Music ¶¶ Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is October 17, 2024. Welcome to the Urban County Planning Commission. Special meetings, amendments to the comprehensive plan. First up, we will have Chris Taylor step up to the podium, have a few comments, and then we will carry on from there. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the commission. A couple of housekeeping items real quick before we get started. we're going to be submitting a couple things into the record this afternoon first is the affidavit of the publication of the legal notice for this public hearing second is a copy of the draft master plan that is on the website copy of the appendices that are also again on the website and then full packet of everything public comment that we've received thus far as of noon today you should have at your place with your agenda the few remaining items that came in in the last two days since we last sent these items to you digitally but in this packet is the entirety of it on your machines right now you have three tabs open in the browser one is public comment one is the place builder element and one is the master plan itself on the website where you can then select each chapter in the drop-down and follow along or review throughout this meeting as you wish if any of you need any assistance with that anything just let us know and we'll we'll help you out with that in terms of order today the consultant team led by Sam Castro and Caleb Rassico from TSW design will do the presentation of the draft urban growth master plan how Bailey will do a very brief presentation on the place builder update to the comprehensive plan and then we will open it up for public comment but it's mr. chair if anyone the planning commission has any questions for me well I'll go ahead and turn it over to TSW design thank you this cash grow good afternoon I need to lower that good afternoon everyone again I'm Samantha Castro I'm I'm with Tenelle Spengler and Associates, TSW. We are a local, we just opened a Lexington office, but we are a longstanding planning architecture and landscape architecture firm based here in the South. And so I appreciate your time today. Hopefully we will kind of move quickly because a lot of this is all things that have been presented to you, but we've got to get it on the record. let's see here we go okay um so first off i want to um i want to talk about the um the incredible team that we had working on this on this master plan process so we have Gresham Smith we have a few folks here in the room they helped us with transportation and infrastructure we had partners for economic solutions they came several times and talked to you all about market analysis and the fiscal impact we had South face looking at sustainability and we of course have Civic Lex doing our our you know the bulk of our community engagement so what are we here today to talk about following the urban county council's directive around this time last year we the the city was asked to bring in an additional over 2,700 acres into the urban service boundary you all as planning Commission brought in two thousand eight hundred and thirty three we slightly adjusted that number at some point during a planning mission work session that brought that number up to two thousand eight hundred and forty and that was to bring in that that little corner in area five that that you know was just an anomaly between the GIS and how things were done these it's spread out over five different expansion five to five different areas in really three different sectors along the edge of our existing urban service area and they they're all three of them are along our major arterials so I really want I can't say this enough because it feels like this process has moved quickly of course but this is establishing a vision for growth similar to the 1996 expansion this will really take decades of steady development to be fully realized so i want to put that into context i think there's a you know some fear that that everything's going to happen you know overnight but you know this is all part of of a long planning process We, as part of this being part of the Imagine Lexington Comprehensive Plan, we of course went back and looked at the pillars and policies and guiding principles that were laid out in that comprehensive plan. And incorporated those into the design and the master plan. you can find that element in appendix a starting at page 274 how each of those pillars and policies aligns with either the physical master plan or the the regulatory approach so in addition to to the research that we did on sort of the physical parameters of each site and that can all be found in in section 2 existing conditions that's on page 40 we worked with partners for economic solutions and they conducted a market analysis to help us better understand what types of development would actually be viable for these sites that that's found in section 3 market analysis on page 82 if you're following along at home so before we kind of get into all of that you know I think we've all seen the sort of growth statistic of how of the projected growth of how Lexington's going to grow in the next you know 20 years and we're projected to grow by around 25,000 households which equals out to about 48,000 50,000 people I think it's really important to to see here that this urban growth master plan in in itself fulfills a huge part of that need you know we're estimating that we can supply around 17 000 to 27 000 new households which could potentially bring another you know 40 to 60 000 new residents to our city so if you put that into context that's um that's basically the population of of an owensboro or a bowling green so when we're thinking about the massive scale of what we are undertaking here that that helps uh frame what what we're looking at what we're doing so the other thing that the that the market analysis really showed us is that um far and away residential was is really the the driving thing in the market that they are seeing currently but it's not necessarily the typical residential typology that we've been seeing for a long time which is you know I would say your traditional suburban large lot development more and more people are looking for that housing variety and whether that's a variety of housing types or unit types different sizes different price points people just want something that's new and different And so we think that this plan helps fill some of that need. We also looked at other uses. And, you know, one thing that was really of note is that, yes, we do have retail. And we have some pretty high-functioning retail within the county, you know, that's newly built and it's very successful. So the idea of adding a whole new major retail center isn't necessarily in the cards right now. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't plan for some flexibility for that in the future. But typically what we find is that retail follows rooftops. So it helps to build the residential, build the people in, and then the retail providers want to follow. In terms of office, I think we all know what that trend is looking like. But people that are still, that's not to say that people aren't looking for office space, but in a lot of cases employers are looking for sort of that live-work-play aspect and to start to locate their offices in more mixed-use locations. And then finally, industrial. We looked at that on more of a regional scale because that's really how they look at the market. We're finding that the land here in Fayette County is very cost prohibitive to do a lot of kinds of industrial, but that doesn't preclude the idea that there are types of light industrial that we might find in some of these spaces. So in terms of our approach, we as designers follow best practice standards of our profession to design the best possible master plans. And we sort of aspire to a series of principles of good design. But these principles very much align with the existing comprehensive plan and the pillars and policies from that. So I'm going to walk through those very quickly. So, like I said, a mix of housing types. If you add variety to the housing market, we open up all sorts of doors to making housing more attainable. By providing a diversity of uses, a greater mix of uses, the wider variety of users and the more interesting and vibrant a place can become. Gentle density. and what you know what I mean by general density is that there are ways to achieve density without giving up things like open space and amenities so it's equally as important to think about maximizing the use of a parcel of land as it is to build the trails greenways parks civic spaces that need to support that connectivity so I would say that probably one of the biggest things that we need to shift or change or a lesson learned from the 1996 expansion was this idea of connecting and future connectivity and planning for future connectivity the area shown here is is around athens chilesburg and as we can see it was purposely planned so that there were no road connections into you know future growth opportunities but what that means now is that all pretty much all of our expansion areas that we're looking at are very much isolated and so we are having to force connections that that should naturally be there but you know purposely were excluded uh transportation um obviously you know more and more uh we are focusing on on all of all of the modes of transportation so from walking rolling biking or driving we know that this area is is quite far away from our existing transit service so we need it's imperative that these master plans show connections and circulation routes that you know that build in the potential for transit eventually but that function you know from from day one so our process we have tried to make our process as transparent as possible and you know meet with anyone that's willing and and be open about about how we're getting from point A to point B through the help of Civic Lex and planning staff we've held numerous opportunities for public involvement community input education and engagement along the way which you can read about in section 4 of the public stakeholder engagement on page 128. in addition to that you know we were civiclex did a great job i think of sort of tracking who we were hearing from and then very specifically and targeted going out to communities where we weren't hearing you know as many voices and so in that sense they did an additional 16 pop-ups in different places around the community so that we could get a more diverse representation of who is providing us input we also uh you know kind of got out there through all sorts of social media and meetings if any of you have had the chance that we have urban growth lex.com which launched in november of 2023 as of september the website had over 7 000 unique visitors and 14 000 page views I would assume that it's much higher since September the urban growth survey which we launched very at the beginning of the project received over a thousand responses and the draft sections of the report that we already had out so that that kind of had the frameworks and the concept plans you know at the time of the draft master plan had around 37,000 views I would love to update you on the number of what that is today I'm sure it's quite a bit higher than that now I kind of want to shift a little bit and talk about you know our design process so design is very much an iterative process and we we move through layers of information so we created our initial framework these initial framework plans are sort of rough sketches based on you know the existing conditions data that had gathered and information from property owners and developers and the community. Then we asked for feedback from those same owners and developers. And then we got down to these example concept plans that you all saw. So these are really, we want to think about these as more of a proof of concept where we went in and tested our ideas from those frameworks to make sure that they could actually exist in the real world and that they were giving us the types of buildings and roads and parking and open space that you typically see but we also really wanted to ensure that this increased density that we're using in in this particular master plan which is sort of new to the way Lexington has developed still provides that that sense of community that we are that we so desire we also then you know when we were building those those concept plans we tested them using actual lot size and lot sizes and layouts that we know work you might notice that these are a lot of these are narrower than than what we've been building lately and so that's also helping us get this increased density we also provided you know townhouse examples and then really pushed this idea of missing middle housing you know the duplexes the quads that the multiplexes and then the other thing that we tried to do is build in flexibility and we were doing that by using what we're calling a modified grid so we use almost a fairly standard block size throughout you'll see but the idea is that over time or based on the market or where you are on the site you can fit in different product types within that same grid so this iterative iterative process continued on to what we call the regulating plans which will really be the elements that planning services will hold developers to as they come in for any future rezoning and you'll find those in section 5 regulating plans on page 146 so these showed different types of different land use types and we did that rather than zoning to allow for flexibility of the developers to be able to choose where their development fit in with place builder the lowest density being shown currently is a minimum of eight dwelling units per acre which still allows for a single-family product if you want but it really hits on more of a denser in-town neighborhood feel sort of like kenwick is a good example they're right around eight then we work into our medium density this is really where we start pushing missing middle high density is really thinking about multifamily and a little bit of neighborhood serving commercial and then we have these two purple types that you'll see on on the regulating plans and those are our sort of centers the first one is a village center which is I would say more of what we think of as a traditional horizontal mixed use and then we have the town center which is more of a stacked vertical mixed use so you have might have retail below and then office or apartment above and that's really the the most dense that we that we see in here and then last but not least we have this built-in flex space and we wanted to leave this very open like I said and these these spaces on the maps are really supposed to start to get at like what what does the city need in terms of jobs or industry or even more retail and so that allows that flexibility for for future growth and for future market aspects so I'm not going to go into too much detail on each of these we've talked a lot about these but I want to just kind of give the highlights so this is area one this is off at the intersection of Parker's Mill and man-of-war Boulevard it has it we're currently showing one village center so against that that smaller sort of horizontal mixed-use center and in here we're thinking that we can get around 1100 to 1800 households with a net density of around you know between 11 and 17 so you know rather dense but you can also see in there there's a lot of built-in green space and open space some of that has to do with the non-buildable land that's out there the potential for sinkholes but then also providing access to to parks and open space we also wanted to be very conscious about providing providing and maintaining a vegetative buffer between the existing neighborhood and the proposed residential and then the connection of the the single street connection that we that is shown here goes from a very like low speed neighborhood style street and just connects into what is already an existing low-speed neighborhood street next is area 2 so this is where polo club basically tees into Winchester and this area has a lot of opportunity for several different centers so there's a town center which is our more dense product right there up on our arterials and then moving back into you know two other potential village centers this whole this whole area is very much designed around the greenways here and these like fingers of green that move into each of these sort of neighborhoods and then building the plan around that you'll also see that we we're showing two schools here just because of the the number of households that we think that this area could project you know these are just potential areas for schools but we felt it was really important in this master plan process to put to go ahead and put schools and parks and civic uses and bake them right into the design right up front so that they're not getting the leftover pieces at the very end of the development this is area three and this is of course out Athens Boonesboro you can see Brenda Cowan and the existing Charlesburg neighborhood that's in there there there's opportunity for several other centers in here obviously this area is one that is very challenged by the potential for connections so you're really kind of moving in and through the site and back out all on Athens Boonesboro. But we do have the potential to get quite a lot of density in here, somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 new household units right by the highway, so that's fairly appealing for both folks that live in Lexington and sort of regionally. This is Area 4, which is right next to area 3 and it is a connection a potential connection of cane break drive so that would the idea is that it would connect Athens Boonesboro to Todd's Road and provide another opportunity for relief of the the sort of traffic issues that form on Hayes over time and just provide you know like like I've said several times we're all about making additional connections as many connections as as as possible. And you'll see here there is sort of that node of flex space that exists that we're showing at the southern end of this, and that really ties into the existing blue sky. And then this one of course looks a little bit different. This is area 5. This is right at the sort of interchange of Athens-Boonesboro and I-75. We're getting quite a bit of density here, but also there's a lot of sort of flex space that we're really talking about being mostly about the soccer stadium and sort of an entertainment district idea but of course you know there is flexibility for for those to to change over time you will see in that same section of the regulating plans that we we do talk quite a bit about transportation and we show a lot of typical street sections but I want to make note that those are really placeholders we use those to for ourselves to know what the sort of design hierarchy of streets and roads would be so we could know the difference between you know boulevard and a neighborhood street and also then so that we could cost them but really all of this will be trumped by the work that is ongoing right now with the complete streets design manual so these are sort of placeholders currently but we wanted ensure that there was enough right-of-way designed into the plan so that whatever they're doing can then feed into this finally the capital cost section section eight infrastructure costs and fiscal impact really takes a deep dive into how much these plans cost and that's based on the infrastructure utilities police fire parks libraries and transit obviously the contingency factor on these is quite high at this point because we're really working at this macro scale of design and so we have no idea what is happening physically out on the site that impacts a lot of these numbers and but much of these costs that you're seeing on here typically fall to the developer with a few like emergency services that fall to the city so it's important to note that that those you know that not all of these numbers fall to to the city to have to work at this point I'm going to turn this over to my colleague Caleb to continue thank you very much Sam and good afternoon commissioners I'm Caleb Rossico with tennell spinger Walsh and Associates and I'm going to be talking to you briefly about some of the regulation standards that would begin to implement this particular vision i knew you missed one sam do you want me to talk about attainable housing so um one final aspect of this master planning process is of course to think about providing housing diversity to make sure that as the urban growth boundary area expands that the type of housing provided in there does provide for persons of different incomes different ages uh really in different life cycles and so there is obviously a lot of work that continues to need to be done there i'll talk about a couple of recommendations shortly that we can consider through zoning but there is definitely needs to have ongoing conversations there about support to make the deals potentially possible potential land that makes them work and as i'll mention soon things that we can do in the design of new development so with that said let's see it is not working okay going backwards not going forward can someone manually switch it last one well while we're getting this loaded for the sake of everyone's time there are certain things that that I can talk about related to the zoning and development of these urban growth boundary expansion areas that I think will set the foundation for what I'm going to share. The first thing, as Sam mentioned, is that one of the key goals of the master planning vision is to really build upon the quality of development that Lexington has seen following the 1996 expansion. So the ideas that I'm going to talk about shortly are intended to achieve a couple of things. The first thing is to make sure that private development activities are more carefully planned. They align with the vision, they support the vision, and they really move the city in the direction that this master plan called for. Additionally, a lot of the things related to connectivity are going to be extremely important things to think about in the regulatory framework. not just street connectivity but also bicycle connectivity trail connectivity and even potentially thinking about bus cervix expansion into these areas and then a final very important aspect is that in terms of entitlement the vision is not to codify any of these framework plans or any of these concept plans as sort of static documents we know as planners that whenever we work on a community process with the citizens and the elected officials and Planning Commission members there's definitely got to be some flexibility built in there we can put pens on paper all day long and draw beautiful plans but the reality of the situation is that it's going to take elected officials it's going to take the city and it's going take private private developers working in tandem to make sure that this vision becomes a reality and so to that end you're going to see that the regulatory framework has a lot of flexibility built into it we have been very deliberate and specific where we feel that we need to be in order to achieve the aspects that sam talked about but we've also been very flexible in other areas And so for those of you who may live adjacent to one of these areas and see a particular use on a particular property, please know that that is illustrative and that the framework pieces that I'll talk about momentarily are really the important aspects. Okay, and I can go no further without graphics. Thank you. Great. Perfect. Well, this is what I just talked about. Again, building on the 1996 urban service area boundary expansion to be more carefully planned, more connected, more walkable, bikeable, and very importantly, more mixed use. And so, as you'll hear in a moment, there are some regulatory recommendations to actually mandate mixed-use development in several of these areas and why is that important well i would say if there was one key takeaway from this entire initiative it's that in order for lexington to realize the potential of this very precious commodity this very precious allocation of over 2 000 acres of land for new development it's very important that that development provides a range of uses and housing types there are financial implications to the city associated with that and our economists have sort of looked at the the financial variability of different scenarios and mixed-use development from a tax revenue perspective for the city is is incredibly important especially with regard to infrastructure additionally the allocation of uses can have a a positive impact on traffic or a negative impact on traffic. One of the ways that you make a community actually be walkable and bikeable and supportive of transit is to lay out developments in a way that are mixed use. This is very intuitive to everyone being in downtown right now. You can walk out of one building, walk out of a city office building, go into a hotel, go into a condos or lofts nearby, and what all of that does is it lets us set up a physical framework that can reduce driving and that in itself does have a public health benefit the EPA and the CDC have estimated that the sedentary lifestyles have a very significant impact on quality of life on lifestyles of people on the public health and so mixed-use can can contribute that and then finally and I think this last piece is incredibly important as well is that is that mixed use does not only mean housing and jobs, or housing and retail. When we use mixed use here, we're also thinking about a variety of housing types. Housing for people who may just gotten out of high school or gotten out of college and maybe only need a one bedroom place. A family that may need a three or four bedroom home, and then a senior or a person who downsizes may need a slightly different housing type. And so mixed use and mixed housing types are really central to the regulatory framework. So with that said, how in fact are we going to use these regulating plans that Sam showed? Well, the first thing is that they are only going to be mandatory in a couple of ways. The first is that the village centers and the mixed use centers that Sam talked about, the village center and town centers, those will have to be provided in approximately the location shown. They won't have to have the exact layout. They won't have to have the exact size. But the idea that as these areas develop, every person who lives there or lives nearby should be able to walk to an amenity, walk to retail, walk to a corner store or even a school. The village and the town centers are really fundamental to achieving that. The other thing that's really important is making sure that those major connections are achieved. So when you look at all of these regulating plans, you'll notice there are two types of lines. There's a heavy, solid line, which means that it is a mandatory street. And there are dashed lines, which are completely hypothetical, up to the developer to lay out. Additionally, the regulating plan will require connectivity. Providing connections between adjacent areas and these growth area expansions are really important to reducing traffic on the major corridors. And then the final area, the final way that regulating plans are going to be mandatory is that every one of these land use colors that Sam talked about has a range of allocated housing types, housing densities. And so the idea there is that if a property is designated for a high density or medium density mixed use development, there will be an associated minimum density with that. Again, we're trying to set up a framework for really creating new walkable neighborhoods, new walkable parts of the city, and not necessarily a collection of subdivisions where you've got a subdivision here, you may have townhomes here, you may have apartments there. They're all going to be interconnected. They're all going to be integrated. Now, with that said, flexibility would be available to adjust based on site features and natural resources. Now, one of the other really important aspects of providing the benefits of mixed-use development is this idea of concurrency. And this is a completely new idea for Lexington and one that we believe is incredibly important. Sam didn't mention, but at TSW, I focus on most of our coding work. So I've worked with cities all across the southeast, and I found loopholes that developers may or may not use to sometimes not realize the visions that are recommended. And so one of the things we're recommending here is that single-family homes will have to provide other uses. So, for example, if there's a development that's in the lower-density area and they want to come in and do a conventional subdivision, they would only be allowed to build up to a certain number of single-family units before they have to have some commercial space. And that number is up to 20% of whatever the allocated single family was for that area. And then over 20%, you have to have some sort of commercial, 4,000 square feet. Now, I know we've heard some feedback already that where does that number come from? 4,000 square feet sounds like a lot for those of you who are not in the retail industry, but it really is arguably one or two or three storefronts. The image before you is a 4,200 square foot immediate care clinic in Atlanta where I'm from. That kind of very small corner building that could be done by a separate developer but within the development would allow to satisfy that. The other thing that we've put in place here that I think is really exciting is that we are recommending that the spaces that meet this commercial requirement don't even have to be leased to commercial initially. So we've put in place a concept called retail ready. We know because we work for developers in addition to cities that retail markets and office markets and commercial markets are not always such that you will lease commercial space on the ground floor on day one. And so we've put in place a flexible provision that says as long as the developers build the space such that they can convert to retail in the future with minimum ceiling heights, with wheelchair accessible doors, and service areas, that that could also count. I think that that's a really important takeaway because again look at Lexington. You've seen a physical form in and around your downtown area where buildings change use over time and so it may have been built as a townhome one day and then it has converted to a commercial use 100 years later we're trying to set up that frame same framework of flexibility in the urban growth boundary area expansions and then finally there is also a concurrency require requirement or a mixed use requirement for the commercial areas the proposal is to allow a developer to build up to about 80 000 square feet of commercial so that's a you know fairly large kroger or a very small walmart without having to have any residential uses but above that they would have to build at least 50 percent of the residential uses on the site and you may ask why have you put this in here why is this being recommended well I have seen far too many developers come into various jurisdictions and say they're going to build this wonderful plan that meets all of the city objectives meets everything the public asked for and then they never build the retail or if they're commercial developer they never build the housing so having this very generous flexible threshold in our opinion is going to ensure that you get mixed use over time so that's a really central to what we're talking about into achieving the vision that sam mentioned additionally there are a series of requirements in here to achieve the connectivity and circulation there are standards for access management which means restricting driveways on key corridors there are standards for bicycle parking and storage there are standards for loading alley access and even the provision of street trees again making a truly walkable community is not only about land use it's not only about the connectivity of streets, it also is about providing shade. Additionally, there are standards in here for open space, and we have recommended a requirement that all developments have to be within a walking distance of open space, so the developer could not take a large tract, put all the open space at one end, and call it a day. This requirement would require open spaces to be scattered throughout the development, as illustrated in the drawings. We even get into the level of buildings in the zoning recommendations. There is a recommendation that all buildings should have to have active depths, active uses along the street. And all this really means is that if you're going to build a building in these village centers or town centers, you have to make sure that you have active uses on the ground floor. You don't have blank walls. You don't have parking. again, look outside this building and see the benefit of actual habitable space on the street. There are also some standards for drive-thrus. We know drive-thrus are part of modern society, but we are recommending some design provisions so that they're a bit less harmful on the walkability. And then the final aspect is prohibition and regulations for certain uses. We are putting in place some recommended standards for data centers. Again, we believe that the land is probably too valuable to make this work, but you never know. And so we put in some standards for data centers to make sure that they meet the general design requirements and put in some standards for commercial self-storage uses to make sure they are limited in terms of where they go and meet the design requirements. So the final thing I wanted to talk about is, you know, knowing that I have worked with a lot of jurisdictions across the Southeast, Where have these ideas been tried before and where have they worked? And I first want to commit to every commissioner every stakeholder in the city of Lexington That we have put forth recommendations that we believe based on what we've heard Will work and are viable in this community The requirements for concurrency are fairly common across the southeast especially when you're dealing with something as precious and I think that is a really critical word precious as the urban growth boundary area expansions concurrency is used quite a bit in Georgia for planned developments for mixed-use districts traditional neighborhoods transit oriented developments and even in many of the larger cities in Kentucky Louisville has similar provisions so it's not it's not completely unheard of and I wanted to show you some examples of how this actually physically manifests on the ground and I'm going to use a city between Atlanta and the Tennessee border called Woodstock Georgia this is a jurisdiction where about 15 20 years ago my firm was brought in to do exactly what you're doing now to work with the community to come up with an area a vision for expanding their downtown expanding their city and very importantly to codify it and one of the things that we put in there which which 20 years ago was quite unheard of at least in Georgia was a requirement that larger developments did in fact have to provide a range of housing types and a range of uses and so this property which I believe is about a hundred acres There is a major state arterial on the right side, State Highway 90. The city required connectivity, internal to development. The city required a mix of housing types, so there are single-family lots and townhomes. And then very importantly, the city required along that Highway 90 the provision of retail-ready buildings, exactly like I've talked about. So you can see them sort of on the right. This has, in fact, worked out fairly well. This is a national builder who works a lot in Georgia, John Whelan Homes. I think they've been bought out by a bigger national builder, but they're what you call a production builder. They basically build a single family product type, a couple of townhome product types, and then are getting into commercial and mixed use in these targeted areas. But as you can see, the development has come out exactly as required by the city. There are streets that interconnect, there are alleys like we're recommending here in Lexington, and there's usable public open space. And very importantly, everything sort of on the right, three quarters of the page is single family detached. And then on the left, you've got a row of about 10 townhomes. So this could be a development where a family may be very comfortable living in one of these arguably large three to four thousand square foot homes but you know their parents or a younger family may be more comfortable in the townhomes and then this is the commercial aspect on the corridor again this is a condition where the market was not quite as strong as as it eventually needs to be so the buildings were built their 5,000 square feet out parcels very similar to what we're talking about and the developer is using them as their leasing center because they're retail ready in a couple of other cases I think they've had like a dentist going one of them so the idea here again is to lay out a community that supports the vision that Sam talked about and gives flexibility for the property owners in the short term again here's the back side of it and then the other thing Woodstock had which sort of speaks to the second aspect of concurrency that I I talk about, is they had a very attractive interstate exit. Interstate 75 is immediately to the left here, and they had a major development corridor. And lo and behold, Costco came in, and Costco says, we want to do a, whatever this is, 150,000 square foot commercial building with the out-parcel gas station. And the city stuck to their code, and they actually made Costco do about 80 townhomes behind the building. So I know they're hard to see in this image but Costco is at the top of the hill and right behind it there is a townhome development. So this is very very similar to what we've talked about in Lexington. Again the same builder did not build all this. Costco sold the townhome parcel off to another developer but again it begins to provide the housing that the city needs and i think does it in a fairly reasonable way so i wanted to show those because i think it is important to look at other communities i know that some of the things that are in here from the regulatory framework are very new and again you have my word as a code writer and as a planner that we've put forth recommendations that will implement the vision that sam talked about and certainly we believe is very doable and practical so thank you for your time thank you mr bailey coming up i don't know mr nickel you had something okay good afternoon hal bailey division of planning much like mr. Taylor did at the beginning of the previous presentation I have a few elements that we need to enter into the record this is a second agenda item it is associated with what we're talking about for the urban growth master plan but it is a little bit different from that so we do have our affidavit for our public notice a copy of our current comprehensive plan the proposed amendments to the place builder element of the comprehensive plan and then there is one comment that was made on the conveyor application for the place builder amendment that i'll hand to you now Over the course of the past year and a half, we have been discussing some of the modifications to the zoning ordinance as well as the introduction of the Urban Growth Master Plan. Both of those elements are very important to how we see the future of Lexington, not just from a regulatory approach within our zoning ordinance but from an impact on our comprehensive plan the urban growth master plan would be a adopted element of the comprehensive plan and both of these documents together cause us to look at what we currently have in our comprehensive plan and specifically the place builder element which is meant to act as the guiding point for zone changes within our community so part of the implementation of our comprehensive plan so as you know very recently the urban County Council adopted the urban growth management zoning ordinance text amendment this had significant modifications to several zones within our zoning ordinance including three residential zones the creation of a new residential zone and then the modification of two commercial zones within our zoning ordinance and as we've been talking about with the previous presentation the urban growth master plan will have significant impacts on our comprehensive plan how we talk about things in the future typically when we adopt a element into the comprehensive plan like a small area plan or a master plan it is a standalone document however in 2018 we implemented our place builder element which brings in different aspects of small area plans corridor plans all of which are called out in different places in our place builder element due to the modifications of the urban growth management zota as well as the potential for the adoption of the urban growth master plan we recommend several changes to the place builder to make sure that it is modern and up to date to reflect the changes that we made previously and the adoption of the master plan the place builder is that distillation of the goals objectives and policies of our comprehensive plan that is meant to make the zone change process a more conversational act it is meant to have very clear standards that we are trying to meet or try to get agreement with our full comprehensive plan we've been utilizing this since that 2018 adoption and it has been going quite well we modified small aspects of that with our most recent 2023 update to our comprehensive plan this would add some more clarity and bring in zones that were previously not recommended within our comprehensive plan that are now up-to-date modern zones like the corridor business zone or that b3 zone so we are making recommendations or changes to the current place builder you do have this in front of you on your screen but the major changes that we are looking at are in the place types a little bit in the development types and then some modification in the zone so you'll see in the downtown zone this we are recommending a modification of some of the zones including the cn zone or the corridor node zone this is our newest zone within the zoning ordinance and we are proposing to add that into the downtown second tier urban and regional center removing references to the mu zones or our mixed use zones those zones were developed really associated with some of the changes that we were seeing along our oliver lewis way areas that removal is because we have made a lot of our other zones more flexible they allow for integration of different types of land uses business and commercial but they also allow for flexibility and housing types throughout different zones we are also proposing adding some of the the different new zones specifically the b3 zone that corridor business zone back into the recommendations this is specifically for that regional center place type this would allow for the those commercial opportunities to occur at those locations but the modifications that we have made within the zoning ordinance with the ugm zoda specifically also allow for residential to happen along those corridors so we would like to see a greater utilization of that space much of the areas of our corridors have changed dramatically and we want to see those changes in agreement with some of the modifications that were made with the previous zoda in terms of our corridor new complete neighborhood enhance and enhance neighborhood there were a few modifications again adding in the b3 zone and the CN zone in the corridor place type removing those MU zones throughout there was a significant amount of change for the new complete neighborhood previously in the new complete neighborhood located here there was no recommendation for a low density residential development type this was due to the fact that we were seeking to increase the density and intensity of some of our new complete neighborhoods so that we are offsetting some of the environmental impacts of any new development while also trying to create more walkable spaces within our community by adding that low density residential development and type into the place builder. We can also recommend the R2 zone, which is a modified zone with the urban growth management ZODA. This mixed low density residential zone allows for single family detached, attached, and some small scale multifamily residential. Finally, with the enhanced neighborhood, staff is recommending the inclusion of that R2 zone, the removal of some other zones, including the MUs as well as the R3 zone, again, pushing for a new modern perspective of the R2 zone as being the primary residential zone in some of those areas. Finally, there was no change that was recommended within the industrial and non-residential place type and development type. Associated with the Urban Growth Master Plan, we are seeking to include several or multiple new development criteria associated specifically with that master plan this will help the Planning Commission and the public see the different ways that we are trying to ensure that we are getting the best development in agreement with the urban growth master plan and our comprehensive plan finally there is the inclusion of the proposed maps associated with the land use recommendations from the urban growth master plan that would be brought into the place builder again making it more transparent of what we are looking for during the zone change process guiding applicants through the process a little bit easier and then also making sure that it is available to the public during those zone changes in the future so that is a quick run-through of the modifications of the place builder element of the comprehensive plan if you have any questions on that I'd be happy to answer you have any questions for mr. Billy thank you thank you next we're have the public comments and I'm going by the sign-up sheets I hope everyone signed up here. So first on the podium Janet Pike and we would each individual have two minutes and 30 seconds to speak today. Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Janet Pike. I live at 1536 Pine Needles Lane in area one of the master plan I'm here speaking on behalf of the board of directors of the Heritage Place condominium Association which makes up about 30 acres of area 1 adjacent to the large farmland we are made up of 120 homeowners who individually own condominium units and we and we also collectively own the common areas throughout the property our common area includes a private street and direct access to Manowar Boulevard as well as our entry signage, landscape beds, and a small unguarded gatehouse. Approximately six to seven acres upon entering our property was set aside by the original developer as the community's green space, which we call our arboretum because most of it consists of a large catch basin and terrain that the developer at that time determined was not feasible to build upon. property plat as it was originally filed in 2000 clearly shows this area as non-buildable land which is the same language that's being used for the various green spaces in area one on the conceptual plan obviously we're heartbroken that the farm next to us is going to go away but we want to make very clear at this stage and on the record that our community has no desire or intent to develop or alter the property that we own that's currently has just been put into this plan as we believe is our right we followed the development of the concept plan closely throughout this year we've had several opportunities to communicate these concerns to the planning group we appreciate the fact that mr. Duncan and mr. Taylor came and spoke to us last week about this we've given written comment etc and our message has stayed the same and that is that the preservation of our common area including our private entrance that limits traffic onto our property is paramount to our community we do want to go on record today with two primary concerns that remain for us based on what we see we've asked that the regulating plan refrain from implying in any way that we would potentially oh I'm done can I can can I continue thank you I'm dying we I'll say we asked we want to say that we want the concept plan to refrain from implying in any fashion that we would potentially close our access to Manowar Boulevard and reroute the entry to our our neighborhood through the new development, nor would we sell or build on any portion of our common area. However, we've been alarmed by the continued suggestion of both of these things in various drawings and things that we have seen. The more detailed plans are showing buildings on property that we own, and we believe that it is inaccurate and misleading to show that because we know that land to be non-buildable and we have no intention of ever developing it so if you look at the area one plan currently our piece of property is one one minute I'm sorry that piece of the property shirt currently shows us as as low density in yellow, when in fact it should be non-buildable land in green, which is similar to what's also in area one. So that's number one. Number two, we're concerned about the placement of the road because we think it will impact our access to our neighborhood depending on traffic flow. So I appreciate your time. I do have written copies of summarizing what I have just said, which I'll be happy to provide to you all. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Ms. Pike. Next, Margaret Graves. Good afternoon, my name is Margaret Graves. I reside at 2497 Liberty Road. I've appeared before you many times before as a rural advocate. I have a couple of comments and concerns about the proposed plans as presented today. First, and this is a multi-million dollar question, and that is how will this be paid for? And I think that that's something that the Planning Commission and the Council needs to take a hard look at and explain to the community. Because this is going to be a very expensive endeavor. it is going to be largely paid for allegedly by the development community that's not worked out in the past and I think that the community as a whole deserves some assurance that in fact the development community will pay for the necessary infrastructure and improvements also I think it's important to convey to the community what assurances there will be given that there will in fact be mixed income housing and affordable housing this expansion which you didn't recommend and the council mandated was sold to the community on the basis for the need for affordable housing so let's make sure we do in fact get affordable housing I think that's very important and I think it's important that you all demand that as well as the council and then finally I have issue I take issue with the plans that show access roads into adjacent farms implying that those farms will be developed in the future i know access and connectivity is important and i applaud that but i don't think it's appropriate to show roads stubbing into active farms when those farms are not being developed and this community is planning supposedly until 2045. thank you thank you frank becker Good afternoon, council members. I'm Frank Becker, and my wife and I reside on Sycamore Road in Ashland Park. I've lived here in excess of 66 years, which I'm sorry to say is not my whole life. So, but I'm here mostly because I initially opposed, or I did oppose the expansion, but I thought, well, if we're going to have the expansion, I hope it gets done right. So my wife and I have attended a lot of the public meetings, which we thought were excellent. And I want to applaud TSW for, and the planning staff for the job they've done and the openness they've had in this process. And I do want to say I think Lexington is desperately in need of these kind of developments, and I think this is an excellent development. And because of the walkability, livability, and general nature of these type of urbanism communities, I think this one would be a great addition to Lexington, or these would be. If you're competitive with Louisville, Louisville has one, Norton Commons, Lexington can have five. We have zero right now to speak Louisville on this. So I very much urge you to adopt this amendment, and I do appreciate your time here today. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor Baszler. I really don't have anything to say unless somebody talks about the region I'm interested in. And so far, that hasn't happened. So I'll thank you. Okay. We like those comments. That's section number five of the zone. So if anybody's up here to discuss it, I'm here to discuss it with them. Otherwise, I think it's a good job. Okay. Dean, Poe Cipher. Hi. Overall, I like the basic ideas of the UGM plan. I'm a little not comfortable yet with the concurrency. I don't have that mixed in my head, so I think that needs to be a big discussion point by the Planning Commission when they get to this is exactly how do you implement concurrency. I'm also been here. I'm in Area 1. Roswell has ended at a dead end since I bought my house in 2003. I always assumed that it was going to go somewhere someday, and now this plan is showing that it is going somewhere. And I just wanted to say that for me personally, where I live in Beaumont Reserve, having that extension would actually be a benefit. So I like the idea of the concept plan. It's got multiple turns on that road before it gets to Parker's Mill, and Parker's Mill needs to be worked on anyway. and I would suggest that there's a speed table or something on the entrance to Beaumont Reserve but I think that's something that the HOA the Beaumont HOA and the city can work together on to get implemented. Thank you. Zach Worsham. Good afternoon, I'm Zach Horsham. I reside at 219 West Vista Street and I represent Winterwood Incorporated, an affordable housing developer and operator based here in Lexington. And I want to first thank the commission and the staff for continuing to keep affordable housing at the forefront of the conversation in this expansion area. But I want to start by cautioning us against the idea of residential and commercial concurrency as it relates to the benefit that this expansion area brings to affordable housing development. It was said earlier that concurrency is not uncommon. Well, we have an uncommon housing shortage in this county right now. Kentucky Housing Corporation recently put out a study that says we are currently 22,000 units short of housing in this county, 8,000 of those as single family homes. So I think that doing anything to regulate and slow down the development of housing in this community is not a good idea. Additionally, as an affordable housing developer, one of the benefits of this expansion is that the market rate developers in our community will start to focus on areas outside of the urban service boundary. opening up less competition for us as affordable housing providers inside of the urban service boundary but if we continue from the start to slow down that growth that cop the benefit of that reduced competition is not going to come and then outside of the urban service boundary in these expansion areas if us as affordable housing providers are able to compete with some of these portions of land we typically do not have the time or the resources to wait or to build our commercial facilities so I think it is something that is going to slow down the response to something that is clearly a crisis in our community I think we should be cautious about doing anything that will slow down the response to this housing crisis thank you thank you Todd Johnson Good afternoon, Commissioners. Thank you for the time to be here today. Todd Johnson with the Building Industry Association, Custer Drive here in Lexington. I'll just kind of cut to the chase on my comments. I do thank the staff for their openness and all the time that we've been able to spend with them. In regards to concurrency, we are just simply requesting that this requirement be removed. We agree with the first presenter consultant that typically you see commercial and retail follow the rooftops. Concurrency by definition controls the pace of construction and attempts to manipulate or dictate market forces. It's not sound ideology to think that this could work in practicality. It is rare or non-existing circumstance where residential developers and commercial developers are within the same company, much less coordinate with one another while they're building their projects. An independent company with no bearing on another's schedule, finances, or ability to perform should not be expected to operate under the threat of being ordered to stop based on the other company's performance. We have a desperate housing need in this community and once the land is ready the builders need to go and do their job and bring product to market as soon as possible. Contractors, home builders especially, are negatively impacted by any delay. That negative impact always results in cost increase driving up. Those increases are always passed along in the price of the product not to mention how can anyone expect to be able to accurately budget or plan with a requirement like this hanging over them this is just a bad idea that's impractical and needs to be removed the other issue that we are concerned about is the densities being requested in the new areas these densities suggested are far exceeding anything that we currently see in Lexington or any city that's even like Lexington that we use as a comparable community on other levels. Low density residential is proposed at 8 to 12 units per acre. This body can recall several different development discussions in the recent past where developers brought in density requests at 20 to 25 percent higher than this that were met with pretty stiff resentment from neighborhoods and always resulted in less density than the developer proposed. Further, we've seen numerous medium density projects that have been brought forward for consideration in recent years. These were almost always met with the request to reduce the number of floors which equals reduce the number of units and as a result most of these failed to come to existence. Thank you for your time today. Thank you Mr. Johnson. Brittany Rothenmeier. Good afternoon, Chair and members of the Commission. I really tried to keep my comments under three minutes. If I go over, I'm going to get done as soon as I can, I promise. Brittany Rothmeier on behalf of Fade Alliance, I do want to take time to thank planning staff, TSW, and all the subcontractors that worked so hard and incredibly quickly on this plan. In so many ways, it really represents best practices for new neighborhoods, for our community, and builds a roadmap for what responsible, sustainable, and equitable development can look like in Fayette County. Diverse housing options, multimodal transit options, connected streets, neighborhoods, and attentions to greenway parks and more make this really the most innovative we've seen in a very long time here. But it does, as it's been raised earlier, raise important questions that have to be asked and answered for Lexington residents and more importantly, tax payers. The plans for expansion were based on needs for housing affordability and equity. And the main questions are, does this plan help to achieve those things? And if so, how does it do that? It proposes infrastructure costs and fiscal impacts that raise serious concerns about the fiscal sustainability of this type of development. While the upfront $570 million of infrastructure costs will be split between the city and private developers, ultimately those costs are passed on to people purchasing houses from developers. How do those costs make the housing more affordable for Lexingtonians? The plan projects ongoing maintenance costs specifically to the city of $8.5 million a year for staff and services. Once again, residential development doesn't pay for itself. It costs all of us. The projected deficit for LFUCG once development is completed is between negative $32 and $48 million a year. How will it impact investments that are needed in other neighborhoods and other parts of our community, especially those that have been historically disinvested. 2,500 acres of land for the 96 expansion have still been undeveloped and thousands of underutilized acres inside the boundary could still support tens of thousands of housing units and jobs. And they still require incredible infrastructure investment. We cannot leave these areas behind. We hope you'll consider the following recommendations. Require a measurement tool in the plan to study and evaluate how progress on this plan impacts housing affordability, affordable housing, and equity in our community in certain time intervals. Require updated regulating plans for existed expansion areas for 96 and other prime infill and redevelopment focus areas so that those areas don't get left behind. And require commitment to simultaneous investment in infill and redevelopment infrastructure inside the existing urban service boundary. Recommending support for financial commitments to the public infrastructure fund and Priority projects like model complete streets or an updated plan for existing undeveloped expansion areas are examples of very tangible opportunities to ensure that our existing undeveloped land doesn't get ignored. A lot is at stake for our future and while proponents of expansion told us that these efforts would make housing more accessible, they aren't being held accountable for how these are going to be paid for. We'll hope you'll consider including these types of accountability tools in the plan. Thanks so much. Thank you, Mr. Rothermeyer. Walt Gatfield? Walt's here? Okay. Can we start the time after he states his name? I think we were starting it a little early on him. I'm Walt Gatfield. I live at 2001 Bamboo Drive in the 10th Council District. I've listed a whole number of things where I agree with staff. On principle, I really like their ideas. I think they've done a good job of presenting it to the public. On the other hand, I think there's, I have a concern that you're spending all this time on the expansion areas with ideas that I really like, and I've got a whole list of them that I'm not going to state right now. I think there's a problem inside the urban services boundary. In essence, the commission and staff seem to believe that infill areas inside the urban services area within neighborhoods should change to match the desired outcome in the new expansion areas. However, given that we're looking at existing development, problems exist in size, height, mass, equity, and context. The luxury dorm in the Prawl Street neighborhood is a case in point. It extends 500 feet into the neighborhood and will blot out the sun. The expansion of the trailer park next to a highly successful African-American neighborhood near Georgetown Street is inexplicable based on the urban growth management plan. I don't understand how it got approved, actually. likely enforceable small area plans will need to increase and stricter infill standards will be necessary our problems with development will likely increase the new cn zone lacks adequate development standards and is a problem already as you've already encountered in the first effort to present it. Transportation-based development is fundamental in the urban growth management plan and seems to be based on the famous line from the movie Field of Dreams, if we build it they will come. Is data available showing that any city has been successful in building transit stations on arterials and tall higher density residential buildings to fill the buses uh lex trans deficiencies are well known lack of transfer stations lack of ridership inadequate frequency and insufficient budget the urban growth management plan is unlikely to solve these problems anytime soon and that that's something you're going to need to think about and address as a commission again i really like the ideas behind the behind the staff's work and and I appreciate allowing the public to participate in the process. Thank you. Thank you. Bob Quick. Good afternoon. My name is Bob Quick. I'm the president and CEO of Commerce Lexington. We are committed to helping to grow our city and attract more good-paying jobs. We appreciate the inclusion of our recommended language in the full master plan document about the need for a future local or regional business park in Chapter 5 in the Flex Space section. For the public record, I want to read the language to the Planning Commission. As noted in theme E, goal three of the 2045 comprehensive plan, Lexington continues to support new and robust economic development through the inclusion of land for new jobs. The urban growth master plan has not identified specific acreage for regional or local business or industrial park. However, nothing in this plan is intended to prevent a property owner from bringing forward a proposed business park. While the urban growth master plan does not identify a specific location for such a use, economic growth remains a priority for the community. Should a business park identify land that is within the urban growth master plan area, appropriate flexibility is important to allow for significant job opportunities within the Lexington Urban Service area. We strongly recommend jobs, business park language, to be added to the executive summary as a supporting policy so its importance is emphasized. More than 60% of city revenues are generated from payroll taxes. Job creation is essential to the growth strategy of our community. The business community remains concerned about the lack of flex, light industrial land, and the master plan. It's less than 3% of the proposed area expansion and those areas are scattered places that will be incredibly difficult for industrial development. We routinely hear from site selectors and businesses that a community needs to have 250 to 500 acres of continuous, shovel-ready, properly zoned land to be competitive for economic development projects. Companies are making decisions in real time and cannot afford to wait years for land or buildings to be available. Requests are typically 10 to 20 to 50 acres. This is especially true for our key target sectors such as advanced manufacturing, bio and ag tech, global headquarters, life sciences like healthcare, business and financial services, and logistics and engineering operations. This plan provides for acres that don't make sense for large sites. Blue sky is already developed and we can't count on it for future job land. As a community, we must make it a priority to be planning for the next business park location in the expansion area. We need to have a continuum of jobs land in the pipeline to be competitive for jobs. Thank you. Thank you. Dick Murphy. And Mr. Murphy, you'd ask on Monday because you're representing four different clients, correct? Yes, sir, I am. Okay. So you have 12 minutes. Thank you very much. I don't plan on spending all of that, but I appreciate it. I'm Dick Murphy. I represent four different properties consisting of about 584 acres, all which are shown in this expansion area plan. Two on Todd's Road that take up the frontage of Todd's Road in this area. One in the nose on Athens Boonsboro Road and a 10 acre lot on Winchester Road. We appreciate the work that's been done. All my clients believe in the principles of this plan. Mixed densities, walkability, bikeability, new type of development. We agree with that. I want to emphasize a couple things overall. One is the need for flexibility in this. These regulatory plans and the regulations that are coming with them are very, very detailed. They specify block lengths, location of streets, location of access points, where community features go. and as the staff has told me and I want to emphasize to you and I hope you will emphasize these are plans these are not set in concrete and that's because the plans you see before you were done in two dimensions they're excellent planning plans they were done based upon site visits I think TSW went to all of the sites that I represent for a site visit aerial mapping aerial for the photographs and that sort of thing what they don't have is a three-dimensional look which comes later on in the process for geotechnical studies topographic surveys environmental studies and even traditional surveys they don't have that we don't have that until we get farther in the process we will be bringing in plans to you that meet the goals and objectives of this plan but may not meet everything on where streets are how wide blocks are how long blocks are that sort of thing and we don't want to get in a situation where we have to go through through a variance or waiver process or put the staff into the position where they're saying, well, this is a good plan, but you don't meet our requirements, so we can't recommend approval to you. I hope you'll work in language that states that the development criteria in this plan cannot govern every situation, that you have flexibility to look at these plans to make sure they meet our goals, but we may not meet every provision of them. Second is concurrency. Others have discussed this. were very, very concerned about concurrency requirements. I was fortunate. I went on with one of my developers on a tour through these communities in the Atlanta area in December to look at what was going on, and we were shown plans. And we showed one community. It was probably the one that was shown where there was development. And they said, well, you had to do the commercial first on the Mage Highway because the commercial paid for the infrastructure property in the back, which was the residential. We went to another one, which was a town center type thing, and they said to us, well, in that situation, you have to be patient. You have to build your residential up. Once you get to a certain point of residential, whether it's single-family townhouses or multifamily, Once you get to a certain point, then the commercial users will come because they're confident there's enough users in the area. But as one of my clients always tells me, you cannot time the real estate market. What my concern is is that the lenders, this is governed by what lenders will give. There's lending for people who buy single-family houses through mortgages. there's lenders for people who build commercial developments and lenders who lend for multifamily developments and as you all know there's not always money available in each of those piles of money or silos of money if single-family residential is hot today if mortgage rates are down the developer needs to build as much of the single-family as is allowed under your plan without stopping at 20% to wait for the commercial catch-up because by the time they wait for the commercial to catch up rates will be back up and he the developer will have lost his or her market for the single family homes which are planned for in this community we cannot start and stop we cannot wait for one type of development to catch up for the other because it's going to make it longer it's going to draw out the process and the time frame in which all that residential is built residential is a key element of this of this plan and we need to build as much residential without the interference of waiting for one part to catch up to another part on this because they're not going to catch up and it depends on what's hot and what money is being lent for at that particular time retail ready is nice but the retail ready we're seeing is the first floor of multi-family buildings and we can't stop our single family to switch over to a multi-family building or a commercial building to build to build that we need to go with what is going on which agrees with the plan the key is agreement with the plan and getting the density in there we agree with that I have a couple of particular things relating to particular pieces of property also first of all 12 foot multi-use trails we're concerned are too wide because they invite cars on them they invite moving vans delivery vehicles and people to park their cars parallel parking on trails we think eight foot trails are better because they discourage automobile traffic on them on todd's road are two properties they're shown a town center up near todd's road the economic study which was done by you all by pes in april stated that on on Todd's Road property could support 10,000 to 15,000 square feet of retail by the year 2045. And I think that's what qualifies as a village center, not as the town center. So I'd ask the staff to look at that classification because what the retail study shows, I think is more of a village center. Discussion of the thousand foot, or excuse me, a hundred foot setback along rural areas. supportive of that but we think we should encourage property owners to talk to their neighbors and if their neighbors want something else if they're agreeable to a lesser setback in return for denser plantings or something else i think that's something that should be allowed so i'd request the words to be added to that unless agreed to by adjoining property owners adjoining property owners will essentially have a veto power over that they don't want it to be less than 100 or add other landscaping they don't have to agree to it it'll be a hundred feet on athans boonesboro road the property in the nose my clients have hired the town architect of norton commons to be their designer on this he's pointed out a couple things he's got a long memo in the file for you i just like to point out two things one observation was that he felt a grocery store is appropriate to serve this large area which is i guess it's going to be the size of bowling crane here we're going to need a need a grocery store he suggested that the parking should be along 8th and spoonsborough road property landscaped put the shopping center put the store itself in the rear behind the parking and that way the store will be in the in the residential area close to the residential area so that people who live in the new community can walk and bike to the store without having to cross the parking lot on there so he has suggested that i hope that's possible under this plan staff has told me that the high density classification does allow commercial in that area the other thing he might mention was about parking garages he said in norton commons the first parking structure was not built for 20 years after norton commons started but he said the key to allowing parking structures is to design the parking lots so that they can be converted and what that means is that if you have a large area open area parking lot you don't put a sewer line down the middle of the parking lot because that would be under a potential future parking garage you don't put a utility line through the middle of the parking lot because that would prevent a parking structure from coming in the future he said you're not going to have parking structures now you will in 20 years and you want to make sure you prepare that space so it's available for a parking structure because in 20 years when you get the people there it will support the additional expense for a parking garage and on winchester road the property i have some of you are familiar with the zone change i had for that it's a 10 acre tract divided almost down the middle with the the urban service line we hope it will be treated as one property so it can so it can be developed properly not based on which side of the old urban service boundary line it is on that one thank you very much and we do appreciate the work that has gone into this as I said the properties I represent support the concepts of this plan we support the idea of the mixed uses the open space walkability bike ability we're excited about the plan and by my criticisms I don't I don't want to seem overly critical of the staff which has been very cooperative very helpful TSW which I said has visited the sites and done a very good plan on this but it's a planning plan on it just want to emphasize again the need for flexibility in this and the grave problems we have with the concurrency requirements thank you very much appreciate it thank you Brenda Rosen good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity I'm gonna watch my time I'm gonna go Jersey girl here and talk very fast I am a resident of Beaumont Reserve my husband and I are home borders Roswell and the opening of this road would not only be a danger to children, to people of all ages, to animals, but to the safety of the continued neighborhood. What you're looking at right now is the exact neighborhood you're talking about. Mixed use, business, retail, walkability, open spaces. We have that. It's amazing, it's wonderful, but the aftershock is the building of businesses, Increased traffic between Manowar, Harrodsburg Road, for anybody that's driven by there, a nightmare many times of the day. The safety, the increasing risk to our schools. For the property that borders Roswell Road, why aren't we making that a 55 and over community? That won't impact the schools, because right now the schools are at capacity. So we're also looking at having to redistrict, expand, rebuild eminent domain, taxes yada yada put in a 55 and older and then move all those people and all those homes are freed up if we're talking about walking and sustainability and moving around keep roswell road closed make it a walking trail you want people out walking communicating connecting keep roswell road closed you've got half a dozen roads coming out of this new development let those feed on demand a war don't connect roswell road to already overcrowded roads through roswell and chamblee which bleed out into rosa parks the traffic is horrible and what you're asking for what will be our reality is increased safety risks drainage sinkholes the reality of what this farm land could mean to the current what you're projecting and to the homes that have been there for 30 years. I love the idea I'm a social worker, I'm a lobbyist, I want diversity, I want I want what I have in my neighborhood already where we can listen and learn of all the different ethnic and racial groups that make up this mixed-use community. But when you start adding even more traffic and exposure to more safety risks to human and animal life, then this defeats the whole purpose of what we all are up here talking about today. So I thank you and I ask I've got 420 and another 400 a petition to stop the opening of Roswell Road ding it's time for me to go thank you thank you okay Blake Hall Blake Hall I live in district 3 while I don't support expansion I think this is the best way to do it to avoid more to avoid more financially unsustainable car dependent sprawl we need to make the best use of this expansion so we aren't here again in another 10 or 15 years we need housing of all types most of the people who need the housing and will benefit from this plan aren't in this room urge you to think of future residents and the ones who can't make a meeting in the middle of the working day a neighborhood corner store needs a thousand homes within walking distance to survive otherwise people will just drive to larger stores density is needed for retail and retail needed to make sure they are actually walkable without retail every trip requires a car to leave the neighborhood density is also needed to make sure the expansion area isn't a drain on the city's financial long finances long term sure the developer might pay for installation but the city will have to pay for ongoing maintenance and eventual replacement the concurrency requirement I think is good overall it's flexible enough to allow both sides to develop and the one thing I would think would be open to is either some sort of allowance for smaller developments or making it a broader area requirement not necessarily on a per development basis and the only thing that I would like to see potentially is more density on the north of area one as it's the part that is physically closer to the rest of the city but also to other city amenities like the two neighborhood parks right next door I hope you'll follow through with the other zoning reform recommendations to not only make sure this plan is a success but also to help make sure that we have more and better infill development in the future thank you thank you Ashley Smith Hello, my name is Ashley Smith and I oppose the development of Area 1. There are a number of reasons why this Area 1 is inappropriate for development. You've heard about the karst land, the sinkholes, there's existing drainage issues in this area, the impact that it would have on our schools. This area is also far from jobs and public transportation. Residents of Beaumont are concerned with adding housing and retail to an area that already has heavy traffic and congestion. Expanding Parker's Mill alone will not solve this problem because it runs under New Circle Road, so there will always be a bottleneck on Parker's Mill unless there's major construction on New Circle Road. This would need to be fixed before more housing is added to that area. To me, though, the most important reason why this is not an appropriate area for development is because it would destroy a beautiful horse farm. This could open the door to developing other horse farms in the area in the future. We should be protecting horse farms like these, not developing them. As residents of Kentucky, we're used to seeing beautiful horse farms like this, and so it's easy to forget how special this land is. But this land, this soil is not found all over the world. It's unique to our region, and it needs to be protected. The equine industry is the heart of Kentucky, and our land is the heart of the equine industry. And once it's developed, it's gone forever. Thank you. Thank you. Nick Nicholson? afternoon Nick Nicholson as many of you all know I represent a lot of folks in the development community also several property owners and neighbors in these expansion areas and I did want to raise just kind of three areas of concern I sent in some red lines to the kind of proposed text on the end of the place builder and all of my concerns really are focused on that new text that we just got in past two weeks one major area is we were told throughout this entire process that this is going to be an incredibly flexible plan we're going to just not take the expansionary master plan 96 with hard land use recommendations more conceptual and everything was going I thought very flexible right up until we got the language in past two weeks where they talked about hard requirements such as you cannot move a road more than 200 feet you also cannot increase or decrease the number of intersections in these areas this makes what was a very flexible plan conceptually not so flexible because it doesn't take into consideration environmental concerns like stream crossings or property lines which would lead to much more inefficient development of the infrastructure in these areas the other major kind of issue I want to bring is there are several attempts to basically like backdoor in ordinance changes in the kind of in the new language and and they're often areas that this body in this community has just gone through the process of changing our rules for. You heard about drive-throughs, there's also block length, there's cul-de-sac length. We've heard a lot about concurrence as well, but we have just kind of gone through the process of updating our zoning ordinance for the purpose of allowing for this type of development, and then to now change those rules further kind of flies in the face of the regulatory process. I did think it was interesting that the consultant kept on talking about, here's the regulatory changes you need to make in order to implement these ideas. Those need to come through ordinances. They shouldn't be backdoored in the place builder. None of my concerns relate to the updates to the place builder areas and place types in the development criteria, because those are broad, like the comprehensive plan is supposed to be. The last issue is density. The development community has said all along that we thought having a minimum density of eight units per acre is a little bit too high. We would feel much more comfortable if that was six, because we've actually been on these properties, we have been looking at the topography of all of these, and we just do not see how a lot of them can do an eight unit per acre as the kind of minimum. That doesn't mean that we're talking about dramatically changing the density, but if that was just six, we could see how this vision could be done. I would remind you that the peninsula development that crossed over 24 hours of public hearings in this room because of concerns for density was about four and a half to five units per acre. This would jump up to eight. Thank you all. Thank you. Brian Fuller. Okay. Jason Smith. I'll make this quick. You guys hear me? Hello, I'm Jason Smith. I'm also a resident of Beaumont Reserve. I'm against what a lot of people have said, and I even signed that petition connecting Roswell, you know, mainly because of the traffic, but also I've spoken to the school district. they're worried about the increase of people on the schools and kids we're already worried about the traffic Harrisburg Road is a nightmare no everyone agrees Harrisburg Road is a nightmare but really what I wanted to talk about was a second ago the was it said earlier that gentleman was talking about how they had done this in Woodstock Georgia and I just happened to look up you know we were talking about affordable housing and affordability a a single-family home in that area that they did in Woodstock, Georgia is 1.3 million dollars. A townhome in that same area is 780,000 dollars and then those townhomes that are behind that Costco is over a half a million dollars, 560,000 dollars for those townhomes that are but beside the Costco I mean those are not affordable yeah it's that's not affordable housing for most people so I think we have to think about that right I mean that's all I have to say thank you that's don't have any more on the list here so mr. Duncan do we bring it back What's our next step here? Mr. Chair, you may want to ask if anyone was unable to sign up. Okay, that's fair enough too. Is there anyone that was not able to sign up would like to speak? All right. I'm not seeing anyone. Mr. Chair, at this point, if the Planning Commission had any follow-up questions for the consultants or the staff, we'd be happy to address them. or if you had any issues that you would like us to research and to bring back to you all, as a reminder, this public hearing will be continued, again, on October 31st, at which time you'll be asked to make a decision about the master plan. But at this time, if there was direction from the Planning Commission or questions, we'd be happy to work with those. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. Commission, do we have any questions at the moment? I do have a recommendation for some action from the planning staff. I would like to see a more precise, I guess a more detailed explanation of the concurrency policy that's being recommended. And how through your all's real world experience, think that that could be best modified by you all or be provide us with some questions that we need to start thinking about how we can make sure that the housing component is completed in a timely fashion for the reasons stated by the bia and also from mr warsham because we are in a housing crisis and i think one of the statements that mr warsham said were as incredibly relevant that as we these this property is expensive that has been added into the urban growth management plan but even though it may not produce the yield of we call affordable housing it is producing attainable housing and any housing that's attainable is going to reduce the pressure of the properties that can be better redeveloped in the infill and urban service area that are close to services that are existing and we need to work as hard as we can to free up some of that pressure that's on that land the price pressure and I think working through the concurrency in favor of providing more housing that is attainable would be really beneficial. So, again, if you all can put your all's heads together on your thoughts, your real-world experience of how the concurrency issue would play out in your all's minds, some recommendations that you all make. It's great to have outside observers provide this really cool plan for us, but this is a great place for us to rely on your all's experience and expertise, and it could really help us solve this housing crisis that we are in now. Thank you. And Mr. Nickel, do you mind, would you send out an email? No. Ms. Worth. So I'm agreeing with Mr. Nichols' suggestion, but I also had a question about the concern of concurrency. Is what we're doing in the ED zone at Newtown use of concurrency already in our community, and if it is, are we using it any place else now? So there is history in the Division of Planning and with the Planning Commission in dealing with concurrency issues. Oftentimes most applicable that you all would see would be in the timing of construction of infrastructure improvements to a road. We've had some longstanding timing issues related to development along Spur Road. The limit on how much can be built up into a certain point of investment takes place. This concept that the consultants are bringing to us is new for Lexington. in their research clearly and in the research that we've done since we've received this recommendation Indicates that it is a common practice in other jurisdictions Whether it's something that you all feel comfortable with is really the main reason we wanted to put it in front of you and talk about it We do Share as a staff an overall concern in making sure that these areas are walkable and that there's a reason to walk And those uses are really important getting those and the timing of those obviously the devil's in the details there and so I feel and the staff feels in our review that the retail ready component that's provided as that option on the low end is a very easy threshold to clear I don't think our staff has any concern there the timing on the other side where you would have a lot of development pressure on arterial roads to develop for commercial is one that we share a concern because we've seen those changes happen after a plan was was outlined like in the CC zone in the expansion area for our Costco our Costco did not get the residential component for the community center zone that was laid out in 1996 so we view that as a cautionary tale and we do want to address that in the future and we do want to make sure that the essentially the CC type zoning that this plan is calling for does get built but that's going to require community buy-in especially from this planning Commission and then obviously on onto the council So the concurrency requirement, while it would be a development criteria, and it is not, it is recommended for us to address it through the regulatory framework to follow, I think whether or not you all set it in place as a development criteria at this stage is really one of the critical issues that we would like your guidance on as we move forward over the next week to get some comments back to the consultants and then to you all to review for the 31st. So we're comfortable with those. We've seen examples of those in other cities. the question is is the body who's going to have to enforce them in their votes comfortable with that and then we're open to your all's guidance there poll it seems like we're at least five years out before the first spade full of dirt gets turned probably more I'm thinking it might be sensible for the city to begin planning to planning for a program that would subsidize the concurrency requirement when a certain level of affordable housing is involved with the development that's that's proposed we're we're not going to see affordable housing in these developments the way things are now there's gonna have to be some fundamental changes to to the to the financing equation and so on and so forth so I'd like to encourage the staff to look into whether other cities are doing that kind of subsidizing and what might be required for the city to get involved with that mr paul i think the infrastructure funding plan recommendation that's in this plan sort of gets at the heart of that in other cities that are building these types of developments the city does take an active role in some of those processes just like mr murphy stated you know a developer makes a decision on how they're going to pay for the rest of that infrastructure that they're on the hook for building by building something up front that may cover that cost in a scenario where other cities have pro funding programs that might construct the relevant infrastructure upfront and then they get paid development pays back over over the longer term as development comes in having that sort of flexible option is something that is recommended as a next step in this plan but as it as you see in front of you today right now the developers would be on the hook for for constructing the needed infrastructure until such time as that that process is defined but it is a recommendation of this plan to to do sort of exactly that create an infrastructure financing program that would incentivize the type of development that this plan calls for on a different topic one of the suggestions I noted was some sort of accountability tool I know you know not all of us have been on the Planning Commission a long period of time but we certainly heard stories of this was the original plan that we had in mind how in the world did we end up here down the road so is there thought to either creating or looking at what's already been created someplace else some sort of accountability tool that looks at where we start what we have planned and along the way measures what we've gotten done so that we continuously have input about our information about that yes the short answer is yes that is something that long-range planning is looking at doing and is currently working on developing at this time as it relates to a potential change in process going forward. That's also in our goals and objectives to be done by a date certain. And so long-range planning is working on a data metric tool and dashboard for these types of things. Now, I'm not exactly sure what Ms. Rothmeier meant when she made that request. The details might matter there, and we may not be thinking of the same thing. But long-range planning does concur that we are looking at trying to create a transparent dashboard of development activity over time and certain trends to project those things out and be able to tell the story of development in certain areas over time. Yes. Mr. Wilson. Sorry about that. Back in 1996, when we had that initial expansion, along with it came exaction fees to help the developers with it. Where are we now with that? In other words, are we going to continue the exaction fee concept in order to help developers move along or what are we going to do? No, there is no exaction fee with this master plan. There is a recommendation to pursue an infrastructure funding plan that would be a little more comprehensive than just what the exaction program did in 1996. That program is in the process, I believe, of being wound down and that's about all I can tell you about that. But it is not proposed to be carried forward into this development. now as it as this plan states it is a land use plan master plan for development it calls for the transportation network to be built but the developers under this framework that we you know currently have the developers would be on would be required to build the necessary infrastructure as part of their development plans again should the infrastructure funding plan recommendation be implemented and we certainly expect and hope that it will be there could be other arrangements in place that allow the government to enter into some sort of partnership in those ways thank you mr. chair a lot a lot of information here I've got two I've got three four five things but one I'll start with concurrency you mentioned our our Costco and the lack of the residential. I think there's been several of the CC parts here in the area that one or the other got built but neither got built. Unfortunately, I think we need some sort of concurrency to move this thing forward to make sure that it does happen. I sent you an email and most of the comments very brief one of them was should versus shall we're hearing flexibility accountability here and so forth is our language in this going to be strong enough to keep things on track well the language in here is shoulds not shalls but they are strong shoulds that there's no mistake there I think the development community would agree these are these are strong should statements and I think we've all experienced and you know the staff and the Planning Commission have experienced changes in plans over time that are that sort of eat away at some of the recommendations of our master plans and so it is and we asked for from the consultants a regulatory framework to implement this plan so they have delivered what we asked for. And staff is comfortable with it. And we have worked to educate the development community on what that means and how we would try to interpret that and how we would try to apply it. And they've expressed some concerns to you all. And I can't say this enough. I think guidance from this body is really what we need to turn that around to you all in two weeks, or frankly a week, so that you have some time to review it. So, like I said, I think we're comfortable. I think what's in the plan is more than adequate to address the issues that we see and have seen in the past. The question is, do you all feel it's adequate? Well, in looking through everything that you all sent, which I think I got through most of it, I don't know if I picked up on that other than the fact that there was a couple of citizen comments, one of them from a builder who simply asked is this going to be recommended or is it going to be mandated so you know it's it's it's a serious subject something a few things just a little bit more pointed that I'd like to hear about or know about they've mentioned bike pad trails at 12 feet is there room to reduce those as 12 feet really needed. I think the complete streets manual in that process is going to more specifically define the circumstances and the locations of those types of connections. I think the language that's in there that specifically calls out 12 feet is about connections to the trail network. So it's not even necessarily talking about the trail itself. It's talking about the connections to them. Obviously, the street design and the block layouts in this plan are significantly different than most of the development patterns that we've seen in Lexington in the past. So it reduces a lot of curb cuts, driveways in favor of alley access and rear access. And so we're not as concerned, again, about vehicles driving on trails and trail access points. We feel like we have adequate procedures in place to address the design of those to keep that from happening. but we expect that the specifics of the of the widths to be defined really later through the complete street manual and that and that's that program is a development conclusion that could be up to 12 feet yes okay staying on bike trails etc early on on a couple of the maps where the proposed land adjoined rural land there was the mention of a temporary buffer in there I don't see it now you know is will that occur will expansion occur in the future probably so but you know considering the fact that it took us 35 years to get to this point I think that's a little premature maybe it's already been removed as far as buffers I think I read where streets could be allowed I kind of see that as problematic it really doesn't become a buffer anymore I don't have a problem with trails bike pad etc but streets I think is encroaching on the rural land just a little bit much and then density we've talked about it's been several important people talk about density. It's listed at 8 to 12 minimum now. Is that something we should look at? Well, I think one of the really important things to point out about the density recommendations in here, and you see a gross and a net density calculation on all those charts. We have made it clear that the 8 to 12 is on the net, which is taking out the streets and the greenways. And so in developments that have four or five units an acre densities under the way we've typically calculated them on an overall project level, we are calculating these a little bit differently, essentially not to penalize the developers for the creation of additional streets and access points and alleys and things like that. We want to make sure that there's no disincentive in the regulations of this plan in the getting of those types of street infrastructure. And so the Norton Commons development, on their plan, it shows 4.5 units an acre. But when you calculate the density and you take out the alleys and the other streets, it comes in at 7.5. And that's a low-density town center. If you've been to Norton Commons, it does not have the density in the core of the town center, again, that we're talking about here. We're trying to address a significant housing need, and it does call for substantially higher densities in the core of the town centers and the village centers, which will attract commercial tenants. But I think staff is pretty comfortable with the eight, but we recognize the developer's concern on that. I think if the planning commission were to give us some guidance on that too, I think that is another area where we would like to hear some feedback from the planning commission on that as well. I think six gets us awfully close to the status quo, and the status quo is deeply unaffordable in terms of lot sizes and things like that. And again, when you lower the densities, you make the lot sizes larger, which significantly impacts the cost of the housing. So this plan, again, it was stated very clearly in the goal and objective what the purpose of this plan was, was to provide a mix of housing type that is broadly affordable. And the only way we address affordability in Lexington is on lot sizes and densities. So this plan is, again, the consultants did what we asked them to do, which is to give us a plan that recommends densities that would address broader affordability, not subsidized affordable housing. That's a whole separate issue. But in terms of giving us the appropriate supply and the varied housing type to address a broad affordability concern, this does that. The question is, is the eight or seven or six, what is the appropriate number? Staff feels that the way we're calculating density, that eight is very attainable. But if the planning commission has other thoughts, again, we would be happy to entertain those. Believe me, I didn't do the math as you explained. We have done the math. I haven't done that, but it did jump out at me when developers were saying they wanted to go the other way. So that's what jumped out at me. Right. Just a couple more things. Alleys, are they going to be public or private? We would hope there's enough flexibility. We expect there to be enough flexibility through the complete streets program and that manual that there could be an option for public or private. Again, some developers may want to develop those and maintain control of them for maintenance and HOA-type purposes, and some may want to build them and dedicate them and get them off the books for that ongoing cost. Again, our goal is to get that development typology built, support the walkable blocks and walkable neighborhoods, and whether it's public or private really shouldn't matter too much. I'm not going to bring up the cost of this, but one other thing in hearing today is the Pine Needles private access. What have you all looked at and considered there? All right, well, so there's a history here. That property was split down the urban service area and the rural service area, and the part that's designated as green space and was set aside was outside the urban service boundary, so that was really the only option for it. So it made sense to put the stormwater and the detention on that lot. It had no other option. Also, the reason that access point is where it is is because it was the only safe place and remains the only safe place for access to Man O' War at the top of the hill. The reason we show an access point there to serve this development is because it remains the only safe place to access Man O' War. Now, it doesn't mean that the developer gets to come in and just take that and make that a public street and build that access point. And it doesn't mean that the government is going to take it. It just means that if there is an access point on demand of war, that's where it needs to be. And those two parties can work that out or not work that out. And we may have to address our plans in phases as things come in, whether or not that access point is ever constructed. It may not be. But that is the only safe location for access to man-of-war. They have all the right to sell it, not sell it, develop it, not develop it. That is entirely up to them. Planning staff, we gave guidance to the consultant to show that area as it is because it is not precluded from development the same way that the other green areas in area one are for environmentally sensitive reasons for cars topography potential sinkholes this area is not constrained in that way they could move the detention if they so wanted to but again they don't have to and we've communicated that to the neighborhood to their leadership and i think when we left that discussion with them they seemed to understand that it was up to them and whether or not they ever moved forward in that regard okay thank you chris and thank you mr chair Yeah, I've got a few questions here. The first is a small follow-up on the one about density here. We're having this conversation and throwing out the numbers of units per acre. And you sort of got at it with you're talking about the net. So are you essentially equating, now I understand there would be multifamily or things, but essentially if you're talking about single-family houses and they're on a tenth of an acre, then you're talking about 10 houses per acre. You're not counting any of the right-of-way alley. Correct. Things like that. That's correct. And that density, that 8, is exactly what the R4 zone as amended in the UGM Zota comes to on the lot basis. That's really where that comes from. It's already within the code of the R4 zone as updated. and as well as the R2. Sorry. I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head around the sort of some of the different points we're trying to get at with the transportation. So we're saying that the roads need to be built according to the complete street manual, but we don't know exactly what that is going to be. Yes. And we're also saying that the streets and alleys need to be built to public standards, but we don't know exactly what those are going to be. and I guess my concern is that we could be creating this idea of an alley that currently is not permitted but that has to be built to public standards. I'm trying to reconcile that here. We've had some coordination with the consultant on the Complete Streets team, and I think TSW is a sub on that project as well, and so there's some sort of built-in review happening between those two, and I think great care has been taken to try to make sure that we're not putting anything in here that is going to be contradictory to that plan and that that plan, once adopted, can be the governing document for future development in this area. We've taken every precaution that we think we can, and everything, every sort of pothole we think we've seen, we've tried to address by putting that concept to that team and asking if they are planning to have a solution in mind for that. And so far, the answer to that has been, yes, this can be accommodated. And I think, Mr. Mickler, that may be about the best we can do, given the timeline that these two things are on. We're slightly ahead of that process. Well, I guess that sort of maybe comes back to that requirement that they be built to public standards and sort of wondering whether that requirement needs to apply to alleyways specifically. Yeah, I think there is a potential, and I may need to have this conversation with our NPO staff and the leadership on that project, but it is possible that these could very well be an access easement type of development, but again, we may further define what we mean for an appropriate access easement under this standard, too. It may be some measure short of a private street built to a public street standard. I think that's still very much to be determined. And from our standpoint, it was it doesn't particularly matter if it's public or private. The details of that, yes, are still very much to be determined. And then staying with the sort of street concept here, just trying to work through it, I think you started getting at some of the difficulty with talking about, well, we show this access to man-of-war because this is where it's logical. And then we also have in the plan this sort of draft text that says the streets need to be within 200 feet of where they're proposed. And so trying to reconcile that conflict right there is, I guess, one of my questions. We understand the developer's concern on that as well. We're trying to figure out what the appropriate language is to ensure that we get the connections in the safest locations, specifically lined up against opposite intersection points. That's really where that's, I think, coming from, is the intent to make sure that we have these access points to arterials, specifically in the safest locations so that we avoid any offsets, which creates significant traffic issues when we have these offset intersections. So I think the 200 foot is, again, maybe it's, I don't know if we're in the right spot yet. There may need to be some language if we are evaluating that internally and having that conversation again with the consultants based on the feedback that we're getting. So the sort of location was really more focused at the connections to the arterials. and then the restriction on sort of the quantity was really, I guess, getting at the network. Correct. And I guess I'm wondering sort of there were different discussion points. We had different presentation on, you know, blocks or conference and things like that, and that kind of replaced that. Is that what's going on here? That's the way staff has been discussing it internally. And again, we need to have that conversation with the consultant team too, is if the block standards address these things, then the language maybe could be reflected to address the 200 feet related to just the shifting of access points to the arterials or something appropriate to that regard. Yes, Mr. Mickler, that's exactly what we're working through now. And I got two more, so sorry for the length. But one of them was brought up by one of the speakers here, and that is, you know, a lot of these restrictions and concurrence and street network sort of requirements make a lot of sense for most of these parcels as they're larger scale parcels. There are not a whole lot, but there are a few small parcels in the expansion area. is there something in there that kind of treats those differently because this sort of master planning process does seem different if you're trying to redevelop a small parcel that's almost like an infill project even though it's in the expansion area yeah there's not language in there right now that outlines a different sort of thought process for small parcels and i think that's something we can take a look at and then the um um last one is sort of related to that a little bit but the the loc the sort of specifying that these town centers need to be in the general location that they're proposed um and then seeing some of the comments on the developer's side well we may want to drop one, that kind of thing. With the sort of staging of development, how does this sort of work if an area that was going to be a town center does get a different proposal, like, for example, either more focused on residential or like the business park sort of thing that's sort of nebulously thrown in there? So two things. One is I think we are taking the comments from the developers seriously on whether or not the right number of centers and the right types of centers are appropriate based off of some of their concerns. And so staff may have some conversations and provide some revisions to you in that regard anyway. We're having those conversations with the consultant team too. Secondly, I forgot the second half of your question. Can you give it to me again? I guess it's more like if somebody comes with a proposal at the exact location of where a town center is proposed, but it's not a town center, and there's still a room adjacent, and they say, oh, well, the town center can go next to us. How are we supposed to sort of review that? That's where it's a strong should. The planning staff will be giving you a pretty strong should if they're bringing in a plan that shows and is identified as an area for a town center. So that's not part of the regulatory framework, really. That's more of the guiding principle. It's a development criteria listed in the plan. And so it would be something, again, as part of the staff's recommendation that we would be providing to you that this plan calls for a town center or a village center with these densities. And so I think the overriding thing that you're probably going to see from staff is a strong recommendation of the minimum densities and the ranges and that they're providing that and how are they providing that. The commercial, there's commercial opportunities. It doesn't preclude commercial in the village and town centers. But the staff is going to be trying to ensure that we get the residential and so there is going to be a question Whether there's a concurrency requirement or not specifically the development criteria The staff is going to be asking on a largely commercial development. Where's the residential and is it meeting the density ranges? It's very important that this plan meet the residential goals that are outlined in it So I think you can expect Tracy to be telling you at a future meeting this plan shows a town center it is where a town center should be or it is not where a town center should be and if it's not then there's going to be a reason and discussion about where that might be and if it's not on their plan right now it may be a different recommendation from staff thank you yes I just have one question my background is in finance so my tend to be the role that way but my question is regarding my understanding is that when residential reaches a certain threshold they're going to be required to stop and let commercial building catch up with that and from a I guess a practical standpoint is there any possibility for a continuing discussion of that issue because as a you know a builder or someone who's lent money to builders it's a very fickle environment in that rates can change and it throws off the the economics of a project just like that. So requiring them to stop might not be the best way to go, but again, is there any possibility we can continue to discuss that issue? Well, as they're written right now, they're recommendations. And so the Planning Commission ultimately has discretion on the zone change at the time it comes in, in accordance with that. If there was, as part of the regulatory package that's recommended by the consultants, were to bring you a set of text amendments then there would obviously be some sort of definition and much more refining of how we would apply that so I think it's it's not rigid in the sense that it's in the zoning code it might be rigid in the form of the staff's recommendation but obviously there is you know an opportunity there to to address that at the time of the zone change and I think it's going to be you know it may have be heavily dependent upon the type of development that's coming in whether it's a single-family development or if they're bringing us something in their core of the town center with the density. So obviously the concurrency is identified as in the town center. It's just within those sort of identified circles. That's where we're talking about the concurrency requirements. So it's not in the whole of it. It's just in those identified areas. So I think the Planning Commission and the council would have discretion in applying that development criteria, but the staff would be making recommendations accordingly. Okay. Mr. Taylor. I think that's enough where you can breathe. All right, so Mr. Duncan, I think that's it with the questions for now. We come back here on the 31st, and if there's any other questions, we can email staff. Absolutely, yes. Yes, okay. Mr. Chair, a couple of other things before we leave, unrelated to what we've done today, if you all are finished talking about that. We do want to share with you all the proposed meeting and filing schedule for 2025, We ordinarily share with that at a work session in October, but this meeting is replacing that work session. So Tracy's going to get those to you all. And then at a regular meeting in the future, you all will adopt that. And if you're looking at that, if you see any errors or have any questions, please feel free to contact us about that. And then a couple of other administrative things, Mr. Chair. Before we leave, even though we have set the October 31st meeting, we'd like you all to formally continue the public hearing to ensure that it stays open. And then to define what the next steps are for the October 31st hearing. And then in the meantime, you do have a zoning hearing next Thursday, and that's listed on your calendar. And there is a continued public hearing at that meeting as well. And several of you were not able to be here or were not able to stay for the entire meeting when it was presented last month. And we've sent you all the links to the videos. So if you all are able to watch those and then state on the record that you did so next week when the continued hearing starts, you all should be able to participate in that hearing and make those decisions. So for today, if you all would continue this comprehensive, the Urban Growth Master Plan public hearing to the October 31st. And then for the rest, we will get you the draft schedule. And then we will also see you next Thursday, same time, same place. Okay, thank you, Mr. Duncan. I did listen to that meeting and heard Mr. Wilson's comments about Mr. Frank Lucas, so I'm very aware of what's going on. Does anyone want to add? I need a motion for that continuance for the public meeting for the Urban County Planning Commission amendment to the comprehensive plan. So moved. So moved. Okay, we got a motion by Mr. Jonathan Davis. Do we have a second? Second by Mr. Graham Pohl. Just vote via your hand, your right hand. All right. Okay, motion passes unanimously. Thank you. All right, meeting's adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. 20 years now