition started in 2003, we had some town homes where they weren't allowed to put a porch on their building because it made us too dense. And I was on the board at the time negotiating with Atchison Heller and I thought that was really strange because we're spread out and if you know where we're at and you've gone and seen our property, you'll know what I mean. We couldn't put a porch on some of the properties because we were getting too dense. The other thing is we took over ownership for the reservoir because we were maintaining it and we thought that would be the best way to control and keep our property beautiful. And with the proposed development, I have major concern about handling the water runoff, as I think you should too, because whatever comes into our front yard goes into Jacobson Park so if there's any water impurity through any any way shape or form it's a problem that's it thank you very much for your time thank you uh edward fisher is up next followed by mary diane hannah say again okay thank you uh mary diane hannah and then wayne mitchell are you here Yes, and you're yielding your time to Ms. Hannum? Yes. Okay. Ms. Hannum, you will have six minutes. Good afternoon or evening. My name is Mary Diane Hanna. I'm in District 12 under Kathy Plowman, and I am president of the Ulrich and Road Neighborhood Association. I have a thing that you all are supposed to put up there that shows the area of the Ulrich and Road area. is there you go it equals about 25,494 acres I've been the president of this association for over 30 years I've lived on my farm for over 60 years and our families had the farm since the 1800s I want to say first that last time only 14 people spoke i guess at the planning commission meeting it said that surprised me but there were almost 100 people here many people out in the hallway who never had their name called or didn't hear their name who did want to speak so they were unseen and unheard and there are people out there now who are unseen and i hope they will be heard i have attended the expansion area master plan meetings since the 1990s. It's been the same throughout the reviews as has been pointed out. This land was zoned two to three houses per acre. It's what was expected there. It's what the people in traditions and Ellerslie expected as well. To change it to a community center is against this plan. It sounded like with the statistics that were placed up there that 60 percent of it is commercial. I will say the picture that he did with the old B3 zoning looked way out of proportion to nine acres. It was only 1.62, so that made it look like, wow, you know, they could develop all that. I think they're developing quite a lot more than 1.62 acres. This property is next to Belmar Farm and you will hear a letter from Linda Green who owns Belmar who is against this. It's Caddy Corner from Judmont Farm. It was created as a step down area from urban to rural. You are our representatives. You represent each a community in and of yourselves where you want to help your people we expect chuck and dan and james to be helpful to us because there are at large people preston morley and fred brown also represent a piece of the old richmond road area we hope that you will comply with what the people are asking for this area i want you to listen to the residents who live in this area like you would listen to the residents in your area and hope all the council people would listen to your people and help you out in this situation we are against a gas station other potential commercial property there, four story apartments next to a rural area on a designated scenic byway. We have at least 44 people who have signed our list that are here against this situation. I wish the people that are actually in this room who are against this situation would stand and be recognized. And there are more outside as well, so don't forget them. Thank you very much and appreciate your help. Thank you. Thank you. Up next is Arthur Bowman, followed by Taff McInstree. Arthur Bowman, I'm in District 7. I'm a resident and owner of a townhome in the Traditions just north of the Phelps property. I have a couple things I would like you to consider. One is, again, as she presented, what I believe was on the screen was that with a community center designation, that 65% of it is going to be used for either commercial or a community type setup. That leaves 35% that's going to be used for residential. 8.36 acres means that there's less than three acres that are going to be associated to 139 units. I calculate that as 45 units per acre. I think that's high density. It's even been presented as its medium density, let alone the low density that supposedly the 1996 expansion plan had designated. There's concerns about the water runoff. There is a culvert that runs underneath Athens-Boonesboro Road from the Phelps property onto the Tridgitions property. Runs into a retention basin that have there that we have to take care of. That further feeds into Jacobson Reservoir. Hence the concerns about adding that number of units, a gas station, a restaurant, with the concerns of how that can affect our particular property which we have to take care of, let alone . the possibility of going into the drinking water for the city of Lexington. Also there was discussion about pedestrian walkways to be able to get to Jakesham Park. Those don't exist. They are not there. There was also a pedestrian walkway that was supposed to be built. It was supposed to be built to go across Athens-Burnsboro Road to get to that pedestrian walkway. That doesn't exist. Who's paying for that? Haven't heard anything from this development group. Thank you. Thank you. Up next is Taft McKinstry followed by Lyle Hannah. Welcome. Dear Councilman, I'm Taft McKinstry. I live at 1957 Evans Mill Road, which is out Old Richmond Road, with my husband Douglas Rood, who is also here. We both oppose the proposed development. I pass that intersection every morning and every evening on my way to downtown employment and back home. I used to do some zoning work and then I got away from it and now it looks like I might be getting back to it again. I think Bruce was absolutely right. This application does not comply with the comprehensive plan. It does not comply with the present zoning. and it doesn't comply with the Kentucky statute. There's been some argument about an R-cut. It doesn't exist. We've heard about it. We've talked about it. Maybe it will exist, but it doesn't exist now. It is not a current change. They've talked about Costco and Hamburg. Hamburg is miles away. I go to Hamburg to shop. It's 30 minutes away. It's not a change around this property that affects this property. There's a Kentucky statute that requires all the work that goes into this comprehensive plan. That same statute, and I would ask you to review it, is 100.213. And it says before any map amendment, that's a zone change, is granted. This body must find, and the Zoning Commission should have found, that the map is either in agreement with the adopted comprehensive plan, or if they can't make that finding, that one or the more of the following apply, and this body must make specific facts and put minutes in recording that one of the following apply. That the existing zone classification given to the property is inappropriate and that the proposed zoning classification is appropriate, or more importantly, that there have been major changes of economic, physical, or social nature within the area that make the anticipated that make the present zoning inappropriate and therefore should be changed. Neither of those facts have been presented by the applicant. Thank you. Thank you. Lyle Hanna, and then I'm going to double check and see if there is a different Richard Murphy, because I've got a Richard Murphy signed up for public input. And if that's you, I'm scratching you off. And then we have Mr. Michael Kraft who was going to yield time to Richard Murphy. Michael, are you here? Yes. Would you like to speak on your own behalf or do you want to just call it? Okay. All right. In that case, we have Lyle Hanna and then after Mr. Hanna will be Alston Kerr. So go ahead. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm Lyle Hanna. I live at 6398 Old Richmond Road and I've been there for 36 years and it's a darn nice place. I appreciate you giving me just a minute to talk. I actually have worked for the Planning Commission in the past, and I've worked for the last city manager we had. So I know it's tough to do this work. It takes talent, and it takes a lot of effort, and I appreciate your all's commitment to this. You know, I boil this down to just eight simple questions, and I want to give you those questions, and I want to tell you what my answers are. The first one is, has our city and county had a plan for many years? Well, the answer is yes. You know, the first one was in 1928, but this is the 1996 one we're most concerned about today. Have citizens been able to rely on that plan and know that it will not change without a plan update? Well, the answer is yes to that, okay? Do we update that plan periodically so that citizens have input and have a way to speak up about the planned growth of the future? The answer to that question is yes, too. Are we in the middle of one of those updates right now? The answer is yes. Is the Anderson plan, the proposal, consistent with the current plan? Well, the answer is no, for a whole lot of reasons. Is it a good idea to set an example or set a precedent? So many parts of the – which – is it a good idea to set a precedent? Which many parts of the plan violate parts of the current plan? And the answer is no, not a good idea. Will it be able to trust future plans if this proposal is approved? Well, the answer is no again. We'll shoot that. Should you pass this plan, the change that's presented today? I think the answer to that is no, too. We kind of have heavy thoughts, so I might end with just a fun one. You know, the military really works hard to try to plan things out. And when things get really screwed up, they use a term called blivet. And blivet is 10 pounds of stuff in a five-pound bag. And that's what we've got going here. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Up next is Alston Kerr, followed by Adam Kirk. Good evening. Alston Kerr, Old Richmond Road, District 12. And I've been involved in the Comprehensive Plan since 1996. That's not to tell you that I'm a dinosaur, which you all know, except for we know in front of this council today it will be a Herculean effort for you all to craft the next stage for this city. You will spend hours and hours of lots of listening. We did this before in 96, and we've done it as all the comprehensive plans have gone forward. So I admire and advance the work you have, but believe me, it's tedious and time-consuming. The reason I have pause for cause here is that basically this development on this prophecy as a community center puts a cannonball through this comprehensive plan as it is today. And it was ratified in 2018, and I know you have heard it, but you all are going to spend hours over the next two years doing exactly what we all did with these plans. So imagine all your work and somebody puts a cannonball through the middle of it, and now as Lyle said, and so many of us will continue to say, literally, can anybody be trusted? It's about a 700% increase in density from the present zoning, and this really does seem egregious. We would hate for this type of precedence to take pace now when maybe this is not what you all's vision will be at the end of 2024, when you all come up with your plan, with your vision that you've worked so hard for. So what I ask you to do for us, for now, for Royal Fair County, is to deny this change, ask Mr. Anderson to come back, submit his idea, And again, if at the end of 2024, you all's vision is a 700% increase in density right here on this little island, that so be it. I thank you for allowing me to comment. Very quickly on the ARCUT, Taff McCrinstry said it literally is not here yet. On last Friday, there were four of us that met with Transportation Cabinet Secretary Jim Gray and the Transportation Department District 7. because there are many concerns about this RCUT and the traffic that comes down the old Richmond Road. We have many farm vehicles. We have horse trailers. We have rock trucks. And because the whole population of traffic in this area has changed since they did their study in 2019, literally the whole area has concern. So I think we will find that on Thursday, I guess, at the MPO meeting, this whole arc hut is going to go on pause until we make sure that everything has been discussed because U.S. Highway 25 is going to be very difficult to get the rock trucks to turn right, horse trailers, and then turn around and take a left. And they have admitted this, and they want to make sure their lanes are what needs to be. So I think it's going to go on pause for a while. So Mr. Anderson uses this within his piece of property. I would ask you all to consider that. Thank you very much. Adam Kirk is next, followed by Bo Fisher. Is Adam Mr. Bo Fisher? Okay. James Hodge, followed by Cabby Boone. uh let me take a look charles martin okay okay gotcha go ahead you got six minutes James Hodge 6050 old Richmond Road council district 12 I have a very narrow but pivotal issue to discuss with you this case as you've heard turns on interpretation of the comprehensive plan as has been explained the expansionary master plan was readopted in 2018 so they're basically at the same time the point I want to stress to you and I've told you this before and I probably sound arrogant for saying it but I'm a former commissioner of law of Durham County Government. For property in the expansion areas the specific provision of the land use element of the 1996 expansion area master plan takes precedence over the general provisions of place builder in the 2018 comprehensive plan And that's a matter of law, and that's what governs this case. And it has been pointed out by everyone here on both sides, there's a big conflict between the general vague language of place builder and the specific language of the expansionary master plan, which expressly deals with this specific property in a very specific manner, and expressly says this specific property shall be limited to three units per acre. Place builder is totally contrary to that. In fact, place builder is vague and ambiguous, and you can come up to all sorts of conclusions, but place builder does not deal with this specific property. Now, the point I want to make, two points. In Kentucky, if there's a conflict between two statutory or regulatory provisions, and at least two of you over here know this, the specific provision takes precedence over the general provision. And the Kentucky Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed this rule. One case said, in the event two statutory provisions directly conflict, it has been long established the specific provision takes precedence over the general provision. Again, in another case, they say, where there appears to be a conflict between two statutes, as here, a general rule of statutory construction mandated that the specific provision takes precedence over the general. Now, I'll give you two cases, but these two cases cite many other cases that say the same thing. First case is Commonwealth v. Fawn, P-H-O-N. 17 Southwest 3rd, 106, 2000 case. The other case is Porter v. Commonwealth, 841 Southwest 2nd, 166 at 168, 169, 1992. Also, in addition to what the court has said about statutory construction, the current comprehensive plan expressly recognizes this rule also. It says that for land located within expansion areas, and this is only for land located within expansion areas, the specific provisions of the land use element of the EMP that govern only the expansion areas take precedence over the general provisions of place builder in the 2018 comprehensive plan that apply to all of Fayette County. Expansionary master plan only applies to the expansion area. The other generic provisions of place builder apply to the entire county. The plan specifically says the overall 2018 plan and the 96 stuff has been incorporated in to the 2008. So they're the same time period. They're not this one ancient thing against this current thing. They're both adopted the same time in 2018. On page 262 of the current plan, it says, zoning ordinance and subdivision regulations are laws that must be followed regarding land use in Lexington. If site-specific conflicts arise between place builder and these laws, these laws must prevail. Now, Mr. Murphy's going to tell you, well, that only applies to statutes and only applies to—doesn't apply to anything else. but and I'll give you a copy of this but one in the investopedia it says zoning refers to municipal or local laws or regulations that govern how real property can be used in certain geographic locations in the zoning ordinance itself it says the purpose of this zoning ordinance is to implement the adopted comprehensive plan and in Rathkoff's the law of zoning and planning and this is the only thing I have that's not not in the record it says as in the case of statute zoning ordinances must be given their plain and ordinary meeting so these rules apply to all regulations zoning ordinances comprehensive plans, statutes, anything else you've got. You learned this in law school. So the expansionary master plan specific provision controls over the generic provisions of place builder and control this case. Thank you very much. Thank you. Up next is Cabby Boone followed by Clay Johnson. Good evening. It is evening now. Sorry about that. My name is Cappy Boone. I live at 1111 Walnut Hill Road. I've been living in that area since 1981. I've seen expansion and growth in this area. I have been to countless meetings in this chamber and in the Phoenix building in regard to development and change and urban expansion. People have mentioned the comprehensive plan obviously tonight. Yes, 1996 was its original, But it's been reviewed, as you've heard, every year for five years. And what is so important about that is that citizens and people buy homes, vacant lots, and even a little piece of farmland, using this as a basis of what they expect to have in their life. Whether you buy a house downtown or in the traditions or in Ellerslie, this has been a source of a guide for most people when they're looking at where they want to live. I remember in a meeting in August, someone on the board, I've been to so many meetings, I forget exactly which one, but I remember it was about zoning and planning, said, we can't pick and choose. We just can't. That is what Mr. Anderson is asking you guys to do, is pick and choose. What is important to do is go through the process. The planning, the comprehensive plan has been a great guide for everyone. It is important to keep the process. This 8.5 acres is too small for this big development. It's just not the right time. We can't plan for today. We can't even plan for next week or next year. We need to think many years ahead like the people in 1996 did so we can sit here today and be very proud of our community. Let's take their lead on this. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Ms. Boone, is that your drink? Somebody's, oh, gotcha. No problem. I'm going to drink after him. Thank you. Up next is Clay Johnson. I'm going to have to yield my talent at Lisa Corpus. Okay, hold on. You're not quite up just yet. So next up is going to be Lori Kirk followed by Hilary Boone. Hello, my name is Lori Kirk and I live at 4851 Old Richmond Road for over 35 years. I am approximately one mile from the Phelps property and I have 54 acres that have the conservation easement on them as well as the 11 acres next door. I am a neighbor of Linda Green and I'd like to read her letter. Okay? Okay. I'm reading Linda Green. She's, I'm an immediate neighbor to the Phelps's property. Denny, Denny, sorry, Denny, I have a song. Anderson is trying to get rezoned. Please accept this letter as a formal request to object to Mr. Anderson's request for the highly dense development of the Phelps's property. The plan to change the zoning to allow over 130 townhouses and apartments is inconceivable for the area. This property allows two to three houses per acre, not a large commercial entity gas station, and a highly populated development next to and catty corner from active horse farms and is against the comprehensive plan. Something we expect as area residents to be followed. The plan would create a worsening traffic situation in an area with excessive traffic at peak travel times and could be even worse, with a poor plan also on the table to supposedly improve the situation. Due to the lack of commuter infrastructure, i.e. no bus service, no bike lanes, no grocery stores, no post office, this means that all tenants are going to be required to own automobiles to go about their daily lives, which is going to exacerbate the traffic situation. Given the fact that every tenant is going to have to have their own transportation, this means the developer's argument that he's creating affordable housing is erroneous. This is a bad site for this type of development. I seriously encourage my representatives to reject the development plan as it is currently presented. It's important to wait until the final urban service area comprehensive plan is finalized before making the decision to change the Phelps property zoning. Thank you for your time and consideration. I obviously agree with what you said. Thank you. Thank you. Give us just a second. We're having an issue with our iPad with the sign-in names. It got switched. The sheet got switched. Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Question? Excuse me. So we are at, tell me your name. Hillary Boone. Okay. So we are at Hillary Boone and then Lisa Corpus. Thank you. Good evening. First of all, I'd like to thank you for your service and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Hillary Boone. I live at 1451 Walnut Hill Road. I was born and raised on Wampel Hill on Wimbledon Farm. I currently run the horse farm that my grandfather started in the 70s. I also own Boondog's Restaurant on the corner of Olderish Road and Jack's Creek. Since I'm only 31, I've not been a part of these comprehensive plan meetings in previous years. With that being said, I'm having a hard time understanding why there's talk of making an exception for this property. If we have stayed true to the comprehensive plan over the years, why is it okay to violate them now? Going from 24 units to over 130 units is over five times. That's way too many. I understand that growth and development are inevitable, but it's all about how it is executed. Reasonable growth is good. Too much growth is bad. Reasonable development is good. Too much development is bad. I think we need to look at how reasonable four-story apartment buildings are in this location. This property was zoned initially to be a step down to rural areas. Why does it feel like this proposed plan change makes it feel more like a step up? I feel there is a major rush to get this done before the new revised comprehensive plan is to be ready at the end of 24. Would it make sense to wait until the new plan is finished before making unprecedented changes to the current one? After looking at the proposed site plan, it clearly shows Old Richland Road closed, AFIDS re-engineered. Shouldn't the state road changes be confirmed before this plan is approved? Thank you. Thank you. Lisa Corpus, you're going to have six minutes, and then Dawn Todd. Hello, I'm Lisa Corpus, the real estate manager for Wawa. I am in charge of finding all the new locations for Wawa for the state of Kentucky. And as a fellow Kentuckian, I am super excited to bring Wawa to the great state of Kentucky. To give you a little background on Wawa, Wawa started off as very humble beginnings. It's a family-owned company and employee-owned. The Wood family is our founding fathers. They have over 200 years of business in America. Started out as an iron foundry, then went into textile business, and then started the Wawa Dairy. We actually have an active dairy in Wawa, Pennsylvania currently. And in the late 50s, when bottled milk delivery started becoming kind of fewer, far between, Wawa opened up Wawa convenience stores or neighborhood markets to start selling their dairy products. And that's how Wawa became a store. Since then, we have started with fresh brewed coffee, our sandwiches, and have now expanded to over 1,000 locations, primarily in the Mid-Atlantic states, which is Philadelphia, Delaware, Maryland. And then we also have locations in Florida, over 300 locations there. We have expansion efforts to bring Wawa to the Midwest, which is we have identified Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio as our states. We have plans of building over 40 locations in the state of Kentucky, primarily in Lexington, Louisville, and those corridors that connect those and connecting to Cincinnati. We, let's see, our primary focus is food. As we have a cult-like following, I know a lot of you, there's been a lot of excitement about Wawa coming into this market. Like I said, our sandwiches. We really strive to become part of the community and become that daily stop for the customers and residents of the neighborhood. serving them for you know stopping getting their breakfast sandwiches their coffees in the morning sandwiches and for lunch and then grabbing something on the way home for work and you know quick food on the way in the evening on the way home we are really excited about this project with dennis anderson we hope to be a huge amenity to not just the residents within the community he's developing but also the residents in the community around we pride ourselves on ingraining ourselves within the community. I mean, we're a year and a half out from putting our first store open here, and we've already started, you know, community partnerships with local charitable organizations, and that's something that we truly focus on in this area. And the other thing, I wanted to make a comment while I have the time on the concerns around the fuel in the underground storage tanks and the reservoir that was mentioned earlier. I just wanted to note that Wawa has, within their last 50 years of being a fuel provider because fuel we didn't actually add fuel to our locations until the 80s and as of in the last 50 years of the fuel provider we have zero leaks of the tanks we use double-walled fiberglass tanks that do not rust or corrode they are double walled to provide for efficient monitoring we also have a perfect standing with the epa that you all can confer that and we also have a plan in place of in the event of above ground storage leaks which is like basically a customer that's spilled gas while they're filling their tanks or on the rare chance that a tanker spill while they're filling our underground storage tanks we have a contracted contracted with a third party company that responds to those cleanups within four hours typically they occur within one to two hours and annually those are less than within our 1100 stores less than 25 per year so we have a very good standing rating on that just wanted to call that out one other piece i wanted to mention is we are like i said family owned but we also are um employee owned so we are a part of an esop so all of our employees from the top all the way to our associates in the stores we are all owners of wawa so our tenure for our store level employees are seven years which most convenient store tenures is less than seven months so everybody that you're going to you know see on your daily stop in the wawa is a vested owner in the business we do not franchise any of our locations they are all company owned company maintained so they are very clean very nice well maintained our prototype that we're bringing into this market is a state-of-the-art design they're going to be very complimentary with the area around and within the community that dennis is building here so we're excited to be a part of the community that's all life. Thanks. Thank you very much. Up next is Don Todd followed by Jeff Walker. Mr. Vice Mayor, members of the council appreciate the opportunity. I prepared a two-page summary of the legal issues that both Bruce and Jim Hodge presented to you and I just want to introduce that as an exhibit in the record so that it ultimately can be used by the courts should they have an opportunity to review it. As I mentioned, my name is Don Todd. I was 12th District Councilman for eight years, and I've served on four comprehensive plan update committees since 1978. I served with Chuck's father. I've been around so long, I got Bruce Simpson to do his first planning zoning case of the 1980s. I've lived with this process. These people are passionate about this issue. As a council person, person, you can vote on budgets, you can vote on personnel issues, you can vote on all kinds of things, but your constituents will remember planning and zoning decisions until you walk out of office. I promise you, they will not forget it. In fact, right now the 12th district is keeping track on all the votes on issues because they live this thing. They've lived it since 1958 when we first put that urban service boundary line in place, and we controlled growth with sewers since 1958. We stay on top of this thing. So what you need to know is you have to give your constituents notice and reliability and understanding in the planning and zoning process. Notice, reliability, and confidence. How do you do that? You establish a system and you adhere to it. That's your job. You're the only people who can respond to your constituency on this issue. It is so important to them to have that. Imagine, if you will, if you go home tonight and one of your constituents says, how did you vote on this thing? Well, I voted okay or no. What was the basis for it? What was placemaker or position builder, whatever it's called? That's goulash. People don't understand that. How many of you all have read the entire place builder concept? How many of you actually sat down and read it? Raise your hand. That's what I thought. Hell, I haven't read it either. I've read parts of it, but to get halfway through it, I put it aside. And what did Place Builder do? It transferred all the power from you to them. It took the power away from you and gave it to them. They make the decisions now. So what do you do here? This is a false choice. I don't care about their development plan, whether it's three stories, four stories, whatever. This is a choice of whether you adhere to the process, to the plan, or whether you give them the spot zoning that they're asking you to give them. This is a leapfrog spot development proposal. They're no different than anybody else. They should go through the process like everyone else. Go through the update process, explain why they're doing it in concert with the other surrounding land usages, and then if it's agreeable, let it come forward. wanting to step out of line and step in front this is spot zoning and they're leapfrogging everyone else thank you very much don't let them do it uh just a point of clarity for the audience and you may remember this i gave i gave 16 of them to the lady out front there and she said she would give them to who the lady out front yeah i gave him 15 16 of them trust me i gave it to her All the documents that we've got on the end I think has been distributed. All right. I just wanted to make a quick point of clarity. Mr. Todd, you might remember this from your time on council. During public comment, we're not to react to anything from the comments. So don't take our raising or not raising of hands as an indication of any sort. Thank you very much. Jeff Walker is next followed by Caroline Francis. Good evening. My name is Jeff Walker. I live at Raven Creek Estates which is a which is off Jackson Creek. Go out over and road down Jackson Creek and down Keeterville Lane which is of course in the 12th. I have heard a lot tonight but one of the things I kept hearing repeatedly in the hearings we had with the zoning folks Was the buzzword affordable housing or providing rental housing? But for the life of me, I'm confused because this development is a gas station primarily in a restaurant and other things, which appear to be about 60% of the use of the acreage. So I would just point that out. The other thing that I would point out, this is being considered in the midst of a lot of chaos going on with a potential change with the R-Cut, which has been discussed extensively tonight. And it's been noted it's not there yet. And so we're trying to consider a change in an area that's going to have a major highway change potentially. So how can we do that? I would encourage you to put a pause on this. Finally, I would just point out that this is the doorway to the old Richmond Road, which is perhaps, if not, I believe is the most beautiful corridor. I've been driving up and down Old Richmond Road for the last 30 years. I work downtown. And this is the doorway, and we're looking to put a gas station. I agree. It's a very nice gas station. I love Wawa's. And I think Mr. Anderson's plan here is a good plan. It's just the wrong location, just a bad location for this particular plan. I would also note that, you know, as far as the expansion of the change in the expansion area, the master plan, when it's amended, you know, it would make sense to look at this with some sort of housing changes. These are not necessarily three per acre, but 45 or 55, whatever we're looking at, the high densities being considered here, this seems totally inappropriate. it. With those thoughts, I thank you for your attention, I thank you for your service, and I appreciate it, but I do respectfully ask that you reject this. Thank you. Thank you. Caroline Francis is next, followed by Linda Bowman. Is Ms. Francis here? How about Ms. Bowman? Come on up, please. Can I give my time to somebody else? Say that again. Can I give my time to somebody else? Sure. Who is that? Harper back there. Delm Harper. Okay. When your turn comes up, you'll have six minutes, sir. Yeah. Tell me your name. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. All right. So let's see, and then it was Ms. Bowman who gave her time to Mr. Harper. Is that correct? I just want to keep that straight. All right, then up next is Wanda Mills followed by Robert Lee. It's Ms. Mills here. All right, let's go on to Robert Lee. Oh, no, sorry. Here we come. And please state your name and your council district, and you'll have three minutes. My name is Wanda Mills and I'm in District 7 and my address is 475 the Long Road. I'm not much of a speaker, but I have a serious problem. My problem is since they put the new pipeline in and they put the new drainage building over at the Jacobson Park. When you go down the Long Road, there is sometimes office mail. I have called several people, several people, and I find I called Frankfort. And then Frankfort came out, and this is what the young lady told me. We will pour some bleach down it, and the bleach will take care of it for a while, but we can't pour bleach down it every day. They'll be calling us every day thinking we can pour bleach down it because it'll eat up our lives. So if you put all these houses there, I won't be able to sit outside. My neighbor thought it was my safety tank for a long time, and it wasn't my safety tank. So we all got together, and we figured it out. It's coming from over into subdivision, and it's awful. So I don't know what to do about it. So if we build more houses, will I have to move, or will we just continue to smell this smell when we go up down the long road, or what? Thank you. Thank you. Robert Lee is up next, followed by Lisa Gano. Hello. I'm Robert Lee at 475 DeLong Road, and I'm generally against this movement in a sort of a way. To explain Wanda a little bit better there, there's a high-pressure sewer line that goes up parallel to DeLong Road from the entrance on the Richmond Road side that we occasionally pick up a loud, at times, very loud smell. It's only temporary, and it comes and goes. And from what we found out so far is that there's a venting action going on. So there was some concern about that in regards to this new development with 129 or 130-some units. what kind of impact would that have on the sewage movement in that area when it's getting pumped? We have more venting, more increased periods of venting going on, which would increase that smell. So now I'll continue on. The R-Cut, I know everybody refers to it as R-Cut, but I'd like to mention that the R-Cut stands for restricted cut. And restricted to me means, you know, there's a congestion type thing where you're actually slowing down traffic. It's sold as being safer, and I don't disagree with that. But at the same time, there's some aspects of it, like for the traffic consideration, which I think is mentioned earlier, I won't go into details. But if we want to go to Lexington, and of course it impacts me because I always want to go to Lexington, so I'll have to make the right turn, then a left turn, and then hit another stoplight. So possibly you'll have to go through three stoplights to go to Lexington from where I live at. So in that regard, I'm kind of like not real pleased with the ARCUT idea. And I'm sure there's a lot of other people that come and go on Richard Road that would have that same problem when they want to go to Lexington as well instead of to the interstate. So, and also to me, it's a traffic, it would be a traffic delay in generally to get where I need to go every day. And the last point, most of the points I had to make were already made by other people, so my list is kind of short now. but the last comment I want to make is in regards to the utility and also respect to I've already mentioned sewer what kind of water impacts and expansions are needed and what kind of power extensions are needed to support that many homes or apartments and overall as that spreads out to affect the rest of the community and with that being said thank you for your time. Thank you. Lisa Gannon followed by Steven Albert. Lisa Gannon, 7525 Old Richmond Road 12th district. I grew up here in Lexington. I'm a product of this community and I care deeply about this community. I am an active member that comes to these meetings, spends their time to come down here, sit for hours, just because I feel it's important to be a part of this process. And because of that, you know, you're asking people to give their input for these plans. And then in the end, to just have developers do whatever they want is disheartening to me. So if we don't follow the plans, if we don't follow zoning, if we don't follow the rules, then we have nothing. And so as an educator, this guides me as an educator, and I pay attention to fairness, and I pay attention to details. And what I see here is that planning used the words interpretation of the comp plan. Well, my interpretation of the comp plan is that this goes against the comp plan, and it sets a bad precedent. It feels like the old bait and switch. We talked about single family homes to something that's much larger, much denser, all while discussing changes to a major historic byway and a main road in and out of Lexington. Now, this property that's been shown, eight acres, that's not a lot of property for what's being discussed to be built here. And so on eight acres, there's limited accesses in and out, according to the drawings, in this area for numerous vehicles that will be there. So right now, when I leave, I have the choice to go down and turn on Old Richmond or to go to Aphids. We're talking about closing one of those entrances, and so now everybody's going to be going down Aphids. What I saw in that picture is there's a small entrance off of Richmond Road and two larger exits and entrances onto aphids. So everybody's going to be channeled down aphids. They're stopping at the corner. They've got to turn right. They've got to get over two lanes to the R-cut. And so that traffic's going to back up greatly. Everybody's leaving out on aphids way. You want to talk about a traffic nightmare? I think that's going to be a huge traffic nightmare. I do care about the trees that are probably going to be removed at this exit since it is the access to the agricultural rural zone and the access to a scenic byway. And I think we're killing ourselves because we're losing what's important and what makes Lexington special. I also don't believe that neighboring properties should have their property taken for these types of purposes when they're using their land as AR and as expected. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Steven Albert, you're next. And after Steven will be Tom Kirke. Hi, my name is Steve Albert. I'm with Albert and Associates Architecture. I'm the project architect for this project. I reside in District 3 and my business is in District 1. We do not have the actual buildings designed yet, but I can share with you some of our thoughts and ideas. Our regular one-bedroom building footprint encompasses 10 units. We are lowering that density to a six-unit footprint, which creates more open space on the site. We're giving up our density by creating smaller footprints and giving more green space. On the buildings themselves, just to give you an idea, we use brick all the way around, not just on the front. We use horizontal siding and batten, maybe some shake siding, different textures and colors, different horizontal layers to create a lower horizontal look. We put low roof, low slope roofs, wide eaves, some details in there to bring the buildings down. So we're talking about the four stories, but it's only 24 units versus our normal 30 unit three-story buildings. Plus, we're bringing the buildings down with the horizontal look. The entrances into the breezeways will have covered porchways with lower roofs on them also. The old Richmond Road segment that the state is reworking between the existing homes and the development will be bermed and landscaped. The transition from those property lines is built in layers. The berms, the trees, the townhomes, and then the apartment buildings. It's also our intentions and something we have done in other sites, and I invite you to go to other Anderson community sites. The one out Townley and the one that is being built now out Great Acres. There are townhomes and other buildings on the site. They all use similar materials and that's what we will do here so that it will be a cohesive site. The development is set up as a community where you live and you work and you shop and you play. And it's a self-contained, healthier town center living environment. Thank you. Thank you. Up next is Tom Kerkey, followed by Tony Barrett. Is Tom here? All right, Tony Barrett. All right, Dalam Harper. And you'll have six minutes as you've had somebody yield time to you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Dale Harper. I live at 4180 Tradition Way and across the street from, across Boonsboro Road from, you know, property under consideration. Twenty-seven years ago, I was on your side of the podium here listening to people argue for and against inclusion of the creation of the expansionary master plan. And so we wrote it. It was a community thing. What we're trying to do is we were trying to build a community, not only on our side of the property, but also expansionary one, expansionary two, expansionary three. And we were trying to say, we were trying to build our, or grow our city, and we came up with the plan. And you ask why, we can't see that very well. But, yeah, that's good enough. That's good enough. But at any rate, we didn't put, we could have put, you know, CC zoning, or not zoning, but land use category for community, you know, CC. But we didn't. We opted, we put that somewhere else. We put the higher density not in the water table in the drainage basin that has a reservoir. We put lower density in that. We put lower density towards, as a transition to the agricultural area. So the bottom line is that we also did regional detention. And what you see here is over at the very top is my car. And across the way and then up a little bit, that's where Mr. Anderson's property is. And you can't see it very well, but there's a cattle livestock underpass. and that flows directly into our detention basins. These basins were bought by the expansion area master plan residents. They were paid for by the expansion area master plan residents, okay, and they're being maintained, okay, by the Traditions Homeowners Association at no expense to the city and have been for an awful long time. And when they were engineered, exaction fees were put forward because we knew, we calculated how many people are on there and how many people could live there. Then we could engineer the basins appropriately. When you take and you move the, you know, when you intensify those, you know, the actual population that, you know, the density, then all of a sudden we may, you know, we are, when, this is, you know, this is what happens when it rains now. And the stormwater comes from where it's supposed to come from. And that includes the Anderson property. Okay. And you can right now. I don't know how much rain there was that day. But this is what happens. And then it filters out. It goes up and filters out. And that's with agricultural, no impervious surfaces. you know, on the flowing into it, add the impervious circle, impervious surfaces, then we don't know what it's going to, you know, we will be harmed. That's the main thing. And I don't know how to correct that You know, when it happens, I'm sorry, I am, we can move on from that. Second, one of the reasons, one of the things is that Mr. Anderson is asking to rezone property he doesn't own. And that the, he's included that the, he's included Department of Transportation property in his development plan. And the survey that he submitted with his application includes land that he does not own. And I don't think that's an appropriate thing. The place builder model creates, as far as the justification creates problems. The, I'm sorry. Thank you very much. I don't know what, for some reason, I'm just not thinking clearly right now. That's all right. I don't know why. Up next is Margaret Graves, followed by Amy Luchzinger. Good evening. My name is Margaret Graves, and I live in the 6th District. I'm here tonight on behalf of the Bluegrass Land Conservancy, Conservancy, and I serve on the Rural Land Management Board with Dennis Anderson. We have a different perspective on land. My goal is to conserve it. His is to develop it. The Bluegrass Land Conservancy is a non-profit regional land trust. We have 17 conservation easements in Fayette County, protecting over 2,391 acres of land. The Old Richmond Road is a scenic byway, and we have a conservation easement on Old Richmond Road that is just a mile from the proposed development site. We are not an anti-growth group. We are a pro-planning group, and we feel that this proposed development should be rejected by you as council members because it conflicts with the comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan only means something if you follow it. If you easily disregard it in favor of one development, it loses its meaning for the community as a whole with with serious consequences for everyone who relies upon it. We are in the midst, as you know well, of an intense debate about the new comprehensive plan and whether we should expand the urban service boundary. Now is not the time to do spot zoning in favor of one property in the midst of a comprehensive plan update, which will be concluded in 2024. So I urge you to reject this proposal and uphold the existing comprehensive plan. Thank you. Thank you. Amy Lukesinger? And then lastly, C. Gibson Downing, are you here? Okay. He originally was going to give up his time to someone who has decided not to speak, so So I just want to make sure that person can speak if they wish to. Give us just a minute. No, we're good. Okay. That concludes our public comment section. We can start with rebuttals if any of the presentation parties would like to give them. Would staff like to make a rebuttal and comments? Okay. Come on up. You'll have five minutes. Daniel Crum, planning staff. Just wanted to lead off by just reminding everyone that the RCUT project is not under consideration tonight. We're here strictly to evaluate this request for a zone change. There was a lot of discussion about the relationship between the expansion area master plan as as well as the comprehensive plan itself, a reminder that the expansion area master plan is not a zoning ordinance. This is making recommendations for the anticipated future land use. When council adopted this in 1996, they had the option to rezone all the parcels to the corresponding recommendations in that plan. They opted not to do so. In doing so, they gave the owners of these parcels the flexibility to make their arguments for the appropriateness of their particular zone. So when we're talking about making changes in the expansion area with regards to rezonings, requesting a rezoning in the expansion area does not require updating the expansion area master plan. There's been a slew of rezonings that have gone contrary to the recommendation for the particular area. The CC at Costco, for instance, was located at a different part of that expansion area further on Hayes Boulevard. That CC zone was not located originally as anticipated by the plan, and so there's flexibility for the council to kind of take the intent behind the expansionary master plan, but the future land use element of that plan is not an iron steadfast thing that cannot be changed. In review of the policies mentioned that talk to updating the expansion area master plan, that is included within the comprehensive plan because of these inconsistencies. As we keep going further out from the 1996 approval, the more these inconsistencies pop up. So at this point in time, the future land use map that is being shown today doesn't account for the fact that Hayes Boulevard was never extended, doesn't account for the CC zone that was relocated elsewhere. So these changes sort of pile up, and as a result, planning staff has had that recommendation and that policy to update it. But that's a larger group effort. That's not incumbent upon a particular applicant to do, but it's rather kind of a cohesive, collaborative process between council, the planning commission, planning staff. That's based on a number of factors, and it's going to be important moving forward. but with regards to the particular proposals here the the applicant has the ability to ask for this zone staff in our staff report and presentation touched upon the aspects of the expansionary master plan that are being met with this request the expansionary master plan is more than just that future land use map it speaks to the intent behind the zone it expands upon the relationship of these zones to the the surrounding areas so this proposal which is providing for that mixture of housing types providing for these day-to-day uses and providing as much connections as the site can allow staff found that it was an agreement while not actually designated on the future land use map that was anticipated in 1996 is meeting those same community kind of items that we found to be in substantial compliance and in our discussion of the place type development type and zone weighed the compatibility between the place builder with the new complete neighborhood and the medium density non-residential slash mixed use with the kind of expansion area categories that existed back in 1996. Furthermore, to keep in mind when this was adopted in 1996, the way we handled comprehensive plans was significantly different. We had a future land use map back then. We have since as a council, as a community have opted to adopt the place builder. We thought that these goals, objectives, and policies that as a result of public input stakeholder meetings pc action council action have adopted have found to be significant for our community staff finds that they're in agreement with comprehensive plan staff finds that they're in agreement with the intent behind the cc areas within the expansionary master plan and i'd be happy to entertain kind of any further questions you may have at this time okay thank you very much um and the planning commission found that as well okay thank you very much uh would petitioner like time for rebuttal as well and we'll get to questions a little bit thank you very much mr murphy you have five minutes i will also have time for a summation is that correct there'll be a separate time for something i'd like to rebut some of the items that have been brought up we've been working on some of these things there's been no complaints about uh water traffic at earlier uh hearings on this in front of the planning commission this was they waited to bring this up to this hearing on this talk about water the the first of all the capacity of the storm water basin this is a regional basin which is across the road it was designed to handle this entire area was actually designed by mr garland who's working for us now when he was at a previous employment and the uh it is designed to handle the water runoff from this property and one thing mr harper said is correct that all property owners pay for that we're going to have to pay exactions just like everybody else did for the basin the exactions on their spra typically in this type of property are 30 000 an acre running much higher for commercial property to pay for those improvements but the regional basin is designed to handle it we'll have to do some on-site detention to handle it probably to handle it as well. The as far as water quality, Ms. Corpus said they have not had a water quality leak from their tanks in 50 years through the many hundreds of stores that they have. This is going to go through a final development plan after you act hopefully if you approve it we'll go through a final development plans through the process we'll have to have sign-offs from kentucky american water company we'll have to have sign-offs from our engineering division which i don't think is here tonight they come to all the planning commission meetings there we have very extensive manuals that we have to comply with we will comply with all of those just like every other developer does and those are very strenuous traffic we looked at those traffic numbers the traffic numbers just for our sit-down restaurant the way those numbers come out we have a a a count of four cars a minute patronizing our sit-down restaurant which has 120 seats four cars a minute we think they probably calculated this as the highest kind of restaurant with a drive-through we don't have the room, we don't have the seats, we don't have the parking to handle the capacity they're using. What happened on the traffic study is that we took the numbers the state of Kentucky had for the ARCA. We added our traffic to it from what the real uses are. The level of service was not changed. It is level of service E in the morning, it's level of service C in the afternoon, and adding our traffic to the RCUP numbers, which the state gave us to work with, no change in level of service. We cannot, we could not get the numbers they're telling you in this property if we wanted to. I want to talk to you about floor area. Our floor area statistics are we will have, if I can find where I have put those, we have, they've said it's mainly commercial. We have 109,000 square feet of residential. 109,000 square feet. We have 11,400 feet of commercial. that's a 90 percent residential floor area number 90 percent versus 10 percent our acreage is about a little above 75 percent 25 percent maybe maybe more like 80 20 something like that residential versus commercial on this property the we have never claimed that we are affordable housing that that issue has been raised up and and then other people come and knock it down we have never claimed to be affordable housing we are missing middle workforce housing which is different from affordable housing but it's still greatly needed the planning commission the planning commission members themselves pointed out that the studies that have been sponsored by us fayette alliance and others show we need 1500 units a year of additional housing and this is housing i'm going to save the rest of my comments for the my summation mr chair looks like i'm about up anyway okay thank you thank you very much uh does the opposition want time for a rebuttal i'll just report break that into my summation okay great thank you so much appreciate that um all right it's time for summations i'm going to do uh three minutes a piece starting with planning staff. All right. Daniel Crum, planning staff. Once again, just wanted to reiterate that both staff and the planning commission have found this to be in line with the goals, objectives, policies, development criteria of the comprehensive plan and would be happy to entertain any further questions you all may have but we have found it to be in compliance with those items. Okay. Thank you very much. Summation for the petitioner. You have three minutes. Mr. Chair, we understand emotions are high and people feel strongly about this area. I don't think, though, that we've heard any citizen comment tonight from Ellerslie, which is the area right closest to us, right across from Old Richmond Road, which is going to be removed. We've had, I think, five people from Tradition, which is on the other side of Athens Boonesboro Road, which is going to be even more improved, concerned about water. I think we've dealt with the water issues. People are farther away, five miles, eight miles, and they have the right to voice their opinion too. But I do need to point out that measurement and the distance to you. We have shown, I feel, we agree with the comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan is a plan. Mr. Hodge is right. Laws are laws, but this is a plan. Mr. Simpson's favorite quote in mine is, the comprehensive plan is a guide, not a straight jacket. It's a guide, not a straight jacket. They're asking you to ask us to stop and go through a comprehensive plan revision process. Now, as you all know, all the revisions that were mandated in 2018 still haven't been done five years later. They're asking us to pause for a year, three years, five years, seven years, to do something on the expansion area master plan, which isn't even on the agenda for part of the comprehensive plan at this point? No. And the reason I say no is the other changes in the area, including the not putting Hayes Boulevard through, Costco, Cabela's, UK Hospital, Central Baptist Hospital, those were changes, and none of them were asked to wait for several years to go through a comprehensive plan process. We ask for the same treatment that much bigger users get on this property. We're not in the rural land management area. We're in the urban service area boundary. The one thing I want to end on is that we are doing housing. Housing is needed. As the Planning Commission pointed out, we need 1,500 units a year of housing. the expansion area master plan was done 27 years ago the people who have read your comprehensive plan have been working with us for since before the first of the year to work on our plan to come to you they have agreed it agrees with the comprehensive plan graham paul is a member of the planning commission he's an architect when just before he voted he said i like this design This is designed as a neighborhood. And the other thing he said was, if we're going to be serious about housing in this community, we have to build housing. And he voted in favor of us, as did eight out of the ten Planning Commission members. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, we have a summation from the opposition. Mr. Simpson, you all have three minutes. Thank you, Vice Mayor, members of the Council. Appreciate your time and due diligence. As I mentioned at the very beginning, this is a critically important case for you, for your neighborhoods, for your constituents, and how you're going to decide this case. Lexington is watching how you decide this case and whether you're going to believe in fictional arguments or whether you're going to be in facts. and I just ask you to read the document yourself. You don't need a lawyer, you don't need a planner to read the document yourself. I've provided you with the language in my handout from the comprehensive plan. It says under tab 5, the use and intensity of lands within expansion areas shall be consistent with the land use designations in this element. Shall. Very rare word you see in the comp plan. Shall. Usually it's suggest, recommend, shall. Land use recommendation on this property tonight, not in dispute, three units per acre max. That's what the plan says. I haven't heard anybody rebut that. Next item I want you to read. You don't need a planner, a lawyer. All you got to do is read it for yourself. Under tab number nine, placemaking policy. It's said not only once in the comp plan, the 2018 plan, three times it's mentioned in this plan to emphasize, amend the expansion area master plan to update the remaining residential area to reflect the 2018 comprehensive plan goals and objectives. Amend the plan. I've not heard the staff rebut that with some evidence that they don't have to do it to amend the plan. plan, you can read this language for yourself, your constituents, your neighborhoods. They rely upon plain language. They don't need an interpretation from the government staff or any lawyer. Just read the plan. It's written so that the average citizen can understand it and more importantly, rely upon it. We've been relying upon this plan on behalf of Old Richmond Road since 1996. The Planning Commission had the opportunity to change it five times, five different plans. It's not been changed. Specifically recommended in this plan, 2018, change this plan, amend it for the residential areas. Not done. There is no dispute. This plan is not being followed. If this plan has an ounce of integrity, you must turn this zone change down and I thank you for your attention. Thank you. I'm going to open up the floor to questions from council. Make sure we ask all of our questions during this portion so that we can only deliberate amongst ourselves once we go into closed hearing. So go ahead and sign in to speak and I'm going to try to make sure everybody gets a chance to speak before I call on repeat questions and then it may not hurt for Mr. Crumb, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Simpson to be close-ish to the podium to answer questions as they come. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just have a point of clarification that I need. It was mentioned that Anderson is asking for rezoning a property it doesn't own. And I just need some clarification on that point. It was just mentioned. I can't recall the gentleman that mentioned it. You can clarify. I see Ms. Wade coming up too. When we file a zone change application, everybody who files a zone change application is required to rezone to the middle of the road. We don't own the roads. The state owns the roads. But we're required to do that because every square inch of Lexington has to be zoned something. And so we're required to go to the middle of the road. So Anderson Communities has already taken deed to this property. it owns every bit of the 8.36 net acres i think there's a gross acre figure which they do not own which we had to include in our application so that the roads to the center line are zoned as well council member gray the the map that's included with your packet shows the area they're rezoning. And so you'll note that this kind of at an angle that comes across is 8th and Spoonsboro Road. And the zone line does come to the middle of that, whereas their property line parallels that. So that really makes up that three acres that they have to, as Mr. Murphy said, they really have to rezone. so that we don't, I tell people we don't have this like no man's land of no zoning. Thank you for the clarification. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Vice Mayor. A couple questions about the area surrounding this property. So one is how close is this to the new hospital developments? so like is do you have like approximate mileage and for that location like the uk and the the new developments there we're just guessing five to six miles on that i'm just thinking of the relation of development of property where workforce is also growing that that's kind of where i'm going with that and then the other question i have about the area is we know that our cut project has not completed and hasn't started yet so are there pedestrian facilities there now or would be incorporated before that project is underway i'm thinking of access to the park across the street there are currently not any sidewalks or pedestrian walkways along richmond road or eighth and spoonsboro road historically our transportation cabinet did not provide those facilities on our arterial roadways especially if they had a rural cross section and as this was really outside of the urban service boundary for a number of years it it did not include any sidewalks with the arcot project a trail is planned and that would be constructed by the state when that is built and that would connect from the entrance the new entrance to jacobson park along athans boonesboro road to the intersection of hayes and then again pedestrian accommodations are included in that intersection improvement that would get you across athans boonesboro to the site and then within the property the applicant is responsible for is there a timeline for that project at this point there is um the currently approved project is set to go out to bid within within the next 12 months. Okay. I can add to that. I checked with the Department of Highways Friday and their legal department. They have been directed to proceed to obtain right-of-way and their direction is to move as quick as possible on it. I would add Mr. Anderson's development will not be built until the ARCUT is. And in the plan, as Ms. Wade mentioned to you, we connect our walkways to the walkway that is being provided by the state across the intersection and then up the north side of 8th and Spoonsboro Road to Jacobson Park. Thank you. And then I have a place builder question. for the areas we heard about for place builder what would we currently characterize as low to medium density because some in the expansion area master plan it mentions low to medium density what is what does that look like in place builder yeah so so the place builder is a little bit different right so a within regards to less of dwelling units and more of stories so typically planning staff's interpretation of that medium density is is generally in two to four stories so you've got in this development the commercial component is one stories ranging from the residential component up to four so staff in review found this to be medium density. Thank you and then I don't know if this can happen at the moment or if it can be put on the screen but before our deliberations I would like to see and for public viewing the other uses that can be in a community center zone because we're we're thinking of his own change overall we don't evaluate the development plan so we need to know what the possible uses are for that area too not just what we have maybe have talked about today thank you Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Legree. Thank you, Chair. I have a couple of questions and one is a follow-up on an inquiry of Councilmember Sheehan's. Thinking about some of the trails and the connectivity between this proposed area and adjacent areas, I believe in the presentation there was some discussion of either a sidewalk or a pathway to one of the other neighborhoods adjacent to this one. Are there any special permissions that would have to be granted for that to occur, or would that happen naturally? I'm asking. The applicants are showing on their development plan a sidewalk stub. They do not own the property across the road. It generally lines up with areas that I believe are under common ownership by the Ellerslie neighborhood, but they would not be able to complete that connection on their own. But they are showing that connection if Ellerslie wanted to connect in the future. Okay. Great. I think that type of connectivity is important. Then I also had a question about trees and buffering. Am I able to ask that? I know there's been some discussion of berms and the potential of planting trees on them. Can anybody talk to me about the overall vegetation management or vegetation plan for the property and other types of buffering? Because there have been some concerns brought forward about the tree canopy as well. So green space, trees. I'm Tony Barrett with Barrett Partners. I'm a landscape architect for the project. What was shown was the additional buffering, berming and the landscaping along the abandoned, what would be the abandoned Old Richmond Road. But we would have the current requirements of the zoning ordinance. that are recently increased so we've doubled the interior required landscaping for the parking lots we've increased the buffering around the parking lots and the zone to zone we really wouldn't have any zone to zone because we're we're an island basically other than where we but the old richmond road abandonment and then additional open space requirements just in general so we have not developed a specific landscape plan per se but we have pretty stringent requirements of trees and hedges around all the parking lots okay yes internal to the park and that's connected to some of our new open space space requirements with parking, I assume? Yes. In the canopy. Okay, thank you. All right, sure. And then, and perhaps this was covered and I missed it, but we've had a couple of comments about storm water management and mitigation. Is that something, a plan for that, does that occur later on in the development plan process? Okay, so that's not covered here in our discussion. But I imagine that stormwater management would be a big part of the next step if this were to proceed. There's a requirement. If you don't mind explaining that for the group, thank you. Yes, so what was approved by the Planning Commission is a preliminary development plan. It's a rougher, more conceptual plan that accompanies the zone change. In order to build or develop off of that plan, they are going to need to go back to the Planning Commission for a final development plan. That specifically lays out exactly what is built, shows the stormwater facilities, it makes sure that it's in agreement with all of the different agency sign-offs, and all of these different divisions, engineering, water quality, etc., will be required to be sign-offs in order for that plan to be proceeded and built. But that level of specificity is not included at this stage. Okay, and I would assume the same for sewage, for example. Okay. Yes. Great, thank you for that clarification. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My questions are for the staff. On the triangle diagram that we have, it shows the surrounding area a little bit. Can you describe the types of housing that are right around that area? There are some condos, is that right? So we've got all of this is single family residential of kind of various sizes and shapes. So you've got larger lot development located to the west along Ellerslie. That moves into, yeah. Yeah, so these, within the traditions, you've got individually lotted condos or townhomes, as well as within Ellerslie, there is also, So all of these are individually allotted, either single family, detached, or attached residential is the character of the area. So there are some attached townhomes? I believe so. Yes. Yes. Okay, so they're not all very large single lots. There is a variety of housing in that area. That is correct. Okay. And when you talk about the expansionary master plan, you were saying that that does not supersede place builder in your opinion? So the comprehensive plan kind of specifically spells that out. So they're both considered they should be in addition to, not in place of one another. So in making the recommendation that staff did, we reviewed not just the future land use element of the expansion area master plan, but also kind of the core components, the intents behind each of these areas, and how it was sort of relating with this development. So one doesn't supersede the other, but the combination thereof is what led staff and the planning commission to recommend approval to you all. And I think that's what's confusing for our residents. you know we're we have a comp plan that says that we need density and that we need housing but then we have different things that we've worked on over the years that say but it has to fit into the character of the neighborhood and so we kind of come into this clash and so i understand why residents are really upset and i also understand why we need these type of developments and we need housing. And I think that's the pickle that we've been in for a long time in Lexington, and I think it's playing out right now. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Vice Mayor. To follow up on Council Member Reynolds' questioning there, and this is partly for the law department and partly for our planning staff, and so you're both there. I'll just kind of so i i think i understand well the advice that's been given in the in the correlation between the uh ea emp and the comp plan but i want to make sure in our discussions we that i'm understanding the framework legally that i believe so when i read the comp plan and these references that are being made to the expansionary master plan i read that it should influence decisions but that does not say should control or mandate decisions would that be a fair assessment that's that's our interpretation yes and then it goes on to say that these considerations should be in addition to and not in place of place builder and that's been presented to us as if it's somehow superior but you it's your legal interpretation and that they should be looked together that place builder is a comp plan that has incorporated the expansion area master plan not that the expansion area master plan is a controlling document is that correct i think that is correct and the reason why is because they're both plans it's a comprehensive plan that incorporates the expansion area master plan and what you're asking to be cons to consider tonight is a zone change which is controlled about what you can ask for for the zone change and the zoning ordinance which is a whole different document. And so to determine based on that zoning ordinance, if the zone change being asked for, you have to look at the comprehensive plan, which includes the expansion area master plan. And I think it has been shown to you all tonight and previously in other decisions where interpreting those together, obviously some things have changed because their plans if if they reviewed more specifically they would the plans would would become the quote what you've heard from both these attorneys tonight and we hear frequently they would become straight jackets instead of plans well and that's and and and i've heard you say this to us many times of you represent us and you're going to give us the best advice and obviously these advocates are doing their job for their clients but then your advice is then that the comprehensive plan and the expansionary master plan are to be viewed together. Yes. And that the expansionary master plan does not supersede or control the comprehensive plan. Yes. And so then when we see reference to the expansionary master plan, opportunities to amend the expansionary master plan, I think it's policy, place making policy six then it's not your interpretation then that that is a requirement to development within the master plan or rezoning but perhaps that would be the comprehensive plan calling for amendment in and of itself that it's a critique that some of the things in the expansionary master plan need to be reviewed yes much like the process that you all just went through where you identified certain things as a matter of policy that you would like to have reviewed. So that's not either an endorsement or a mandate of the expansionary master plan, but perhaps a critique of opportunities to be made in amending the master plan, but not saying that it somehow controls the development zone changes. Yes, I think that's fair, but I think you do have to look at them in conjunction, which is what you're being asked to do tonight. I think that's what I'm getting to. So, earlier you said, we were saying that just because we have an expansionary master plan that has a future land use map, that the council, when that expansion was made and that master plan was adopted, chose not to actually give the zoning category that was expressed in that future land use map. Is that correct? and it's Ural's interpretation then both legally and from a staff academic planning perspective that that was done because there could future applicants should come forward and say what they think is the most appropriate use of the of the land within the comprehensive plan existing at that time. I think that's correct and I think that's reflected by the part of the zoning ordinance that says in order to have a zone in the expansion area, you have to choose one of these zones. But it gives a choice. So then I've got some other questions for the staff that I'll have to come back because my time is up. But just the last, at least for now, Tracy, to the legal department, based on the advice that you've just shared with us there, that was also the advice you shared with the planning commission and their evaluation. Is that correct? That is correct. And based on the findings of fact that incorporate that, those sorts of statements, you believe the Planning Commission took, that that is the advice that they took and that's what they do is to incorporate these findings of fact? I assume that is what they did, yes. Okay, thank you, Vice Mayor. I'll come back. Okay, thank you. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I know that once, this is for staff, I know that once a zone change is approved that there is another approval process for the final development plan and then there's an extensive technical committee review after that. What preliminary technical reviews are done before now? Yeah, so in order to make it to the Planning Commission for its preliminary review, it goes through that same process. So there was a technical committee that was attended. There was a subdivision committee comprised of a portion of the Planning Commission, and then it was reviewed by the entire planning commission. So it would follow that same process again for a final development plan and be subject to that same review. Okay, so it's fair to say that sewer ability has been looked at, that stormwater has been looked at, that environmental issues have been reviewed. All of these things, some of the items that we've heard concerns tonight, those have had an initial review to get to this point, correct? Some of those items are decided at the final development plan stage. So some of the specifics on where retention basins are located or some of the finer calculations are done at the time of final. But all of those agencies have been involved since the beginning of the process taking these preliminary looks. Okay. And then, Tracy, were you able to find the list of approved uses for a CC zone? Yes, but it is four or five pages. So it's not going to be easily put up on the overhead. So I wanted to just briefly maybe describe it before we shared it on the overhead. So the CC zone, as Daniel mentioned in his presentation, mandates residential, a residential component. So the minimum is 40%. percent and the applicant is closer square footage wise to 90 so they're mostly residential and that's true for quite a few of our well a few of our cc zones they tend to either be all residential or very close to all residential or very much the commercial end waiting for that residential component to come for instance costco and cabela's doesn't have its its residential component yet so it's a timing issue for those to come in whereas this cc proposed the one on hayes boulevard are primarily residential so that's just a clarification so in the zoning ordinance the cc zone refers back to our residential zones that are in that in the expansion area as well so the ea are one two and three are sort of the building blocks of our residential and they control density in the expansion area so the those underlying zones allow for single family two family multifamily and townhouse residential they allow for community residences golf courses religious assembly and schools for academic instruction then we jump into the cc zone which almost entirely mimics our neighborhood business zone so the b1 zone so you'll see restaurants retail the gas stations and convenience stores of retail um is the list of prohibited uses shorter um yeah you could just for you could just pass it around too so we could take a look at it but I think I heard someone say that hotels were prohibited use in a CC. Did I hear that correctly or am I making that up? They are not prohibited, but they are restricted size-wise. Size-wise, okay. Okay. And then I do have one question for the applicant as well. I know that you reduced your number of units overall. Was the plan to always have four-story apartment complexes and you just reduced the overall footprint, or did you change the configuration in some way? Dennis Anderson. We started out with all apartments, and after listening to some of the concerns, we decided we would step it up with the intensity of uses. And so we had to take some of the apartment buildings out to make room for townhouses, and in that we lost 50-some-odd units. I forget exactly. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Members, y'all asked a lot of questions that I would ask, so I appreciate that. Can you tell us how much community engagement you had with this development in the zone change? How intense and how responsive have you been to addressing the concerns of the surrounding communities? I made lots of offers. I didn't get a whole lot of engagement. We had one meeting which surrounding neighbors come in and hijack the meeting. I met with the president of Alversity for lunch at different times. I met with Mr. Matthew for lunch one day. That was productive. It was a positive meeting, but nothing came out of it. Well, thank you for that. I know when these zone changes are as contentious as they are, and there's a lot of passionate folks, I think we all appreciate the community engagement aspect and at least want to know that it's been an attempt made. I guess I got a question about the R cuts and the state's project going forward. Would the zoning request for this property be different if it wasn't the possibility of losing road access on one side? Would it be a more economically feasible development to go B1 as opposed to going CC? I mean, did losing that one road make it more sense to go for a community center? They can't ask for a B1 zone because they're in the expansion area. So CC and ED are the only two commercial zones available in the expansion area. Okay, okay. But in terms of feasibility. But I guess I'm just, yeah, I guess I'm wondering how losing that access to that road or that plan going forward went into the thought process of this type of development. For the applicant? Yeah. That's probably a unique question. We planned this. We were given the RCUT plans, and we planned our development with the assumption that the RCUT is going to be built. We were told it's on the way and may even start this spring on the RCUT development. So we've had to have, we used their plans to plan our property. As I mentioned, Mr. Anderson's not going to start until the RCUT is done. If the RCUT were never done, we'd probably have a similar development, but it may look a little different depending on where access points are and that sort of thing on it. So we would have to take another look. And if the ARCUD is not done, our final development plan might be arranged a little differently on it, but we'd have to see based on what happens on that. Okay. All right, thank you for that. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. This is a question for staff. So Ms. Wade or Mr. Crum. So I know we've talked about RCUT a few times, and RCUT is not on the table here, but it obviously does impact this development. Did I hear correctly that we are about to send out the RFP for it? Is that correct? Is that where we are on the project? Are you talking about the RCUT? Yeah, the RCUT. The RCUT project was contemplated and proceeded through the state office, so in Frankfurt as opposed to our District 7 office. And my understanding is it's been in process for several years. It's a highway safety improvement program project. And so they look for projects around the state to improve specifically safety of roads that have a lot of accidents and potential either property damage or injuries. So it's been in the process for a few years, and that's why the applicant was able to plan around it. They have approved it through the MPO last year or earlier this year, and it is scheduled to go out to bid in the spring. So they anticipate that those plans are already drawn. They're ready to build it. Is there a way to ballpark when that project will be completed? The NPO director told me yesterday that they anticipate it will take 18 months. 18 months from the time the bid comes back. The bid is accepted. Okay, so two years-ish? Yeah, we would anticipate it would be finished by the end of 2025. Okay, so did I hear correctly, Mr. Murphy? I'm trying to remember exactly what you said in relation to this project developing in relation to the RCUT finishing. Will you clarify that for me? We have to match. It's a great question. See, as I mentioned to you, Aphids Lane is being lowered. So we have to know, we have to match that. So we're going to have to wait until the state constructs that to do ours because we have to match that. I might add that we got a final copy of the RCUT plans. People talked about an RPO going out. Well, the plans are done, have been done in Frankfurt by the Highway Department. So they're done. The state is acquiring easements, has acquired some of the easements, and is acquiring the rest of them right now in anticipation of starting construction early next year. I just want to get a sense of timeline on that. And then either Mr. Crum or Ms. Wade, I want to get a little more clarity on this community-centered zone. you all said that it needs to be at least 40% residential, right? And this developer is planning on somewhere close to 90. Can it be 100% residential with no business? Okay. Yes. So early on in your presentations, we looked at some of the polo club areas and a couple of areas that were supposed to be zoned CC. And it seems like they have not fulfilled that requirement. What happens at that point? like is there any sort of accountability can we go like what happens I'll defer that one to Ms. Wade well our zoning ordinance does not have any particular timing mandate for the CC zones for those to be built but really that land as long as the zoning ordinance says there's a minimum residential acreage there's land reserved in those CC areas to be built for residential So the property owner, if they come in, the staff, the planning commission evaluates a project, does it agree with the zoning ordinance? And if the zoning ordinance still says there's a 40% minimum, they are not going to be allowed to continue to develop commercial. They'll have to hit the 40% minimum. Okay. So in theory, and I can't remember, it's a Rite Aid or a Walgreens or something out there, right? So in theory, if I had, I'm making up numbers here, if I was a developer, I had 100 acres, I'm in a CC. zone, I build, you know, commercial on 59% of it, and I leave that 40% alone, and I don't develop it. As long as I don't develop it as commercial, I'm still sort of not in violation or not in disagreement with the zone. Is that? That's correct. Is that correct? And the minute that I start into 61% commercial, then we have an issue. Well, that plan wouldn't get approved by the planning commission. It would, we would continue to hold up the land and really they, they evaluate square footages. So again, we want to encourage our residential to go up so we can have multi-story residential and then something more likely single story commercial in these areas. For me, I think I just wanted to get a sense of what that development plan versus what the future reality looks like and whether or not it fits into the zone that it is, you know, applied and approved for. And we did add the CC zone list to the overhead, but it continues on to page two as well. All right. Thank you. That's all for me. Council Member Floman. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I know this isn't about the arc huts, but I just wanted to tell you that it's also proposed for Winchester Road and Richmond Road. But there was a meeting on Friday with Transportation Secretary Jim Gray, and there might be more pause to that. But we'll see. And I do have some more statements, but I'll wait until you close. Thank you. Do we have, from Council, do we have any more questions from any of our presenters? Okay. I want to make sure that I didn't misspeak earlier. We're not going to close session. We are closing the hearing, which means we're not taking or asking any more questions. We're going to deliberate right here still in public. So if there are no more questions or comments from Council, I will declare this hearing closed. From this point on, no further evidence can be taken. Council will deliberate on the evidence we've heard so far, and at some point I will entertain motions for findings of fact and then the underlying ordinance. So, Council Members, if you wish to speak, I'll open the floor. Please sign in. Council Member Plowman. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I do want to thank everybody that is here tonight and for speaking. And you are passionate, and rightfully so. I will also add that it's not just the 12th District that's passionate about this. It is our whole community. We need to look at the big picture. With that said, I would refer back to Mr. Simpson's sharing of information in regards to the process. And I think it's very important for us to all realize, and I've watched this the past seven years that I've been in council, the escalation, the increase of the number of zone changes that we are asked for. And that's because it's simpler than to wait. Mr. Murphy, you alluded to that, maybe one year or whatever these years are. But it is a shortcut to be able to get a zone change than to go back and to amend. So I wanted to point that out. I'm not a land use attorney by any means, but I understood what you said, and I hope that my colleagues also can see what was you trying to bring across. I think also we need to keep in mind that this is a gateway, our city of Lexington to our rural area. And it's very important. I see this area, the Phelps area, should serve more as a buffer. I think about the noise pollution. I think about the light pollution. I think about the traffic. And in mine and a lot of other folks in our community, we don't need that type of development in that area. It's bigger than just about this one development. It's about what we're doing. It's an encroachment on the rural area. And when does it stop? And when is it enough? Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. If we don't have anyone else signed in, I'm going to share a few words. Council Member Worley, go ahead. Okay, thank you. I feel like in this city, our biggest, most contentious issue is always land use. It's been that way for decades. And I think we've spent way, way too much time on a question of expansion versus infill. It's always been couched that way. It's always been one or the other. When people suggest expansion, there's a lot of resistance from it, for it. When we suggest infill, there's a lot of resistance against it as well. for me I'm not an either or kind of guy when it comes to this issue I'm about doing both and I'm about doing them both in a really smart way sustainable way thoughtful way with a lot of input and a lot of safeguards so for me that's how I'm going to judge either each project or each idea is are we putting in all those safeguards are we talking about jobs are we talking about our tax base? Are we talking about more density, missing middle housing, all these factors, not do we want to do it at all? So for me, I want to judge every case as we're doing right now on its merits. Yeah. Council Member Baxter. You're going to have more to say, Vice Mayor. I thought I did too. You do. You're just going to wait. Okay, I have a few thoughts here. My first thought is that, plain and simple, this is an infill project within the urban services area. And so I'm a smidge frustrated that we're having such a hard discussion about it. It seems pretty common sense to me. I hear that this is a doorway to the rural community, but in actuality, this property has frontage on a major corridor in Lexington, and it's a doorway to Lexington, not just to the rural community, which is obviously very important. But, you know, in 1996, our council thought that this area should be in the expansion area. and here we are 27 years later still talking about a piece of property that's inside the urban services area that hasn't been developed. And yes, I heard Mr. Todd earlier say that Lexington is watching. Yeah, they are watching. They're begging us for more housing and we can't provide it because we're constantly met with opposition. So that's very frustrating to me. Um, finally, I take a little bit of, actually I take a lot of bit of offense, um, to the inference that I personally might vote in a way that I can't defend. I really do. Um, I won't be intimidated by anyone in this community. and I vote with a clear mind and knowledge and forethought for the future of Lexington as a whole and not just this minute in time. So I hope that my colleagues can vote with the same forethought as we consider my children's future in this community and everybody's future in this community. That's all I have to say for right now. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you to all the neighbors and community members that came out today and shared your thoughts, expressed your concerns. I remember one of the first emails I got about the zone change asking for another hearing is that folks shared that they didn't feel like they got heard or their voices were heard at the Planning Commission meeting. I hate that that happened. I'm sorry that you felt that way. But hopefully you've had the opportunity to share your thoughts and concerns with this body here as we make a decision going forward. And just because we may either agree or not agree with your position, please don't take it as not being heard. I mean, that's why we want to hear what you have to say. I think other council members that have signed up and some that have already spoken have spoken about housing. Housing is a real need in this community. Every issue that we talk about and have to deliberate almost every day has something to do with housing. And the fact that this development is proposing market rate housing in a development that I know we're not supposed to consider the development, but I think it's the development plan or the proposal that's in front of us looks like it takes a lot of things into consideration. And I think that's the viewshed of Richmond Road. We talk often about the way we grow and the way we develop in this community. We can't just do it in broad strokes. We have to do it with a scalpel. And this looks like this is a scalpel approach on this development and thoughtful. There were also comments tonight about myself and at large council members and representing the whole community. And in representing the whole community, we have to have the foresight and look forward to what this community is going to look like in years ahead. And I think providing housing opportunities and I think also being considerate of all the things that make Lexington great is what we're charged to do and how I make decisions going forward. So, Vice Mayor, thank you for that, and I'm interested in seeing what other council members have to say. Thank you. Council member Sheehan. Good night. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I also want to thank everyone who came to speak with us today. I think it is a very important piece of this process is to hear from folks who are in the area and residents in our community about issues around planning and development like this. I also want to say and point out that the applicant for this zone change is here and has been listening to all the concerns and the development plan hasn't been finalized. I think there's still time for some conversation and he has been willing to engage in those conversations. So I would encourage the neighborhood to talk with him more and to take him up on the invitations that have been offered. For me when it when I'm thinking about this area and the zone change overall and and the comprehensive plan that has been extensively discussed tonight, one of the biggest critiques that we heard through comprehensive plan process was that the expansion area from 1996 had not been developed. So for me to hear that critique but then to not allow for development in that expansion area when we've heard so much from the community that that is what we are looking for, it would be inconsistent. So and I think some of the people who even spoke today also provided that argument for not doing another expansion because this area was available so i do um i do think this expansion area is um and and this zone is going to be appropriate here it meets the community needs i know we're not reviewing the development plan but i i am encouraged by the community center zone requiring at least 40 housing because we've had extensive conversations around housing as well. So taking into account all of the information that we heard from the community around the comprehensive plan and the discussion around expansion at that time, I will be supporting this zone change for this community center, particularly with the housing and particularly with the need for use of that 1996 expansion area. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Vice Mayor. As I start my reflections on this zone change, I think I'd first say one of the hardest parts of this job that we all know is to see friends, constituents, supporters, and then tell them something that your position on an issue that you know is not what they want to hear or that they disagree with. And I look in the room, I see friends here that I've known since college. Mr. Simpson, I've been friends. We used to be law partners. I respect all of you immensely, and I know that many of you have serious concerns about the issue. And so it's hard to say that I disagree with you. But the reality is, for many of you, what you all have said here, since 1996, this land has been identified for development. It is already partially zoned to do a more offensive version of the commercial space, part of the commercial space that is proposed. Here, by right, a gas station can be built on the property right now. The land is partly identified as agriculture land, though identified as part of the urban services area for 30 years. That's inherently incongruent. It cannot be designated as urban in nature and stay agriculture. our policies for infill and redevelopment would say all available infill land needs to be developed and while this is on the outskirts this is infill land and this is an infill project though our policies for infill and redevelopment would typically push towards more density and heavier development here that i don't think would respect my neighborhood i live in ellerslie And I think that this project serves the purpose of providing more housing, more services within the urban services area while respecting a neighborhood. As it's proposed, it gives over 300 feet of buffer between structures. There's landscaping proposed. But I will say we have a developer here who is a local developer who also owns land and lives in the area nearby. and we've seen the work that he's done in our community and he keeps his word and we we ask developers to make concessions we ask them to work with neighbors and to make changes and he has made a 26 unit reduction in this plan has changed his plan around to avoid those things that were considered to be potentially offensive at the subdivision committee stages and zoning committee stages that are planning commission that's what we ask our developers to do so i hate to tell friends and constituents that i don't agree with them it's not that i didn't hear them because i certainly did but i will say we need housing in our community and housing of all type and particularly workforce housing when you think of police fire teachers people that may be going to Richmond to work. All of those things make sense to me and those sorts of renters and residents also deserve to live in our end of town. And so I think this is a good project as proposed and as difficult as it may be, I think it's appropriate and I'll be supporting it. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Legree. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for being here with us for many hours this evening. I think we're all here not only as representatives but as community members because we care about the quality of life within our community. We care about the future of Lexington and we care about meeting the needs of our community while maintaining the character. I represent probably the the most dense district in Lexington and I also care a lot about environmental issues. And so when I've been thinking this evening for the last several hours about this proposal, I mean, I do have a sense of, some sense of conflict. But I think that that conflict would exist in a lot of different spaces when it comes to the idea of, you know, the ecosystems that are potentially disrupted or soil degradation or light pollution. You know, and I'm not a huge I'm a huge fan of gas stations, though I do use them, like most people in this room. And so, when I've been thinking about all these things, I've also been considering themes that some of my colleagues have also brought up tonight. And themes that we've talked a lot about over the past couple of months, especially when it comes to infill. A lot of what we heard from people around the comprehensive plan, not just 2023 but also 2018 was this idea that there was acreage within the urban service area from 1996 that had not been developed. And then we also heard many, many points made to us about the need for housing and for mixed use developments and considerable developments that met people's needs when it comes to a place to live and a place to rent. But also incorporated green space, pedestrian access, and other types of connectivity. And so when I think about this, even though as Council Member Worley mentioned, it's in a different part of town, not the part that I represent. I do believe that this is an infill project. And I think when infill projects occur, sometimes there are challenges and sometimes there's discomfort. And I know that that can be uncomfortable. And whenever we make decisions around land use, there are always a series of trade offs. There's a trade off of what we have right now and what we know and then what is in front of us and what's being presented. And we try to make the best decision possible and that doesn't make everyone happy. But I want you to know that we have been listening. but that ultimately I am going to be in support of this project as well. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Vice Mayor. As we sit here, by the way, thank you all for sitting four hours with us. I feel like we've grown as family. Just to make you smile. So, began four hours ago, we were told, you're new. This might be too hard for you to understand. I think we understand quite well. Several months ago, when we were talking about the expansion of Lexington, several of you in this room got up before us and said don't expand focus on infill you said it you said it this right here is infill we're actually doing what you asked when you got up here several months ago and said let's let's focus on infill. We're doing the job that you actually asked us to do. And the decisions that we make are not easy. That's why you elected us to make those hard decisions. Everyone's not going to like what we do. Heck, sometimes we don't like what we have to do. But we ran for office to make the hard decisions for all Lexingtonians, for the present and for the future. I heard many of you all say something that somewhat bothers me. I heard, it's not the right time. Let's see, build elsewhere. let's see it's not the right time again build it someplace else it that was as i was taking notes and i take lots of notes because i went to law school um that's what i do that was a it was a narrative that was repeated and no longer can we as Lexingtonians say, build it elsewhere. Because everybody's saying, build it elsewhere. So we need to come back with something different. Where we're thinking of all Lexingtonians. I'm going to have to side with approval. Because we cannot continue to say, build elsewhere. And let's wait. It's not right. Time's not right. Because the time will never be right. It will never be in your neighborhood that you want it to be. But sometimes it's going to have to be in your neighborhood. Because the future of Lexington, at this point, it will be in our neighborhoods. And we just have to work together and be open to listening to the developers and the residents together, working together. And I heard Mr. Anderson mention that he had hearings or meetings that were taken over by some residents. I don't know if it's true. I see heads shaking. This is a time now to talk peacefully because things are changing, and we want it to change for the better, and we don't want to fight one another. There is a way for us all to get something out of this that we want. There is a way. It's all in how we look at it. But I just want to say that we can no longer stay someplace else, somewhere over there across town. We can't do it. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments from council? All right, so we're going to entertain two motions, one at a time. first we have to talk about the regarding the findings of facts so at this time I will entertain a motion regarding findings of fact either a motion to adopt the Planning Commission's findings of fact or to determine new findings of fact we have a motion to um will you be clear on what you're moving to do since I just gave out two options to accept the Planning Commission's Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, we have a second from Council Member Baxter. Any discussion on this motion? Please sign in if you do. All right, seeing no discussion, Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Could you just go over, because there's always, make sure in the affirmative, just on how the voting goes, because in this one, we will be accepting what the Planning Commission said, so you'd be voting in the affirmative? Yes. When you are adopting what the Planning Commission says, or what they adopted as their finding is yours, then you would be voting in favor of that, and then that would be an approval on the ordinance as well when you get to that. Okay. Everybody clear on that point? Okay. Clerk, can we have a roll call vote, please? Council Member Ellinger? Yes. Council Member Elliot Baxter? Yes. Council Member Gray? Yes. Council Member Legree? Yes. Council Member Minares? Yes. Council Member Plowman? No. Council Member Reynolds? Yes. Council Member Sheehan? Yes. Council Member Worley? Yes. Vice Mayor Wu? Yes. Council member Fred Brown? Yes. Council member James Brown? Yes. Thank you. All right, thank you. Now that we have adopted the, that motion carries, now that we have adopted the planning commission's findings of fact, we will need a motion on to approve the underlying ordinance. Can I have a motion? So moved. Second. Motion from Council Member Baxter, seconded by Council Member Menares. Any discussion on this motion? Okay, seeing none, clerk, can I have a roll call vote, please? Council Member Ellinger? Yes, ma'am. Council Member Elliott Baxter? Council Member Gray? Yes. Council Member Legree? Yes. Council Member Menares? Yes. Council Member Plowman? Council Member Reynolds? Yes. Council Member Sheehan? Yes. Council Member Worley? Yes, ma'am. Vice Mayor Wu? Yes. Council Member Fred Brown? Yes. Council Member James Brown? Yes. Thank you. All right, thank you. That's the end of our business. We are adjourned. Thank you all. Thank you.