# Planning Committee Zoning 11-07-24 - November 7, 2024 > Auto-transcribed civic record · November 7, 2024 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6272 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6272?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2024-11-07 - **Last revised**: November 7, 2024 - **Length**: 19,265 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Zoning Committee met on November 7, 2024, at 1:30 p.m. in the Phoenix Building, 3rd Floor Conference Room. The committee addressed five agenda items, taking five motions and votes during the session. Two members of the public provided comments. The committee's actions on the agenda items produced mixed outcomes. One amendment was approved: PLN-ZOTA-24-00007, which updates short-term rental regulations. One item was forwarded with no recommendation: PLN-ZOTA-24-00008, an amendment to Article 17 concerning digital billboards. Two items were postponed: PLN-MAR-22-00017 for Rose Holdings-Lexington, LLC and PLN-ZOTA-24-00006, which involves revisions to Article 23A-10 for the Economic Development (ED) Zone. One application was disapproved: PLN-MAR-22-00016 for Realty Unlimited Bluegrass, LLC. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on November 7, 2024: * James Mills * Tracy Way * Bruce Simpson * Dan Rose * Kurt Rose * Jihad Halani * Mr. Wilson * Mr. Paul * Mr. Jonathan Davis * Mr. Gross * Mr. Gaffield No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included five votes, all of which passed unanimously. **Postponement of PLN-MAR-24-17 Rose Holdings Lexington LLC** [timestamp: 0:38:57] Mr. Wilson moved to postpone this item, seconded by Mr. Jonathan Davis. The motion to postpone was approved unanimously. **Recommendation on PLN-ZOTA-24-7** [timestamp: 1:15:58] Mr. Cole moved to recommend approval of PLN-ZOTA-24-7, seconded by Mr. Wilson. The motion passed unanimously. Staff was directed to consider possible changes discussed during the meeting. **PLN-ZOTA-24-8 Forwarded to Full Planning Commission** [timestamp: 1:50:54] Mr. Wilson moved to forward PLN-ZOTA-24-8 to the full Planning Commission with no recommendation, seconded by Mr. Pohl. The motion passed unanimously. **Postponement of PLN-ZOTA-24-6** [timestamp: 2:18:54] Mr. Pohl moved to postpone PLN-ZOTA-24-6 per the applicant's recommendation, seconded by Mr. Davis. The motion to postpone was approved unanimously. **Recommendation on PLN-MAR-22-16** [timestamp: 2:22:10] Mr. Paul moved to recommend disapproval of PLN-MAR-22-16, seconded by Mr. Wilson. The motion passed unanimously. ## Public Comment Mr. Gaffield addressed the meeting on two separate matters during the public comment period. **Short-term Rental Regulations** [timestamp: 00:53:31] Mr. Gaffield expressed concerns about the impact of short-term rentals on neighborhoods and advocated for stricter regulations to address these issues. **Digital Billboards** [timestamp: 01:24:27] Mr. Gaffield opposed the ordinance allowing digital billboards, citing safety concerns and potential negative impacts on the community. ## Contested Items The meeting included discussion of two items that generated community opposition: **Digital Billboards** Community members expressed concerns about the safety and environmental impacts of digital billboards. Specific details regarding the nature of safety concerns, environmental impacts cited, or any resolution reached were not documented in the available meeting materials. **Short-Term Rental Regulations** Neighborhood representatives voiced concerns about the impact of short-term rentals on housing and community character. The specific housing and community character issues raised, as well as any outcomes or decisions made regarding short-term rental regulations, were not detailed in the available meeting documentation. ## PLN-MAR-22-00017: ROSE HOLDINGS-LEXINGTON, LLC [timestamp: 00:06:30] This agenda item addressed a petition for a zone map amendment submitted by Rose Holdings-Lexington, LLC for property located at 1899 Parkers Mill Road. The petition seeks to change the property's zoning classification from Single Family Residential (R-1A) to Planned Neighborhood Residential (R-3). Key speakers during the discussion included James Mills, Bruce Simpson, and Dan Rose. The meeting examined the proposed zoning change and its implications for the affected property and surrounding area. **Outcome** The item was postponed and did not proceed to a final decision at this meeting. ## PLN-ZOTA-24-00007: AMENDMENT TO UPDATE SHORT TERM RENTAL REGULATIONS This agenda item addressed a text amendment to update Articles 3, 8, and 23 of local regulations to modernize the rules governing Short Term Rentals. **Presentation and Discussion** The amendment was presented by Daniel, Mr. Paul, and Mr. Gross, who led the discussion on the proposed regulatory changes [timestamp: 0:39:29]. The speakers outlined modifications to three articles within the zoning ordinance to address current Short Term Rental practices and standards. **Outcome** The amendment to update Short Term Rental regulations was approved. ## PLN-ZOTA-24-00008: AMENDMENT TO ARTICLE 17 FOR DIGITAL BILLBOARDS This agenda item addressed a text amendment to Article 17 to define and regulate digital billboards in the B-3, B-4, I-1, I-2, and CN zones. [timestamp: 1:16:32] **Key Speakers** Daniel and Mr. Gaffield were the primary speakers on this matter. **Outcome** The amendment was forwarded with no recommendation. ## PLN-ZOTA-24-00006: REVISIONS TO ARTICLE 23A-10 FOR THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (ED) ZONE This agenda item addressed a text amendment to modify the Economic Development (ED) zone under Article 23A-10. [timestamp: 1:59:19] **Key Speakers** Daniel and Mr. Gross were the primary speakers on this matter. **Outcome** The item was postponed and did not proceed to a vote or final decision at this meeting. ## PLN-MAR-22-00016: REALTY UNLIMITED BLUEGRASS, LLC This agenda item addressed a petition for a zone map amendment submitted by Realty Unlimited Bluegrass, LLC for property located at 940 Higbee Mill Road. The petitioner requested a change in zoning classification from Single Family Residential (R-1C) to Townhouse Residential (R-1T). [timestamp: 2:19:56] The petition was disapproved by the body. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — postponed (0-0): Postpone PLN-MAR-24-17 Rose Holdings Lexington LLC - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Recommend approval of PLN-ZOTA-24-7 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Forward PLN-ZOTA-24-8 to full Planning Commission with no recommendation - **Motion** — postponed (0-0): Postpone PLN-ZOTA-24-6 per applicant's recommendation - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Recommend disapproval of PLN-MAR-22-16 --- ## Full transcript Thank you. First item on the agenda, BLN MAR 2217, Rose Holdings, Lexington. 24. 2417. James Mills, Planning Staff. Today I'm going to present to you a request by Rose Holdings Lexington LLC for the property located at 1899 Parker's Mill Road. This request is a zone change from the single family residential R1A zone located at the subject property to the planned neighborhood residential R3 zone. The applicant has decided their place type as the enhanced neighborhood place type and low density residential development type. The purpose of this request is to develop 25 single-family residential lots on the approximately 11.5-acre property. Taking a look at the vicinity of the subject property, here you can see Parker's Mill Road, where the subject property is, and it is located at the end of Lane Allen Road. Over here you can see West New Circle Road and to the north of the subject property is the Colony. Taking a closer look at the zoning around the subject property, it is mainly all single-family residential zones. You have some R1A, R1B and R1C, but it's all single-family. and to the north you can see the neighborhood design overlay of the colony up here. Taking a look at the aerial photos around the subject property, to the northeast is a tributary stream that runs all the way down here into and feeds into Wolf Run Creek. located with this tributary stream is floodplains and floodway area. Additionally, these areas from this stream run into the subject property and kind of terminate somewhere around here. The 2014 FEMA floodplain ended about right here in its study, and did not continue past this area on the subject property. Including these floodplain areas, the Greenway Master Plan highlighted portions of this for conservation to conserve the floodplain and its habitat. About north portion of the subject property is a Bluegrass Trust home that was previously existing that was recently demolished. I'm sorry, so the house is gone? Yes, we found out this morning that the house has been demolished. I suppose I will because a substantial amount of my questions and concerns involved an immensely historic early Fayette County residence that is now gone. My apologies. No, I didn't mean to drop that in the middle of the presentation. I should have probably saved that for the end. Additionally, whenever we look at the site plan, it right here highlights that 2014 FEMA floodplain and where it technically ends on the subject property. Still, the stream and the stream bed area kind of passes this, but it continues down further and, as I said previously, feeds into Wolf Creek Run. As you can tell from the site plan, three lots would be affected by that floodplain currently, as it has currently been studied. Two of them would be homes that would also require flood insurance and would be in the floodplain. And one more is dedicated green space and stormwater detention over here on this portion. But the applicant hasn't highlighted whether or not there would be additional buffering within there or that would meet the requirements under the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance. So with all that, staff has recommended postponement. A flood study is necessary to determine the extent of the flood hazard area present on the subject property. Address several goals and objectives of the 2045 comprehensive plan that include complete streets policies, conservation, and preservation was one of those. However, the historic home on the property has been demolished. Additionally, several development criteria need to be addressed by the applicant. That includes and covers several areas including floodplains, multimodal networks, community-oriented places, environmentally sensitive areas, and reuse of viable existing structures, which is no longer applicable. But with that, Tracy Way will show the development plan. So a little closer look at the development plan. The subdivision committee this morning reviewed this plan, and there was a fairly lengthy discussion about the floodplain and the proposed manner in which the applicant wants to move forward related to that. Generally, as James mentioned, we have Lane Allen coming into Parker's Mill just directly teeing into the subject property. And the proposed lotting pattern really circles around an internal block. So you have six lots in the middle, and then that leaves 19 lots around the outside for a total of 25 single-family buildable lots. It also includes an area here recommended for detention. And that would, again, as James mentioned, here's where the lot, you can see kind of a line right here. That is where the floodplain has been mapped by FEMA and then goes downstream, working towards Versailles Road. But what is really a question is where is the floodplain and its extents on the rest of the property, and what is the impact of that floodplain to the developable area where you see it now. So the applicant has shown this lotting pattern and street layout, which circles around and really cuts through the floodplain here on this side. So Article 19 does not permit construction and building in the floodplain. You can cross a floodplain, but that does need some special permits, but not construction of houses. So the applicant is really going to need to show what is the extent of the floodplain on this property, and then that will help us, the division and other divisions, as well as the Planning Commission, determine the extent of developable area because a floodplain is an environmentally sensitive area. And in addition to the limits of the floodplain, then there's a 25-foot setback for structures from that, and there's also a vegetative buffer that's required along our floodplain and creeks. So we really can't know the extent of developable land until we know the extent of the floodplain. And so that's sort of the piece of information that the applicant hasn't provided in terms of evaluating this particular subdivision that's proposed. In addition, the staff had indicated a need to discuss street improvements along Parker's Mill. I know the Planning Commission is aware Parker's Mill is a unimproved collector road. So as we go further out, we're going to connect to the new urban growth master plan area. And there is a plan, as Chris Avilia told us last week, for improvements along Parker's Mill. But the question is, is the applicant going to be providing any of those set improvements as well or right-of-way in order for those improvements to occur in the future? And they did indicate they were willing to provide right-of-way, and we'll discuss with traffic engineering the extent of that right-of-way for their property. But mentioned including a sidewalk, bike lane, potentially a bus stop and shelter as well. And then the last thing for the committee this morning was to just discuss the preservation of the existing structure, and that's when it came to light this morning that they had already secured a demolition permit for the site, and Mr. Rose mentioned that it was likely already demolished. The subdivision committee did recommend postponement, primarily because of the floodplain study that's needed. Thank you, Ms. Wade. Any questions for Ms. Wade? If not, we will hear from the applicant. Good afternoon. I'm Bruce Simpson on behalf of the Rose family. Dan Rose is here and Kurt Rose, his brother, is in the back. I've known these gentlemen since I was a kid. Dan is one of my former law partners. He's also in the development business. Just a brief overview of things that weren't discussed. Appreciate the staff's comments. I got their report yesterday afternoon where these issues that they discussed were raised, and so we're going to address those prior to the hearing of the Planning Commission later this month. I'm very familiar with this neighborhood because it was one of my first zoning cases back in 1993. I represented the old colony neighborhood when all the farm around it called the Sturgill property. It's now Colony 2 and Parker's Landing was across from Calumet Farm that was proposed for development. And the colony, along with the West Gardenside Neighborhood Association and the other nearby neighborhood associations at that time, really from that very first filing of that case, had been intimately involved in how this area was going to be developed. And so being mindful of those precedents that had been set over the last 30 years, Dan and Kurt wanted to finish out the rest of the pie, if you will, of this area by building close to what they already had. And part of that was to assure the residents that we were going to have deed restrictions that would equal or exceed the deed restrictions of all the surrounding properties. on the other side of Parker's Mill, on the colony, Colony 2, and Parker's Landing. It is a low-density single-family neighborhood, and I know there's been a push for single-family or intensity of development for residential purposes. This property is zoned one-acre lots right now, R1A, and we could develop seven houses right now without a zone change. but being mindful of what the comprehensive plan calls for with respect to increasing density, we're proposing to have 25 houses rather than seven. Part of that is being sensitive to the existing situation, which this area wasn't gone into detail. I know it from historical reasons in the staff report, but this whole area has a history of flooding that was never addressed, which was in part culminated in the federal lawsuit that was filed and settled a number of years ago that resulted in the multimillion-dollar consent decree. What we're proposing to do with this basin, because it will have less impervious surface with low density residential, which will help with managing the stormwater, plus we're going to greatly exceed the stormwater management requirements to hold water back for a longer period of time, and also timing the release of that water with the downstream flows that currently exist so that we actually improve the existing stormwater management situation in this area. And just so you know, just downstream or north of the subject property on the other side of Episcopal Church is Chinquapin Drive. Those houses are three or four that have been flooding, and their pump station's been running for hours for 20-some years because there's nothing to detain the water coming off the property right now. It just sheet flows without being slowed down right on top of this street, and we're going to help that situation and those neighbors greatly with this lower density development, but it's still much higher than what the existing zoning is. We had a meeting with the neighbors back in August. Ordinarily, you send out invitations to all the people that own property within 500 feet. That's the legal notification requirement for zone changes. We sent notices out 2,000 feet. We wanted everybody within the area to know what's being proposed because we knew there would be great concern, and we filled up the sanctuary at the Episcopal Church on Parker's Mill. and addressed all their questions. Their principal questions were traffic on Parker's Mill Road, rightfully so, and stormwater flooding. I mentioned how we're going to deal with stormwater flooding. We're going to actually improve their situation. With respect to Parker's Mill Road, instead of seven houses, we're proposing 25. Parker's Mill Road is going to be expanded at some point because you all just approved part of the expansionary master plan, a number of houses at Parker's Mill and Manowar. Those will be coming. Sewer issues that have to be addressed there, of course, but eventually Parker's Mill is going to have to be widened. I submit to you that 18 more houses of what we're proposing is going to have a negligible impact on the traffic is there. There is a signal that's already there into this development. It's a signalized interchange. Tracy mentioned we're going to provide right-of-way for the widening of Parker's Mill Road. We're going to have a bus stop with a shelter. We're going to improve the pedestrian connections on the other side of Lane Allen Road and Parker's Mill. And we're going to have a bike lane. So those are major improvements that we're going to install as part of this development. that it is going to be compatible with what people have been expecting in that area, what they have participated in intimately over years, including court battles for 20-some years. And this fills out the rest of the small pie, this 11 acres, to fill out basically what's been built up over the years in terms of the character of this neighborhood. I know it's not high density, but it is a housing choice that's certainly provided for in the comprehensive plan. So we believe we do comply with the comprehensive plan. Now, the staff is ready to issue, which we will address between now and the public hearing about development criteria, and then the issue of the floodplain management. Obviously, we know we have to comply with Article 19 of the ordinance dealing with floodplain management. We cannot have houses in the floodplain. We know that. There is a process after zoning is approved that you file an application because you can change with grading the configuration of the floodplain. You have to get what's called a conditional letter of MAP amendment that has to be approved locally through the state and federal government. there's a process for which that has to be done. That's reviewed post-zoning. You all have done this numerous times in the past. It's nothing new. It's no different than any zone change being subject to all the typical conditions of zoning. You have to get engineering approval. You have to get pedestrian sidewalk approval and all the other sign-offs to make sure that the ultimate development before any construction can take place is approved and in compliance with the zoning ordinance. We understand that, and we will be in compliance with that. Mr. Helani is here to share with you what we propose to do in that regard, but this isn't anything that hasn't happened numerous times before, and if necessary, we can submit to you all the prior zone changes that have been approved by the Planning Commission and the Council for which this same process was exercised. Now, the safeguard is, if it can't be approved, then we have to come up with a different development plan and lose some lots most likely. So this is a preliminary development plan. It is not a final development plan. It is a concept plan for what we would like to see based on our consultation with the neighbors, based on our understanding of the history of this property and the pains we've taken to deal with the stormwater management problem, to keep density to match up with the current configuration of not adversely impacting the current traffic on Parker's Mill. We have the signal. We're going to provide a bus stop. We're going to provide a shelter and a bike lane, and we think all those features make this a very worthy project for you all to consider. I understand the postponement recommendation. We're fine with that. we need to do some additional amplification on our application and we'll do that and submit that to the staff and have their review of it before it comes to you for the public hearing. I'll let Mr. Rose talk to you about this historic house. There's been a lot of work and research that went in to try to save that house. Obviously, when they came to me, I said, you need to save the house as much as we can. So document everything because the Planning Commission is going to want to know. and Dan and his people, the people he's engaged to help him, the Historic Preservation Construction people and others have done that. We met with the president of Bluegrass Trust himself, came out on site, inspected the property, had consultations with him. I'll let Dan share with you all about those conversations. Dan. Thank you. My name is Dan Rose. My brother Kurt is in the back. We're the owners of the company trying to develop the property. So just to give you a little background in terms of being cognizant of the historic issues involved, my law office currently is in a Bluegrass Trust home on 326 South Broadway that I bought back in 2015 and spent quite a bit of money improving it and restoring it and even made an addition to it with the Board of Architectural Review's consent. So I just want everybody to understand I'm very interested in the preservation of Lexington's history, and so I approached this project with that in mind. I've done another development out in Chessamine County where I've similarly tried to save a historic home that we determined, again, it just wasn't savable. In this case, after we bought the property, my first intention was to save the house and make it part of the development. I had Rock Daniels. I don't know if you all know Rock. He does some historic preservation work. He came and evaluated the house. I had Jeff Gale, who is a custom builder, come and evaluate the house. My brother himself is a general contractor. He evaluated the house. and we basically determined it just wasn't feasible to try to save it and turn it into a house that could be used safely by a family. Just to give you a little information about the house itself, the oldest piece of the house was a small sort of like a square piece that was in the front that was built in like the early 1800s, and it was basically two rooms stacked on top of two other rooms. and the first time I went in there, I went upstairs and I tried to go in both of the bedrooms and I tried to walk in the bedrooms. The header hit me in the head about right here going in either side of the upstairs rooms and those were load-bearing walls. There's no bathrooms in that part of the house. It basically was just two rooms on top of two rooms, which was only, it was the smallest part of the house. Behind that, they had built a garage and a kitchen addition that looks like it was built maybe in the mid-20th century, 1950, 1960. It was frame construction. It was essentially the garage was falling down. The kitchen, it was almost like plywood walls in part of it, just totally unusable at all. The other part of the house they had built behind the historic piece was a larger, it looks like they almost enclosed a patio in the back with a roof and some brick walls. It was, again, mid-20th century. And they had an addition on the left side of the house where they built a pool house and a pool also looked like mid-20th century. Those parts of the home were basically dilapidated, not functional. The bathrooms were obsolete. The room sizes were all messed up. So we looked at it, and in my view and from my consultants, it would have cost $700,000, $800,000 to even try to restore that configuration of the home to make it functional. And when we started doing the numbers to try to, and even then, if you did that, we weren't sure we'd get a product that would actually be desirable to live in. the way people want to live their lives these days. It would just basically be a small historic piece surrounded by new construction, but the historic piece just wasn't functional. So we spent a lot of time evaluating that, so we didn't take it lightly when we determined we needed to bring it down. Also, the way the home was configured on the property, it sat in the back corner, and the way it was situated, it would have probably caused us to lose at least two, if not more, of the lots that we proposed. So it was going to prevent us from increasing the density to the point where we felt like we knew that was one of the primary objectives of the master plan, the comprehensive plan, was to get as much density as possible. So all those factors led us to conclude that we needed to remove the home. Yeah, thanks. I invited Zach Leonard, who's with Bluegrass Trust. We invited him out. He came out. He spent about an hour and a half with me at the house. He made a bunch of pictures to document the home. And from talking to him, I think he concluded as well that it just wasn't practical to try to save the home, given the small portion that was historic relative to all the other additions that had been made. And I think in his view, and I'm sure he could be asked, that he felt like the historic integrity of it had already been so compromised by these two additions that it just wasn't feasible to save it. He did indicate it. You're going to use some of the housing, some of the new construction. Yeah, Zach wanted us to, he suggests we pull out like some stained glass windows, and we pulled those out. There were a couple of grates in the front on the foundation we pulled out. We've asked, one of my contractors I think talked to the fellow at Longwood, Antique Wood, where he was going to come out maybe and try to pull some of the wood out. I don't know if he's done that or not yet. But there were some elements in the home that we did take out to try to use repurpose in some way. Mr. Lani, if you would address the issues about the floodplain and how we propose to deal with that. Yes, sir. This is Jihad Halani with Vision Engineering. So basically, we understand that this project will fall under Article 19 of the zoning ordinance and under Section 19-9. It can outline what's the procedure to follow when we get to the stage of final development plan or preliminary subdivision plan. At that time, we'll present our grading plan, our drainage calculation. We submit it to engineering to get the special use permit. So it's kind of outlined in Section 19-9 what's the procedure to obtain a special use permit. And a portion of the property, as mentioned before, is in the floodplain. So this is where FEMA started their study. is basically if you are on site, you can determine there's no stream bed and bank a certain distance, and toward the northeast side of the property, approximately 100, 150 feet maximum, you can see the stream start having its own kind of foam bed and bank, and this is where FEMA started the study in that location. And as Bruce mentioned, we're proposing to have a detention basin, and we're going to over-detain. So not only are we going to over-detain, we're going to delay the release of the runoff for a certain time. So we're going to have an extended detention. So that's the goal, and all this will be documented and submitted as part of the preliminary subdivision plan slash final development plan at the time of the submittal. Plus it will be incorporated with the CLOMER, and the CLOMER will need to be approved by the county engineer. prior to submit it to FEMA, as well as the special use permit. I'd be happy to respond to any questions myself, Mr. Halani, or Mr. Rose, with respect to recommendation of postponement. We're fine with it. We'll address the staff's concerns in as much detail as they want prior to your hearing. Mr. Wilson. Just for clarification, first of all, the project seems like it's good, going well, and as I understand it, you're going to take care of that plain issue before we get to the council, and you'll be able to confer with staff to take care of that. But I was curious about the house. Did you follow the proper processes? In other words, did the Bluegrass Trust give you permission to tear the house down, or did you follow that particular process? We did. Why don't you get up to the mic? We completely complied. Mr. Rex, if you would please speak in the moment. Yes, sir, we did. We had Bluegrass Trust representative come out and evaluate the house. He called me. He said, hey, I'd like to come out and look at it. I invited him out, met him out there. They photographed it. They documented the historic nature of it. That property, it was a Bluegrass Trust designation on it, but it wasn't protected legally from demolition because it's not in the historic overlay district like my law office is downtown. But we did have to get the permit through the LFUCG office, and they had someone from Board of Architectural Review, I believe, that had to come out and also evaluate the home, but there wasn't a process by which we had to get permission relative to its historic nature for purposes of the demolition. But we complied fully with all the laws, and I had John Conley of Diversified Demolition, was my demolition contractor, and he works with the city's representatives on a regular basis, and so it was all done by the book. Okay, thank you. Yes, I want to, first of all, I want to commend you gentlemen for, I guess, having a process in place before you took the home down. It would be easy for you to knock it down and just ask for forgiveness later. But listening to what you said and also you, Mr. Simpson, how you explained what was there and what would be needed to save it, that it wasn't tenable. So again, I appreciate you guys coming here with a thorough work through as to why what happened had to happen. All righty. Speaking for myself, I appreciate and feel, and I'm glad we're doing it. I appreciate the residential use. I do wish the house, demolition of the house would have waited at least until coming to this level because there are a number. as you know Mr. Simpson's historic homes in that neighborhood that are on residential lots now that were a farmhouse, but as it developed, they remained standing. And there actually was an older house earlier this year that sold in what was the Meadows, Winchester Road out Loudoun. It needed everything, and they found a buyer, I think, in under a week. So I wish that would have just waited until it got to us for a discussion. If Dr. Leonard did not see any redeeming quality, perhaps a letter or just a statement from them might help, even though now it's really a moot point. But everything else I can appreciate. Do we have any further discussion or questions? Mr. Paul. I think it's worth repeating that the Bluegrass Trust has no jurisdiction anywhere, frankly, and that really a serious analysis of the House should have been done by Division of Historic Preservation. It sounds like you had someone from Historic Preservation come out and look at the House, But I just wanted to clarify that because Bluegrass Trust does good work, but they have no authority whatsoever. Thank you, applicants. If there is no discussion, the floor is open for a motion. Mr. Wilson. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I move that we postpone PLNMAR 24-17 Rose Holdings Lexington LLC for the reasons provided by staff. Second. Do we need, at this point, do we need to amend? I guess no. We don't need to take out any of the recommendations applying. That would be done later. Okay. All right. Seconded by Mr. Jonathan Davis. Any discussion? If not, all in favor, raise your right hand. Unanimous. Thank you so much. Second item on the agenda is PLNZOZO24-7. And Daniel from Planning Staff. While Tracy's pulling that up, I just want to go ahead and explain. There's a couple documents associated with this. So the first is the staff report that you have in front of you that is recommending approval of the staff alternative text. The staff alternative text is included with this document. The red denotes what was given or what was proposed by the Urban County Council. The blue is planning staff's recommended additions or deletions. So kind of both of those elements are incorporated into the same document. So this was initiated recently. It's a request to update and examine our short-term rental regulations. Just a reminder that this is somewhat of a newer set of provisions for the ordinance. So July of 2023 is when these were first implemented. And then existing regulations touch on several different applications or aspects of the short-term rental. It makes distinctions between whether a rental is hosted or unhosted and establishes regulations based on that. There's occupancy calculations that are involved, the number of people that are allowed to stay, which is currently a function of the number of bedrooms in the home, as well as a maximum occupancy that exceeding that requires the Board of Adjustments approval. The current ordinance directs the Board of Adjustments to consider several different factors when they weigh their conditional use applications, the number of short-term rentals in the vicinity, the compliance record, the occupancy of other short-term rentals in the area, and any history of nuisances. And this is strictly applying to the short-term rentals or allowing a framework for them within our urbanized zones. So agricultural zones are a separate consideration that council is currently in the process of considering and are not touched by this or the previous regulations. The Urban County Council-initiated text makes kind of a host of changes, largely designed to kind of limit the impact of the short-term rental. So really what we're seeing is a reduction in a lot of the standards and a strengthening of some of the protections that are in place, especially when it relates to neighborhood contexts. So previously, you were able to request, in most instances, a short-term rental within a principal dwelling, your home. And if you had an accessory dwelling unit or an ADU, you could request a short-term rental in each of those. Now, the Urban County Council's recommended text shrinks that to just a single one. It modifies the number of short-term rentals in the B1 and P1 zones, so it modifies that calculation. Previously, if you had a business zone and had, say, three dwelling units, you would not be able to have any short-term rentals because of the way it was calculated. Now they're allowed to have a minimum of one as long as they have that dwelling unit there. There's been a reduction in the occupancy calculation. So the overall limit has been dropped to 10, and the calculation is now based on the number of two per bedroom plus two. So trying to shrink kind of the frame that these are able to operate and make those larger short-term rentals request approval through the Board of Adjustment. So there is also a change to the consideration So previously If the property There was a typo there There's been changes to the Considerations for the Board of Adjustments So previously the Number of short term rentals In the surrounding vicinity Was just something for them to consider Now this has been moved to a firmer requirement So if this property The property that is applying for a short term rental If it in fact is located within 500 feet of another shore terminal, or as in within 1,000 feet, there is a greater than 3% concentration, that would not be allowed to be applied for. They would have to essentially request relief for that process. The Urban Counties initiated text lays out considerations for those process that deal with several different aspects of the application. So in order to give them relief, from a property that's close, that doesn't meet the location or the concentration standards, they have to either show that it's not going to affect affordable housing in the area, it's not going to be an over-concentration in the area, and meet the four criteria that are kind of shown at the bottom of the screen here relating to being adjacent to residential zones, where those short-term rentals in the area are sort of located, or if a neighborhood plan supports those. So the framework that is being proposed by council hits kind of a number of different aspects of the text. Staff alternative changes, we did make some formatting and clarity changes, relocating some of the language. There was a clarification of what constitutes a high-demand area. So one of the things that the Urban County Council's text was directing the board to consider, as it was in an area that would have a high demand for short-term rentals based on land use or other characteristics. We've added, kind of tried to clarify that, really when planning staff has been reviewing these applications, really that was meaning that they were in close proximity to, say, downtown or these other sort of amenity areas, entertainment-oriented areas, and areas that had mixing of uses. So we provided some additional language that is still going to give the Board of Adjustment flexibility to evaluate these, but kind of clarify because any area could really be considered high demand, even if it was a purely residential neighborhood. So we wanted to add that in. There's some specific dates relating to compliance with the division of revenue that we've included, but some of the more important reductions that we've made or changes we've made is the concentration calculation. So the 3% within residential zones, you can't exceed the 3% based on council's recommended text. In our experience with our updated data, being able to actually look at the entirety of all of the parcels and all of the address points, even for multifamily, the kind of specificity in that data was leading to a lot of these applications being able to exceed that. So staff found that 2% still would allow many of these short-term rentals that we've seen so far to operate, but really kind of provides a better protection for neighborhood because when calculating that, the 3% kind of was a distinct difference. We also made some changes to relief requirements. So the situation where the applicant has to request that it's either closer than 500 feet to another rental or exceeds that concentration, we made some changes to that. The first, the reference to affordable housing, it wasn't clear in our reading of the text if they were looking for the textbook definition of standard affordable housing or if it was affordable in the colloquial sense. So we've removed the notation that they consider affordable housing and just the housing stock in general, so giving them more leeway into kind of looking in that aspect when they evaluate an application to see if it's going to have negative impacts on a surrounding neighborhood. We've modified the roadway requirement from a collector or higher to a minor arterial or higher. That is actually not denoted in the text as a copy error in our typo. So I'll actually reference this section so that you all can see. So looking in, yes. Yep, M2, near the end of that page, that there's a significant environmental feature or primary collector or higher classification roadway. Really the impact that we're looking for is a lot of roads can be classified as collectors. so that wasn't as doing as much heavy lifting as staff would like. So upon consultation with our transportation staff, they recommended we bump that up. Finally, we removed the condition that spoke to a neighborhood plan recommending it. Really, that really would not occur. Staff's real view is that, you know, there's lots of goals and objectives that relate to providing housing stock, you know, affordability, et cetera, that sort of conflicts and really would never get into a situation where a neighborhood plan developed would recommend that more short-term rentals be added. So we removed that as sort of a consideration. But otherwise, accepting the urban council's recommended text with those specific additions. So we are recommending approval of our staff alternative text. We find that it does provide greater protections for the neighborhood and really provides buffers against over-concentration, which was something the Board of Adjustment has sort of month in and month out sort of been hearing from neighborhoods as sort of presenting problems. And it also provides limitations that will sort of prevent and protect against health, safety, and welfare concerns. So with that, staff is recommending approval of our alternative text. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have about that. Mr. Paul? Could you explain how the council came to 3% while staff came to 2% on the number of conditional use STRs within 1,000 feet? I will say over the past year, the staff has recommended approval to the Board of Adjustment for concentrations of less than 5%. The board has tended to kind of lean closer to 3% in the actions they're taking. So I think that was a consideration by the council when they initiated it for 3%. The 3%, I think, reflects how we were calculating that concentration, which was the number of short-term rentals within the area, but the denominator was actually the parcels. that became problematic because we weren't calculating number of short-term rentals over total dwelling units in the area. So when we looked at calculating it, what I would say is correctly a more justifiable statistic, we found that there was a significant decrease in the concentration numbers. So in a few areas near downtown, we saw 11, 12, 13 percent. And when we calculated it based on the correct denominator, it became closer to 7 or 6%. And so if we are consistent with that, we felt that what they were looking at in terms of the short-term rentals based on parcel concentration of 3%, if we adjust it for our correct denominator, it's really going to be closer to 2%. That was a more accurate concentration of what they were aiming for, if that makes sense. It's kind of a math project. Thank you. Maybe this is just an educational question. I try to catch some of the BOA hearings. What is the most common reason an STR is denied? That is a good question. Is there a common theme or top two or three themes for denial? Hmm. James, what do you think? James has been there for the whole year now to experience all of them. For better and for worse. So essentially there's not really too much of a common theme when they've been denied. In terms of staff recommending disapproval has been because it's exceeded 5% or if there was other conflicts or if an applicant had compliance issues. But outside of that, we have not recommended disapproval that much, and it has mainly been due to those higher concentration areas or if the applicant has had a history of compliance, which we just had our first case and our first recommendation for disapproval. We also have recommended disapproval for the potential, the neighborhoods in transition, which Mr. Wilson is very familiar with. The report that came out from that in 2021 showed 10 census tracts which have a higher probability of displacement. And so we have recommended disapproval in any of those 10 census tracts because of the potential impact of short-term rentals kind of changing the character of the neighborhood and potentially displacing people. And that has, the board has accepted that as a justifiable reason to disapprove cases. In a few other cases, it has been because of infrastructure. So it's a dead-end street. There's not available parking on the street. or a cul-de-sac or a private street where it's shared common areas, near schools in a few cases. Those are the potential traffic concentrations. Another one has been because of shared walls or shared facilities. We have had buildings such as condo units been denied because of that shared common area. That has been another reason the board has denied applications. All righty. Thank you so much. Any other questions? If not, thank you, Mr. Cromwell. The Urban County Council isn't here. I was going to say the applicant's not here, but I'm sure we have public comment. Mr. Gaffield. I'm Walt Gaffield. I'm president of the Fayette County Neighborhood Council. I want to start by saying, you know, Tracy attended a general meeting of the neighborhood council and did an excellent job. However, we didn't have the staff modifications to the proposed by staff for the ZODA. And staff said, fine, we'll send them to you. We never got them. I wrote the commissioner of planning and the director and asked for a meeting where we brought in a few neighborhood leaders and talked about it. Got no response to that, followed up again and said, you know, I just wanted to make sure you got my first request, and I got no response to that. So I think it makes kind of a violation of the process if you really want public engagement. I mean, we represent more neighborhoods than any organization in the entire county. Now, you're kind of in a box because the council did a council-initiated soda, and you don't have much time. You're under an obligation to send it back, and that puts us in kind of an odd situation. We had a meeting last night with neighborhoods, or yesterday morning. We have another meeting scheduled for tonight, and they're going to have to do this on the fly without really having the actual ordinance. And then we've got a meeting scheduled for next week. we're taking this pretty seriously as something existential. In looking at this, I mean, I like some of the changes the staff has made, but I do have a couple of questions without the document. One thing, in the calculation of the 500 feet and the 1,000 feet, it looks like it only includes conditional use STRs and the ones that don't have is it is am I reading that correctly that short-term rentals that are in a neighborhood but don't have a conditional use permit and are there because they're grandfathered or for other reasons they're not counted within the 500 feet of the thousand I'm not sure if I'm reading that correctly no both are counted so okay the way it reads is there should be no other short-term rental within 500 feet of the proposed that has either been approved by the board with a conditional use permit or otherwise a legal non-conforming use pursuant to subsection I above, which is that six-month grandfathering window. So it could be one or the other. The other thing that I think is, you know, without having seen it, there may be more, but I would like... The staff left our... information at the door if you want to pick it up. Okay, I will. The other thing that I know is going to cause some consternation, if I'm reading it correctly, the B1 zone allows short-term rentals as a principal use. It's a neighborhood business zone. They're all over Lexington. And the ordinance we were looking at basically said, okay, if you're located near a zone that allows short-term rentals, then the Board of Adjustment, which has been a train wreck, I don't want to go into that, the Board of Adjustment then can give relief to somebody who wants to build within 500 feet or within a thousand feet of another short term rental. I think that's a very large loophole and it's going to particularly harm downtown areas. In fact, what I've looked at specifically mentions downtown. You'd be looking at areas like Southland Drive, which is all B1. be looking at, oh, the street in Chevy Chase with Suggins in it, which I like. And do you really want to do that? Do people who want to build a new short-term rental really need relief? Because, I mean, they can go to places that are not – and these places have smaller houses. I mean, the question is what's affordable and what's not. but this is going to be a problem for those neighborhoods, and it's not going to be beneficial to them. I think I'm pretty certain that what the neighborhood council wants, and we don't oppose conditional uses, but we want a set standard that basically says they can't be built within 500 feet of each other or with a percentage, say, greater than 2%. and that way it's a fair, it's an even playing field for all neighborhoods. But you better take a look particularly at neighborhood business zones and decide do you really want to clutter them, and they're the most cluttered already in Lexington. Now, I don't think that's particularly because tourists want them. I think we attended, and I'm sure staff did too, a meeting in Louisville two or three years ago, And in the essence of what the banking community said and people who are in the business, you really need to look for property that's smaller and less expensive and near things to do and that sort of thing. And that's kind of what's happened. The Kenwick neighborhood is completely crushed, and they're probably more upset about it than any neighborhood in Lexington. Another one, some of the university neighbors are also crushed. And I think you really need to look at that provision. You can still have conditional uses without saying, well, okay, just because you're in a desirable place with smaller homes, that's where you ought to be able to allow an exception. So we'll look at it, but it's going to be really hard to make corrections with what we've already told people without having really seen the changes. I think it is good to go, one of my concerns was on the size of streets, and I was frankly going to send one of our neighborhoods and say, okay, this is a small collector, this is a large collector, this is a neighborhood street. Why should that be a place? It doesn't make sense that that should allow somebody to build a short-term rental within the buffer or within the 1,000 feet just because there's a street in between. So I do like the correction that you're looking at arterials or small arterials. Now, I think we may want to know what a small arterial is. which gets into definitions. But I would urge you to really look at that one thing, and we may have more. We're going to have trouble correcting people. I mean, we're a volunteer organization. We represent a lot of neighborhoods. We don't have a lot of people doing the work on the documents and that kind of stuff. Okay. So I don't know what to tell you. I like a lot of what staff's done. I think that's probably the biggest gap, because you're really one of the goals of the planning condition and the comprehensive plan really is to establish more commercial development in Lexington. And I think that's right. We do need it. Some of it needs to be in neighborhoods. But you have good commercial development and bad commercial development that actually harms the neighborhood. And short-term rentals almost have universal opposition. All righty. Well, thank you, Mr. Garfield. and we'll continue listening and communicating. And when will this go to the full planning commission? Yeah, November 14th. Because, again, we have a statutory limitation of 60 days. So that's next week? It's next Thursday. Yes, next week. Okay. That's why I'm here. Well, I appreciate it, and at least we can try to iron some things out between now and then. one question I had for staff is on the B1 could someone just talk us through the accessory use accessory use principal use for for the different categories yeah I wish this draft and in the ordinance it had hopefully it'll have it it would look more like a table so you'd see the lines going up. So in the business zones, a short-term rental, if it's hosted, is considered accessory. If it's not hosted, unhosted, it's a principal use. And that's true from B1 mixed-use zones, the downtown zones, if there happens to be housing in B4, I1, CC, B6P. So it would apply to all those. Those are all principal uses if they're unhosted. So what we're seeing is there are places in our B1 zone where residences exist, usually on the second floor or above, so in a mixed shoe structure. And a lot of times the number of dwelling units is very limited. So what we ran into was people were saying, well, I can't even do it because I only have three dwelling units. Wouldn't it be nice if I could rent one of them out for short-term rental. So the council suggested changing it from 25% max, which means you'd have to have at least four dwelling units to even have one, or one, whichever is greater. So it would allow every B1 that happens to have a dwelling unit be able to have a short-term rental. Okay. It was confusing because if it's unhosted, it's a principal use, meaning they don't have to, it's totally permitted. Do they have to get BOA approval? No, but if it's hosted, it's an excess reuse. It still wouldn't require. But it still wouldn't require. Okay. Okay. Already. Does staff have any other comment? I mean, I would say that the goal of this is to address the neighborhood concerns that the council has been hearing over the past year. They also, the council members, have also heard from Board of Adjustment members, which Brandon Gross is as well, about the impact that they have felt as a board in terms of having to spend so much time on short-term rentals as well as having an ordinance that they can lean on in terms of making better recommendations. Okay. Mr. Gross, are you here to comment on this? I am. All right. Yeah. I won't take too much of your time. I'm Brandon Gross. I'm here as a citizen, not as an advocate today. I will say that, unfortunately, the ordinance as written is not how the Board of Adjustment would have written it. We are often vilified, but we are applying the law as written, not as we wish it was written. As many of the people that have been on it for a number of years know I wasn't a fan of ADUs I'm not a huge fan of short-term rentals But I know we're in a housing crisis I have now accepted ADUs as a necessary tool to get us there I think short-term rentals are also a necessary tool And I'll give you a couple examples My wife and I, we own a couple long-term rentals One is a duplex off of Rosemont Gardens. It's about 650 square feet per unit. So it's very affordable. We've kept the rent, you know, at a, we have not raised the rent since 2019. So unlike a lot of landlords, we could probably make more money, but we, we've kept these long-term tenants there at that rate. But the city at some point changed all those R2 zones to R1 zones. And they lowered the density years and years and years ago. So now you can't do duplexes in that area of the city, and it would be an opportunity if we were allowed to do duplexes to have more housing. I've also bought another house off of Winchester that had a flop room on it, for those of you who don't know. Those houses where you go up and they have two front doors, oftentimes that second door just accessed a room that someone could rent with very minimal amenities. Once again, with zoning, that was washed out decades ago, and you weren't allowed to do that anymore. And some of those things have caused our housing crisis that we're in. I think that when the neighbors are before us, it's like a zone change. Neighbors hate change. Everyone hates traffic. Generally, people don't like strangers. And they don't want commercial uses in a residential neighborhood. And that generally lines up with everything. And then we get policy concerns of affordable housing and other things that are beyond our purview as board members. And so I think what the council has proposed and how the staff has tweaked it, I think it goes a long way in fixing many of the concerns that many of the neighbors have stated. I would disagree with the Neighborhood Association. I think that B1 is a commercial use. I think B1 is an appropriate location for short-term rentals because it is a commercial use. So that's one I would disagree with them that we should not have those. But I think so far it's not perfect, but it's better than what we have. And the only other tweak I would put is on the 10-person limit, you know, going down from 12. and I'm not sure if this is even legal, but potentially being the greater of two per bedroom or ten persons. There's a lot of times we get requests where they want twelve and they've got three bedrooms and a basement and some other nooks and crannies that they could put people into, but then we're like, okay, how many bathrooms? One. Like, well, how are you going to have ten people and, you know, three bedrooms with one house? So that may be something you may want to look at. And like I said, I'm not sure if there is a fair housing or other reason you could not do that. But that would be the only thing I would suggest, given what the staff has proposed. I also agree with them on that the greater of 24 or 1 was an issue. So those are the comments I have. And like I said, I'm not here as an advocate today. I'm just here to answer questions for you and to just give you my two cents on. and also to support the staff and the council in trying to tweak this to alleviate what I consider kind of a difficult process that's currently in place. Thank you, Brandon. And you said two per bedroom or ten, whichever is greater? Yes. So if you have a three-bedroom house, you get six. I see. Okay. That's what I meant. Sorry, whichever is less. I'm sorry. Yeah, you're right. That would not make any sense. Yes, yes, that's right. Whichever is less. Whichever is less. Okay. I think on the surface that sounds reasonable. Yeah, that's just something just to think about. So thank you. Any other questions? I have a question I'd like to ask. Oh, well, me or not me. Let's do this. Okay. Mr. Gross, if nobody has any further questions, Mr. Graffield, we can take two minutes for one quick question, please. One, I actually agree that you should have short-term rentals in B1. I don't have a problem with that at all. In fact, I supported things like that in the past. What I, again, it's a question of reading the document I was looking at. It looked to me like if somebody wanted in an adjacent area, and again, I'm looking at the old language, and they were outside of the B-1 zone, they could also build a short-term rental even if it was within 500 feet or 1,000 feet on your requirements. Is that how it's going to work? Because I have no problem with short-term rentals being in B-1. So I think the idea of this text is to say, no, you cannot have any other short-term rentals within 500 feet that have been approved by the board or come in under the nonconformity. So that creates a ring, right, around each one and spaces them out more. Right. And then the concentration within 1,000 feet comes into place. So the only way to vary those, if you will, is to then look to the next section, which is Section M that Daniel mentioned. And it says the board can consider on a case-by-case basis, as long as there's no overconcentration or effect to the housing stock, that they could approve it for at least one of the following reasons. And one of those reasons is it's near a commercial area, at the edge of a commercial area. So if you could imagine the house that resides directly next to an office building or a shopping center or something, and that the impact of that higher intensity use, the business use, is already impacting that house. And so allowing that particular one residential structure, as opposed to its own change, which we'd have to deal with in the planning commission, to go to short-term rental. Sure. It does require the board to take kind of a soft thing in the proposed ordinance and make a decision on it. And I think that's why we would prefer not allowing those kind of exceptions. Considerations. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think in terms of drafting it, the law department looked to what Louisville's doing. So Louisville has kind of the same level of the board can consider these extra things. And the idea would be to avoid a variance, right? Because someone could come in and say, hey, I don't meet the concentration or I don't meet the 500-foot setback, but I'll vary it to zero. Can you accept that? Yeah, well, maybe consider a slightly improved language. And Louisville also has a 600-foot distance requirement, unless they've changed it. So one question is why do we have a 500-foot requirement? Thank you. All right, thank you. Do we have any other comment? If not, gentlemen? I just want a quick question to the staff. Have you all heard anything here today that would cause you to reconsider anything that you already have here on the paper? I think we have heard today, but also over the past two or three months since the draft started circulating, a lot of concern about what you see under G2, and that's the one with the red and the blue in it. the red was an indication of a change from the council. So they wanted whether the property be considered as located, and this is more generic, an area containing a mixture of land uses or zoning categories that may create a high demand for short-term rentals. We've heard a lot of concern about that text. So the staff recommended a change so that instead of this vague high demand, it was more about proximity. So whether the property being considered is located in close proximity to, and we've listed specific things, the downtown core, other mixed use area, or entertainment use. That's what we have interpreted the board is really considering. That's what they're looking at. So they have approved short-term rentals near downtown at a higher concentration. And we thought that more accurately reflected kind of what's happening. I think that is still going to be a concern to a lot of our neighborhood associations. So that may be something that they ask just to be removed altogether. We wanted to soften it or be more specific, but I think that you may hear that's just not enough. We don't want that in there at all. And would you all and staff, would you all go along with that? I guess what I'm getting at is you're asking us to approve this. The question is, should we approve it or should we postpone it? And do you all, what do you want, your recommendation still holds as it is? Yes, and I would encourage you, obviously, next week to listen to the public and see what improvements they see based on the staff's recommendation of, are these tweaks enough, you know? And they may say, no, it's not. I mean, I know we have a few neighborhood associations that will say, no, it's not enough. That shouldn't be in there. I got you. I know we have only the advisory piece here. Okay. Thank you. Alrighty. If we have no other comment on this, and I understand, Tracy, what you're saying, I mean, that is, when you read it, close proximity to the downtown core or other mixed-use or entertainment uses. It's just, it is hard to define that. Okay, well, do we have a motion or any discussion? Mr. Cole? I move to recommend approval of PLN Zota 24-7. Thank you, sir. Seconded by Mr. Wilson. With the understanding that the staff is going to take into consideration the possible changes we've discussed today. I'll forgive you more about it next year. Sure. All right. All in favor, please raise your right hand. That's unanimous. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is PLN Zota 24-8. Mr. Crum. And once again, in a very similar format, this is a text that's coming to us courtesy of the Urban County Council. So you'll have a staff report and then the staff alternative text once again outlining the Urban County Council's text in red with staff's deletions or additions, modifications shown in blue. So when we're talking about existing regulations as they apply to billboards, standard billboards or non-electronic billboards are currently permitted in the B3, B4, CN, I1, and I2 zones. They are subject to various different requirements regarding the overall size of the signage, spacing, other requirements. And you all, as the Planning Commission, will recall that over the past couple years, we have had several tweaks to our language to start allowing various forms of sort of digital signage, changing message signage, dating back to the digital marquee ZODA in 2022, and then the Lexington Convention Center signage allowance that was in 2023. three. So the Urban County Council has initiated this text that looks to basically define and create a pathway for allowing digital billboards. So they create the digital billboard definition and place it within the same zone and generally the same overall framework. So once again, size limitations still apply. The setbacks are identical to a standard billboard, the same spacing from residential densities, and et cetera. They did add several provisions, noting correctly that the digital billboards, because they have a changing message, they have lighting associated with them, they have different impacts to both pedestrians as well as drivers, so different health and safety considerations. So the council has recommended a 2,500 foot separation between digital billboards. They borrowed several pieces of the language for prohibiting animations, flashing, transitions, things that would cause distractions on a roadway. A minimum duration of eight seconds that was consistent with the other digital signage that you all have looked at and reviewed over the past couple of years. And a luminance requirement, so a maximum brightness during the day and then a maximum at night. Once again, there was a staff omission, so the minimum of 500 nits or the maximum of 500 nits at the nighttime was accidentally omitted, so staff will get that language cleaned up, but essentially putting limits on that luminance in order to protect the surrounding area. The staff alternative changes, we made several tweaks. The first was prohibiting non-conforming signage from becoming a digital billboard. So when we looked at this, we want to make sure that we were evaluating and that the signage that is going to have this increased potential for distraction is being and meeting all requirements, and it's not a sign that's either too high or too large or in a space that would cause a potential conflict. So we put some prohibitions on the modification of existing signage to become a digital billboard. One of the things that was included in sort of the creation of the corridor node zone was its placement within here. The corridor node, CN, is actually a residential zone, and so it doesn't have the same sort of signage implications. So staff is recommending that the CN zone not be allowed to have digital billboards. We clarified the spacing standard. Council put that 2,500-foot requirement from digital billboard to digital billboard. we wanted to make sure that they still had to be at least 500 from a standard billboard as well. So making sure that that spacing was in an acceptable place. And then staff also recommended an inclusion in the language for the sign construction itself to use blocking or louvering technology to reduce the viewing angle. And I actually was unfamiliar with the concept until sort of this came across our desk. But the left side is a standard billboard, so it would just be flat with your standard viewing angle and lit. With the light mitigation and that louvering technology, essentially the construction of the billboard is done so that the panels that make up its face have a reduced width of sort of vision. So it only has a 60-degree viewing angle versus a 140-degree viewing angle. And so council, when they initiated this, kind of put that on our radar that that technology exists. and it kind of serves to help mitigate the impact on the surrounding and adjacent properties. Really, you want to focus this at the roadway that you're wanting to target. So staff recommends including that language to require that technology, but otherwise are recommending approval of that staff alternative text, once again reserving it for our most intense and commercialized zones, maintaining the spacing requirements and kind of keeping that in the forefront, prohibiting sort of the flashing or distracting features and kind of setting a minimum level of the transitions to ensure that that is not a nuisance. And then creating standards for the science construction to kind of make sure that these areas are sort of addressed adequately and that you're not getting bleed over effects or other concerns. So staff is recommending approval of our staff alternative text that's in front of you. And I'd be happy to entertain any questions you have for staff at this time. You have to help educate me. On the last page, I'm talking about the luminance now. It says here luminance for digital billboards between sunrise and sunset. The maximum luminance should be 5,000. What's NITS? Yeah, so the NITS, it's an existing metric that we have in our signage or NITS that relates to the brightness of the sign. So it's a measurable standard of brightness that's consistent with how we regulated the digital marquees and the electronic signage in the convention centers. Okay, now here's where I get you know my age. There's another measure called foot candles. So between foot candles and this is acceptable, the modernistic. Yeah, there's a slight. So if this was being lit by an external source, that would be measured in foot candles because this is the luminous, like the sign itself is projecting the lights. That's the measure that's recommended for that. Oh, okay. Thank you. It is really extremely technical. Well, it is, but I think you all do a good job. All these Zota amendments and things, all of them are complex to some extent. Daniel, am I reading this correctly, that in paragraph G, section 1711, the specific zones, Are those only those zones mentioned in this paragraph are really the zones where you could have a digital billboard? Yes. Yes. All right. Or any billboard. Or any billboard. I see. Okay. All right. I'm differentiating in my mind to the difference between this and a digital marquee, which is? It's allowed in connection with a theater in a specific set of zones. Right. Okay. It's just generally smaller. Yes. Okay. Yes, sir. One other quick question. I think this is for my education. Something that is illuminated, does it have to require a certain number of seconds that it has to stay there? Yes. So this would have a minimum. You would have to have that static duration of at least eight seconds. And then when you changed message, you couldn't have any animation, sliding, swirling, sparkling, strobing, scintillating. She just told me where it was. Thank you. All righty. Anything else before we go to public comment? Applicants not here. Mr. Gaffield? Yes. Neighborhood Council has been involved with the digital signing ordinance, I think, since about 2016 or 2017. and we were working for a while with the Kentucky Resources Council and I think it's scenic Kentucky. There's a scenic America in Washington. And we think this is simply a bad ordinance. We know there's opposition to it on council. It's unknown how much that is because council lately, they reach agreement and they all vote for something, even when there's some people against it. So it's kind of odd. And this is to benefit a sign company in Lexington. It owns almost all the billboards. And they've been kind of rugged with the city. They went to a point of applying for 20 or maybe 25 illegal digital billboards several years ago. And they did it specifically to litigate against the city. We brought that to the attention of the city, and it went into litigation, and the sign owner lost the litigation. I think probably the same company, they took the state to litigation over a, I guess it was an adult bookstore in western Kentucky or something like that, an adult store because they said that their rights of free speech went away or something like that based on billboard regulation. And the state lost the case and has changed their regulations. So this has been going on for a long time. But the city won against the sign company and now they're back. And there's one particular councilman who really wants it. You don't want to get tied up in knits and how much light you've got and all that. There are much bigger issues involved. I live on Harrodsburg Road. There was a traffic study that cost the city $150,000. The conclusion looking at accidents was that the accidents were caused by two things almost entirely. One was rear end collisions and the other thing was side swipes. There's a great deal of research, and it's in the document I gave you, and that's not even all of it, that basically says that digital billboards cause rear-end collusions and side swipes. Now, there are economic interests involved in this, so that, I think, is more why it's coming up. It's not that we're backward or anything like that. But, you know, the road's dangerous enough. I just saw a rear-end collision the other day, especially during the evening rush hour. And I think the transportation people with the city did a really good job on that study, and it's much better than it was. But Jessamine County keeps growing, Lexington keeps growing, and the traffic increases. Another thing to consider is the research shows that young people in particular take their eyes off the road for longer periods of time than do adults who are driving. And that's also based on research. So do you want your kids to be driving along in heavy traffic and see a digital sign moving around and take their eyes off the road and run into somebody? You know, I mean, it's a safety issue. There are liability issues associated with it. If you permit a digital billboard, I know this is old case law. I don't know where it is now, but the city of Minneapolis had to replace a bridge and replace a digital sign on the bridge. and they had to use state highway funds and it was several million dollars to take the sign out, to be allowed to take the sign out and pay the sign company. There's a state law that requires that a sign company remove a sign for every digital sign they put in. It may even be two signs, but there's no requirement that that happen in Fayette County. Under state law, they can remove an old used sign, maybe even a Burma Shave sign from 30 years ago or 40 years ago, and that counts. So I would expect probably when that state law hits, they probably won't be removing any signs in Lexington because they don't have to. They're going to take the ones that are least valuable. So there's no benefit that way, although the intent of the law probably was to do that. Well, and then there are environmental concerns, and then you do get into energy use like pollution and general appearance. I mean, they're generally kind of tacky. So I think you actually should just say no. And I don't know how that works when you've got 60 days and what happens when you just say no. But on this one, I just don't think it benefits Lexington. I think it's bad for Lexington. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Garfield. Do we have any other public comments? If not, we can discuss. The reason I was kind of laughing and amusing in one way, I understand the seriousness of these activities, But I was reminded when Sesame Street first came on the air, a lady took, since I was at that time with KET, a lady took exception since I was responsible for that program being on the air. She said I was a drug inducer because nowhere else could kid find that excitement in Sesame Street except through drugs. And so, right. And I kept thinking, ma'am, well, anyhow. Well, I mean, if there's no more discussion, we can entertain a motion. or is there any context in the additional context staff would like to give? Mr. Paul? So following up on Mr. Gaffield's comments, the first reason that staff gives for recommending approval is that the amendment allows for expansion of the use of electronic billboards billboards within the most intense zones of Fayette County. So why is that desirable? Well, the council forwarded it to the planning commission to consider, but I think they believe it is desirable to have a digital billboard as opposed to the static billboard in the conversations that we either participated in or were in the room for, there tends to be an acceptance of digital billboards in the community, I think. And at least the council members that are sitting today, that they are generally accepting of digital billboards that they have seen in other communities. And so I think the planning, the general government and planning committee discussed it, and they forwarded it to the full council and the council then initiated it. So that seems to indicate, at least to the staff, that there is an interest politically to have this option in our community. Not every sign would be able to be converted to a digital billboard. There are probably a limited number of locations within Fayette County that could add digital billboards, and that's sort of for a number of reasons. First, they have to be on a state or federal highway. And then the sign has to be located within 660 feet of the highway. And we just have a limited amount of B3, B4, I1, I2 zones along those corridors. And some of them have conditional zoning restrictions to prohibit signs as well. So there are other limitations that are at play in terms of where billboards can be located and then the number of billboards that can be converted to digital is further limited by the spacing. I would say that the staff has sort of resigned at this point to the option of having digital billboards in the community. I'm going to say I'm in agreement with Mr. Gaffield just to say no. I would point out that the council also recommended expanding the urban services boundary, and, you know, that ended up happening. And I think pretty much anyone that knows anything about it knows that that was a really bad decision and that we're going to be wrestling with this for decades, and it's not going to be good for the community. And I think this may be exactly the same sort of move. That's my opinion. Ms. Jones. Well, I mean, this has been an issue that's been grappled with outside of the purview of the Planning Commission for a number of years. You know, the council's had subcommittees and other task groups that have been working on it. That work has stopped for various reasons, you know, changes in council members, COVID, whatever. but there has been some discussion about it for a number of years. There was never any conclusion reached as to what to move forward until this. You know, I think that this council and the council member that brought it back up and put it in committee and produced what they sent out as an initiated text to you all felt like it's coming. It's coming through other jurisdictions, and so, you know, we should consider it. And so, you know, the council's consideration of it was done primarily on a somewhat limited basis in the General Government and Planning Committee and then moved out to the full council to initiate this text to send to you all. Of course, as you know, whenever they initiate a text amendment to you all as opposed to just referring it to you all, you all have only 60 days to respond by statute. So that's what has happened here now. When it goes back to the Urban County Council, they have any number of options of what they want to do with it, and they're not on a time limit. So they could put it back in committee. They may. I don't know. they're not going to get it in time for them to do anything with it for the remainder of this year because of their their schedule and because of the you know process of you all getting it through your hearing process um so there will be a somewhat new council in january when they see this again so i i don't know what to tell you to do with it that's just by way of information for you all to know that you know they they could um and i would never in a hundred years predict what i think they may do to you all to tell you all but since there will be some fairly number of new council members in january you know it they may desire to put it back in committee because people may want there may be people that don't have the same information as the people that initiated this text at that point. Thank you. And to Mr. Paul's point, what are our options at this decision-making point? Well, I mean, if you all, I mean, it's been initiated to you all for review to send something back. I don't recall, but that doesn't mean it can't happen, that you all have ever just, I don't think you have an option to send nothing back, but I think you could send a recommendation back that you're just disapproving the entire text. The only cautionary measure I would tell you in regard to that is, you know, that you can weigh in based on what you discuss amongst yourselves, what you hear at the hearing on this, as to what you want it to say if you send it back to them. If you send them a recommendation of just we're disapproving the entire text, that doesn't stop them from enacting some sort of text. So just be aware of that, you know, that scenario as to whether or not you want to lend them your recommendation of what you think is appropriate or you think of just a straightforward disapproval recommendation is preferred. Could we say something like we have a general public safety concern and would like more information showing us that this is not going to negatively impact our community going forward? I mean, that could be part of, I think, a disapproval. I don't think you are going to have time to incorporate terms to address the public safety or do more research about that at this time. you're on that 60-day clock. So on the calendar, when will this be heard by the full planning commission? November 21st. Two weeks? Yes. Okay. I mean, you know, if you all would, like, I really don't want to task the staff with more work, but if you all want them to provide you what information they've been given about the public safety and the studies and things by the 21st, I think we can do that if that would be helpful to you. But in terms of researching additional or garnering new information, I don't know that you all are going to have enough time to do that, but there has been information provided, and there is information in the file about those kinds of studies. Yes. We'd like to see, I guess, I'd like to see more of the information that they saw that led them to believe that this was a good thing for us right now. Quick question. When you said that the staff has sort of resigned to the inevitability of regulations like this, If we were to reject it, do you expect that it would just keep on coming back until something happens? Yes. The first time Lamar filed something was in 2007. I remember seeing stuff. Recommended disapproval because the state law did not yet allow for digital signs at all. So they have spent over a decade lobbying the state, going to the Federal Highway Association to change the agreement. So every state has an agreement for the Beautification Act. And those agreements were established, I believe, in the 60s or early 70s. and they say each state decided at that point if they were going to allow billboards or not, and at what level. And when they did that, they accepted or rejected a certain amount of funding from the federal government for highways. And so those agreements have been in place for decades. Each state has gone back to the Federal Highway Administration to change, if they want to, the agreements that they've made to clarify whether or not digital signs were allowed. Because almost all the agreements said no blinking, flashing, and that had been interpreted for a long time as, well, any digital sign changes, so it must be blinking or flashing and very distracted. So in 2007, when the staff recommended disapproval, Lamar postponed and went and started that process of going to the transportation cabinet and the highway department, the federal highway department, to change the state's regulation agreement to allow for digital signs. So the state regulations now allow for it. There is a standard to swap out signs. So for whenever the state approves a digital billboard, that particular business owner, operator has to remove either five or six, depending on the conditions, existing static billboards in order to put that one up. But again, they regulate on a statewide basis. So Mr. Gaffield's correct. They can propose a new digital sign in Fayette County and remove five or six signs in rural counties of Kentucky, which overall that helps the state in terms of reducing our number of billboards, but it doesn't necessarily help Fayette County. So I acknowledge that that is a concern. The staff does think that this won't increase the total number of billboards. and will have a fairly limited availability of digital signs. There's a lot of history with billboards across the country, and some states just prohibited them outright and have stuck to that. Other states have decided digital billboards are okay, and on-premise billboards are on-premise signs, too, being digital. Are there cities comparable to Lexington that have elected not to allow them? Yeah, I think Knoxville might have prohibited billboards completely. There are a few that have stuck to we just don't want billboards in general. Obviously, we already allow billboards. So there are states or cities that have said no billboards at all, period. and they've been able to uphold that. I think Austin was the Austin case, no billboards at all. There's been multiple different cases, but because they're in different states, they have different regulations that apply. And one thing to consider in terms of what Tracy was saying about, you know, the statewide takedown provision could allow it to sign and then take it down in another county. That's why our ordinance doesn't specifically talk about takedown, but it does talk about spacing. So, you know, if you were going to convert an existing billboard to a digital billboard, you would have to honor the spacing. And so what the hope was in that provision was that we were looking at spacing that was enough that, you know, say, because we know, I mean, we're not, we all know that most of, not all, but most of the billboards are owned by one entity, that, you know, they may have several in certain locations billboards, and if they were to convert them all, that generally seems to be frowned upon, but with the spacing requirement, they wouldn't be able to, because they'd be too close together. So while we couldn't necessarily make them take down the static one, we could prevent them from putting up more digital ones. And they're going to have to, from a marketing standpoint, figure out what works best for them economically, too, in converting or not converting or whatever. But, you know, and there are, just so you know, and traffic can speak to this better than I can, but there are some provisions that are separate from how we would regulate them as per the sign ordinance that traffic looks at in relationship to lighting, closeness and proximity to traffic signals and that type of thing that has to be complied with. In other words, you can't have a billboard, you know, right next to a traffic signal such that it's going to confuse the driver as to which one is operational and they run the red light because they thought it was green, but it was really the digital bill. There's some traffic regulations that apply to that, but those are separate from what would be in the signed ordinance. I will say that our staff is going to work, now that Long Range has a little extra time, they are going to help us inventory the billboards that exist right now in Fayette County so that we do have that as a geographical depiction before the 21st. so that we know where those are and sort of the geographic impact to the community. They are concentrated, obviously, on our highways, right? And New Circle Road. Mr. Chairman, as usual, the Planning Commission is going to be put in an awkward situation. And I think the law allows for this. What the staff has done is helped us to do the best they can to help us manage a bad situation or a potential bad situation. So, you know, we could sit here all day, I think, making this, that, and the other. But the reality is it's going to be here. And the only question is whether we manage it. I really appreciate Graham over here because he has been firmly against some of the things that's gone on. But when the council said we will expand the district, I don't think anybody around thought that it was the right thing to do in the manner in which it was done. But we had to do the best we could with what was given to us. And right now the law says you can do it. The staff is saying this is the best that they can provide as it relates to the law. So I'd say we don't have to do any action. We can postpone or we can disapprove. I would not recommend putting anything on the table of disapproval. I would go for either a postponement or a no vote because politically all kinds of things are going to be changing here the next year. You really, I mean, you can postpone, and that would result in a no vote because you wouldn't meet the 60 days. So it would just, the council would view that as we sent it to them per the statute to review for 60 days, and they didn't meet the statutory deadline. So. Let me ask you this. If we've asked for, Jonathan has asked for additional information on public safety, when will we get that information? Do you have an idea? If we get it earlier, we can always pass it on, along with any other information as you all reach out. But with the ultimate goal of most certainly having that available by the time this goes to your public hearing. Okay, so I guess in the past, help me out here on this. As a body, if we didn't have a quorum here, what would we do today? We couldn't have done anything. You would have no recommendation from the committee to the full commission. And we can still do that, right? Yes. You can send it on without a recommendation. That's what I was thinking. Okay. I use improper wording rather than postponing it. I simply send it to the committee without any recommendation. That's one option. Or approving it. No, my concerns primarily revolve around just safety. And we spent so much time and so many staff hours on the digital marquee. I mean, we went so deep. And safety was one of the big questions. And I think everybody was satisfied at that point once we had the information and we passed what we passed. This is a similar but I think much larger question because you're dealing with vehicles going 85 miles an hour, which is a torpedo. I just I'm not a no. I just I'm not satisfied on the safety question before I can in good conscience vote yes. In that case, Mr. Chairman, I just move that we pass it along to the council with no recommendation. Well, wouldn't it go to the full commission? That's what I meant. And that way we can get that information. So Mr. Wilson recommended forwarding this to the full planning commission with a no recommendation. That was seconded by Mr. Pohl. Any discussion? If not, all in favor, raise your right hand. And that's unanimous. Okay. Thank you all. It's going on 3.30. Does anybody need a 5, 10-minute break before we get into the ED zone? or we're not hearing Realty United or Unlimited Bluegrass today? Or are we? We have an update. Oh, okay. Yeah, I guess. We do have an updated staff report. The applicant's not here, so I think we can put that one last. Now we have another show. Speak to the text amendment. Okay, so thank you. So just without objection, do you want to, Tracy? Okay, why don't we just take a 5 to 10 if we need a minute break, and then we can come back because I know ED we may have a lot of details to get into. So we'll recess for 10 minutes but maybe less. Thank you. I'm going home. I'm going to have a quarrel. No. Oh, goodness. That was a grand big thing to us. He also comes up with some gum. Thank you. I'm ready to go home. The PLN Zota 24-6. Mr. Crum, what are the nightly specials? Well, the soup du jour is ED zone. So this is the first zoning ordinance text amended of the night that is an applicant initiated Zota. So this was a request by Hamburg East LLC, and it is to amend the provisions of the Economic Development ED Zone, which is a part of our expansion area zones. So as a part of the expansionary master plan that originally brought land in to the urban service boundaries, a specific master plan was created for these areas that laid out land use densities, planning principles, etc. It is still governed by that same plan today and it has not been updated or changed really since that time. So there have been several zoning ordinance text amendments that have occurred since the original inception of this zone, but it really is a game of trying to keep the two meshed together because the expansion area master plan is still a guiding principle, guiding document, regulating plan for those zones. So the ED zone itself was really envisioned to sort of be the workhorse for these expansion areas. This is where our large-scale employment, jobs producing uses, and accounting for an area for industrial development to occur. Really the rest of the expansion area is mostly primarily oriented towards residential with the community center zone allowing for some commercial components. So this was really where the rest of the jobs producing productivity was really oriented to go. Here are pictures of two of those such areas. So the applicant today, Hamburg East LLC, have an interest in the left side there. So expansion area 2A over off of Winchester Road. And on the right is the other area, and that's over off of Newtown. So really two main areas are the subject or the recommended areas for economic development land. And so this has been modified several times. really hoping to make tweaks that allow the land to be used more efficiently and more effectively while understanding that the plan since 1996 has not been updated. So here in 2006, they added regional medical campuses. So this was to try to attract sort of the health care uses and supportive uses that kind of align with that. And then the concept of supportive uses themselves. In 2016, sort of a subcategory of use was created. The intent behind those were not to replace the industrial or productive emphasis of the zone, but provide things that sort of fed into that and helped make those more feasible. So these were services oriented towards those particular uses oriented towards those users. That came out of a kind of more involved committee process where the applicants, the landowners with an interest in the ED land, The urban county government got together through a series of meetings that year to kind of discuss some of the changes there. So the end result was the addition of some supportive uses that were allowed to be a certain percentage of the zone or of the area or developable area, and an increase in the intensity of the zone that was allowed, larger heights, increased floor area ratio. So the applicant is coming to you today to make several changes on several different fronts that really are oriented towards allowing them to kind of do more with their land outside of the really firm, productive, jobs-producing focus that was really sort of envisioned. So the applicant's proposed changes expands the principal uses that are allowed, including sort of the full breadth of professional services. And actually, just to walk us back just a little bit, the documents in front of you, apologies for getting ahead of myself, you have a staff report with its recommendations. The next with the red header is the staff alternative text. That is what staff is recommending approval of this time. And the third page, or the third document, says applicant version is the applicant's proposed text. So it is with the changes outlined in blue. So the staff alternative at this time does not incorporate a number of those changes. So rather than have a mismatch of those two documents, we've provided them separately. So as you go through, if there's any questions between the two, please let us know. But to get us back focused on those changes as you all look those documents over, it really was requesting greater flexibility for professional services, for the ability to host special events, other retail-type uses. so expanding the breadth of those uses kind of past the industrial focus that the zone and the master plan kind of envisioned for the areas. They increased the amount of land that could be allocated towards these supportive uses. So currently 18%. They are proposing an increase to 25%. There's timing restrictions currently with supportive uses, very similar to the concurrency discussion that you all had with the urban growth master plan. So essentially, the supportive uses are allowed to be constructed, but you can only do up to 20% of those before you put your principal uses in. The applicant is seeking to modify the timing for that to allow a greater amount of development. With respect to open space, the applicants opine that the 25% requirement, which is a standard across all of our expansion areas zones, from the residential to community center to the economic development zone. All of those require 25% open space. It's spelled out in the plan. It specifically spells out in the plan what can be considered open space. And so they are seeking to reduce that as well as kind of expand what can be considered open space, so allowing for sort of improvements that aren't just green natural open space to count towards that requirement as well. And there was some substantial changes to the density. So right now, the expansion area master plan does not allow or does not recommend anything greater than 24 units per gross acre anywhere, even within the residential components of the master plan. The applicant's proposal seeks to dramatically increase that residential capacity by removing the maximum and installing minimum residential densities for when they occur. So there was a couple instances in the applicant's language that staff felt in review exceeded or sort of directly contradicted the portions of the expansion area master plan to the extent that we couldn't support them. So the open space changes, the changes to the exceeding that density threshold, staff just sort of categorically off the bat felt that that was not appropriate at this time. With regards to the staff alternative language that we did recommend, we took a look at the applicant's proposed changes in uses and felt that many of them sort of exceeded what was intended in the zone, that it really was getting away from that industrial focus. And so we did accept one of the applicant's changes that related to some specificity in sort of mixed use. The current language only allows or kind of prohibits residential on the first floor. The revised language would allow a mixed use building as long as it was somewhere in the building. So mirroring language we have elsewhere in our ordinance now that is allowing some additional flexibility as far as where uses can occur. Staff, in review of the applicant's justification, recognized that some changes to how the supportive uses are calculated or handled is probably warranted. And the fact that the supportive uses were added later, they aren't any portion that were included within the expansion area master plan that was originally approved. They were a later addition. Staff felt we had more flexibility there to make changes without updating the plan necessarily. So one of the biggest, more substantial changes that we've recommended is a change in how supportive uses are calculated. So right now, it is a floor area question or a floor area requirement. Of your allowable floor area, you can have up to 18% of that floor area be supportive uses. In an effort to kind of intensify our land use and use it more efficiently, we really looked at it from a sort of lot coverage and acreage system. So staff's recommendation is to shift that from an 18% of the allowable floor area to 25% of the acreage of the land can be used for supportive uses. Now, in that, we've combined several different categories of supportive use. So the current ordinance brings out specific criteria for if it's residential, it can be up to a certain percentage. If it's a mixed use, it can be another metric. And then non-residential is its own category. staff really felt that sort of preserving at least that 50% of that land for those larger scale industrial type users was important. But for the portions that we are allocating for supportive uses, giving the ability to build up, if you're regulating by the amount of land that can be utilized, it allows for more intense uses, it allows for a greater density, and additional residential capacity as well. So when we looked at that, the 25% felt that it was giving the applicants and the other ED users more ability to sort of provide those supportive uses while not straying too much from that initial framework. With regards to the concurrency, the applicants opined that the 20% of their allowable supportive uses was too limiting. And so with sort of the conversations that you all as a planning commission just had, we looked at that 40%, which is what was sort of established on a flip side with requiring commercial for residential development. So that 40% still being that tether for allowing supportive uses up to that point. And then you need to start constructing those sort of principal uses that are the main intent of the zone. The current zoning ordinance requirements does place a cap on the total number of dwelling units, so 360 units is the maximum that you can have within a development there. Staff removed that metric. Right now we're still being regulated by that maximum of 24 units per acre, but we want to kind of encourage if we are not going to be using this land for these principally permitted jobs-producing uses, Let's make sure we're doing it efficiently where we can find avenues to provide some housing. And so that provides some flexibility there. And in order to make sure that any changes in the overall intensity of the supportive use doesn't negatively affect an industrial user being able to come later and do this larger scale development, we've recommended an increase in the floor area ratio from 1 to 2. So basically giving them a larger piece of the pie to work with as far as density and intensity, but recognizing that really in these areas the most limiting factor is the amount of land that is available. So staff's alternative language attempted to address some of the concerns raised by the applicant about the kind of current regulations. Some of the aspects we found were sort of too far and would exceed kind of our ability to make those changes without updating the expansion area master plan, which to staff's credit, and Tracy's been here for a number of years, So this has been a consistent push from staff that it would be good to update those. But under the current framework, this was the level of flexibility that staff feels that we currently have. So at this time, we are recommending approval of the staff alternative language. Once again, it allows more efficient, condensate use of the land. Once again, expands the supportive use capacity to help address and entice some of these industrial users to locate there. It provides increased flexibility while maintaining the majority of the land for those really economic driving, economic development uses. And once again, it remains consistent with the provisions of the EAMP as well as the comprehensive plan goals that really speak to kind of promoting economic development within Lexington. So with that, staff would be happy to entertain any questions you have. The applicant is present today. All righty. Thank you, Daniel. and I know this has kind of been a marathon so thank you very much for staff's work on this question do we have any discussion or questions for Daniel if not thank you we'll now hear from Mr. Gross Brandon Gross on behalf of the applicant and I will keep this relatively brief we received the staff's text amendment last night, which is not uncommon and I'm not complaining. But we this is kind of a mixed zone request where we are asking for a classic uses and other things, but it's also a technical request in which calculations and other things are being affected. And so we would like a little bit more time to meet with them, talk through any questions we may have as to the technical supportive uses calculations. I'm going to move back one. That's right. That they're proposing. One question I do have. I'm assuming that the 24 per acre is a clustering type arrangement. So if we've got five acres, we could put 100 on one acre and go up and then not have any... I'm just curious about how, or is it really you can have 24 apartment units on one acre? I was just curious about what? It's an average. I mean, we calculate density. Okay, so if I've got five acres, I can build a 100-unit apartment building on one acre. Okay, we just wanted to make sure. That was our assumption, but didn't have any languages to clustering or anything, so we just wanted to make sure we understood what you guys were talking about. So generally, we'll look through. We appreciate the staff's comments. We did go through. The EAMP was done in 1996, and we tried to, we heard you guys last month. We heard the staffs. We read their comments. We amended our request from last month, and we really focused on what I would consider skilled and professional workers that were not otherwise permitted in this zone, some of which are types of uses we didn't even recognize in 1996. As an example, artists in manufacturing. Manufacturing is permitted, but, however, if you do artists in manufacturing, what we did is we wanted to add that so that that person who ran that small artists in manufacturing shop could have a small retail. Right now it's locked in at 5%. We were saying, hey, how about you letting that person have a 30% retail to sell their goods, their manufacturing on-site as an accessory use. And that's one of the reasons we added in the artisan categories because they are less intense than the industrial-level manufacturing, but they also need to have retail sales to survive. And so they would be locked in at five. So that's one reason. So we really went through, looked at the other employment zones, and attempted to find what I consider skilled and professional workers to make them principal uses. We also added some additional supportive uses that were not otherwise in there. As an example, extended stay. As you know, Baptist Health has just come online with their first phase. UK has an RFP out. We expect them to have in the next couple years a 300,000-foot medical office building built on the 40 acres they purchased from this applicant. And extended stay hotels, apartments are permitted. Hotels are permitted, but extended stay hotels are not permitted as supportive uses. And traveling nurses, people that will, they are within a medical regional campus, but not in any of the other zones. So they weren't in the alternative text that we received, so we're going to work with staff. But once again, these jobs that UK and Baptist will be bringing here, people from eastern Kentucky will likely travel for these jobs. And having the ability to have extended stay and other type uses to house them is one of the things we ask for in the supportive uses. We'll work with the staff on the open space. We understand their position. But once again, we're looking at, we had earlier you guys were talking about the expansion. And so what we're trying to do is utilize more land for these particular uses at this particular site to relieve pressure on other areas of the city. And the 15% is higher than any of the other employment sectors. Industrials 10, I1's 10, B4's 10. So we went to 15, which is greater than those, but less than the 25 that's recommended. We also, lastly, on the residential, I think we've got our answer, but our whole premise was most principal uses and supportive uses in the ED zone are generally first floor uses other than your office buildings, which nobody's building right now. And so why waste all that space in the air that we could put more apartments above those uses? And it sounds like we're getting there and we'll meet with them. But that's generally my brief comments if you guys have any questions. But we appreciate staff. We're going to continue to work with them. We've had discussions with Mr. Anderson and Baptist Health and Faith Alliance, and we sent them all this material we submitted last week to them. We were waiting for comments back from them. So we think postponement until next month is probably appropriate this time, unless you have any questions. All righty. I don't believe we have any questions. and thank you, Mr. Gross. I believe that you'll have your postponement motion very shortly. It's just a recommendation of postponement. We're not talking about it. That's at the next step. We talk about which meeting. Oh, I'm sorry, Daniel. I should have said, is there any discussion? If there's no discussion, is there a motion? I recommend a postponement per staff recommendation. We recommended staff approval of the alternative text. You're free to do it. We have an applicant once a call. Yeah, what we're asking is a postponement to come back here next month or 30 days. To come back to the committee level. I recommend postponement per applicant's recommendation. Second. All righty. Thank you, Mr. Pohl and Mr. Davis. Any discussion? If not, all in favor raise your right hand, and that's unanimous. Thank you. And then I suppose do we have a staff presentation on the Realty Unlimited Bluegrass, even though the applicant is not present? So we have, I mean, if the committee would like to see it, we have a recommended report. I'm prepared to talk about it. The applicant showed up earlier and was aware that today was happening, so I can't speak to why the applicant is not present. So purely, as it stands right now, the request is set to go forward in two weeks. To the Planning Commission? To the Planning Commission. So right now, from the previous iterations, there was a recommendation of postponement, but we've kind of hit a threshold where staff felt we needed to go ahead and it's from 2022. And your recommendation is for disapproval? Disapproval, yes. Okay. Well, what does the committee think? Do you want to hear it? I suppose have there been any substantial changes since the last time we saw this? No. So the substantial changes have really the only changes to the application is sort of some of the development that they had proposed required staff noted it didn't meet our regulation. So they had the options to amend it or to request variances and waivers. So they sent in the required notice that they were going to be seeking these variances and waivers. However, they didn't provide any justification to them or specifically to the variances or amend the site plan or provide an updated justification to that effect. And so staff, based on that lack of information, went ahead and wrote our recommendation of disapproval relative to that. If, since the applicant is not here, I recommend we do not hear it because they're not here to even give us any information to justify their case. We're talking to the wind. So then do we just postpone? Or can we accept the staff's conclusion and recommend disapproval? Yeah, you all have already acted before, so if you're comfortable just holding that same postponement recommendation, staff will just make that same presentation at the full Planning Commission meeting. Okay, all righty. Do we have any other business today? Yes, Mr. Chairman. I have a full and a half hour presentation I'd like to make. Yes, sir, Mr. Paul. I just want to say I would be inclined to agree with staff to disapprove this case. But that's, you know, you bend over backwards only so many times before you start breaking your back. Can you make a motion? I'll second it. Move to recommend disapproval of PLN MAR 2216. Second. Thank you, Mr. Poles. second by Mr. Wilson. Any discussion? Seeing none. If you're in favor of the in favor of the motion to disapprove. Actually, it should be the other way. We approve the staff's recommendation. Okay, but I was trying to do that right. Approve or agree with the staff's recommendation for disapproval to the Planning Commission. Okay, thank you. All those in favor? That's unanimous. Alrighty. And if there's nothing else? Just wanted to mention that you will be receiving a public facilities review coming up at the Plain and Commission hearing, and we'll provide our full analysis then and walk you through those procedures. So a couple of public facilities reviews coming down the pipe, actually. I didn't know if it was one specific. One quick question about the issue about the public safety related to the digital science. Where are you all going to go get that information from? I mean, for the most part, you go online and find it, I guess. That's what I was going to do. Yeah, there's been a lot of research since 2007 that has been done about the safety of digital billboards. Are you just going to provide us the links and let us go ahead? I think that maybe the most efficient thing to do would be to maybe provide some summary points about it. Because they're very academic. In that case, I'm out. Well, I mean, it would take a while to get through all of it. We can put it on a billboard for you to read as you drive home. On that note. Okay. Without objection, we are adjourned. Thank you so much. Thank you.