# Planning Commission Zoning Items Subcommittee - June 6, 2024 > Auto-transcribed civic record · June 6, 2024 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6132 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6132?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2024-06-06 - **Last revised**: June 6, 2024 - **Length**: 20,339 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Zoning Committee met on June 6, 2024, at 1:30 p.m. in the Phoenix Building, 3rd Floor Conference Room. The committee addressed four agenda items during the meeting. Three items—PLN-MAR-24-00007 (Kurt R. Volk Exempt Family Share Trust), PLN-MAR-24-00008 (3743 Freedom, LLC), and PLN-MAR-24-00009 (New Republic Architecture)—were postponed. The committee approved one item: PLN-ZOTA-24-00004 regarding the regulation of outdoor lighting. The committee took four motions and votes during the meeting and heard no public comments. ## Votes and Decisions **Postponement of PLN-MAR-24-00007: KURT R. VOLK EXEMPT FAMILY SHARE TRUST** [timestamp: 1:28:58] Mr. Forrester moved to postpone this item, seconded by Mr. Davis. The motion passed unanimously. **Postponement of PLN-MAR-24-00008: 3743 FREEDOM, LLC** [timestamp: 1:43:55] Mr. Wilson moved to postpone this item, seconded by Mr. Forrester. The motion passed unanimously. **Postponement of PLN-MAR-24-00009: NEW REPUBLIC ARCHITECTURE** [timestamp: 1:57:23] Mr. Forrester moved to postpone this item. The motion passed unanimously. **Approval of PLN-ZOTA-24-00004: REGULATION OF OUTDOOR LIGHTING** [timestamp: 2:15:07] Mr. Wilson moved to approve the regulation of outdoor lighting. The motion passed unanimously. This approval includes the inclusion of lighting standards for A-R, A-B, and A-N zones. ## Contested Items **PLN-MAR-24-00009: New Republic Architecture** A heated discussion arose regarding the appropriateness of single-family residential development in a downtown corridor. The central disagreement focused on whether the proposed development aligned with density requirements and planning objectives for the area. Participants debated the need for increased density in the downtown corridor, with differing perspectives on how the single-family residential component fit within broader urban development goals. The contested item involved questions about land use compatibility and development intensity in a downtown location, where density considerations typically play a significant role in planning decisions. ## PLN-MAR-24-00007: KURT R. VOLK EXEMPT FAMILY SHARE TRUST This agenda item addressed a petition for a zone map amendment affecting property located at 8200 Tates Creek Road. The proposal sought to rezone 144.14 net acres from an Agricultural Rural (A-R) zone to an Agricultural Buffer (A-B) zone. Daniel Crum presented on this matter [timestamp: 0:01:10]. The item was postponed and did not proceed to a final decision at this meeting. ## PLN-MAR-24-00008: 3743 FREEDOM, LLC [timestamp: 1:30:36] This agenda item addressed a petition to modify the Conditional Zoning Restriction for the property at 3743 Red River Drive. The proposed modification would increase the allowable square footage from 60,000 to 80,000 square feet. Daniel Crum presented on this matter. The item was postponed and did not proceed to a final decision at this meeting. ## PLN-MAR-24-00009: NEW REPUBLIC ARCHITECTURE [timestamp: 1:45:07] This agenda item addressed a petition for a zone map amendment affecting properties at 226, 228, and 232 W Maxwell Street. The petition seeks to rezone the parcels from Neighborhood Business (B-1) zone to Medium Density Residential (R-4) zone. Daniel Crum presented on this matter. The discussion item was postponed and did not proceed to a final decision at this meeting. ## PLN-ZOTA-24-00004: REGULATION OF OUTDOOR LIGHTING This agenda item addressed a text amendment to create Article 30 of the Zoning Ordinance to establish comprehensive outdoor lighting regulations. [timestamp: 2:02:53] **Presentation and Discussion** Daniel Crum presented the proposed ordinance amendment, which would introduce new standards for outdoor lighting within the jurisdiction. **Outcome** The regulation of outdoor lighting ordinance was approved. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — postponed (0-0): Postponement of PLN-MAR-24-00007: KURT R. VOLK EXEMPT FAMILY SHARE TRUST - **Motion** — postponed (0-0): Postponement of PLN-MAR-24-00008: 3743 FREEDOM, LLC - **Motion** — postponed (0-0): Postponement of PLN-MAR-24-00009: NEW REPUBLIC ARCHITECTURE - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of PLN-ZOTA-24-00004: REGULATION OF OUTDOOR LIGHTING --- ## Full transcript Today is June 6th, and this is the zoning committee. We do have a request to go slightly out of order for a postponement request. Mr. Gross? Dave, if you want to give an update. I'll show you. I have. First, Mr. Chair, thank you very much. I asked if they could possibly have the solar update first so I can then leave rather than sit here afternoon. Appreciate your indulgence very much. So staff is still looking and working through the text. We've been in communication with the applicants. So we are still kind of well into that process. So there won't be any new updates today for the solar energy system. So as we start to develop that text and sort of work towards that process, we will be sure to bring this back to the committees. but no new information at this time. All right. Thank you, Daniel. Then we can proceed as stated. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Daniel Crum, planning staff. The first item on our agenda is a rezoning request, MAR2407. This is a request by the Curt R. Volk Exempt Family Share Trust. This is relating to land out at 8200 Tate's Creek Road. So this is a large parcel within the rural service area, approximately 144 acres in size. The applicant is seeking to rezone the property from AR, its current designation, to Agricultural Buffer AB. This is being sought in order to divide up the parcel into a total of 13 lots. These lots are going to range from approximately 10 to 20 acres in size, but the applicant is seeking this rezoning as the minimum acreage in the AR zone is 40. So the applicant, as you'll note, is not showing any type of argument where they are in agreement with Place Builder. This is located within the rural service area, and so it's subject to the rural lane management plan, so we will dive into that directly. But to orient ourselves here, the subject property is this large parcel shown in white. This is Tates Creek Road as you're heading out to the very, very edge of the county. On the western portion of Tates Creek Road actually is Jessamine County. So this is directly adjoining the neighboring county. The subject property itself is zoned AR. The surrounding parcels share this designation. There is some AB zoning further north that was done as part of the Tallon Estates. So there's been several rezonings in that immediate vicinity towards the AB zone. And then there is a small portion of B1 zoning that is at the corner of Tades Creek and Spears Road. Historically, that has been a location where commercial activity has occurred. So that's sort of a longstanding commercial area. But everything else is zoned AR, subject to the Rural Land Management Plan. Here, you have a view of the subject property. Historically, it contained a single-family residence here, as well as a sprinkling of agricultural structures. However, the topography and the vegetation in this area don't necessarily lend the entirety of the parcel to farming. So it looked like historically some hay production was taking place in this portion of the site. However, that agricultural process has not really carried over. It looks like the property has been somewhat overgrown within recent years. This is a map that shows the Rural Land Management Plan's land use recommendation. So the Rural Land Management Plan is a map-based plan, and so this tan kind of color that you see here is buffer land use. This intent behind those areas was to provide a buffer from Jessamine County, where the land uses were held to a different standard, would allow for more intense development. The Rural Land Management Plan really was looking to create a land use that would buffer sort of the larger traditional agricultural operations. So in order to do that, they allowed for some smaller lot sizes. So residential development as low as 10 acres per parcel is allowed. And this generally follows the path of Tates Creek Road. There's approximately a 2,000 or so foot buffer that more or less follows Tates Creek Road. Most of the subject property contains this designation, but you'll notice this portion in green here, totaling about 20 acres or so, is recommended for core agricultural land. This is the standard land use throughout the county. These are our 40-acre lot size, our actual agricultural production. So unlike a lot of the parcels in the area, this one has a split designation. It's worth noting that this portion of the property is not large enough to be 40 acres to kind of meet that requirement. This kind of, I guess, teal color would be the natural areas recommendation. So separate from the buffer and really advocates for keeping the existing natural features. So once again, there are a couple different areas of buffer areas, but this is specifically adjacent to Jessamine County seeking to kind of provide a buffer between land uses or more intense development that may upset the agricultural development that would be kind of indicative of core agricultural land. Here we have a view of the subdivision plan. So this is, once again, does not require a development plan. So rather they are showing the proposed division of the parcels. A total of 13 split between Spears Road here and Tates Creek Road as well. So each of these is approximately 10 acres in size, with the largest being this northernmost parcel, which is slightly under 20. This lotting pattern is actually not out of character for existing lotting patterns on Spears Road. The two parcels that are not a part of this request here are under that size, or under the 20 acres, as well as development further up Spears. So this is sort of an area that has a context of existing lotting patterns that match kind of what the applicant is looking to do, match sort of the character of agricultural buffering zoning. And so staff is recommending approval at this time. We find that it's agreement with a comprehensive plan talking about upholding the urban service area concept. So this is development that is in keeping with what the rural land management plan is calling for. We find that it's largely and substantially in agreement. The majority of the parcel is recommended for the buffer zoning that the applicant is asking for. That small piece, which is sort of an outlier due to the shape of the property, is recommended for that core agricultural land. However, the size, topography, and context of that area really matches AB in a buffer type of situation more effectively. And so staff is recommending approval. It will provide consistency with existing lotting pattern. It will provide buffering for the actual kind of larger scale agricultural operations as you go further in away from Tate's Creek Road. And we find that this recommendation is made subject to the approval of the corresponding subdivision plan that you just took a look at. So staff would be happy to entertain any questions you have at this time, but we are recommending approval. Thank you, Daniel. Are there any questions? Mr. Wilson? I don't think it's necessarily a question, but I think you answered it. I mean, we're trying to get away from this large acreage, 10 acres and what have you, but you're saying that this was already existing, So that's the reason why we're allowing this to take place. So if we look at, let's see if we can get an idea. So 40 acres is the minimum lot size for the AR zone. So if this, in a perfect situation, every one of the parcels here in the section here would be at least 40 acres. This is existing development from when that acreage requirement was lower. They all meet the minimum of a 10-acre size. So essentially the character of this section here is outside of the character of normal 40-acre development, and this is sort of matching that in intensity. So what we're doing is grandfathering this in. Well, this would still be a new change because the subject property has met the requirements, but this is really making the determination that it's in compliance with the rural land management plan's intent to buffer this area using as low as 10-acre lots. I would refer you to page two of the staff report where it shows the shaded area as buffer area, and that comes straight from the Rural Land Management Plan as a recommendation for a different land use. So we have the C-A-L land use, which is core agricultural land, and that's where that lines up with our AR zone. And then this buffer area, this is one of them. We have a few other areas that are recommended for this as well. It buffers between the core agricultural land and Jesmond County. We have it recommended on DeLong. We have it recommended on Cane Break here. Okay. And then up along Hume Road. So some of our expansion area that we're looking at will encompass some of that land and so that land use won't recommendation will kind of Go away with those changes, but this area Has been recommended for this buffer since 1999. Okay. Thank you Any other questions yes, sir Well, it's half a question and half a comment. It seems like the rural land management component to the comprehensive plan is clear in that it's a buffer and that 10 acre lot is a lower minimum in this area. We've also recently adopted a comprehensive plan that looks at the county comprehensively with a lot of environmental goals, density goals, residential goals, agricultural preservation goals, which seem to be at odds with further residential 10-acre lot subdivision. How are those goals analyzed through this prism? Yeah, so really the overarching, the comprehensive plan still, I mean, while these goals are still present and are still things we're working toward, really direct land outside of the urban service boundary to sort of refer back to this particular plan. So the rural land management was really the primary kind of guise and lens we looked at with this. Obviously, it is a little bit older. These core recommendations were from 1999, and so we've updated the comprehensive plan more recently than that. There are still goals, objectives, policies that do relate kind of to development being in keeping with what we kind of intended with the rural land management plan. But as a whole, we really looked at it more through that lens, you know, understanding that to meet some of the comprehensive plan goals, objectives may take revisiting this kind of at a future date. But that's sort of what you juggle when we're looking at kind of multiple plans. So really the recommendations of the 2017 Rural Land Management Plan and its land use element was really what we honed in on in this. Thank you, Daniel. Anyone else? I read the 2017 Rural Land Management Plan this morning, and I guess for me, before I could be a yes, I would want some institutional history on the AB. Like Robin, I mean, 10-acre tracks, it's such a poor division or use of the asset, the natural resource. So I think that's just where I am with it right now. I just need some history. I read the plan, but I want to see just where that really came from. and maybe talk to some people, maybe the Rural Land Management Board, people who were around at the time. Does anybody have anything else? I guess I'd like to know what next steps would be to prevent our having to defer to the Rural Land Management Plan in cases like this in the future. I mean, this could go on and on and on. and it just seems counter to the comprehensive plan, goals of the comprehensive plan. I think we have to remember that the goals of the comprehensive plan are twofold. They're urban-oriented, but then also rural. There's some that are rural-oriented. So we try to keep those apart. We're looking for density, but not in the rural service area, right? We're looking to protect that land. And I think in 1999 and then again in 2017, the Rural Land Management Board concluded that there was some compromise for this edge piece, recognizing that the edges we do for our urban service area are often a hard edge, right? The density goes right up to the edge, and then on the other side, it's farmland. And this recognizes that the edge we're adjacent to, we don't have any control over in Jessamine County. And their subdivisions have been five-acre tracks or mobile home park and some other things that maybe aren't compatible. And so this gives the opportunity for those landowners to find a different land use just for a very small portion of our rural area to be somewhere in the middle. It's not like Desmond County, but it's also not the 40-acre tracks. So I don't think we should ignore the Rural Land Management Plan, and it's important for that land. I'm not saying you want to ignore it, but I don't know that we can't apply all the urban goals to the rural land either. Not sure if that's what you're implying. And it seems like that the comprehensive plan should be thinking comprehensively and that the general goals of meeting housing needs and increasing density, that there should be a way of treating agricultural lands and agricultural buffer zones in such a way that you're not wasting agricultural land, potential agricultural land, and you're also meeting some of the general goals about environmental and other issues. All righty. Thank you, Daniel. Is the applicant here with us today? Good afternoon. Normally Nick Nicholson would stand in front of you, but he's out of town, so I get to be here. One thing from Daniel's written statement is that we had not turned in anything for the neighborhood meeting. On May 21st, Nick had an online meeting for everyone that was on that mailing list. He had three people in attendance. One person wanted to buy it, one person wanted to be the realtor, and the other one was an interested neighbor. I don't believe there was much meaningful discussion coming out of those three. I kind of like your questions. That was interesting on this. I think, again, not being the lawyer, but do the comprehensive goals, are they goals, And then is the plan a more, I guess, codified document as we think about this? But other than that, I'm just here answering questions. All righty. Any questions? Just a comment about it, because I had marked it down as a question about it. And I think when the reports come, for example, when we get to the June meeting, I suppose, and you'll have that information about the number of people who were in attendance and who they were and all that. Yeah, Nick will have all that. He'll have all that information. Because one of the things, we got into this place building, I think this was one of the most key pieces of the foundational cornstone to future development, is making sure the communities were involved. But if we ask the communities and they don't show up, I think this just needs to be documented that they did. That's all. Thank you. All righty. anything else thank you thank you do we have any Commissioner discussion seeing none the floor is open for a motion are we pushing this off or we want to get a motion you got one two three possibly three that's about the rural land management piece I'm just curious I know you asked for discussion, but it was part of your question. Speaking for myself, I'm not at approval yet. I'm at postponement, but that's just me. It's kind of a... I mean, this is my two cents, and I just see a conflict. I think the way that I read it is this is a remainder of a compromise when they banned 10-acre lots. And they said, well, if you're on the Jessamine County line, who gives a crap about Jessamine County? And they can have the 10-acre lots. We'll let that little strip. And then, you know, down the road, we've done a lot of thinking over our agricultural resources and the environmental resources, and we look at those slopes. We see trees. We see streams. We see a lot of environmental amenities. We see large tracts of land in the rural area. We have changed our thinking in the comprehensive plan on residential areas going up against farmland, thinking about more density adjacent to farmland. This remnant of this compromise doesn't seem logical today in the context of the broader comprehensive plan. I don't, I, I, I, so, I mean, frankly, I'm conflicted between what I see the comprehensive plan pointing us to and what the staff is correctly sort of interpreting through the rural land management plan. So it's not that I, like, disagree with their interpretation on the rural land management plan. But it seems to me that I would, I mean, personally, I would prefer to vote for postponement or no recommendation. I will say, since Tom's not here, I'll share with the subdivision committee. He went homesick. So the subdivision committee did have a discussion this morning about access, pretty serious discussion. Will you go back to the subdivision plan? There was staff has expressed concern, and then the subdivision committee agreed. The plan shows 13 lots. All 13 of those lots are proposed to have frontage along existing public streets, so along Tates Creek on this side and then Spears on the southeast side. But if you've driven Tates Creek Road as you get closer to the river, you know it's windy and it's narrow and adding one two three four five six seven seven access points on tates creek road and another six on spears road could could cause some you know traffic conflicts so we and there's also a floodplain on the northeast portion of the land So they generally talked about are there opportunities to consolidate driveways, do a shared access season along the front so that we don't have as much land or access points along those roads. And with that, we also briefly talked about is there an opportunity for a public street? Yes. but the developer or the owner is not interested in building a public street but rather to subdivide in accordance with the AV zone. So those were some of the things that we talked about this morning, and although the staff had recommended approval, the subdivision committee did recommend postponement as well. So I think they're seeing it from a different side, but similar concerns. Well, I mean, looking at the, for me, looking at the Talon, The fact that they did have that road, it made a difference when we voted on that. And, yes, I mean, I drive out there all the time, and it can sometimes be very dangerous. Again, the floor is open. Mr. Wilson? One of the things, I don't particularly mind a motion of postponement, but the conflict that I have is any time we postpone something, I like to know specifically what it is we want the staff to do or what it is specifically we want the developer to do so that that can be taken care of. But to simply postpone with no direction is conflicting to me, I guess is my point. Did the early morning group give you some directions as to what? Yes, they're looking for the applicant to look at access and access controls and merging those access points. And then, Mr. Chairman, is it something that you wanted the rural family plan to be presented to us as a body? What was your? I wanted just to see some institutional origins of how this came about, what the intent was, because there are people still around that know why this was done the way it was, and I just think it's important to have some of that input, too. Okay. Then, Mr. Chairman, is it appropriate to ask the staff then to provide that historical documentation for us? Sure. Okay, good. Sure, we can invite the Rural Land Management Board members to attend, or if they want to submit written statements. Does that come back to this committee, or will we take it on to the group? Well, in my opinion, I think this is, of course, left up to the chair, because I think he was making the point that he personally didn't like it, wanted to have more. And the more he talked about it, the more I said, yeah, I think he's right, it would be good for this committee. but it might be good for the entire commission. I'm thinking my recommendation would be for the entire commission. I agree. I agree. Not just the six of us. I agree with that. And also, I mean, I think we'd all agree right now that we're not in love with it the way that it is. But I also don't want to just drag on forever. So there should be some kind of a time frame as to when we want to wrap this up one way or the other, just be done with it. Well, the Commission only has 90 days, so they're entitled to a hearing before the 90 days out, unless they agree to postponing, so there is a time limit in essence. Can I ask a specific question? In the staff recommendation or analysis, I would be interested in hearing the buffer concept framed also in the context of the comprehensive plan, because what is still, I think, conflicting in my mind is we're saying, well, Nicholasville might develop 5 or 10-acre lots on its side, so we'll allow 5 or 10-acre lots on this side. But here with the urban service boundary, we might be developing high density adjacent to 40-acre tracks. So why, you know, 40-acre minimum. So why on this border, we're good with density adjacent to regular AR, and on this border, we want to buffer it. It being another county doesn't intuitively make sense. The use makes more sense as the justification for the buffer. Thank you. Hold on, please. Just a moment. People are still speaking. I guess I'm wondering if it seems like staff's recommendation is based on pretty clear procedural interpretations that make perfect sense. I guess I'm wondering if you can see a potential route to another recommendation given answers to some of the questions that we're raising and digging in further, or if you think that procedurally you're kind of locked into the recommendation that we've already looked at. I do think we're a bit locked in. other um the jessamine county does do some cluster development i mean we could propose a different style of development on those on this acreage and try to guide them towards that or using a public street but i think the minimum 10 acre tracks is what our land use plan has recommended for 25 years and that's what they're applying for so the question at hand is is this an agreement with with the comprehensive plan, and that's our analysis says yes. So why hasn't that recommendation or that guideline from 1999 been questioned and updated in the interim? It was updated in 2017, and the same guideline was reiterated. So now that plan is... You're saying I'm responsible. Somebody in 2017 adopted it and said it was still appropriate at that location. Going to make a motion for postponement. Are we good? All right. So I'd like to make a motion for postponement of PLNMAR 24-7. And based on the conversations we've had with staff, bringing back some information that we have presented during this meeting. Second. Thank you, Mr. Forrester and Mr. Davis. Any discussion to that motion? For clarity, I heard three things. We wanted a historical perspective, access, perhaps what was given, and some review of the comprehensive plan in light of other things. Along those lines, Ms. Wade, did I hear you say something about maybe inviting someone from the rural to come in and talk to us a little bit to figure out what it is that they had in mind when they kept the 2017 plan in light of all the other things that were going on? Sure. We can invite them to the hearing, and either they can attend in person or send Beth Overman, their director, or send something in writing. So all I'm saying, Mr. Chairman, that's the reason for postponement for those elements to be addressed. Yes. Okay, thank you. Rory, just before we vote. Just a clarification. Staff's presentation on the rural land management plan, is that part of the public hearing that we are at? Is that at a Planning Commission work session? It's okay. It will all be at the public hearing. Okay. I'll let Nick know. All righty. Any further comment to the motion? Seeing none, all in favor? Unanimous. Thank you. Next. PLN MAR 24-8. Daniel. This is a request by 3743 Freedom, LLC. This is actually a request to modify conditional zoning restrictions. So the parcel in question is 3734 Red River Drive. The parcel is approximately 5.124 acres. Currently, it has a R4 zone with conditional zoning restrictions. There's also a portion of the site that contains P1 zoning as well. But they are specifically looking to modify a condition specifically targeted at the R4 portion of the property. Essentially, there was a maximum amount of building area that was approved in the 2017 rezoning, 60,000 square feet. They are requesting to modify that condition to 80,000 square feet. And so staff will walk through the applicant's justification for that as well as their particular plan. so here we have the subject parcel shown in white it is located on red river drive which curves around here generally in the vicinity we have man of war boulevard that kind of curveles around to the south as you get closer and take a look at the subject property you'll see an overwhelming amount of residential zoning so we have these these light yellow colors is that single family residential. We've got more intense residential with the darker shades. It does directly adjoin a large park, so this is that green AU zoning that you see to the west. Historically, the subject property had single-family residential zoning. It was historically used as the site of the Bluegrass Baptist School, which was a private school that was established in the 1970s and is still visible on the aerial here. The Bluegrass Baptist School left this site around 2017, and at that point there was a request for a rezoning of the parcel. There was a group that wanted to use the property for kind of a comprehensive development. They were looking at P1 zoning, professional office, and sought to establish an assisted living facility, medical office, child care center and a community center. Staff at that time had some concerns with kind of the scale and intensity of the development, especially given its location on a solidly residential area. So this Red River Drive is exclusively sort of a residential street. So in those discussions that occurred at the time of the 2017 zone change, the applicant altered their proposal. They changed the zoning from a P1, which had kind of a much larger potential development, to an R4 with a very small slice of P1 designed to accommodate, I believe, a pharmacy-type use. Accompanying this was a number of conditional zoning restrictions that the applicant proposed in order to try to address staff's concerns about sort of the intensity of development at that location in an existing neighborhood. They offered a number of conditional zoning restrictions that apply to the property that we'll touch on in a second, but this included limitations on the overall amount of square footage they could build. Essentially, they put a cap just above what they were proposing at that time, which accounted for the existing school, this community center building here, and then proposed assisted living in the western portion of the site. So looking at the conditional zoning restrictions, there was a number of them that were put in place relating to limiting the uses on site. That's really what staff weighed in on at the time of the 2017 rezoning. The applicant's condition about the square footage was provided by them at that time, and so staff really focused on further restricting the uses to make sure that those were compatible. So there were restrictions on both the P1 and the R4 section, But specifically, that 60,000 square feet is what is really causing issues with the applicant today. The applicant is seeking to modify that 60,000 square foot condition, which was placed in order to be in agreement with the 2013 comprehensive plan, as well as protect the character of that residential neighborhood, in order to develop affordable senior housing. So the plan you have in front of you today maintains that existing school building here, the existing community center here, this is the development that was proposed originally with the P1, but the applicant does not actually intend to construct that. The main change is the shift from that residential component to a four-story, this is going to be a modular building, but it is going to be affordable senior housing. The issue that they've run into is that this entire development exceeds that 60,000 square feet. In addition, there was some, after the original rezoning in 2017, there were some questions about the square footage of the existing school itself and whether that was originally accounted for correctly. So in order to account for a slightly larger footprint of the school that was originally intended, as well as to build a larger structure with the affordable housing, the applicant has to amend that conditional zoning restriction. The conditional zoning restriction process is different than the rezoning process. Instead of using place builder or the comprehensive plan to make an argument, this is a very specific set of findings. This is relating to has there been a substantial change since 2017 that would make those limitations that were put on the property no longer appropriate. And so here, those findings, you can be an economic, physical, or social change, but it has to show that that's occurred in that time. It wasn't anticipated when they put the restrictions in place, and that has substantially altered the character of the surrounding area. So what has changed since 2017 that makes this no longer appropriate? The applicant makes a couple arguments to this point. They point to sort of the desire or the need for senior housing kind of in general. They provide some statistics, or they've opined that sort of since COVID, there was a drop, or during COVID, there was a drop in the vacancy rates in these places. But now that this is picking back up, there's an increased demand for senior housing. They also point to economic costs, increased cost of borrowing, increased cost development, as to reasons why this conditional zoning restriction should be lifted. Staff has been in conversation with them since they've submitted their initial justification, and they are currently working through providing an updated justification, but essentially at this time staff doesn't feel that they've sort of met the criteria for a specific change in this area. So we've been in contact with the applicant and are working through trying to find some more specific language to identify really kind of a more tangible change that meets that criteria. In addition, the applicant has not indicated that they've done any public outreach. That public outreach and the desire to protect the neighborhood was sort of the core foundation of those conditions that were placed back in 2017. And so we're also seeking some more information on public outreach efforts and sort of how they are kind of reaching out to the neighborhood with that. So staff is looking for more information, more specific information that can kind of better fill out as to why this is appropriate and what has changed. But at this time, I'd be happy to entertain any questions you have of staff. Thank you, Daniel. Any questions? So really the core of the request is the square footage? Yes, yes. They are able to meet the other components of this. So it's a raise to accommodate this building and to more accurately reflect the square footage with the existing school. That jumps it from $60,000 to $80,000. Okay. All righty. If there are no questions for Daniel, thank you. And we will hear from our applicant. Good afternoon, I'm Ashley Bartley, I'm a landscape architect at QK4 out of Louisville, Kentucky, although I did live in Lexington for seven years and went to UK. Go cats. So as Daniel mentioned, yes, this is really an issue of square footage. Also to note, that center building, which is, well, there's some questions about that. a basement was built that is usable square footage that wasn't accounted for on the plan so rather than about 15,000 square feet PVA actually actually lists that as 22,408 square feet that building is currently shuttered it's not going to be used or excuse me developed the property owner actually spent $80,000 to have it sealed because it's given the age of construction likely likely have contaminants in it so rather than tear that building down we would propose to just keep it for now if we did tear that building down I believe we'd be close I been running all kinds of numbers we would be close to being under that 60 thousand square feet also that office building in the northeast corner is not constructed they don't have any plans to construct it this is merely a a senior housing affordable which is greatly needed in the community and in this specific neighborhood yeah there are some as Daniel mentioned this is a pretty unique project it's a modular build there's some funding through Kentucky Housing Corporation some tax credits and they so they build a foundation and then they build every all the units off-site and they come and place them so it's actually a quick build a lot of neat environmental stuff solar power oops oh no that's the wrong way how do I do the light okay there we go there is a greenhouse dome down here which will be really nice for the elderly people to in the wintertime be able to go outside and enjoy it's a it's it's fairly large it's about 1,400 square feet there's rainwater harvesting tank here that'll be used to irrigate that we've got a dog park there is a connection sidewalk connection over to the park that's adjacent here also connects into the public right away got some raised planter beds I say dog park yeah dog park so kind of a neat development something kind of unique but yeah really the issue if we could remove that central building we could get under that square footage but again they don't want to have to release all the contaminants into the atmosphere so just leave it alone for now, potentially in the future. They could renovate it and do any abatement that would be needed and use it for their mission for Dare to Care, food banks, something like that. So I think I covered everything. Does anybody have any questions? Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, first of all, for that update. I guess one question I had you mention that, you know, if that building war hypothetically torn down or taken out of the equation, you'd be close to $60,000. How close? Are we talking feet? Are we talking, I mean, what are we talking? Yeah, so right now my total, and we've talked earlier today, we were at the 830 meeting as well. We had requested 80,000 now that I've got everything calculated, and then Cheryl had me add the office building. We're actually at 83,072, so we'd be at like 61,072, so very close. My second question, with piggyback on that, I think staff mentioned that to date there had been no community outreach. Why is that? I was not aware that we were supposed to do that, to be honest with you. I used to work in Lexington, but that was about 17 years ago. I didn't know that that was part of the process. So I think that's something that we can certainly do. Is there an official requirement for notification area? So, I mean, generally speaking, we've got some guidelines on sort of effective public outreach that we can kind of provide to your all's team. but really it's sort of fleshing out this larger process. So it's not a defined area, so we've, you know, kind of the scale and scope varies from project to project, but in this instance, you know, Red River Drive sort of is its own kind of very set, you know, kind of geographic area of kind of what would be most impacted with the park kind of serving as a buffer and other residential kind of being further south. So we can discuss kind of the parameters of that, but that was one of the things that staff was also looking for. Okay, and I mean that's, I'm familiar with it, when I do zone changes in Louisville, we have to always hold the neighborhood meetings two tiers and send notification two weeks in advance. So I think that, yeah, that's something we can definitely look into and provide. Is there any, well, we can talk offline about that. Are there any other questions for the applicant? Seeing none, thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Do we have any discussion? Any final comments or questions? Is there a... Yes, sir. I'm ready to make a motion if indeed you are... I move that we postpone the plan PLNMR 24-283743 Freedom, LLC, for the reasons provided by staff. Second. All right. Motion, Mr. Wilson. Second, Mr. Forrester. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Unanimous. Thank you. So I just wonder, before we move on, the notices that went out indicated we were changing the conditional zoning restrictions. And if it said 80,000, we can't go up from that without sending another notice letter. And I don't, again, you all are in a very tight timeline, and those notice letters have to be received 21 days in advance, which is today. Okay. So we need to look at the letter again, and we – unless it doesn't say that. It doesn't – it's possible that it doesn't – wasn't that specific? We can also take a look at those. You said you had some information from the PVA. We can also make sure that we're on the same page of that exact calculation. So we'll touch base with that as well. I didn't want you to leave thinking that, yeah. All righty, Daniel. All right. Our last rezoning of the afternoon is MAR2409. This is a request by New Republic Architecture. This is to rezone three properties located on West Maxwell. It's 226, 228, and 232 West Maxwell Street. They are currently zoned neighborhood business B1, and they are seeking a medium-density residential R4 zone. The subject property is also located within an H1 overlay, but the applicant is seeking this rezoning in order to establish three single-family residential uses. In their discussion about place type and development type, which is actually the first time that we've really talked about this today, but the applicant has identified this as a second-tier urban place type. Now, when I bring up the map, we can sort of talk through some of what staff was looking at. This is really located in an area where sort of the downtown core is really starting to transition into those existing neighborhoods. Staff in the previous rezonings had really identified this more as a downtown place type. However, it is in that area where sort of that transition is starting to occur. And so the applicant is seeking to orient it in this type of place type. However, they're recommending low-density residential. This is not recommended within second-tier urban. It's looking at medium-density residential and kind of up. So neither the downtown, which staff would have kind of oriented this towards, or the second-tier urban, which the applicant has chosen, really support the low-density residential that comes with three single-family residential uses. But to show ourselves here, here we have a map of the subject property. It is three parcels located on the south side of West Maxwell Street. West Maxwell Street is heading this way. Here you've got South Martin Luther King and Broadway further to the west. Zooming in a little bit better, or zooming in, you get a little bit better idea of the location of the property and its proximity to some existing zoning. So once again, the three parcels make up essentially the block section between South Mill Street, which runs to the west, West Maxwell Street, borders it to the north, and Lawrence Street, which borders it to the east. The zoning in this area, the West Maxwell Corridor is solidly commercial, B-1 zoned in nature. There are little pockets of existing residential reflecting some existing land use, but this is the zoning that's been on the property since the comprehensive rezoning of the city and county in 1969. Originally, based on some of the information the applicant has provided, the three subject properties were originally one parcel, but at some point in the early 1900s was subdivided into the current configuration that faces West Maxwell Street instead of the residences on Mill Street. Also located within the H-1 overlay, so any changes, physical changes to the site, would have to be vetted by the historic preservation process, receive the certificate of appropriateness, and go through that for physical construction proposed on the site itself. It's worth noting that the South Hill Historic Overlay Zone really represents a variety in uses. I mean, this is historic development, but over time this is manifested in commercial uses, single-family residential uses, higher-density residential development that has sort of come out of these old existing homes where they've been converted into duplexes, triplexes. So really it's really a mix of density, a mix of uses, but primarily located on this West Maxwell corridor that is kind of defined by its commercial uses, as well as lots that face and kind of address and strengthen West Maxwell Street. Here we have a border showing the kind of extent of the H1 overlay zone. The applicant has some renderings and other visual materials that give you kind of a better idea of kind of the design of this site that can be presented a little bit later. but once again, covering a variety of uses, a variety of styles, a variety sort of development. Here's an aerial that gives you a better idea of how this property exists today. So since the 1980s, this parcel has been a parking lot. Here you have further on South Mill Street, a single family residence. I believe this is a triplex, a duplex, some commercial uses further up. You have the Dudley Square building, so a residential with a commercial component, and then a number of commercial uses, small neighborhood-style businesses, directly accessing and fronting on West Maxwell Street. So when staff was looking at sort of the orientation of the existing lotting pattern that has existed for a significant period of time, the orientation of other properties in the vicinity, and sort of how historically we've looked at rezonings on Maxwell, well, we are really looking for a request that sort of activates that street frontage, that sort of reinforces this major primary corridor in our downtown area, and really encourages sort of a pedestrian-friendly streetscape. Here we have the applicant's proposal. So this is single-family residential development, and so they are able to do this under a preliminary subdivision plan. As such, a lot of the detail and the specifics and the direct control that we would have in a development plan is instead kind of reduced to this lotting pattern. They have provided some building outlines that demonstrate some variances that will be needed in order to develop the property. But essentially, the request revolves around reorienting the three lots that currently are oriented towards Maxwell, reorienting them into narrow lots that would front on mill with three detached single-family residences with rear detached garages that would access off of three driveways to Lawrence Street. So accompanying this are several variances that staff will get into a little bit later on in the proposal, but essentially they are requesting a front setback variance here to bring this in line with other development kind of existing on South Mill. as road frontage on three sides. They have a full setback to meet off of South Mill as well as Lawrence, so they're requesting a setback here in order to reduce that. In order to fit the homes at the proposed width, they're building basically at a zero lot line, and so we reduce side yard variance. And then the widths of the driveway is shown. Within the infill and redevelopment area, standard is 10 feet. They're requesting 16. and then they're increasing the height of the structure slightly to accommodate a differing roof design. So the applicant earlier today provided us with some information on how they are going to propose to develop the site. It's worth noting that when we're looking at some of the specifics of this, whether it's the design of the structures, where the structures are generally going to be located, that this is a subdivision plan, and so this would be followed up by a vinyl record plat, at which point there wouldn't be, other than the H-1 overlay, any specific planning commission control over ensuring that this actually is built out. So process-wise, it's a little bit different because it's single-family residential. Normally, we do not make a single-family residential kind of conform and go through the development plan process. But here we have some renderings provided by the applicant. So starting actually from the bottom would be the view from South Mill Street. So these are the fronts of the structures here, and sort of they would be oriented toward South Mill Street. Here you have Dudley Square. So really the discussion point is really the treatment throughout the kind of proposal of West Maxwell. So this middle section here shows the proposed development and how it's interacting kind of with its largest road frontage. So this is basically, if memory serves, I believe about 150 feet where you're getting sort of the side of the building here, an entire wall running that length, and then a detached garage. So there isn't any, unlike other portions of this roadway, there isn't any businesses there, no sort of activation, homes fronting on it, sort of those sort of things that we looked at. And some of the other rezonings of the area where the character, the walkability, maintaining kind of the integrity of this major corridor was such sort of a talking point. The applicant has kind of opined that they want to kind of mirror sort of the pattern of development kind of interior to the neighborhood on South Mill by orienting them this way. However, kind of that context of that important corridor staff really had issues with sort of the orientation of the site. And then this top image is the view of the rear detached garage. So that would be sort of the view looking back towards Lawrence Street. Here, once again, some more specifications on the homes themselves. The applicant has some further information, but essentially because this isn't a development plan, they would have a large amount of flexibility once those were lotted off as to how the construction would be done, as long as it was in accordance with H1. And so identifying and making a place builder argument in a lot of these criteria is really difficult because all that we can really concretely work off of is this lotting pattern and the requested variances. So essentially, from a place builder perspective, we found a number of instances where we found that this request wasn't necessarily meeting what we called for in the comprehensive plan. So when we're talking about infill development, especially along a corridor, we're looking to kind of increase density. So three single-family residences on these lots has a lower density than most everything in their surrounding vicinity. There is historic development, historic homes that have been reconfigured to accommodate and kind of adaptively reused in order to provide greater density. So the subject property as it stands would be less than 10 units per acre. But in the surrounding area, just two houses down, there's a density of 42 units per acre because they've once again taken what was historically a single-family residence and kind of as the need for housing has increased, they found a way to make that density work in a context-sensitive manner. So when we're talking about development along a downtown corridor, even though it is located within a historic overlay, staff believes that there is a way to accommodate additional density while also sort of maintaining that integrity with the neighborhood. When we're talking about kind of creating mixed-use neighborhoods, utilizing some of these corridors for commercial components, shifting a down zoning from B1, where you can have a mixture of uses, you can provide commercial mixed with residential. Here, going to an R4 and then utilizing it just for single family, limits the ability to kind of provide sort of walkable uses in the vicinity, really where those walkable uses would be sort of most important and most valued. When we're talking about certain elements like creating a walkable streetscape, Staff, once again, is concerned with how the development along the most major road is going to be the side of a building with no doors or direct access due to a wall, and at a detached accessory garage. So really, when you're kind of faced with the largest and most significant road, it seems like under this proposal, it's sort of the least architecturally nuanced, if you will, or kind of involved and activated. So staff is recommending disapproval at this time. We found, once again, that the density was not at a level that we thought was appropriate for this type of location along this corridor, even though it is located within a H1 overlay. We found that there was issues with the low-density development type not being recommended for anything in the vicinity. And then we found issue with the development criteria ranging from the orientation of the buildings to kind of the way that the use is going to kind of form and function. Once again, the other kind of criteria that applicants can lean on in a zone change is substantial changes in the area. There hasn't been any shown there, and there wasn't an appropriate arginist made. So there are corresponding variances that are kind of with this request that I will dig into momentarily, but strictly from the zone change side of things, staff had some issues with this particular application. Thank you, Daniel. Are there any questions for Daniel on the zone change? Seeing none. All right. I guess I can also play Tom to a certain extent. It was – let me just – so, yeah, so Tom was here when this was originally platted. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But essentially the applicant has made a number of changes and addressed a number of criteria that were sort of present at the first staff review. So staff was able to get to an approval recommendation earlier this morning, and I believe the subdivision committee did as well. But essentially a lot of the issues with the plan are more of kind of the character of the area, how it fits with the comprehensive plan, but mechanically the plan that they're showing with the requested variances does meet those general things. So it's really a kind of a balancing place builder versus the applicant's desire to orient this sign up internally towards those residential streets. And so we'd be happy to provide any information on the subdivision side. If not, I can give you a little bit more information about the variances. Any questions at this point for Daniel? All right, seeing none, keep going. All right. So once again, just refreshing the commission on kind of the standards that we're looking at when we're evaluating variances. is that it's not going to negatively affect the health, safety, or welfare of the area, not going to change the essential character of the general vicinity, not going to be a hazard or nuisance, and isn't an unreasonable circumvention of the ordinance. And the things to kind of consider when evaluating that is, are there any special circumstances that apply to the property and would sort of applying these provisions limit the applicant or create an undue hardship? and are these any subject to action that the applicant's already taken. So there's been a total of five requested variances. A lot of these are due to kind of the reorientation of the lot. So under a B1, there's more flexibility with setbacks. You can go closer to the road. They're kind of looking for that better road frontage. But shifting those essentially creates some issues where they're needing setback variances from the front on Mill Street. The applicant was seeking to do that in order to kind of match the historic pattern of where those buildings are located. From the side street side yard perspective, that they're requesting the setback from Maxwell to be reduced from 20 to 6 feet. So this is the side that is going to be adjoining that brick wall, but is otherwise going to be the sides of the structure. And in the vicinity, you do have development that was built fairly close to West Maxwell. Existing buildings with zero lot line commercial development that is sort of within that range as well. The side yard variance, in order to accommodate the proposed width, the applicant is seeking to essentially reduce those yards in order to fit three lots with structures that I believe are about 25 feet in width. And then accommodating the maximum driveway width from 10 feet to 16 feet, the applicant is wanting to install two-car garages and opines that it's necessary from that. And then based on their proposed roof design, they are slightly over the 35 feet maximum for single-family residential development, so they are requesting 38. So a lot of this is driven primarily for the applicant's desire to create this one particular product with this one particular orientation. And so when you're looking at a lot that winning combined is 0.3 acres in size, there is room to kind of play around with dimensions. A smaller building wouldn't necessarily require some of these dimensions. A shorter building. And so staff is really looking for more information from the applicant on that end, on sort of what is specific to this site that makes this kind of appropriate, and kind of what is sort of the necessity of some of these design choices. So how are these particular provisions keeping you from meaningfully being able to utilize these lots? So staff is looking at a postponement on that end. We are recommending a disapproval on the zone change. If the zone change were disapproved, the corresponding variances would not apply. And so that's sort of staff's perspective on this is the applicant working from a clear site has some flexibility. We understand that some of these have a little bit more merit in matching kind of historical patterns, but some of the things like the driveway width, the height, just were not very well justified. So looking for additional information on that end. But I'd be happy to entertain any questions you have, staff. All righty. Thank you, Daniel. Do we have any questions? Yes, sir. Just curious, if this proposal had suggested that the three garages were actually accessory structures for residential purposes? Would that have changed staffs? So that provides some additional density, and the applicant has noted kind of the possibility of that. But once again, because this is a preliminary subdivision plan, there's not really much holding them to that. You know, they've explored it, but really their sort of proposal kind of as it stands is to be garages that maybe based on their size could become ADUs, But I think that's still kind of below the general density that we would be looking at. And kind of from a variance perspective, it really doesn't move the needle because the side that the garages are on are the side that meets the setbacks kind of regardless. So, you know, kind of overarching, we still have issues with how is this orienting towards the streets and the density kind of in general, even though that would be an increase, but there's not really a way to hold them to that. You ask about it. I will. Okay, Mr. Mickler. Yeah, I've got a couple questions. The main one is with this, just for some clarification on some logic with the second tier urban and the density argument. And that is, you know, the existing condition is a parking lot. And I think it's fair to say changing that checks off some boxes regardless in almost any change. and changing that parking lot to residential units does increase density and does change the street state from something that's entirely auto-centric to something that's not entirely auto-centric. Not looking at the orientation for a second, but just trying to understand And when I think of second-tier urban, I think of neighborhoods that are a mix of housing types, and I think of that mix including single family. is it staff's interpretation that their chosen place type of second-tier urban is incorrect, or is it staff's interpretation that single-family houses do not belong in second-tier urban? So there's, once again, so the recommendations that we have in Place Builder, they're just sort of this conversation on this is what generally is sort of most appropriate. The applicant could make an argument for that, but I think it's important to note that this isn't second-tier urban tucked well within a residential street, not adjoining anything else. I think the context of it being adjoining directly fronting on West Maxwell, this major corridor, this downtown corridor, changes that calculus a little bit. So kind of this would, I think, would be a little bit of a different conversation if this rezoning request, let me bring up the maps, were happening, say, further, you know, in the middle of a residential block, really. So the fact that this is sort of on this major roadway is sort of driving a lot of the conversation and the context that we need to view the density. So place builder is sort of guiding these conversations on what is most appropriate. The applicant is making an argument that it should be matching this character, whereas staff is making the argument that this is really – it's due to the intensity, the prominence, the kind of the role that that plays in developing land use through that entire corridor is really the more overarching kind of signal that land use needs to be drawing from. I mean, I know the resident of 215, and that's a single family, and I know that the family at 211 is single family, catty corner. Yeah, I mean, so we have existing land. I mean, the story of downtown development is sort of how do we make this development that's been here for a significant period of time kind of flow together and work kind of more cohesively. And when we're looking at a site that doesn't have any existing structures that has access to these roadways, we're sort of looking at kind of a higher utilization. We would understand if this was an infill lot sandwiched in between two uses here, but kind of based on the size of the parcel, we were looking for new development in this area to start building towards what we're wanting to achieve in the future. So existing development, absolutely, this entire stretch is not entirety of high-density development. it's a mix, but we're looking towards what we can control now and kind of building towards the future and maintaining only single family land use in these kind of areas isn't really going to get us where we need to go as a community. So we understand that this is nuanced, especially with it being in an H-1 overlay, but staff's opinion or staff's kind of evaluation is we were looking for something that better addressed that. Mr. Forrester and I were talking about, is it possible to put conditions on an approval that would say, hey, hold the applicant close to what they're proposing? I mean, is there a way around the, quote, gamble of the zone change? Yeah, our law department is not here today, so I get to play lawyer again. Yes, because we have conditional zoning restrictions, so we can restrict the use, we can restrict buffers, and because it's in a historic district, we can put some conditional zoning restrictions on there related to the architectural elements. Okay, that's what I thought. I thought there's got to be a way. This is the only time, right, when it's in an H-1. Right. Okay. Any other questions? If not, we'll hear from the applicant. Hey, good afternoon. My name is Matt Matone. I'm with New Republic Architecture, a university tech graduate. I have a master's from historic preservation and have had an absolute joyous time working with staff. And then we got the report yesterday, and we were like, holy shit. we're not going to be able to get this through. Hey, Graham. I recognized your voice when I hadn't seen you for a while. So, yeah, so we were approached by these clients. They owned and redeveloped the – let me try this clicker thing. You just hold the top button. Top button. Okay, so the clients owned the Dudley Square, and they redeveloped it into a residential unit. They lived for several years, like 366, one of these two houses here. So these properties have been owned by them for several years, and they've tried to figure out how to redevelop that. We helped them redevelop some property they have in Cincinnati. Our firm is from Cincinnati, although the two primary designers on this project are Bob Carbon and myself, who grew up in Lexington and lived in the area. and so we looked at this and they wanted to know how many pieces of how many buildings how many residential units could get a lot and so we looked at a townhome so combined units are like attached product and it looked like we might be able to get four but to meet the setback and all you're going to have to jump through a bunch of hurdles and then we looked at the neighborhood at a zoomed level and then also looked at it through the filter of the H1 overlay. And how do I drive this guy? Sorry. If we want to, do you want me to bring up some of the... So I can pull up the H1 overlay just to kind of figure out how to explain to the... Yeah, let me... How we zoomed into this. But we looked at it from the H1 overlay knowing that that's a significant obstacle to overcome to get anything past them. And there's probably been a good reason that it hasn't been developed for 30, 40 years, because economically it's a challenging site. There's not a lot of place to stage materials. There's a significant cost. It was almost like eight or ten years ago when the interest rates were zero. That's when it should have been redeveloped. And it was too difficult. I think they approached the Board of – well, they approached the historic preservation folks and kind of went through there, and it didn't look like it would work. So and are looking at this this property I think it's these it's these guys right here in the center So, these guys right here, and as we've looked at it, almost all the development, again, we'll address the corridor issue that we've looked at. Most of these parcels were oriented. Mr. Patone, I'm sorry to interrupt you. We just need that on the record. Oh, yeah, I'm going to be Pat Sajak. Yeah, thank you. His last day is tomorrow, I think I heard. So as we looked at this, we recognized that for this to be contextual with the historic fabric, it made some sense to orient it 90 degrees and so it would face mill, kind of fill in the gaps in the teeth that are missing in that corridor. So that's where we started, and we tried to, again, because of the setbacks orientation, we looked at a narrow product, so like a narrow home, like 25 feet, And if it's 90 feet wide and you need three and three, so for setbacks, it ended up being about 25 feet wide and close to 30-foot wide lots. And so that's kind of the exercise. And we reached out to staff to find out how do we get through this because we're used to doing it in Cincinnati and over the Rhine where we do this a lot. This is a different process, but the placemaking components and the comprehensive plan, we knew we were going to have a tough battle because it's going to be difficult to recommend something that contradicts that or counterposes the wish to densify the corridor. So, let's see. All right. But again, this is indicative of how helpful they've been with us through this process. And then when we got there yesterday, it was like, oh man, we missed the whole altogether. But the clients from the onset have said they really feel that it's important for this to be a residential infill development. And I'm actually pitch hitting for the guy that did the work, so I apologize if I missed some nuanced parts about this. But I'm learning. So we felt it was important to, you know, this is the Dudley Square, to hold the corner, which is kind of a traditional way for houses to, you know, face the street. And, you know, so we ended up, one of the variances is a zero lot line setback on this side so that we can have a five-foot change buffer so that we can get plenty of light and air on this side. So this is the fenestrated side of the house. We looked at some of the guidelines, and it asked for it to be up on a podium, so be up like 24 inches or 36 inches. So we were at about 35 feet, and then you'd raise it up because of having it up elevated. It pushed the ridge line up a little bit, so that's why we requested the variance for the height. so this is the Florida backwards thing so that's what we started doing, looking at the site and there are smaller densely packed houses along Mill Street on this side looking Dudley Square, you've got the old school house and then we wanted this house to kind of transition back down into the fabric going I guess west on Mill Street or south on Mill Street. Again, we knew this was gonna be a two-sided property, at least the corner one, and we had to activate Mill Street and kind of pay homage to these houses and kind of keep it diminutive, and then we ended up with the mansard roof, so it looks like it's a two-story house with a roof and some dormer and some living quarters above. But this was the big side elevation that's kind of the elephant in the room, and how do you treat that and have some scale and mass and relate to Dudley Square and kind of keep that corridor feel. But then as you're driving, I guess, east on Maxwell, step back down into the fabric along Maxwell. You've got these kind of smaller, diminutive, like commercial buildings this way. So we thought the garage structure with potential to be developed, and we actually, they recommended or told us that in order to increase the density, because we weren't going to be even close to the recommended density, would be to have this as a potential ADU. And so that is part of the intent. Now, the property-owning intent is to sell them individually, and so somebody might have an ADU above, and somebody might have it as a granny flat or a kid's studio or an office. So we can't really dictate. And again, we're concurrently doing and working with historic preservation department and next week we go before them for the Board of Architectural Review and a certificate of appropriateness. We've met with the South Hill Neighborhood Association and kind of show them these boards and walk them through the process. I think they are very hesitant of over-scale development within the neighborhood because if you look at Well, I can find the – no, I can't. I can bring up the – I think it is. I went back one, two. If you look at the proposals that have been made in the last couple of years, some of them have been, you know, the podium, you've got the business, and then you've got three or four stories above, and those seem to tower over the existing fabric. And so much of this historic neighborhood fabric, and then if you go farther west into downtown where Rupp Arena is, they lost 600 or 700 houses of this fabric. And so interestingly, as this process kind of evolved, historic preservation was happy to have single-family residential there, but it couldn't look like it was old. So we kind of are fighting density and comprehensive plan and all these restrictions, and then not really fighting, but also trying to address and design something that felt contextual but not historic mimicry. And so, I mean, this is where we are. And, I mean, there is, like Daniel said, we've worked with them. There is some flexibility in the width of the building and the height, but not very much. You know, 24-foot-wide house inside is really about as narrow as you could fit on a 30-foot lot. We did feel that it was important to rotate and orient the houses kind of consistent with the old neighborhood. So I don't know how well this shows up, but this is from the 1871 bird's eye. I was talking into it. So this is a bird's eye of 1871. This is Dudley Square, and we've got two small skinny houses oriented on Mill Street. And again, this is where we were opining that this is the way to go or to reinsert this. But, I mean, these two houses I think still exist. There's a small one that exists here. And so we felt this was an appropriate suggestion for an infill product. I mean, again, so we also pulled up some sand mowers just to kind of track it. And we kind of, at one point, so here's a school. These are those two parcels. So in 1886, and our guests, and I didn't do any of the BD research, but it's probably a schoolmaster's home, and there was a big vacant lot behind. And then at one point in, where are these guys? At one point, there was a house on the corner, and this disappeared. So we believe that there is some context and some history with rotating and reorienting the lot. We feel like this proposal kind of pays homage to some of the images that we presented to the clients and the South Hill Neighborhood Association and Historic Preservation. These were some of the precedents that we felt could be appropriate. Okay. Sorry. I had... Well, anyway, I don't know if I addressed all the questions, but it kind of walks you through. So this is intended to be the owner wants to occupy one of the units. They're not sure which. They think the corner lot is the most challenging, but also going to be the most desirable one. there were some issues about turning aside from the corridor and not having any way to activate the block. I mean, currently there is a brick wall with a kind of wrought iron fence. We want to maintain that and kind of keep that kind of walkability. And then there's to be an interior courtyard between the main part of the house and then the garage or ADU. So there's justification, and the sad truth is that it counterposes the comprehensive plan. And I think while their intent is for this to be designed and delivered to be the highest and best intent, this may be the best opportunity to, I guess, restore some of the missing historic context in the neighborhood and maybe redefine that corner. So, I mean, I'm happy to take questions. I probably rambled on a little bit too much. But, no, we've really enjoyed working with staff. We understand the challenges we present to them with a comprehensive plan. But, I mean, the client feels very confident that this is the good proposal. We met. We had a conceptual Board of Architecture review, and they felt the massing was appropriate. wanted to see some more specific details because we're kind of having to design a final product before we even have zoning approval. And on the one level, I don't think we can get a certificate of appropriateness while this is still zoned business. So we may have to get a conditional certificate of appropriateness before we apply for the zone change, or we may not even get a chance to have a zone change, and it's a whole other thing altogether. All righty. Thank you, Mr. Matone. Yes. Questions? permission. Yes, sir. Oh, boy. I'm getting in trouble with the boss. Old boss. He's always going to be the boss. It's been a long time, though. Did you all consider the possibility of the Brooklyn townhouse prototype in which there would be a unit that would be partly below level, and then two to three stories above that, and then an accessory dwelling unit behind. That would give you three units per lot and would completely change the equation. And, you know, having experienced being in those buildings, they're very successful buildings, obviously, because they're all over Brooklyn. Yeah, which is a little denser than that spot in Lexington. Yeah, but that's what we're shooting for, right? I mean, the Brooklyn prototype is exactly what we're shooting for. Yeah, I mean, if this were an over-the-rhyne in Cincinnati, that would be kind of not necessarily a no-brainer, but the same kind of issues where we would want to have that kind of density. I think the reason the client is looking for a single-family detachment, they feel like this kind of meets the size house, the resident, But, again, it was proposed to have a walkout basement so that it is possible to do from the rear, that the ADU and a potential basement unit could be there. But I don't know that that's the direction they're interested in moving. But, I mean, again, if it meant no development for them. So there's another caveat to this is if it doesn't receive certificate of appropriateness, they don't want to lose the zoning. So it's kind of like they really think this is the correct answer, but they know the property is more valued to the city and somebody else as a B1 use. So if the historic folks and the neighborhood association doesn't like this, they don't want to proceed. So we're kind of like walking, and then we've got the planning zone saying, you can't do this. We've got historic saying, well, you can do this, but it can't look old. And then we've got a client that wants to have a significant presence of a single-family detached home just on the second tier of downtown Lexington. So I don't think I really answered your question, but I mean, I think it could be developed into the program. It's just a matter. And since these will be individually sold lots, an owner could do that. Well, and that's the thing. I mean, I'm sure that you've thought this through in that regard, but there's no reason why an individual owner would have to use the lower unit for a tenant. They could easily, usually they're designed in such a way that it's really easy to incorporate them into a single-family situation. but the potential for greater density is there. And sometimes those units are on the upper floor as well. So I don't know. I'll just throw that out there. It just seems like an obvious potential solution. Yeah, it's like low-hanging fruit. And again, it'll come down to the property owner if it's subdivided and this thing is approved. I have to say, personally, I'm not put off by the concept of the units facing Mill Street. I agree that there's a strong argument to be made that that's more consistent with the historic character of the area. And also, I'm really familiar with this stretch because I do business with someone who's in the next block very regularly. But it seems to me that the kind of aesthetic that you're presenting to the Maxwell Street orientation is not a negative. And if you walk down Maxwell, you'll see that it's far superior to most of what's going on along there because there's so many parking lots and sort of dead zones here and there. And, again, this was even before they raised the issue about activation of Maxwell Street, that we felt that it was important rather than have a blank facade kind of like you have in the schoolhouses, that there's a puncture or like some kind of a bay kind of thing, and then also to kind of maintain that path of the corridor. So, no, I mean, again, there's no perfect design. I mean, we know that. and there's, like, the best choices you can make given the constraints, and all of a sudden there's a whole lot more constraints that we didn't know until, I guess, yesterday or Tuesday when we got this. I was like, oh, man. And then we had, like, 13 or 17 conditions on the subdivision plan. And, I mean, truthfully, you guys have, like, we've worked with a lot of people, and you all really have been beyond helpful, and we've appreciated that. All righty. Mr. Mickler? Yeah, I have just a couple of questions, and I appreciate the different things you're trying to balance but in terms of a couple of the details in the logic for the, you know, the reorientation, um, you lose that sort of larger lot square on that Mill Street Maxwell to sort of establish something that has that corner, um, anchored in a stronger way. This also has it already, if I looked at the plans correctly, has an alleyway behind. Is that correct? Let me see if I can get a plan. I'm probably going to goof this up again. This does not actually have an alleyway. It at some point was reverted into the adjoining parcel there, so it directly adjoins the next adjoining I think it was abandoned or it was. Okay. And then, so I guess the question on the orientation really has to do with sort of losing that opportunity for that corner Maxwell Mill Street sort of corner orientation. and I'm just curious what were the drivers that made you think that you weighed this higher and abandoned the Maxwell orientation? I mean, I think some of it was that by keeping the footprint, the actual size of the house could be about what they wanted either way, but that you could have a courtyard in the front, the house with kind of a green buffer along the side and then kind of an interior courtyard. We thought, although it may be contrary, but it provided the most green space, too. If you look at that aerial view that Daniel had of the neighborhood, like all of these houses, all the things that face Mack Alley, so on one block north of that, all of them have a house, a courtyard and then a garage or an outbuilding off of Mack's Alley. And that's kind of the context. Beg your pardon? I just said or an abandoned boat. Yeah, oh, yeah. That's farther down Mack, right before you get to the church. Yeah, we saw that one. But no. But that was part of it. Also, there was the greenscaping things that if we'd had four units together, you'd have four units together and then green space and then parking. And this one we felt, one, kept up with the urban context that's existent. And, I mean, our position, and I think the client's position, was this was a buffer going from north to south to campus and kind of in the other direction. And even though that is a major corridor, I always avoid Maxwell coming in town. It's like always, you know, you get to campus and it's – so it really hadn't – the thought that that's what's going to be developed or redeveloped as a major quarter and densify, I think – I'm speaking on Bob's behalf, but that – I mean, we thought that it was more important to kind of keep the residential fabric going north-south than kind of give in to the densification. and it slowly starts to erode the historic neighborhood. And, again, I think that's why this neighborhood association has been so active, is that they are fighting to keep, you know, as much context as they can. So, but, yeah, I mean, I think the reason was that we thought it gave it more opportunity to have green space and distance between the home and the rear yard. And then we also, I think, interpreted that Lawrence was kind of a service alleyway anyway, and that was the kind of more likely place to put the garage or the accessory dwelling. It's like rather than – and if it was – so the 90 feet kind of took away a lot of that extra option. So we couldn't get enough residential if it was like one block that kind of hugged the corner at Maxwell and Mill versus this, but we still didn't hit the density mark. Any other questions for Mr. Matone? Thank you. All right. Thank you all. Now we will have our discussion. I agree with Graham. Looking at it, I'm very comfortable with the orientation back to Mill. I think they've put an extraordinary amount of thought and effort into trying to comply everywhere they can. But I'm anxious to hear other people's opinions. Well, you know, as you could tell from my comments, I'm most concerned about the failure to max out the number of units. And to me, it would be an easy thing to make each of those a three-unit lot, which would have the effect of tripling the density that they're proposing. Another thing that troubles me, this is more of a historic preservation thing, but the variance for the wider driveway is such a suburban move. move. And I think there are other ways to get a vehicle in and out. I think there are other things to think about than having a little house for a car. You know, to me, that's a luxury that's going to be going by the wayside as time goes on in an urban environment. so I think there's room for considerable improvement with what they're presenting but fundamentally I agree that I think there's great potential in the basic move that they're making well I think that Maxwell in this area is second tier urban. We even see that in the small shops that are adjacent to that. They're smaller, they're stepped down, they're different in character than the downtown shops. And I think that um we've recently approved a very high density development along maxwell street and i supported that and i think one of the defining characteristics of second tier urban neighborhoods is they they have residences that span the entire range of of um density and i don't i i don't um I think that, I mean, I don't inherently have a problem with single family moving into or developing on Maxwell. And I think that a move from a parking lot to three houses with potentially ADUs in the back is, is the, I think it meets the goals as infill. I agree with Graham on the one variance on the driveway that our second-tier urban and our infill area, we specified the driveway width for those specific reasons, and I see no reason to waive it in this case. I like the ADUs in the back, but I'm not sure if that's marketable. Just from a banker's perspective. So they're going to have to market that. They're going to have to find financing for that. And there's not any financing for ADUs that I'm aware of. You know what I mean? You know how to create that product. No, I do. It's not something that... It's a cash-only business. Yeah, it's a cash business. So that limits your customer base too. So you've got to consider that as well. Well, I guess the way I would see those units is that they would be considered a part of the entire. There are three properties, right? The same person owns each of them. Someone owns that whole property. And in that property, they have the ability to sublease the ADU if they want to. And they have an ability to sublease either the basement unit or the third floor unit if they want to. and that way there is a market. In fact, it's a pretty sexy market if you think about the additional income that could be generated by leasing those properties out. Yeah, that's different. Now, you're talking more on the leasing side. That's different than the home ownership. So, yeah, I can see that being an opportunity. So that's a good point. Thank you. Just from a real estate perspective, I know that it is a difficult site because it was for sale for years, I believe, many years, during a very good market when it otherwise should have, would have sold. So maybe that's why I have an appreciation of what's been put in front of us today. Are there any other comments? Yes, sir. Just one quick comment. First of all, this has been a good discussion from my perspective because there are really no bad people here. Everybody is wanting to figure a way to get this done. And I like the idea of the recommendation of something that can be done to increase the density in that area. Now, my question is, are the developers willing to work and to do that in whatever way they would do in order to comply with that? because if this goes before the commission as it is and the staff does not change their position of disapproval, we simply can't say because we like it, because it's pretty and all that. We have to have legal reasons as to why we cannot do this. Right now, I'm hearing a lot of aesthetics and niceties, and I love them all because I think that's good, and I appreciate the idea of something there as opposed to a parking lot. But in order to go against the staff's recommendation of disapproval, You've got to have findings, and that's where the lawyers would have to come in. Because right now, I would be inclined to follow the staff's recommendation, but with a strong input of saying, why can't you all get together, me and the developers and things, to figure out how to increase that density rather than working the other way around, working toward the positive end. Yes. So I guess I was surprised at the recommendation of disapproval. I was hoping maybe for postponement. is there a path to approval? Because if not, you know, then we just need to, if the commission does decide to approve the zone change, we'll just have to have our own findings. I think staff's position is that in general the R4 zone could be appropriate at this location, but it really kind of depends on what you're specifically doing on site. So in this instance, the developer also wanting to kind of live in one of these units in having preferences on the design that kind of come with that. I think maybe limit their flexibility to a little bit, but staff is always willing to consider if there was additional density, any changes that they propose to the design, we would review and, if necessary, issue kind of a new report. But sort of the initial plan as presented without the benefit of sort of more specific details and without any kind of conditional zoning considerations, for locking some of this in is kind of where we ran into issues. But I think still single-family residential is kind of a big sticking point for staff. So we are always open to have these conversations, but, you know, I can't commit to anything right now. Yes, thanks. I'm still learning the process, and I guess one question that I have for staff and that I'm confused about is that it's clear that you guys don't want the project as is, but how much guidance can staff give to a developer saying, okay, we don't want this, but this would work? Is it just a situation where you just say yes or no to what they bring, or can you be more proactive into saying we need a density of X, so we need the building to look like this so there's not so much back and forth? I don't know. Yeah, so typically speaking, you know, in some of these kind of conversations point orientation of the structure, kind of the single-family residential, where we're raised in some of the preliminary discussions with the pre-application meeting. You know, staff normally isn't in the business of, you know, architecturally designing a building. What we talk about are some of the core kind of issues that we see and then leave the kind of the applicant, the developer, to kind of find ways to implement that. So case in point further east on Maxwell when we had the rezoning there, the feedback that staff gave was, hey, you've got this long stretch of blank facade. You've got this existing character of this neighborhood. How can you match that? And the applicant in that instance said, okay, we can add articulation. We can add a townhome component. We can do sort of these things. So staff can highlight the issues where I'm not willing to pretend to be a land development expert or a architect or kind of anything on that. We can really just kind of respond to the issues that we see with the current design. And if there's a clear path forward, then we kind of, you know, discuss that from there. But really it's just sort of highlighting the issues and then kind of building off that iteratively. Okay. Again, new to the process, thank you again for you guys' patience with me. It appears to me that density is, I guess, a big sticking point here. What kind of density is staff looking for? Can you guys be more specific on that guidance? Yeah, so this context, and in the report, it outlies kind of what we're seeing in the vicinity here. So kind of currently as proposed with the single-family residential that they're kind of going for, I believe they're at a nine-and-a-half dwelling units per acre when you look at kind of the entire development. That's lower than the adjoining single-family residential, which is about 12. Next property over, it's in the 40s. You've got triplexes, fiveplexes, I mean, on smaller lots than kind of what they're proposed here. So there isn't kind of a firm number. It's just getting to something that kind of works within that context, but certainly higher than what they've single-family residential. So, and part of this is also based on kind of the applicant's framing. So if they say, you know, based on the limitations of the site, we may not be able to get a huge number, but this is an improvement. This is over kind of what we – something a little bit more conducive to this particular area. So there isn't a specific ballpark, but, you know, we're open to them, you know, expanding that in any way that they can feasibly do it. So, I guess – Yeah, just as a frame of reference, if they did three per lot, that would be 28.5 units per acre, which would be much more palatable and a little bit better keeping than what we're seeing now. Sorry to interrupt. So I know it's probably a tough question to answer, Mr. Matone, but do you believe your client would be open to these adjustments to get the zoning involving density? I mean, I do believe so. I mean, that's the thing. What they didn't want to do is declare these ADUs as a garage when a property owner may not want an ADU. I mean, I think that was the tightrope we've had to walk with, both the neighborhood association because they were worried about too much density, too big, too tall, and then something that kind of fit within the context. And then with our conversations, the concern that this isn't really very dense and this is a corner and it's not so much that you're not filling up the corner visually but that you're not getting the density that we are kind of mandated by the comprehensive plan to maintain along this corridor. are. So what I don't know is can we make a design, I believe they would be agreeable to have a design that showed a potential ADU but may not be developed by the individual parcel owner. And I don't know if that would work for staff, but again, this is where these These are going to be sold as designs, and the property owner who buys them designs them as they wish. So we can't say, oh, yeah, we're going to put ADUs on each one of these units because we can't guarantee that's how. And so I guess the question is, well, I think the owner would certainly be open to that, but I don't know that they can mandate that the property owner will take that advice or develop it that way. If that's ‑‑ Just a thought I had. Could we perhaps, if we get to this point, rezone and put in the zone that you can have up to three dwellings per lot so that density can, could increase? Yeah, because, and again, I think the client saw these as three single-family detached, and then when we had the discussion about density, they're like, well, yeah, we're fine with an ADU because essentially they had that with the property further down on the mill. They had a tenant above the garage. So they're not opposed to that, but they just don't know the market and who the buyers will be. And, you know, again, some of the hard – the other reason, again, kind of backtracking, is that the reason they also wanted to do detached residents was that for staging and financing. It's like they can bite off one building at a time but not a three-plex or a four-plex, and then the actual construction phase. So it was very logical the way they got this, and even though we were kind of pitting ourselves more against the comprehensive plan, they wanted to be able to have the flexibility to have the ADUs because they recognized the importance of that, but they didn't want to design it and say this is an ADU as a garage. Sure. And, I mean, I can speak just from the real estate market. Graham is right. I mean, the demand is so significant that if you build it, they will come, and especially in this location being as central as it is, being as walkable as it is. And I guess there's nothing that would preclude them as building them as for lease ultimately and just have this. But we have not had that conversation, but it's something, you know, I think they're committed to either doing residential on the property or just leaving it as a B-1 and then moving on because I think, as you said, there were plenty of good times to get easier money to develop this and nothing could come of it. And this is, I think, their last best attempt to do what they think is appropriate for it, and, you know, even though it contradicts the findings of the comprehensive plan. All right. Thank you, Mr. Matano. This is just a question for staff. I just want to make sure I understand this correctly. So if we approve this and these get divided and the lots get reconfigured this way, in R4, that is a multifamily zone. So many of the houses in this neighborhood on Maxwell were once single-family homes that people have later divided and made into multiple apartments. There wouldn't be anything from a zoning perspective that would preclude that same evolution on a single family home on these lots. Would that be a correct understanding? Yeah, with the variances, that would be true. It wouldn't be a group presidential or multifamily. it would already be a prohibited use I mean a permitted use in the zone and then if our recommendations for the R4 get approved then a business could also be a permitted use in an R4 with a conditional use zoning not yet is okay Okay. And the current B1 zoning, the way that it's written, does not allow residences without business use? Correct. Okay. Mr. McToon. I just want to make a back to the R3. Initially, a townhouse that wasn't appropriate, we looked at an R3, and staff recommended we look at the R4 zone request, down zone to an R4 zone request, because at a future date, these houses could have more density if they were torn down, which we kind of think the way they're going to be developed, it wouldn't be for a while. but that would enable future developers of the property to densify it as per the comprehensive plan. So it was, again, their recommendation that rather than de-densify it forever, if you propose an R4 that's closer to the comprehensive plan, although it's not perfect, perfect is the enemy of good, and this is a good proposal and it's not perfect. Is it feasible to approve a rezone with a minimum number of units required in each lot? We have approved zone changes with a minimum density before. I'm not sure if it was a specific number of dwelling units, but a minimum density. Yeah, on the West Maxwell. We did have a minimum. With a minimum, yep. That was like 100 and something. And would that be workable for an applicant like this who may prefer to have just a single family living on a lot but would be required to develop a piece of property that could be occupied by three separate families? There's no way that there couldn't be a review process of floor plans, I guess, right? It gets kind of sticky. Like, planning doesn't really get involved with the single-family dwellings. I think we want to be careful about mandating certain things, basically, because the last zone change you just heard about was one where the applicant offered all kinds of restrictions to get what they wanted seven or eight years ago, and then things change. The market changes, whatever changes. And then they're back here saying, well, that didn't work, and, you know, the market didn't support it and we need a change, which then becomes even harder to get because of the reasons you might have put it in place. The R4 zone does allow for greater density than what they're proposing, for sure. And for that to be either a natural transition or a situation where you build one single family home and they don't have any other units associated with it, but the next one that comes in, say they take the market at its word and say, yeah, we do want to have a lower unit and an upper unit and one in the back, and then put that up for sale and take them one at a time and find out what the market is. And it's possible to get that higher density. But what we found was they weren't in the market to even propose that at this point. So that's where we, I think, as the staff said, this isn't consistent with the area or what the comp plan says. But with R4, if someone chose to buy the lot, build what is proposed, but also, like Graham said, put a unit in the lower level or in the upper level, put a unit above the garage, with that zoning, they could get occupancy permits for those individual living spaces? Yes, with all of our zoning text amendments over the past two years. So if an individual bought it, built it, maybe didn't want to lease it out immediately, but wanted to go ahead and get that permitting so that they could have the higher density. So Autumn just said you can't have an ADU if you are multifamily. So if you have a duplex in the front structure, a lower unit, an upper unit, you can't build an ADU in the back. So then it would just be a regular R4 density of units. It wouldn't be an ADU. Right. But it would still be a place somebody could live. You could put three units in the main building with a garage in the back. So you could still get the density. You don't have to have an ADU to get the density is what I'm getting at. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, I don't think we have. We've got four options is the way I see it. We can either approve the staff's recommendation of disapproval, one. Number two, we could approve. Number three, we could postpone. Or we could do nothing. And we've done that on many occasions as well. Now, having said that, the key thing that I think rests here is I would like from time for the applicant to go back and talk to the owners to find out what they can do and give them that shot at it. But I think it's on their responsibility, not us. I mean, what we have done here is something that is not necessary. I mean, we have done this before, and I've been around long enough to know that when we see a really good project, we've gone out of our way to try to figure out how to make that thing work because we thought it was in the best interest of Lexington. But again, you've got your staff sitting here comfortably saying this is a disapproval. Now, that does not mean that they don't like the project, I think it's fair to say. It's just not the way it's designed according to our comprehensive plan. If we start now doing deliberations on our comprehensive plan, that's going to set some real interesting precedents in the future, which is why I'm not for that. So I'm all for giving the applicant an opportunity to come back to the staff with a recommendation of what they can do to improve that density within the confines of what we need in terms of our comprehensive plan. And for the purposes of today, I don't know how the staff feels. I would go along with either a postponement or go on record as saying that we are not ready to make that decision or something along those lines. But I don't want to set something up today which is clearly not in line with our comprehensive plan because that's something we've got to live with. And, Lord, have I lived with it. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. So if there's not any other questions, I would like to make a motion of postponement for PLNMAR 24-9. Second. All righty. Thank you, Mr. Forrester. Motion and a second. We certainly will see if there's any discussion to that. But I think that if the staff can take what Commissioner comment has been today, I really think that we can, with such a willing and workable applicant, I really think that we can get to an approval on it. Because I don't think we're going in violation of the comprehensive plan by any means. but I think it is the duty and the responsibility of the Planning Commission to make these tougher decisions, and every property is different, but I think we can get there on this one. I hope we can. I think it's a good thing to do what we can, especially, and I think, Mr. Chairman, you put it very nicely, here we've got a willing applicant who's willing to work with the staff. It's not an adversarial thing, and so what we're doing is trying to act in the best interest of Lexington. And I think today's been actually really productive because we've done what Frank Penn said. We've tried to iron out as many wrinkles as we can at the committee level so that when it does get to the commission, it's not a long, drawn-out thing. Are there any other points on the motion? Yes, sir. Well, I'm good with the postponement because I think that time has the potential of making this proposal better. But I do like the proposal, and I think that nine dwelling units per acre sure sounds like a whole lot compared to that one where we saw where it's one dwelling unit for 10 acres. and I think one a lot of the lots in this area are a house on a tenth of an acre that's a pretty common size in a lot of these side streets and I don't think it's and and changing that parking lot to to three houses is in principle like and I like the fact that this in an H-1 neighborhood where there is going to be some secondary architectural review that looks at some of those things and looks at fenestration and things like that that we wouldn't normally get. So I'm good with the postponement. I think another month of discussion could improve the project, but I do like the project. I just wanted to bring up one small issue that the staff brought up and hasn't been discussed, and that is the quality of the presentation on Maxwell Street and the walkability. I think it would behoove the client to think a little more deeply about the potential for activating that experience in some way. I know the garden wall is a start, but I think that establishing some kind of rhythm, some kind of sense that there is a place there that a passing pedestrian can relate to and feel that there is not a monotony from one end of the block to the other would be helpful to their proposal. Thank you, Mr. Polk. We have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? If not, all those in favor, say aye. Say aye, not raise your hand. Oh, I'm sorry. Say aye, raise your hand, do whatever. Okay, that was unanimous. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Matone. Up next is PLN Zota 24-4. Commissioner Davis, if we could get a motion on the variances as well. Okay, so the subdivision plan was approved this morning, recommended for approval. Is that correct? And then the variances was a recommendation of postponement from staff. Yes, staff was recommending postponement on that. I can make a motion for a recommendation of the postponement of the variance. And that was, yeah. I don't need to say anything else on there. Am I missing something? I think that's it. Second. Seconded by Mr. Pohl. All those in favor, raise your right hand. unanimous also. Thank you. Alrighty. Soda. A quick poll and Mr. Poll is gone. Mr. Davis has to leave at four. Does anybody, Mr. Wilson has to leave at Okay, so Thank you I'm doing you a favor It's favor for favor here Okay, let's see Nice. Had to make sure it's working. Okay, I'm here to present the Outdoor Lighting Ordinance, which will be Article 30. This ordinance was originally, we started it back in the day, and we were looking at some of the old lighting ordinances, which were the only outdoor lighting owners at Lexington had at the time was Article 16, which dealt with outdoor lighting for parking lots. And some of the things that we had in there was the height of the fixture, which was at 12 feet, and also the direction where the light was supposed to point. And that didn't really work with the modern times. And as we made changes, we were lucky enough that council initiated this text amendment, and so we've been working with council on this. And also, back when we did the 2045 comprehensive plan, it recommended that we reduce light pollution and protect our dark skies. So this text amendment, some of the things we've worked on is to establish something that's comprehensive for the outdoor lighting. We want to minimize all the light pollution, glare, light trespass, sky glow, and nocturnal impact on wildlife. We want to ensure a safe nighttime environment for everyone. That includes pedestrians, motorists, and also for properties. Give me a second here. And so some of the parts that's included in this text amendment is the outdoor lighting requirement. We also have lighting plans included in this, outdoor lighting standards, standards for recreation and entertainment, and some exemptions. This is confusing. So when it comes to the outdoor light requirements, this ordinance affects all our zones, except some of the agricultural zones, which include the agricultural buffer, agricultural rural, and agricultural neutral. Those are all excluded, and also excluded from this stuff like lighting with low output, like the string lights we use, seasonal lighting, also lighting that is governed by federal and state regulations, like lighting we use for flags, lighting we use required for building code. Those are all exempt. So when we go, what is actually in the ordinance, there's the lighting plan. And one of the reasons we have the lighting plan is to avoid conflicts like having light poles and sidewalks. We've seen that because we don't have a lighting plan requirement right now, so someone can design the lighting plan on the side, and someone does the sidewalks on the side, someone does the planting on the side, so those plants don't work together. So to avoid that, we will require a lighting plan. You can see parking lots with lighting poles in the middle, light right in the middle of planting where over time the trees overgrow it. And then also the standards include the lighting fixtures. Right now we have the unacceptable and the very bad. Few places where we have good design, they use the partially shielded, but we are going for the better which is completely shielded. And hopefully some of the innovative designers will go with the best where lights can be turned off after a certain time. With this, we're also recommending a maximum light temperature of 300 Kelvins. As you can see, the cold to the warm, the cold is what we use indoors. Warm is what's recommended for outdoors. Right now, we don't have... Engineering recommends 300 Kelvins, but not everyone follows that. It's just a recommendation. Then the outdoor light limits. As I mentioned, originally, we had the... Article 16 had a limit of 12 feet. We're moving from 12 to 25. As you can see, 25 feet works well. Fully shielded in a parking lot. It's well lit. You can see the sky is dark, and that's what we are going for. Then also with maximum lumens that we will recommend, it will be different for residential and for commercial. Residential at 100,000. Commercial residential at 25,000. As you can see on the left, that's what night glow is. But if we reduce our light output, we might end up with something on the right where we can actually see the stars at night. And then we'll also be looking at how to reduce the light trespass, recommending 0.5 food candles. And that's what a food candle is. It's just one lumen. and this is what we are going for. So if this article passes, we are trying to, this is what we'll be going for. We'll reduce our sky glow, reduce our light trespass, reduce backlights. So the sky glow is to reduce light pollution. Trespass is for our neighbors to be happy when they go to bed at night, when they're in the backyard. They don't want your light there. That will help. Backlight will help with wildlife protection. you don't want extra light where the habitats, wildlife and plants also need to sleep at night, if that's what they do at night. And then reduce the light glare when you're driving, you don't want that extra light in your face. If you're walking, you don't want that extra light. And we want to only keep the useful light. So that's the article in a nutshell. And we'll have special provisions for those who come up with innovative ideas, Like if you meet certain net lumens for your property, you can have taller light structures. Let's see what are the... I think that's the main one. And then we have outdoor recreation and entertainment exemptions, where we have higher lumens and kelvins for sports fields and entertainment areas. This will allow us to have good photography and film for events. Also, spectators can have better viewing. We'll have taller lights for these event spaces, which will go from 25 that we allow everywhere else to 80 feet for venues that have 2,500 people, 125 feet for those with over 5,000. And then all the accessories connected to these areas are not exempt from this article. They still have to follow all the other regulations. These exemptions are just for the play areas and entertainment areas. And as Mr. Sean Carter said, turn the lights down, the games are over. So with these places, we will have a one-hour requirement for lights to be turned off at the end of every event. And these are some of the places that we looked at when going through this. And finally, staff recommends approval under 10 minutes. Questions? Thank you so much. Do we have any questions? I have about 50. All right, Mr. Wilson, go right ahead. I have a question. Section 30.2, this section applies to all zones excluding A-R, A-B, A-N. That's just that paragraph, correct? The rest of the ordinance would apply in the A-R? No, no, the ordinance itself applies to every zone except those three. Those three are not affected by this. I see. Okay. Well, it was on a plan maybe a month ago. We were in chambers, and I asked about, it was in the AR zone. I said, should we put any lighting restrictions because of the effect on the ovulation cycles of livestock? And the response was, the lighting ordinance will take care of that. I think I said that we had a lighting ordinance coming and that we could incorporate some standards into that. So at this point, that's not been done. Is that something you would recommend doing, providing guidelines for the Board of Adjustment? Again. Is in essence what you're asking? Yes. Yes. Yes. because we've discussed the importance of that on the natural environment, businesses that contribute billions of dollars to central Kentucky. So, yes, I think that needs to be included. Is it because the lighting for, like, a barn or a house is that what you're considering? It's not even that. It's some of the things that could potentially go into the rural area that would have significant almost industrial-style lighting that adjoining farm landowners shouldn't be subject to or their livestock. And are they conditional uses? That's my question. Or are they, you think they're... I mean, some of the acceptable uses that are not conditional uses in the AR, I guess I would want to read the zone, but I think we need to afford them some lighting pollution protection too. Okay. I'll refer to Hal. Mr. Davis, can you give us some examples of how this would impact the agricultural community? Right now, when we did a little bit of review in other communities, especially when it comes to the cattle industry and a fair amount of the milk operations, dairy industry, they do not utilize lighting in a way that is conducive to meet a lot of these goals. They're typically very bright. They're very tall. We wanted to avoid any impact of an agricultural use as defined by the state and some of the ways that we are not able to restrict those land uses. So if you could give us some examples of what types of lighting and what types of land uses you are concerned with, we can get to that. I will email that. And the science, I mean, veterinary science has been very clear on just the effect primarily on ovulation. And when one of our primary crops is breeding and foaling horses, it's critical. Thank you. And just to clarify, when you send us that, just ensure that you tell us which agricultural uses you're concerned with, which ones that you are concerned with from a conditional use or any other of those perspectives. That would be very helpful. Happy to do it. Thank you. All righty. Do we have any discussion or questions? Fifty questions? Just one. Are you ready for a motion? Yes, sir. If you are. Yeah, I move for approval of the PLN 24-4 regulation of outdoor lighting with the provisions provided by staff. And can we include inclusion of? Ah, yes. I don't know how to put that in. The inclusion of the lighting for standards for? Standards for the A-R-A-B-N-A-U. Or, I'm sorry, A-N. A-N. Okay. I'll accept that as a part of the motion. Second. Second. All right. Any discussion? All in favor? Raise your right hand. Thank you very much. Thank you. This will be on your agenda next week because it's a council-initiated text, so we only have 60 days. Okay. Now we're on to landscaping and tree protection. Just wanted to give you all a quick update. The staff report you have in front of you delves kind of comprehensively into some of the language that we're looking at for this zoning ordinance text amendment. However, as a result of some public outreach that our long-range staff and your DES staff have had, there are some sections that they are wanting to kind of continue to work on, and so they are seeking, they're going to be, in essence, postponing the request in order to get that additional information, make sure that that language is something the stakeholders are comfortable with, and we'll be bringing that back before you. So nothing with that at this time. Thank you, Daniel. I think are we finished? How'd we do? 345. Alrighty, without objection. Thank you all.