you feel is still missing? Do you feel like there is a piece that is kind of still in the works that we are aspiring to become? Or do you feel like we're really on the right path to kind of making a difference in the community? I think this is one piece of the puzzle. I think there are some other pieces of the puzzle that we are working on to try to get in. I think the next logical step that I think hopefully will come to fruition is maybe putting somebody at dispatch. There's conversations about putting a behavioral health resource to take a telephone call. And then that kind of goes in line with, hey, if somebody calls 911 and is in crisis, our dispatchers are phenomenal. But being able to have that educated individual to be able to transfer a phone call to, maybe a de-escalation can happen over the telephone. Maybe that de-escalation can start, and they still send out the mobile crisis response team to engage that individual. But from the time that phone call starts, you can already start that whole process of de-escalating and helping an individual that's experiencing whatever emergency they're having. And so I think that's a good puzzle piece that's being discussed right now and hopefully will come to fruition sooner than later. So those are all things that we're looking at. It's a lot of fun right now. Chris, do you feel like this is a model that is seen in other cities, or are we kind of an industry leader in this? Yeah, no, I've seen, I've spoken to many other co-response departments, you know, within the police departments in Colorado, California, Washington, all over the country. This is really new, like, community policing, and I think it's been shown to be effective, and I'm hoping that even if it's just me, you know, one person goes a long way and this is sort of something you know pretty new for at least the city of Lexington but I think it'll be good. I think it's probably really helpful for you to have a support network to kind of fall back on and and ask questions about how to handle specific situations and how maybe you could handle something different I think that would be really beneficial for you as well. It's really collaborative like having their community paramedicine team and learning from them the paramedics are the firefighters and social workers I don't feel isolated at all, which is really neat. I'm able to consult with whoever may be even in the city. It's just really nice to engage with everybody. That's awesome. Is this an arm of paramedicine or is it completely separate? Well, it's a good question. So, you know, the paramedicine team is such a collaborative effort. It lets into place. We have the firefighter paramedics that are on the team. We have the social workers. And so we were, I think, fairly vocal about wanting to apply for this. In fact, when we noticed the funding opportunity came out, we sent it over to the police because we truly believe it's an integral part of police response. They've been very supportive of us taking the lead and kind of steering the ship, and so they've been great. It is such a collaborative effort between the fire department and the police department. Chris is a fire department employee, but he's going to be partnered with a police officer, and so it's truly going to be a collaborative effort between. So it's just another thing that community paramedicine. We also look at it from a long continuation of care, a continuum of care where Chris and the police officer may make an individual on a Monday evening and comes back and says, hey, can somebody follow up with him on Tuesday or Wednesday so they can go on to the next individual that's experiencing that emergency. And, you know, the community paramedicine was never a crisis response team. It was never on the, not that we didn't, but generally speaking, we were post-crisis, post-emergent situation that we were engaging. And so it's kind of a continuity, right? Maybe Chris set up some appointments for an individual. He can now drop it off on our lap to say, hey, can you make sure that an individual made those appointments and didn't have any barriers? And, you know, the community paramedicine team can pick up that and see those that follow up with that individual over time. So I think it's just a continuation. Chris, do you feel like this, your role may end up maybe freeing up some of our other first responders that don't need to necessarily stick around in a situation that you can kind of hang back and manage a situation better than our typical first responders might? I wouldn't say better. Maybe a different approach. Sure. Like a more mental health informed perspective. But yeah, I do think that having a, whether it's first responders, police officers, or firefighters, is pretty overwhelming for anybody in a mental health crisis. So hopefully just having me being there, I'll be able to alleviate some of those resources so they can better be where they need to be. It's like the most appropriate level of care. and so that's that's the whole goal yeah that's great so what we did is looked at the volume based on e911 data and our first thought when we started working on this project was it's going to be a friday saturday and those are the like how do you hire somebody for a friday and a saturday everybody wants a weekend you know and uh and we got the data we were really surprised saturdays saturdays and sundays are slowest days um ends up being monday through Thursday end up being our busiest days. And so we started looking through the data and going, okay, what's that window of opportunity? You know, Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m., around 10 a.m. to about 8 p.m. You could do 11 to 9, but somewhere in that area ends up being about the highest peak volume of hitting that number. Outside of that window, the goal will be that will resort back to our traditional response, whatever that looks like. But this unit will be the primary for those types of calls. And if they're on a call or out of service because it's outside of those hours, we'll resort back to our traditional response. So we'll still be responding. Well, thank you both so much for joining me today. And thank you for your hard work with our community paramedicine team. And Chris, welcome to our team. We really are looking forward to what you can bring to our community, and you're a really valued position, so we're really happy that you're here. And thank you for joining us today. As always, you can get my weekly newsletter by emailing my office at wbaxter at lexingtonky.gov or follow me on all social media outlets. Thanks again, and have a great day. Thank you. I forgot. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Welcome to the Urban County Planning Commission subdivision and zoning items meeting. It is now 1.30, December 12, 2024. But first, before we get started, I would like to give credit and an appreciation to one of our commission members, Mr. Graham Pohl, this is his last public meeting for the year. But going forward, he decided to do other things, maybe better things, then spend his time with us on Thursdays. So Mr. Pohl, I want to say thank you just from my standpoint. I know the commissioners may have other things to say to you, but you've been a very valued individual on the commission and do gonna miss you. And hopefully you stay in contact with us, but not too much. But yeah, he didn't. He didn't. But I want to open it up if anybody have any kind words to say to Mr. Pohl. Yes, sir. Mr. Chair, I'd like to echo that sentiment. I've known Mr. Pohl now for quite some time, and I've always enjoyed his wisdom and his ability to articulate what I call the architectural nuances to some of our issues as such. So, Graham, we're going to miss you, and thank you for your service. for this community in general and for the commission in particular. So thank you and have a good luck and have a good whatever endeavor that you're going to do. In fact, the matter is I tore up your resignation, by the way. I said I was not accepting it, but since you were persistent about this, so best of luck to you. Graham, I will tell you something I told Vice Mayor Kaye. being as you've been on this commission for as long as you have please don't try to run for any public office it is a dubious honor to have served on this and you don't really follow that up with professional political careers so go out while you're on top enjoy your retirement and we're going to miss you I don't know if we need this on mic or not but I did all that and thank you for your passion for the environment. You've been very outspoken for all of us and I think out front of us in some ways and I hope you enjoy. If you're going to paint, you're painting and if you're going to visit your grandkids. That's my plan. That's it. Well, I hope you enjoy it. Thank you, everyone. It's been an honor. I've done a lot of volunteering for the city. This has been the most remarkable experience that I've had. I feel very optimistic about our planning processes and planning personnel and where we're going. But I'm not going to promise that I'll go quietly into the good night. We won't. But thank you. I appreciate you, man. Thank you. Okay. I'd like to move the agenda a little bit first before we get to postponements and withdrawals. I would like to take a motion on the performance bonds and letters of credit from the commissioners. So the floor is open for that motion. It's on page 9. All righty. Mr. Chairman, I move that we accept the letters of credit as outlined on the memorandum from Mr. Fairchild. Okay. Performance bonds and letters of credit. Okay, thank you. Do we have a second? Second by Mr. We got it. Mr. Penn? He seconded the motion. Okay, please vote via Granicus. Okay, the motion passes. Postponements and withdrawals. Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, my name is Matt Carter with Vision Engineering. I know Mr. Paul likes to hear a lot of hearings, but I'm going to postpone three. so hope you're not too upset. If you turn to page three in your agenda, item 3A, PLNMJDP 24-56, Red Mo, Mixed-Use Development, I'd like to postpone this to January 16th. We've got some revisions now, and these need to go back through committee. before it's heard okay thank you sir uh the commission uh floor is open for a motion mr chair i'll move postponement plan mjdp 24-56 red mile mixed use development until january 16th 2024 and i would ask if possible it would be nice to see this in subdivision again since there is a revision but i do move for postponement okay thank you we have a motion and a second by mr wilson any further discussion to that motion okay please vote via thank you and then on the same page uh item b hold on one second okay we got All right, Mrs. Box still, she's marked absent. Are we good? Okay. All right. Thank you. That motion passes. Okay. Thank you, sir. On the same page, item B, PLNMJDP 24-74, Hoover and Philpott Evangelistic Association property, a lot for the Fountains of Palomar. I'd like to request a postponement of that also to the 16th. We've got some stuff we're working with on staff before we can go forward. Okay, thank you sir. Floor is open for a motion. Yes sir. I move to postpone PLN MJDP 24-74 to the January 16th meeting. Second. Thank you, we have a second by Mr. Pol, Mr. Davis. Second for Mr. Jonathan Davis. Mr. Jonathan Davis. Motion from Mr. Mickler. We got a motion by Mr. Mickler, we got a second by Mr. Poll. Any further discussion? No, he's already. Oh, okay. Hey, hey, you got to know his place now. Please vote via Granicus. I'll never question you. No. They just thought about it going. It's fine. All right. And then lastly on page 12 and 13 of your agenda, zone change, PLN-MAR 22-17, Rose Holdings, Lexington, LLC, and then there's an associated preliminary development plan, PLN-MJDP 24-81, Lane-Allen, Lots 2 and 3. On this, we would ask for it to be postponed to your January 30th hearing date. We have notified the neighborhood associations and the church next door to the site. We've got some things we need to work on. More specifically, on the floodplain, we need to work with engineering to get that identified properly on the plan before we can move forward. Okay, thank you, sir. The floor is open for that motion. I have two motions here. Yes, Mr. Wills. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I move for postponing of PLN MAR 22-17 Rose Holdings, Lexington LLC until January the 3rd, I think it is. The 30th? 30th. Okay. And we got a second by Ms. Barksdale. Please vote via Granicus. As you're voting on this, I just want to note that that case number isn't quite right. It should be 24-17. Sorry about that. 24-17? As opposed to 22-17. Yeah. Okay. I'm in my motion to reflect that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And Ms. Barksdale seconded that motion. So the motion passes. Mr. Mickler, unanimously, thank you. All right, thank you. Mr. Wilson, are you going to do the second? On page 13, item B. Mr. Chairman, I move for postpone appeal in MJDP 24-81 Lane Allen Park Lots 2 and 3. Okay, thank you. Is that January the 30th as well? Yes. Okay, January 30th. Okay, we have a motion and a second by Mr. Pohl. Please vote via Granicus. Okay. I like this. Sparksdale, I need your vote, Mr. Penn. I think Mr. Penn is voting yes, so it's a unanimous vote. All right, thank you. Staff? Yeah, the staff has a few other postponements related to, I'm going to cover the subdivision items, and then Daniel's going to cover the zoning items. So the first one appears on page four. Item C, PLN MJDP 24-78, Fritz Farm Track C, amended. and that's for property at 250 Harrison, I think it's Street in Lexington for a portion of the Fritz Farm. They've asked for a one-month postponement. So that would be the January 16th meeting. 16th. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Wade. The floor is open. You want a motion? Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, I move for postponement of PLNMJDP 2478. to January 16th? Yes. January 16th, 2025. Thank you. And we got a second by Ms. Worth. Please vote via Granicus. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. And then the second one that I'll cover appears on page 7 of the agenda. Towards the top, item H. PLN MJDP 24-86. for Covey Ridge Development, Lot 4, also an amended development plan for property at 125 Cane Break Drive. They have also asked for a one-month postponement to the January 16th meeting. Okay, thank you, Ms. Wade. We have floors open for a motion. Mr. Chair. Sir. I propose that we postpone PLMJDP 24-86 to the January 16th meeting. We got a second by Ms. Barstale. Please vote via Granicus. Motion passes unanimously. And then, Mr. Chair, one last item that is requesting a postponement here. On page 10 of your agenda, item A, that is PLN MAR-2216, Realty Unlimited Bluegrass, LLC, the request for a zone change subdivision plan and variance. The applicant is requesting a postponement to the January 30th zoning planning commission meeting. Yeah, I was going to ask you, do we need to take them, all three motions? Yes. Oh, we can do it together? All right, great. Mr. Davis? Mr. Chairman, I move that we postpone PLN MAR 2216 along with the variance request and PLN MJDP 22. two to our January 30th meeting. Thank you, and we have a second by Ms. Barksdale. Please vote via Granicus. That motion passes unanimously. Okay. Any other postponements or withdrawals? All right. So, let's send agenda. Ms. Wade? We do have a consent agenda. Now, just for the audience, the consent agenda allows the Planning Commission to vote on items that are recommended for approval already from our subdivision committee and don't have any discussion items. And so they can take those items all with one motion unless there's someone in the audience or one of the members of the commission that wants to have that item heard. So if you hear something that I read that you are here to discuss, if you'll raise your hand, and that'll let everybody know that we need to present that case and have it heard by the commission. And it doesn't apply to zoning items, so if you're here for a zoning case, that won't be included on the consent agenda. So we'll start on page 5 of your regular agenda. item e pln mjdp 24-83 for the george west estate property also known as howard property for prop this is located at 20 i'm sorry not 25 45 38 45 68 and 45 78 georgetown road so anyone here that wishes to have this item heard okay next item is on the next page of our agenda item page six item f pln mjdp 24-84 for the heart property also known as greenbriar estates unit 2j lots 10 and 11 and that is for property located at currently at 3412 briar croftway so anyone here that wishes to have this item heard okay moving down to page seven and item i the bottom pln mjdp 24-87 for springhurst subdivision unit 2 lot 2 and that is for development located at 2090 harrodsburg road anyone for that item okay Next on page 8, item J, we're just going in order here, the Givens property, which is PLN MJDP 2488 for outlawed 11, and that's property located at 2300 Remington Way. Anyone for that item? page nine item k pln mjdp 24-89 first united methodist church for property located at 200 west high street is anyone for that item okay and then page nine item l pln mjdp 24-90 interstate service center and amended final development plan and that's for property at 1943 Stanton Way. So there's not been any requests from the audience for further discussion on any of these items, so the commission can consider them collectively. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Wade. All right. Mr. Penn, for a motion. Yes. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, I move for approval of the consent agenda as presented by staff. Thank you. And we got a second by Mr. Jonathan Davis. Please vote via Granicus. And the motion passes unanimously. Thank you. So that should put us on page two of the agenda, preliminary subdivision plans, PLN MJ SUB 24-8, Patch and Wilkes. That's ma'am. Good afternoon. Get the screen up. Good afternoon. We have MJSUB 24-8 Patch and Wilkes Unit 1, Phase 2. This is a property located off of, this is Winchester Road here. There's a large already single-family dwelling area here. Patch and Wilkes comes in from Winchester Road. They're extending it out further to come in for some additional single-family dwelling units. With this, this is a preliminary subdivision. This will allow them to build the roads for the Patch and Wilkes development. We have revisions on this plan, so you should have a copy of the blue sheet here with some revised conditions. With the revisions, we just have the first nine conditions are just our typical sign-offs from other governmental agencies. We have condition number 10 is to depict access easement in the rear of the new lots to match the cross-section on the plan. The property, the original property out here in the front had alleyways that ran behind the homes. So we have single family homes that are running all the way up behind the new development. And there is an access easement that goes along the back here. And we just want to make sure that we have it depicted correctly to meet this street cross section for that easement on the plan. and with that that's what we have for this and if there's any other questions do we have any questions for staff thank you applicant mr chairman members playing commission rory kaylee fda partners um i've had brandon gross is here with me as well we're in agreement with staffs for revised conditions but we'll Try to answer any questions you might have. Thank you, Mr. Kaley. Do we have any questions for the applicant? I see any. Thank you, sir. Do we have anyone in the audience that would like to speak on this particular application? Okay, all right, we can bring it back to the commission. For any further questions or motion, floor is open. Mr. Chair. Yes. I'll move for approval of Plan MJSUB 24-8 Patchen Wilkes, Unit 1, Phase 2, with the revised 10 conditions. Okay, thank you sir. We got a second by Mr. Penn. Any further discussion to that motion? You second it? I'm sorry, Mr. Penn, Mr. Wirth, got you. Okay, please vote via Granicus. All right, motion passes unanimously. Okay. Good afternoon. Next case is PLN MJ SUB 24-9 Patch and Wilkes Unit 2 located at 1811 Winchester Road. This is near the previous development. It's along Winchester Road here at the bottom of the image. This intersection here is the current entrance to Frederick Douglass High School where the traffic light is, and this new road will be constructed in alignment with that and connect into Thunderstick, which will connect off the property at the top of the image. This is a preliminary subdivision plan for a mix of commercial and residential development. the uh we have the standard sign-offs from other governmental agencies and most of the other sign offs have been taken care of by the applicant um so really we basically we just have the standard sign-offs at this point um let's see sorry i think that's all we have so okay do we have any Any questions for staff? Mr. Penn? Do you have anything? Okay. All right, thank you, sir. Mr. Cayley? Rory again, agreeable to the nine conditions revised by staff, request approval. Thank you, sir. Do we have any questions for the applicant? Seeing none. Thank you, Mr. Cayley. You're right. Is there anyone that would like to speak on this item? Seeing none, the floor is open for a motion. Mr. Penn? Yes, I want to thank the applicant and his people for getting this down to nine conditions. That's pretty simple as you can get the way we like to see them. So I move for approval of PLNMJSU B249 with the nine conditions presented by staff. Okay, thank you. And we have a second by Mr. Jonathan Davis. Please vote via Granicus. Okay, motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Kelly. All right, staff, put us on page five. And we do have revised staff recommendations for this one as well. It's on a paint sheet of paper. Thank you. Daniel Crum, planning staff, you do have, once again, revised conditions in front of you. The applicant has also submitted a revised waiver, so you have the staff report referencing the waiver request as well. But just to orient everyone, this request is for a host of properties located generally on East Maxwell between Lexington Avenue and Stone Avenue. Currently, the site is composed of individual lots that are proposed to be consolidated. Currently, Hagerman Court, which runs from High Street to the north further down and currently essentially bisects the site and connects as a one-way roadway with Maxwell Street, is proposed to be rerouted for this request. This was a request that you saw a little bit over a year ago as a rezoning in order to accommodate a change in zoning for a multifamily residential development primarily oriented towards students attending UK. The proposal you have in front of you is a final development plan for that particular use. So this request is for, just to refresh everyone, is a six-story development, 75 feet in height, accommodating a total of 278 dwelling units. They are providing all of that in this singular building with access being derived, So Stone is here. Hagerman Court is being rerouted to this location here on the site. That's also the location of their requested waiver, which I'll get into in a little bit later on in the presentation. And then accessing an underground parking area here proposed to accommodate approximately 140 spaces. And so staff in the review of this looked at the current zoning regulations as well as what was reviewed and approved during the zone change request. There have been a couple changes in character from that zone change request that you all saw. The previous iteration of the plan utilized property essentially across here from the Hagerman Court reroute that was proposed to be utility areas and other mechanical areas. Those have been removed, and so the development will incorporate the trash areas internally into the site and will be served as such. Other changes to the plan since that time have included a change in the removal of townhome units. So previously, as a part of the discussion on the activation of Stone Avenue, was including townhome units in this particular location here, kind of mimicking the individual feel, multiple entrances to kind of mimic what was there previously. The applicant has opted to change those to just be normal apartment units as a part of the larger development. However, they are maintaining access points in an attempt to kind of replicate that feeling as well. Other changes have included this portion here where it was stepped down in order to kind of give it a gradual transition up is now being used as well as still maintaining that step back. But they're proposing to use the roof as open space. So open space areas are located sort of centrally to the site here, here, here, and then this portion here as well. And so as far as staff's review of the items, you have the updated pink sheet in front of you. We have our standard sign-off conditions. We also have conditions relating to the waiver. The waiver itself relates to, once again, this section of roadway here, and I think we have it zoomed in. Yes. So this section of roadway here, in order to accommodate the increased utilities and other infrastructure necessary for the development on site, the applicant is seeking to locate those facilities here. Essentially, they are required to be set back from roadways, and so they were running into an issue of providing a full width of a required road here. And so they are proposing to shrink that down to a total of 34 feet in right-of-way, so that would allow for two 12-foot travel lanes and then a 5-foot sidewalk on each side. So still maintaining that safe access, but giving them more room to accommodate as they are limited in their ability to do so elsewhere on site, kind of due to the size of the structure. Staff in the review of the waiver there is recommending approval of the waiver at this time. But moving on to the other aspects, this is still on the plan face being referred to as an access easement. Several points during the review of this particular site, the discussion on whether they would make that an access easement or a fully dedicated public street came up. By seeking this waiver, they are able to dedicate that as a public street, and so that resolves that issue. It just needs to be taken off of the plan phase. There's also a discussion on denoting the timing of the closure of the roadway. So in order to develop as proposed, it would take the Lexington-Fayette Urban County government to close the portion of existing right-of-way. That means that they will have to have this portion here to serve traffic, not just for this development, but further up Hagerman. This is the sole exit. It is a one-way roadway, so all of the lots north of this will still have to utilize these same areas. Part of the reason why staff thought it was not particularly appropriate to utilize an access easement for this portion. So the timing on that, the closure, consolidation of the existing lots, the closure of this roadway, and the dedication of this roadway as well needs to be carefully denoted and planned out so that there's always access being maintained for the properties outside of the development. And once again, the decision on whether to close Hagerman is sort of external to this body and requires the full urban county council to do so. The last thing the staff would like to discuss is the multifamily design standard rendering. So as done in the previous iteration with the zone change, The applicant submitted renderings that showed the general character of the project. These renderings were updated several times throughout that process and were presented to the neighborhood. And so now that this is coming in for a final development plan, one of the things that the Planning Commission will consider is whether those are in compliance with what was submitted previously. And so, and your computers, we have a, I'll be going through it in my slides as well, but at each of your respective computers there, we have a compiled list that shows what was approved originally, the applicant's first submission with this request, and their updated request. So I think it may be difficult to see some of these details on the screen at the distance, so those are in front of you as well. So taking those, so this is what was originally approved as far as the Maxwell frontage. So this was the view for Maxwell. Once again, lots of windows, lots of window openings. Their first iteration made some significant changes. There was reduction in sort of the amount of kind of longer lasting materials such as brick and stone, changes in the window rhythm and spacing, as well as some of the reduction in some of the landscaping. The update to the plan brings the brick a little bit further up, still tries to maintain some of the feel as far as incorporating some of the balconies and tries to add additional windows as well. As always, the applicant will be able to talk you through the kind of considerations for their design changes, but ultimately you all as the planning commission will be able to decide whether or not these changes are in compliance with what was submitted previously. Moving on to the corner, once again, we have the zone change view, so detailing the individual entries off of stone here. Once again, lots of windows, mixing materials, kind of those brick and stone being taken from all the way from the first couple floors all the way up. The applicant's first iteration of this plan eliminated a lot of the brick and stone materials past this first couple floors and didn't replicate that all the way through. There was changes in the pattern and the rhythm of the windows as well as kind of the scale and scope of some of these aspects. The applicant's revised design brings the brick once again further up, tries to change some of the window configuration and add additional windows, and then clarifies kind of the purpose of this communal area here. So that's sort of the breadth of the changes. Once again, as often happens from design to actual implementation, certain things may be feasible. The applicant can kind of speak to how they arrived at these particular renderings and designs, but staff wanted to make that a discussion item for the planning commission to evaluate if this design is in keeping with the spirit of what was previously approved by this body. But with that, I'd be happy to entertain any questions you have of staff. We are recommending approval based on the revised conditions on the pink sheet there. Thank you, Mr. Crumb. I don't know if we have any questions. Okay, Mr. Penn. Can you help me with the waiver? Yep. Just tell me the basics of the waiver. Yeah, so the essence of the waiver, and I'll go back to the, yes, here. So the waiver relates to the required width for public right-of-way. So for a standard local street, there is a minimum required cross-section as far as the amount of space you have for the street. And so as currently requested, 52 is the standard. they are asking for a reduction to 34 feet. Essentially, this trims the right-of-way to just the roadway capacity to carry two vehicles, the required sidewalk, and that sort of being the end piece. Normally, there would be additional space built into there. Staff in the review of the request found that due to the unique circumstances of the site, the density that's required by the conditional zoning restrictions, and the fact that this is within a downtown context where some of this older infrastructure, older streets have narrower kind of street profiles than what we would normally approve today, we found that that waiver request was reasonable subject to the conditions that we outlined there, making sure that that sidewalk is still usable, that that access is maintained, and the other conditions. So my question, will it be built as street standards? As a public street, yeah. Thank you. Okay. Any further questions for staff? Mr. Mickler? Yeah. Daniel, can you, looking at this development plan, I've got a couple of questions. The first one centers around this pretty big shift in terms of its facing of the neighborhood from the concept of town homes to the concept of steps. So we've removed the town homes and we've left the steps, is that what you're saying? So there still will be entrances there, but rather those being sort of individual carved out units that they would just lead to units internally. But there would be entrances there as well, but changing a little bit in the concept from That being a dedicated dwelling unit versus. Is this, so these are going to be entrances the way that Kroger's put in an entrance at the corner of Marquis when they were asked to, which has a locked door and a step to it and met the specifications of the development plan, but it serves no purpose. Yeah, insofar as that's concerned, I believe that these are just leading to the interior of the development. I can't tell you whether or not that that's going to. Okay, I think this is a huge change, and I'm definitely disappointed that it was not maintained, because this was one of the core changes that we went through with this zone change, was from their first iteration that received negative feedback to the point where they were maintaining that residential neighborhood component along Stone Avenue, as this is really a transition sort of piece between this. And so replacing that concept with just steps I find really shallow, and I think that I'm hopeful that we are able to put some conditions back in there that mimic the spirit that we approve this plan on. That would be the first thing I wanted to talk about. The second one, could you go to some of those differences in the renderings? Yeah. So this is the, which side would you like to see, Maxwell or the stone side? It doesn't matter. Okay. They did the same thing on both. So one of the problems with this downtown zone being used here as a transitional zone between the neighborhood, they were addressing by, or because the building fills all of the lot, there's no significant room for the green space that we would expect to see in our surrounding neighborhoods, including the neighborhood that this is in. The way that they've stepped this back in the approval renderings that sort of were shown at the zone change is there's a second sort of tier of green space shown that they sort of incorporate to sort of soften the scale of that building. Could you show the current? It's gone. I noticed in the staff report there was no discussion of the impact of the removal of that green space. Could you speak to that? Yeah, so the development plan itself within the open space, it meets kind of the current standards. So we incorporated all of those together. So all of the facade changes and those kind of discussions there, we lumped into this discussion condition at the bottom, but didn't sort of set it out and differentiate it because it's not sort of a set-alone standard that suddenly they were not meeting. Okay, and then my last question is a little bit more straightforward, just sort of a procedure, because when we first looked at it, you know, one of the issues was we have this building with a lot of units sort of proposed, and then we were putting all of the garbage sort of into that neighborhood parcel. You sort of spoke that this development plan addresses that. It puts it in the interior of the building, which is a positive change that I want to sort of conclude on. But I didn't notice that in the notes of the plan anywhere, and I was wondering if I'm missing it or if there's a note that we can add today or that you might suggest that we add today to clarify that since that was a change that we want to make sure that would proceed with this? Yeah, so they've submitted, so kind of first thing, the compactor access is denoted here, and they also have provided an interior exhibit, which also should be on your screen there, that kind of shows that layout and shows that compactor layout as internal. If you all would like to include additional conditions that kind of specify, clarify, get that ironed out, I mean, you know, set in stone, I don't think staff would have any issue with that, but the areas are sort of denoted on the plan, but we can make that more clear if it's the Planning Commission's desire. Thank you. Daniel, in regard to Mr. Mickler's first two questions, am I remembering correctly that those changes along Maxwell were because of utilities there? i can let the the applicant speak to kind of why they decided it we really just reviewed okay this is a pretty significant shift in in a couple of different ways the planning commission needs to weigh in on this that was was really uh the main thing and then at the committee level there was you know concerns raised about sort of the materials spacing and rhythm of windows the the landscaping changes were noted as well so all of that's built too but the the applicant can speak to what their considerations were for the design changes. Yeah. Daniel, on the Stone Avenue or Stone Road side, the townhouse aspect that was there, what was the height? Do you recall the height at the time? So there wasn't a deviation in a specific height in that section. The step back was on the opposite side on Lexington that had that three-story step up, and then you went in. this was really more of a use and functionality in activating kind of that first floor consideration with including those as sort of dedicated townhomes. Okay. So on Stone Road, the roof line was consistent the entire? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Daniel, thank you. Mr. Woodall? Thanks, Daniel. Good afternoon. Commissioner John Woodall on behalf of the applicant. Let me clear some things up here. First of all, this has been a long road with this plan. It started for me before COVID, and I know that my clients have worked extremely hard, I know you all have, in getting to where we are today, which is a project I know we all want to be proud of. It's going to be right in the center of our city. So let me explain some things you didn't hear. On Stone Avenue, when we got into the development plan and design phase of this, KU is taking a 20-foot easement along that side of the building, which is essentially pinching our building. And it caused the initial redesign. I think at one point we had, at the zone change stage, we had seven doorways there, which were called townhouses. The initial design brought that back to two because of that change. We went back to the drawing board after the first committee meeting we had and your comments, especially Commissioner Wirth's comments, and now we're back to five doorways. From the street, the whole point during the zone change, we talked a lot about street activation and how we were going to be harmonious with the neighborhood. If you're standing on the street, you can't tell whether this is a townhouse or what it is. It's only when you go into the actual unit. And, yes, Commissioner Mickler, these are doorways into the unit. These are not just a locked door. I know what you're talking about at Crogers, but that's not what this is. And Michael App from Gilbane, which is going to build the building, is here, and if you want to ask further questions about that. But the utility easement is what necessitated that change. And so when we went back to the drawing board with this project to address that change and then address the comments of the committee meeting, we put three doors back there. So we've got five there. One of those doors goes into a community room. But from the street level, you will not be able to tell whether this is a townhouse or whether it's not a townhouse. But the entire building was affected by that 20-foot easement. And to your question, Commissioner Penn, regarding the waiver as to the street, when we were at the committee, we were talking about this being a private street, and that gave some folks some heartburn, gave us heartburn. So we tried to see what we could do about that. Now, all we're asking to do is we're going to dedicate the street. It would be a public roadway, but we're asking to build it 20 feet narrower, which is what at the 34-foot width we're going to build it to now, that's wider than what's there currently. And it's at least as wide as most of the streets you see in this area anyway. So that was a change we could certainly live with. And why is that? Just because of the wanting to be able to put the compactor and utilities, you know, on the building side of this. I will also say that it shows, you know, two sidewalks. We'd like to just be able to put a sidewalk on one side of the road on that as opposed to two if you all want to discuss that. But otherwise, what you see in the original zone change renderings versus what's in front of you now, I will submit in every sense of the words is substantially the same. And if you lay them side by side. And once again, our builder developer is here to answer any questions you may have on that. But this has been a long road with this project, and we're ready to build it. So with that, I'll take any questions you may have. Okay. Do we have any questions for Mr. Woodall? Mr. Mickler? Yeah. I'd like a little more, like, understanding or clarification on this sort of apartment, townhome, sort of distinction. And then, yeah, and then on the, as one part of, like, what is, how are, because I assumed before the townhomes would presumably be rental, so, and they were part of really a larger building. So, how are you all distinguishing townhome versus rental? And then, And these units that are along the wall, what is preventing you from rearranging the interior to accommodate seven units? Maybe if you gave me the length of that building, but it's pretty long. Right. Commissioner, I'm going to let, this is Michael Apt with Gilbane. I'm going to let him answer those questions. Good afternoon, everyone. Can we go back to the rendering on the Stone Street side? Okay, so I appreciate your questions, Commissioner. This is the original rendering, right? So I just want to go back and forth for you. This is the original rendering. There were townhomes in design on the Stone Street Avenue side of the building. Those units were deeper and not as wide the way they were laid out. They were two-bedroom townhomes with stairs inside, access from Stone Avenue. When we were meeting with the utility company, KU said they had to put a 20-foot easement along Stone Avenue, so we pushed the building back. In doing so, those units, everything pushed back inside the building, But those units then become very long and not as narrow, and they don't work as townhouses anymore. So what we decided to do is make them regular units, access from the exterior of the building on the ground floor, but still keep the townhouse look. So you can see, where's that light? The top one? So you can see here you have a stoop, the stairs go into the townhouse unit, and then you have a balcony up here on the second floor of that unit. We maintained that same image here. So you have the stoop, the steps to come in, that door is active, leads right into their unit, is a usable door, and above you have a balcony also for the second unit, which is above that. You cannot tell that it's a townhouse or not a townhouse. Also the townhouse was always going to be rental units. They were not going to be ownership units. So from the outside of the building, as John said, it really gives the appearance of a townhome. You wouldn't know one way or the other that they're two separate units, the way they're laid out on the elevation. They're very similar from the previous elevation to the new, and it's generally caused by the 20-foot easement from KU that we had to set the building back. We also had to do the same on Maxwell Street as well. We set the building back 20 feet there. I hope that answers your question. What's the effect on the spacing between those stoops going from? Yeah, so the prior submission that you saw, there were seven townhomes there, right? So you had seven stoops. Because the units are longer now and not as deep as the previous ones, we're only able to fit four units, five units there, all access from the exterior. And there was a fraternity house on this corner here. We have incorporated a community room, an amenity. If the fraternity house is going to lease some of our units, they wanted to have their own community room. It's also an amenity to the building, and we figured that that would be a great spot for activation of that corner. Because it's not the main entrance of the building, but it's a community room, also access from the exterior of the building as well. So that has its own stoop and its own doorway leading into there. And so it sounds like you all would be amenable to clarifying on the development plan that the tenants would have access through these doorways. Oh, absolutely. That's the way the building is developed right now, yes. They have access. We can put it on the development plan. The approval. Well, yeah. I want to just clarify that as a person who lives, you know, four doors up from a building that has doorways and stoops along it that are all locked, it does functionally feel different to have people using doors than to have locked doors. And they end up getting maintained and look different as well. That's going to be their entrance. We did the same in a project in Cincinnati on Lyon Street that they wanted to replicate it from the homes across the street. And we actually did, we were able to put townhomes on that side of the building, access from the front. So, yeah, you can put that on there, but it's only the ground floor units that get the access from the stoops. The ones above will have access through the building. In terms of the look of the rendering, could you clarify, going back to that original, it doesn't matter which side. What made you move away from the more sort of traditional looking long sort of tall rectangular window style to these more sort of boxy squares? more to maintain the same look of the building these windows provide i i think better visibility for the units better appearance on the exterior rather than be separate type of windows it matches more the the right sorry when it was am i going the wrong way yep so next plan okay so the original plan when they when this came before you the building guts the interior of the building wasn't designed the units weren't designed they weren't laid out it was just a rendering to show schematically what this building could look like in design when we start laying out where the bedrooms are where the living rooms are the and the bathrooms the window layout then goes along with that plan. So it made more sense to do the windows while looking slightly different. I think it actually gives a better feel to the building. I did it again. Then those windows there. Spacing out those windows, a window would fall in the bathroom, fall in the middle of a wall, that type of thing. The feel of the unit becomes much better inside when they have a bigger window to be able to look out and enjoy what's outside there. And then my last question, which I brought up with staff, which is this as a sort of transition point between the downtown and the neighborhood, space and aesthetics with green space, I believe, is key. and the original sort of rendering covered much more of the lot than we're used to seeing in these sort of transition areas between downtown, but it had that sort of step back and that additional sort of space for green space dedicated to residents, but it also softens it from the sort of street, and that's gone away in the updates. I wondered if you could speak to that. Yeah, it's a really good question, and a lot of that really became, I'd love to be able to build this building right up on the street. That's what we originally planned, that's what we originally were modeled, until we met with the utility company, and they said they had to extend the power from Maxwell down Stone into Hagerman. And once they did that, they required a 20-foot easement, which required us to step back our building, or set back our building. Thus, the building got narrow. It took away that street feel being right up on the street. I agree. But we tried to push the landscaping back with it to take advantage. You can do landscaping in that 20-foot buffer, right? So we're putting more shrubs in. You can see all up in here, lots of shrubs. The street trees per code are going in as well. It really gives that nice green feel to the building, I think, with the building being set back for the utility company to get their power in. Thank you. Those were my questions. Thank you. I'm not going to be as nice as Mr. Mickler. This feels to me like a bait and switch situation. I totally disagree that the window configuration is an improvement. If we look back at the original, if you don't mind looking at the original, there's a very sophisticated interplay with the window mullions speaking to each other as they run through the building as if they're a frame that has its own identity. They're not just little punctured openings with square mullions. It's a sophisticated presentation. I would guess this was done by a different architect than the ones we're looking at now, but maybe not. Another thing that I noticed that is going on here that is not going on in the latest rendition is that the upper floor has a much more elegant presentation of height. It's different from the other floors and the window height is different. I think that really helps the composition. I would also note that the individual volumes, for example, the dark colored volume to the right of the corner, the white volume on the corner, that that dark colored volume has a different cornice color and that the material of that dark volume turns the corner. So as you're looking at it, it has a sense of being volumetric and not just an applique. That has been lost in the rendition that we're looking at now. I'd also notice that the third floors appear to have workable balconies with green planted on them. That's a huge difference from what we're seeing now where the third floor just has some sort of a roof cover over the balconies below. I hope you can see what I'm speaking about there. For example, on the corner closest to where the view is taken, you can see some pink flowers of some kind on that corner. Exactly. And then to the right there, you can see other growth on that, suggesting that one could actually move around up there and use those spaces. I think that makes an enormous difference in that it brings the scale of the project down for people who are on the street level so that the scale of those elements is much more consistent with the scale of other buildings on the street. If we move around to the view on the, thank you, again there's a more sophisticated interplay of volumes. There's a stepping going on. There's not an insistent symmetry. There's a variation in the windows. The upper floor windows are considerably different from the other windows. There's just a higher level of sophistication here. So I'm really troubled by what I'm seeing now. I think it's a gigantic step down in terms of materials, volumes, and articulation. Looking at this, you can see that the white cornice is consistent. There's no sense that those red brick or yellow brick volumes turn the corner and actually move back over that cornice. The windows are all identical. They're all predictable, uninteresting, not generous. Anyway, so I would add that to Mr. Mickler's concerns. I'll speak to the greenery around the building on the, so that's also as a result of the easement, 20 foot easement from the utility pushing the building back. We're not able to provide as deep of a step back of the building there. But we still gave that step back the look. In regards, we do these purpose-built student housing projects all over the nation, and we have done in the past greenery on the building. And it's very difficult to maintain. We find in the colder climates, they die very quickly. There is no access from the third floor out here. They're just windows, there's no doors there. These balconies are all Juliet-type balconies, so you can open them and stand there, but it's not something you walk out onto. There's no access to maintain those shrubbery up on the building, and they just don't survive very well over time. We still tried to give the step back as much as we could, given the easement that we incurred. So you can still see that step back right here as well. It's just not as deep. You can't really plant anything up there. Normally we'd want to. If it's a matter of color up here, where you want the dark color on the cap, we could certainly do that. They are all white across. The architect felt that was the better type feel for the building in its design. Its design is all subjective, but we could certainly match the cornice to the color of the brick below. The height of the windows, the building can only be 75 feet here, so we're kind of limited in height. and how those windows react inside the designed unit that the previous rendering did not have designed for. So, you know, again, I think the windows, in my opinion, or our architect's opinion, really feel well for this surrounding area. We did bring the architect out here to walk the site, see what's around it, and stay within the plan substantially compliant with the existing plan as before. I think this building really makes a significant effort to do that. I appreciate the challenge of not having the depths that you might like for the two-story volumes that are expressed. However, there are other moves that could be made and were made in the original rendering that would really help this elevation on stone and that is that the masonry volumes create a cornice at that floor of the third level that's a really strong cornice line and that expresses itself volumetrically, I think you could achieve that quite readily with this design with some minor modifications. So I would like to see a lot more attention to an understanding that the Stone Street speed elevation in particular requires a two story expression that is substantial and undeniable and not just a paste on half hearted effort. Thank you Mr. Poe for your comments. Any further questions for the applicant at this time? I have a question. Yes, my question had to do with the proposed project. I believe you said it absorbs a fraternity house on the corner, is that correct? Say that again, sir. It absorbs a fraternity house, an existing fraternity house? Yeah, the fraternity house, Ka Fraternity, is located currently on the corner of Maxwell and Stone. Yeah. And we have a lease agreement, if they choose to exercise it, that we would provide them with 14 beds in the building. And they requested a community room. Okay. So we've made that accommodation that the attorney does, in fact, want to exercise a lease here. We would put them in the units on this side of the building, those units, and they have a community room here on the corner that they can use. Okay. But they'll be treated as regular renters. They won't have a simple interest in the property. No. Okay. That was pretty much it. Thank you. Mm-hmm. I don't see any other questions at the moment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have anyone in the audience that would like to speak on this particular application? Yes, ma'am. My name is Maureen Peters and I occupy 276 Lexington Avenue, directly adjacent to this proposed structure. And I was here last year when they did the hard sell for the zone change. The zone change that was denied in 2019. They sold it hard with those renderings and they talked all about facade articulation, stepping it down to the neighborhood, and the staff said that their job was to make sure that the final development plan was in substantial compliance with those renderings. And I agree with Graham, this is a bait and switch. This is nothing like what they showed us a year ago. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have anyone else that would like to speak on this particular application? Okay. Staff, any remarks? Okay, bring it back to the commission for any further questions. Got two, who's one? Mr. Michler? I have a question for staff just in terms of procedure and timeline. When we were hearing this zone change, you know, I spoke because this particular development is in the neighborhood where my business is and the neighborhood where I grew up. And you know, it is a loss to the neighborhood for all of these historic structures to be demolished for this. But at the same time, the development that was proposed would provide a number of places for people to live, walking distance to campus, walking distance to the bus station, and made a number of changes in the process, including that presentation on Stone Avenue that made me vote in support of this. I think I would like this project to be successful, but I'm firmly in agreement that what they're presenting today does not meet the spirit of what they presented at the zone change. What are our timelines? Basically, what I'm asking is would I be able to make a motion to postpone this for a month? Because I think the applicant needs a little bit of time to go back to those original renderings and try harder. Yeah, unless the applicant agrees to a postponement, we don't have time to postpone again. So at the applicant's behest, they could do that or you could make a motion finding that this is not in compliance with those and disapprove the project. Okay, thank you. Dave? I don't have a question, I just have a statement. If anybody else has questions for Daniel. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, I have a question for the applicant. in regards to, as he's coming up, I can definitely appreciate Mr. Mickler's and Mr. Powell's appreciation and detail for what they described. And by the same token, my novice brain will say, okay, I can understand where you're coming from as far as the internal makings of this building and having to change windows to accommodate walls and bathrooms and that kind of stuff. I'm a little concerned as to what Mr. Poe would say would be losing some of the detail, whether it's windows or detail as to the cornices or whatever. But my question would be, and I believe I understood it correctly, when you were talking about the original one, it was identified that there was some shrubbery that was on the second floor of it. And if I understood you right, you said that you removed it because, one, you didn't have access to it and that it would just simply die. If that's the case, why did you show it to begin with? That's a good question. At that stage, Commissioner Owen, nobody knew anything about the KU setback and having to pinch the building the way it's been pinched. Does that change the fact that it's on the second level and not accessible? No, probably not. But at the end of the day, as you said, when we came with this gyration, the first plan, Commissioner Pohl made the comment that it wasn't architecturally nuanced. And that resulted in a completely different plan, which grew and evolved a little bit. And now we have a development plan with what we're trying to build. So if we're down to, you know, we thought we've reacted reasonably to the easement situation and some other problems we've had to confront on this project. If we're down to talking about shrubbery on the second floor and whether we use longer windows or shorter windows, it gets very subjective. And I heard the term bait and switch. I don't think that's what this was at all. But, you know, you get to a point where things are very subjective, Commissioner. Thanks for where we are. Thank you. My only concern is that, and I don't mind saying from the word go when this thing first appeared three years ago or something, I voted for it. I was in favor of it. I'm still in favor of it. But I'm just concerned about losing some of the detail now. simply put, some of the looks, just the way it looks for the community itself. So that's where my concern comes. Commissioner Owens, thank you very much. And we really like that first rendering that was approved here as well. We tried to stay as substantially compliant with that as we did. I wouldn't call it a bait and switch either. A lot of design constraints happened during design. When that rendering was made, there was no backbone. There was no unit mix. There was no where the car is at, how big are these units, how many units. There was none of that at that point in time. Putting pen to paper, starting to design, putting units in the spot, redesigning based on a 20-foot easement that we didn't consider at the time, really shrunk that. It moved the building back. We lost that 20 feet. it doesn't give that feel right up on the street. We would have liked that. We would have had a greater step back on the building. We could have put that greenery up there. I don't like to do that. I do feel it's a maintenance issue. However, I would have had room to do it, and I could have made the plan look substantially compliant in that area. Because we're losing that 20 foot, we still put a step back there, but it's not as considerable as the previous rendering. So it doesn't lend itself to put shrubbery and everything in a six-inch or a foot space as compared to the three or four feet that was presented on the previous rendering. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. I appreciate your thoughts. Paul. I have a question about that. Did you consider seeking a variance with regard to that setback so that you can maintain the appearance and the function along stone? Say that again, Commissioner Polak. Did you consider seeking a variance with regard to that setback so that you could maintain the... No, no, sir, we have not. With the utility company, we have discussed what can and can't be put in that 20 feet. We can certainly put landscaping, which we have done. You can't put the building in that area, but the steps can be there. So our steps actually intrude into that 20-foot easement, but you can't put the hard building within that easement. This is really a detailed question, but I notice that there are two fewer steps up. Did the level of the first floor drop 16 inches or so from the original rendering to this rendering, or is that just am I reading something that was never intended? On which elevation? On stone. There are five stoops there now, and that's, again, because the units became longer and not as wide. I'm speaking about the height of the floor above grade. It appears that the height of the floor dropped a little bit. You know, when we did the zone change, it was a concept. We didn't have the heights of, you know, what the finished floor of the garage was going to be. We didn't know. And, you know, as we got into design now, now we do know. So the number of steps that are shown are based on conditions we've, you know, they just didn't exist when we did the zone change. So. Mr. Mickler. Regarding the loss of these step backs with the greenery on them, every answer we've heard sort of talks about it in the context of, well, we've got this utility easement, but they also went away from the Maxwell Street. It affects both sides. utility easement goes from the maxwell and yes and stone gotcha yeah because because the electrical power poles are all lined up on maxwell we have to stay a certain amount of feet away from those poles uh the previous rendering didn't even take that into account that there are existing power poles right there with large transformers on there okay thank you for clarifying that how it went You all are having trouble with this, and this is a big project. And all along the way, I feel like as an applicant, we've done the best we could to put the best plan in front of you and make changes where we needed to. And that's what we're going to continue to do until we get to a spot where we align. So I would ask that we postpone this until the next meeting and let us take a little closer look at it and come back to you. Yes. That's the. Just continue to the next meeting. I'm sorry. It will be continued because if I postponed it, we have to hear it again. Right, right. We don't want to do that. That's the note January 16th? Yes, sir. 2025? Okay. Okay. The floor is open for a motion then. Mr. Davis? Mr. McClure? One of y'all. I move to continue PLN MJDP 24-79 to the January 16th hearing. Okay, we have a motion and Jonathan Davis has a second to that motion. Any further discussion? Thank you, Mr. Woodall, for continuing and sharpening this all. Thank you. Thank you. Please vote via Granicus. Mr. Penn. Okay, all right, that motion passes unanimously. That should put us on page five. Excuse me, I'm going to make sure. Excuse me. Nope, nope, page six, I'm sorry. We're on PLNMJDP 24-85, staff. We have a development plan and a waiver with this as well. Yeah, so this is a development plan for the Sebastian property, unit 3, located at 525 White Oak Trace. This development is along Leastown, sorry. Leastown Road, and this is White Oak Trace with a cul-de-sac here. The purpose of this amendment is to revise the lotting, add two single family lots, and add 18 townhomes. The site is currently a detention basin. And the, let's see, it's proposed that 12 of the townhomes face Lee's Town and six face this rear lot, which is part of the subject of the waiver. and then there are two single-family homes or two single-family lots in this portion. We have 11 of the standard conditions, and then there's some cleanup items. but then the condition of the approval of the waiver, which is a waiver of articles 6-4C and 6-8M. And then the final condition is to resolve the location of the stormwater management easement conflicts related to the existing detention basin. And with that, if you have any questions. Any questions for staff? Thank you, sir. Mr. Murphy? Yeah, and then you have a waiver in your packet. Sorry, Mr. Murphy. The applicants requesting a waiver for lot frontage and soil access from an access easement and a finding regarding access easements to serve the proposed townhomes. These townhomes front, I believe it's the southwestern property line there, not onto a street, and then all 18 of the townhomes will take access from an access easement serving the rear of the properties. properties. So they're requesting a waiver under Article 1-5A, Exceptional Hardship, 1-5B, Design and Innovation and Large-Scale Development, and 1-5C, Infill and Redevelopment Facilitation. Okay. Thank you, sir. Mr. Murphy. Thank you very much. I'm Dick Murphy representing Anderson Communities, and Dennis Anderson is with me today on the front row, and Rory Cayley, our designer, is with us on the third row. We had a detailed discussion of this at the subdivision committee, and I can go through that again if you want, but to spare you from doing that, we do agree to all the staff conditions, and we agree to the staff's reasons for the waiver. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Do we have any questions for the applicant? Thank you, sir. All right. No questions. For anyone in the audience that would like to speak on this particular application. All right. Staff, you're good. All right, we'll bring it back to the commission for a motion. One motion? Not the variance. Not the variance. Okay. All right. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I move for approval of PLNMJDP 2485. Okay. We have a motion by Mr. Davis, second by Mr. Pohl. Any further discussion to that motion? Vote via Granicus. Do you need the conditions in the motion? I was going to do it separate. sorry that's what i was just asking larry with the 16 conditions as noted in our agenda all right thank you sir all right i think 18 18. two more on the back all right uh that motion passes unanimously mr davis and then on the variance or the waiver i'm sorry i move that we accept the staff's recommendation for PLNMJDP 2485 on the waiver. Okay, we have a motion by Mr. Davis. We have a second. Second by Mr. Pohl. Any further discussion to that motion? Please vote via Granicus. Okay, that motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Thank you. All right, that should put us on the big one. Page 14 of the agenda, item three, PLNMAR 24-18. We have three action items here, zone change, variance, preliminary development plan, and staff also has revised recommendations for us as well. Good afternoon, Planning Commission members. My name is Eve Miller. I'm a senior planner with the Division of Planning, and this month I assisted Mr. Crumb in planning services with the review of this application, and I'll be walking you all through that this afternoon. So this item is a request to rezone the properties located at 475 and 495 Hager Lane, as well as 450 Radcliffe Road. This is a change from the current existing zoning of a neighborhood business B1 zone, a corridor business B3 zone, and an interchange service business B5P zone, and a mixed low-density residential R2 zone. And we would like to note that the interchange service B5P and the mixed low density residential R2 zone is a request to rezone in the public right-of-way areas. They are looking to rezone the areas to a mixed low density residential R2 zone, a planned neighborhood residential R3 zone, and a medium density residential R4 zone. The net acreage of the site is 12.49 acres, and the applicant is seeking a mixed low density, medium to low density residential use. The applicant is seeking this zone change in order to construct an affordable housing development that consists of 29 single family detached units, 26 townhome units, and then 176 multifamily residential units. One building of that is aimed at senior living. In the lens of the place type, the applicant has chosen the enhanced neighborhood place type to be context sensitive to the surrounding neighborhood, and staff believes that that place type is appropriate. This proposal is looking for the type of density we are looking for in the comprehensive plan along a corridor. Additionally, the applicant previously had requested a variance to decrease the setback in the R4 zone area from 20 feet to 10 feet. They have since removed that variance request. And let's see here. So the subject property is located in the center of the screen here outlined in white on the map. It is located off a North Broadway outbound of Lexington towards the I-75 interchange, which is right here. And then we also have Russell Cave to the northwest. Zooming in a little closer to the site, we can see the current zoning, including the Marlboro, Radcliffe, and Elkhorn neighborhoods, which are currently zoned single-family residential R1D, R1C, and R2. South of the subject properties, we have currently two motels, a worship center, an office building, and two convenience stores. And those are zoned neighborhood business B1, corridor business B3, and interchange service business B5P zoning. This is an existing example of how we're looking to balance more corridor development called for in the comprehensive plan alongside maintaining the existing single-family residential neighborhoods and making sure that they can coexist together. Here is an aerial view of the subject properties. The subject properties were zoned neighborhood business B1 at the time of the consolidation of the city and county. And in 1972, 475 Hager Lane was rezoned to B3 with the intent to develop a commercial shopping center. In 1986, a subsequent development plan was approved for that shopping center. However, it never came to fruition and it was never developed. Since 2000, the Transylvania University has used this site as their primary outdoor recreational activity site, namely, as you can see, baseball. And in 2019, Transylvania University moved those activities to the now Lexington Legends baseball stadium inbound North Broadway. Most recently, in 2024, a group of local business people and nonprofits purchased the property from Transylvania University with the aim to convert land from its current outdoor use to construct a series of affordable housing living units. As you can see, the neighborhood north of the subject property is currently single-family units with some duplexes. And then you can see the two motels and the worship center and the two convenience stores. And the office building is located right here. The applicant is looking to utilize this site as an info and redevelopment opportunity, taking the screen space and slowly shifting the zoning from R2 at the northernmost end down to R4 at the southern end. So these slides have some current photography from the site. On the right-hand side of your screen, you can see coming into the property off of North Broadway onto Haggard Lane, and the subject property is currently on the right-hand side of this image. On the left-hand side, the two images are looking back towards North Broadway with the subject property's current existing tree line, as well as the field that exists off of Haggard Lane. Here's another image, and this image is of the stop sign intersection at Haggard Lane and Radcliffe Road. So the right image is an image if you were to take a right off the stop sign, this would be the image you see with the subject property's current existing tree line. And then lastly, we have some images of the subject property itself, and I apologize, it was a rainy winter day when I visited the site. But as you can see, this is a view of the baseball field, and it's very hard to note, but you can see the outline of the roof of the Red Roof Inn, as well as the I-75 interchange. To the right, we have an image of the parking lot that exists off of Haggard Lane, as well as an image if you're looking back towards the stop sign intersection at Haggard Lane and Radcliffe Road. My apologies. So here we have a view of the applicant's development plan. This slide shows the 29 single-family detached structures along Haggard Lane slated for R2 zoning in the dark blue. We have the 26 single-family townhome structures associated with the R3 zoning and the gray shading. And then we have the four garden-style apartment buildings that are slated for R4 zoning, and they are proposed to be three stories in the purple shading. And then we have the last building at the southernmost end in the light blue shading, which is proposed to be a senior living facility. The multifamily dwelling unit structures will total about 176 units for an overall 231 units with a site density of 18.73 units per acre on the development plan. For connectivity components, the applicant is proposing the construction of new public streets with an alley to serve the sites for the 29 single-family detached structures, with their front doors activated on Radcliffe Road and Haggard Lane, so the driveways will come off the alleyway in the back of the property. Sidewalk connections will be provided to link the entire development with the surrounding neighborhood and regarding concerns about the increase in traffic, the applicant is proposing to construct bump outs on Radcliffe Road as you can see here and there. The applicant is proposing 222 parking spaces between the two lots that you see on this development plan here and here, all located internally to the site. They also noted in their parking study that they have 59 off-street parking areas with a total of 281 parking spots available. The proposed development is also located off of LuxTrans Route 17, which will provide transportation access for the development. Despite not being in a FEMA special floodplain hazard area, the Division of Engineering has notified staff that there is known flooding issues on Haggard Lane. The developer will be required to address those concerns and stormwater management on the property in compliance with our engineering stormwater manuals with their final development plan. Additionally, like I mentioned before, the applicant was seeking a variance for the properties you see here in purple, the garden style apartments. However, on this development plan, they have met that 20-foot setback to meet the R4 zoning requirements. Here is a rendering of the senior living facility on the southernmost portion of the property located off of Haggard Lane. And then here is a rendering of the same property, just at a different angle. And then finally, we have a rendering of the garden-style apartment buildings that are three stories in height. Behind this rendering would be the Red Roof Inn as well as the office building that are currently two stories in height. For the place builder evaluation, the applicant has chosen the enhanced neighborhood place type to be context sensitive to the surrounding neighborhoods. enhanced neighborhood place type was designed to build upon existing neighborhood infrastructure providing a variety of housing types as well as create multimodal connections throughout staff believes that that place type is appropriate and this development is building towards the density we are looking for in the comprehensive plan as well as building off a major corridor the comprehensive plan calls for infill and redevelopment opportunities when available and this proposal is looking to build upon an established neighborhood getting a desire use out of a property previously unoccupied and slowly transition the single family zoning to a higher density level towards north broadway the choice of zones for the property as you can see they've chosen r2 r3 and r4 and you may note that r3 is not a recommended zone within the enhanced neighborhood place type. However, staff recommends approval. They are allowed to ask for R3 zoning as part of this proposal, and we believe that it fits this design with their development plan. Regarding the public engagement efforts for this application, the applicant has indicated that they met with the neighborhood on several occasions, most recently on November 11th of this year, to discuss the proposal. The neighbors have provided feedback on the development and they have voiced concerns including the increase in traffic to the neighborhood in and out. Also noting the sanitary and stormwater concerns that they have with current flooding. And then the height of the proposed garden style apartments and making sure that the design fits with the neighborhood currently. With that, staff believes that this proposal is meeting the goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan, and we are seeking approval for this application. The applicant is proposing to provide additional variety housing types in the area that will increase the density in a context-sensitive manner and is utilizing a property that is available for infill and redevelopment. It's providing a housing type that will be affordable to our community and accessible, which Lexington desperately needs to provide, as well as we stated in the comprehensive plan. In regards to the multifamily design standards, staff agrees that the applicant meets the respective criteria of the site design, open space, and architectural design. The proposal locates all the parking internally to the site. They have met open space criteria and the development begins at a compatible height to the existing neighborhood and increases in height and density towards North Broadway. And with that, staff is available to answer any questions or concerns you might have. Thank you. Thank you. Questions for staff? And the commission? Yes, sir. Thank you. One I think should be pretty easy. When you mentioned the number of parking spaces, you kind of combine the two lots. I'm presuming the need is still separate though. Not necessarily they'll be commingled going back from one to the other. I'm sorry, sir. Can you restate that? You mentioned the total number of parking spaces in the two lots. I'm presuming the need is still separate. One takes care of the need for the assisted living. The other takes care of the apartment itself. And really, that's not commingling? Yes, correct. Okay. The other question, alleyway. What's the dimension of the alleyway? I love alleyways, but what's the dimension of it? Oh, I am actually not too sure. I can get you that dimension, and I will double check. We can get to it. Or the applicant. I'm sure they can get to it. So thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. Yep. Well, that's a hard act to follow. Eve did a fantastic job presenting that. So this is the preliminary development plan in support of the zone change, MJDP 24-93. The plan depicts, as you said, 29 single-family dwellings, 26 townhomes, and five multifamily buildings. The applicants have addressed most of the concerns that we initially had. There are five remaining standard sign-offs, and then also the condition that it's conditional upon the zone change being approved. The remaining conditions that we have for the development plan are to depict the location of the shared driveways for the townhomes and to denote alley A cross section shall be determined at the final development plan preliminary subdivision plan stage. So that was one of the discussions that we had was about the dimensions of the alley. That's all I have if you all have any questions for me. Any questions for staff? I'm not turning myself on. She said you got it on your, it's on our system. You can zoom it in on your computer. I haven't seen it yet. So what they're showing on the plan is 20 feet of pavement, 4.5 foot utility, and then 5 foot sidewalk. I'm sorry, how much, what's the width of the alleyway? The pavement, the roadway itself? 20 feet of pavement, yes. 20 or 22? 20. 20, okay. 2-0. All right, thank you. Do we have any other questions? Okay, thank you, sir. Yes. Good afternoon once again. John Woodall, on behalf of the applicant, it's my honor and privilege to be a part of this particular project. and along with the folks that have breathed life into it and bring it into fruition. I want to do things a little bit different today. Instead of you all just hearing from me, checking the boxes on why this complies with the comprehensive plan, etc., all that is, I don't trust technology much, so I put a packet in front of you that makes our record with our justification letter and things of that nature and supplemental that sets forth our compliance with the comp plan and multifamily design guidelines and place builder. But what I want to do is the team of folks that came together to do this in our community, recognizing the severe shortage we have, not only in housing, but in affordable housing, it's just a remarkable team. So I think it's better today that you hear from them, not only as to why the project is designed the way it is, but what their vision is for it and what brought them together. First of all, I had Ed Holmes here from EHI Consultants, which is one of our designers. Steven Garland from Prime Engineering, another. Zach Worsham, who's with Winterwood Properties, one of our developer team. Johan Graham with AU Associates, another one of the developer team. Darrell Neer from Lexington Habitat for Humanity. Austin Sims, I don't know if Austin made it in or not, the Housing Authority. And then PG Peoples, the Lexington Urban League. And also our primary lender that got the ball rolling here, Luther Deaton. What happened here, I think, is something that this community has not seen before. That being, you know, the kind of a bridge between private institutional lending in cooperation with one of our local private colleges and this team of developers. Usually when there's an affordable housing project, you typically don't see that type of a team dynamic, but this one has it. As you all probably know, Transylvania utilized this facility as their baseball practice and game facility for a number of years. I know I spent a lot of time out there with my own sons in the summertime at tournaments and so forth. I forget exactly what year it was. In the recent past, moved to Whitaker Bank Park for their games, so they don't use this facility anymore. So it sits there and is just the perfect site for this particular development. Before I turn it over to these gentlemen, we've got a lot of neighbors here. I want to be mindful of their opportunity to speak and respectful. Even before I got involved, there were two or three prior meetings with the neighborhood or neighborhood representatives to talk about the potential of this development and what it might look like. Then we met with the neighborhood again on November the 11th to talk about the development and hear their concerns. And as recently as two days ago, our team met with the representatives of the business owners on that facing side of the development, that being the engineering firm and the church and the hotel. tell, and they have concerns but do support our development and authorize me to tell you that. So what I want to do first here is bring Ed up and see if I can somehow manipulate this control. If Chris will load my presentation and let Ed and Steve kind of tag team, come on up here, Ed. your vision was for the development when you two guys sat down and tried to put this to paper. Let me, okay. Which button am I? The big one goes forward. Okay, there we go. The one below it goes back. You're getting there. Yeah. Are you going to go to the site plan? I'm going to go to your site plan first, yeah. All right, there you go. Go ahead. Thank you, John. My name is Ed Holmes with EHI Consultants, and we were involved with the overall design of the project and the site. And what we tried to accomplish in doing this was how to make this a context-sensitive site, the existing neighborhood, but yet coming up with a development that blended in with this vacant track of land that met some of the needs that we wanted to do. And so the first effort was to make sure we had single family front facing units along Radcliffe and Haggard Lane, and we did that. Then we stepped back and did the townhouses to meet some needs for increasing the density, yet keeping that front-facing single-family development phase of it. Then from there, we step back to some of the greater density as we move down south towards the apartments. hotel and the church, so the worship center. And there, that's where we added the, you see in the corner, the single family units and then the garden style apartments. With that density, we also wanted to make sure we had more than one entrance into the development. So we provided three entrances, as you can see, into the development. So it dispersed the traffic and also enabled the project to have a good circulation as well as an entrance into it. The rear-facing garages also enabled traffic to be contained internally and making sure that we had enough parking to address the needs. We try to keep it as green as possible, make it walkable, and have the dynamics of a self-contained community that would meet some of the needs that we see in our infield development while also providing the need for additional housing within the community. With that, I'll turn over to Steve. Let me ask you one question here for the record that the single family housing that that that bases Radcliffe are those owner occupied. Yeah, they're designed to be for sale by the developers of the project and they'll be owner occupied for sale as well as the townhouse units. So on the development plan that was shown earlier with the blue and green ovals, those represent all the compliance we've done to place builder in the multifamily guidelines. It was, this project just lays right. There's 18 recommended site-specific things in the multifamily guidelines. The goal is to hit about four, three or four of them per site. We hit them all but one. And the only reason we don't hit it is what it has to tie to existing trails. There's not any existing trails where we would have hit it. So it was, we've been able to comply with not only zoning regs, sub regs, place builder, and the multifamily guidelines that set forth. As Ed said, we did a step down, the topography of this falls from Radcliffe down. There's about 12 to 16 feet of fall from the top to the bottom. So not only are you getting the viewshed from Radcliffe being interrupted by single family homes, as the density increases, the land is falling down. So as Eve showed the photo of the roofs of the Red Roof Inn, we're kind of trying to to follow that so not to create a non-contextual look to this area. Drainage was a significant theme that we heard during the neighborhood meetings. It was something you heard at the subdivision committee meeting the other day as well. It's something we've certainly tried to be mindful of. I don't see the lady that I talked to after the meeting the other day, but she, Commissioner Worthy, remember, Ms. Marksdale talked about not being able to take a shower when it was raining, which kind of jumped out at me a little bit. And I talked to her after the meeting and, you know, just with to, you know, maybe suggest or invite her to use this project and the fact of it to highlight these issues to the extent she hadn't already. And as it turns out, there was a meeting of the Stormwater Stakeholders Advisory Committee, I guess this week, that Ms. Wade advised me of. and what I had tried to convey to this resident was that you're at this meeting, you wouldn't know this because you don't live down here and you're not here all the time like we are, but all the people that can have a positive effect on your problem are in this room or they're close. So, and as fate would have it, Ms. Wade goes to the meeting and asked a question about Elkhorn Park and of Charlie Martin, is there anything on the board that's going to fix this? And in fact, the New Circle Road trunk line project, which as I understand is coming up in priority, is designed to do just that. So drainage has apparently been a problem in this area. You know, in the neighborhood behind us, we don't drain that way, as Steve's going to get it to in a second. We go the other direction, back towards Broadway. way, but that's nonetheless something we've been cognizant of. Okay, so you just tell me what you want to do here. So we'll just go through. So part of due diligence of looking at any property is looking at the history of the property. 1927 USGS map, which we overlaid with some placemarks for context. So Haggard Court is labeled. You can see where it was. The land is kind of respecting how it is now. Radcliffe would be to the north, up and to the left of the sheet. Go on to the next one. 1929, showing how things are progressing in the city. The next one. In 1950, it still shows the drainage flowing in the same pattern. There's a farm pond that would be near the corner of Radcliffe and Haggard. But if reading the contours, it's near the top of the ridge. So somebody dug a little farm pond for their house, which you can see next to the pond. Pond's gone, 2022. It's all been developed. You see a blue line, intermittent blue line going across the interstate. Go ahead. For context, we overlaid this on an aerial. So the drainage is going to the northeast. One more. That's how the blue arrow show how the drainage is going. And so this is a blow up, blow out of where is the water going? That was a big question. Where does our water go? It flows south and then it goes under the interstate northeast and when you track it all the way winds up in North Elkhorn Creek west of the city of Georgetown. So that's where this water is eventually going to. Our traffic study, traffic was also a big theme that we heard in the neighborhood meetings and what effect is your development going to have on our everyday commute? So currently the access points out of this, the neighborhood, surrounding neighborhood, we showed with a little green dot. There's traffic signals at Haggard and Paris Pike, North Broadway, and there's two signals at Russell Cave Road and Radcliffe. We did talk about bus stops in some of the meetings. The bus stops, well, he's outrunning me. But the, yes. All right, so we are adjacent to four bus stops currently. The source is Google Maps. They're shown with the little blue bus, white bus on a blue background, one at Hagrid Court. At Blue Ridge, they're showing one at Benton and then one on down Radcliffe. We pulled together a representative planting plan of what kind of density of trees have to be planted per our zoning ordinance. So we have street trees every 40 feet. You'll have perimeter trees every 40 feet. Along the perimeter, you have to have shrubs three foot on center or equivalent. And, of course, you have to have your interior landscaping. So this was just a representation of how to go along with Ed's beautiful color rendering of how much green will be on the site. Sanitary sewer came up as we were talking about. So this is Charlie's group has done a wonderful job doing a capacity tracking website. So you can click on any sewer shed and it tells you how much capacity is available. So they have just upgraded a pump station a couple years ago behind the Red Roof Inn. So this sewer shed has an available capacity of 13 million gallons per day. And our net impact is 114,000 gallons per day is needed. So it's actually 13,482,000. We're going to use 114,000. And so there's 13 million plus still left in the sewer shed in capacity. Now back to traffic. So we did do a traffic report. We've been working with the traffic department here. We've met with KYTC. The traffic report was done per standards. standards and the largest delay that our development creates is a three-second increase at ultimate build out which is 2036 per the guidelines set forth the way you do a traffic study and go ahead but we recognize there's heavy traffic on paris pike and so does kytc So this is a procurement request from the highway department to do a planning study for the traffic on Parris Pike. So they realize they have a problem on Parris Pike, and this is out on the streets right now for traffic engineers to respond to to do this study. And here's a whole bunch of data that I'm not going to get into from the traffic study. So per KYTC, we got a pin at the locations we were asked to set up traffic counts and the intersections being studied. So that's the existing volumes for the AM and PM peak. The AM is just shown in a number. The PM is shown in parentheses. So looking forward to 2026, which is when we project construction would begin. That was the projected traffic based on the existing counts. and in 2036 if no one builds and we just have normal growth this is what the traffic counts would look like and then we did a proposed trip distribution of how we foresee trips would enter and leave the site, then adding the trips that are generated by the ITE 6 edition guideline for traffic, build volumes when you sum up everything, and I promise we're getting to the end of it here in a second. So at the end, in summary, like I said, to get through all that data, it adds a three-second increase. What does three seconds really look like? The queue length in the morning at Haggard and Broadway will go back about another 150 feet of cars. So that's, each car is about 20 feet long. So that's what a three-second delay at that intersection looks like. But now we know the state's looking at it. Hopefully that can be mitigated. Thank you. Thank you all. Johan, let me get you up here next. Just introduce yourself and your role in the project. Hi, my name is Johan Graham with AU Associates. We are one of the multifamily developers of this project, specifically the family garden-style housing phase. We are a Lexington-based affordable housing developer. I wanted to talk a little bit more about the genesis of the project. As we know, we have an affordable housing crisis in our city. The five main affordable housing developers in Lexington came together with many city business leaders to talk about how to increase the stock of housing in our city. And what we came to realize was that we were all competitors. We had a general interest in improving the lives and the housing stock of where we lived. And the major barrier to do that was the ability to purchase land and hold land to creatively rezone and develop property for the benefit of the city. Right now in the general marketplace, the affordable housing developers are at a disadvantage because we can't buy and hold property as quick as the market rate developers can. So we've engaged with the banking community led by Luther Deaton, and they were able to help us purchase this 12.5-acre side of land. And so we had the time, the ability, the runway to rezone, to think about creatively how to populate and make this project as dense as we needed to make it financially feasible, but also to make it relatively compact and meet the needs of the housing stock in the city of Lexington, both single family housing and multifamily housing. So as they're showing right now, they're showing a fly over of the site showing the density from the single and two-story single family houses that front Radcliffe and Marble up into the townhouse development. The white buildings represent the three-story garden apartments. You'll see in the back left here is the Red Roof Inn and then the four-story senior developments on the right. It's taken all five development partners from the City of Lexington, which again are the five biggest Lexington-based affordable housing partners, to work on a site this big and to share responsibility and share time and energy and effort to making something like this come to fruition. So I just wanted to let the planning commission know that the entire affordable housing community here in Lexington is behind this effort and cooperating to help improve the lives of our residents. Zach or Darrell, either one, whoever's closest. Good afternoon. I'm Zach Worsham with Winterwood Incorporated, one of the development partners for the site. Thank you to the members of the commission and to the staff for your work on this project and for the time today. As Johan mentioned, it's no surprise to anyone here that we have an affordable housing crisis. And that's not new information. As a matter of fact, I was thinking sitting back here that we just as a community recently celebrated Mr. Peoples and the Urban League's 40th year of battling this crisis. It is something that people in this group have been given attention to for a long time, but that crisis is becoming overwhelming. I think the data has been presented to you all from a host of different studies and groups saying that our housing shortage in Fayette County is in the tens of thousands of units right now. And with this overwhelming housing crisis that we have, And what you see in this project is an overwhelming collaborative and creative response. Again to thank our banking community led by Mr. Deaton and Central Bank for going with at risk capital to see this project come to fruition. Five development groups who would typically compete for resources, collaborating on one project, spending a tremendous amount of time working on that project to see the support we've seen from elected officials at the local and the state level and even the federal level for this effort is certainly the type of response we need in our community to this crisis. So I think our team has done a great job providing the data here. And when it's time for this commission to make a decision, we hope that you'll continue with that collaboration with us and moving this project forward. Thank you. Exactly. Darrell. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioners, for the opportunity to speak with you today. I represent Lexington Habitat for Humanity. My name is Darrell Neer. We are working with the other two affordable housing single-family developers in our community right now who are building homes that will go into the marketplace sub-260, right? To be able to build a home right now at that price point is almost impossible without subsidy. Take a look at Realtor.com today before this meeting. There are currently 419 homes on the market in Lexington that are available per purchase, meaning no offer on them. Out of those homes, 75 of them available are under $260,000. This development will put 55 units of single family home ownership opportunities into play to give you a sense of the importance. So together we have built over 550 single family homes for home ownership opportunities. We're looking forward to this opportunity for this project to move forward. You know, there have been questions about the quality of construction that goes into affordable development. That's one of the priorities that we place on the homes we build. Right now, we are building not only affordable homes, but we are building energy efficient homes that are 50% more efficient than the standard homes going into the marketplace. 25% more efficient than the 2009 development standards. So that is what the type of homes that we are putting into place. And we are looking to put more of those into the market. Our most recent home that we have sold is north of here in Eden Court. And that home appraised for $260,000. That is the quality that we are committed to and we are committed to working with the neighborhood in the delivery of the products that we are developing over the course of time. So thank you so much for hearing us and your consideration as we move forward. And last, a man I greatly admire and respect, Mr. P.G. Peoples. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. I come in obviously in support. I support because I'm participating. Urban League has been in the business of providing affordable housing for 40 years. Take a few minutes to talk about history. Over this 40 years as a small organization we put into operation over 272 affordable houses. They've been houses for rental. They've been multifamily housing and they've been we've revitalized to school buildings and we just feel so good about who we are and what we do and we think that we bring tremendous value to this project and what we would like to do in closing we'd like to you heard there talk about the appraisal 260. Oftentimes when the term affordable is mentioned there's a there's it has been demonized and there's a misnomer about that. Let me give assurance to the residents that these houses will add, again, add to the value of your units for your living. So please understand that from us and you can take that as an assurance. So closing, say that this group, our team, went to Washington, spent time with HUD, looking at our project. The lead team from HUD said to us, we compliment you and we're going to monitor this because this collaboration has never, this type of collaboration has never been seen in this kind of model they like to take across this country. Thank you. I can't follow that. So if you all have any questions for me or the other participants, just fire away. Okay, Mr. Woodall. Do we have any questions? Yes, Mr. Wilson. Excuse me, just for clarification. Yes, sir. Two of the issues that you indicated that the community had addressed was the sewer issue as well as the traffic issue. Yes, sir. Was the information you provided here today, was that also provided to the community in terms of what you plan to do? Steve, we didn't have the traffic study information back, I don't think, I know the last time we met. It's certainly available to provide or can. Nothing to hide there at all. Okay. Okay, the other question I had was, and I think I sort of got the answer, but I want clarification. When you use the term affordable, what do you mean? We're people making 80% dairy median income or less. Okay. Okay. 80% AMI or less. The issue is you're using the federal definition of affordable. Yes. Okay, thank you. Yes, sir. Okay. Oh, let's see. That's all for now. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Mr. Polo? We've seen renderings of the multifamily units. Have there been renderings of the single family units? We don't have renderings of the single family, do we? No. Will there be an effort to differentiate those units as they appear from the street so that they're not just cookie cutter units? Yes. And will those units have front porches where people can sit outside the front of the house? That would be our intent to have porches. That's the reason of having the front facing activation along the streets. They haven't completed design standards for the single family or townhouse units, but There will be a set of design standards developed for the neighborhood. So then in the flyover, they're just rendered as rectangular boxes, which is not representative of what they look like. Exactly. Yeah, that's not really representative of the units at this point. Plans and specs haven't been designed yet. I would say that it's really important that they not be identical to one another and that They have some variation in personality. Yeah, I agree with you wholeheartedly. Any further questions for the applicants? Just real quick, for the single family homes and townhomes, what's the bedroom and bath count? Come on up there. We build to the needs of the families that we serve. So to say that we will have X number of bedrooms at this point in time, we do not know. So we will work with a footprint of between 13, usually 1350 square feet up to, what's our cap, Houston? 2100 square feet is what our footprint tends to be. So all of the homes will be habitat homes? No, I'm just speaking for Habitat. This is a collaboration between the Urban League Habitat and the Housing Authority. And as Ed had pointed out, this is what our preliminary layout is in terms of the design. That's what we'll work out together. Just to clarify what you said, when you say we build to the needs of the families, are you saying that you will have identified specific families to go in an allotted space and then you design based on how many bedrooms and bathrooms they need? Speaking from a Habitat point of view, we open up our application period. Homeowners, they meet a variety of criteria. The first and foremost is need. And so as we know in our community, right now we have about 54% of our renters who are paying more than 30% of their income towards housing, 24% are paying more than 50%. And so that is what we're seeing more and more of. And so when a partner family comes through, they're going through a process of about close to 12 months, 15 months of educational programming. And during that time, we're working with them, we know them, we understand the needs. we have four bedrooms, three bedrooms, five bedrooms at times for larger families. But a majority of the homes that we build are three bedrooms. That's Habitat. Are the other affordable housing builders doing something similar? Can you hear me? He just gave you a description of his model. We've been doing this over 40 years and ours range from two bedrooms to as many as four. That we've built and rented or built and sold. Then I also felt a mention that when we were doing these units on the front end, we were We're also training ex-inmates who are returning to our community. Good. Mr. Woodoff, I think until later, thank you sir. Okay, this is citizen comments time and I've got a list of names here. I'm not sure if everybody had signed their name in. If you did not, you can step up to the podium as we call you up. And if we don't call your name, you can also step up. We will have a time limit for each individual to speak. And time clock, you got the time clock, so each individual have two minutes to speak on this particular application. First up is Jordan Lloyd. Hello, everybody. My name is Jordan. I live in the 1st District, about a mile away from this project. I'm also a former Transylvania University student-athlete, so I spend a lot of time on this property as well. I'm also a city planner, affordable housing developer, and just general affordable housing advocate. So I've studied and also worked with a lot of these institutions that are working on this project as well. But I've studied at the local, state, and federal level. I can comprehensively say that this is a wonderful project, a project that will bring a lot of benefits to our community. As you all know, affordable housing is a major issue in our city. it's something that our planning department talks about a lot our local city council members talk about a lot so i really think it's time that we take this initiative and approve a project like this i know the city likes to talk a big game about affordable housing and the things that they're doing to work on affordable housing but now it's time to not just talk the talk but actually to walk the walk and not just talk about these initiative initiatives but actually approve these initiatives so i think this is great and i think you should approve it thanks thank you Thank you. Carla Blanton. Good afternoon. My name is Carla Blanton. I'm chair elect of Commerce Lexington and a former planning commission member. And on behalf of Commerce Lexington and the business community, I would like to express our support for the zone change application for this project. As we've all heard about today, and know firsthand, Lexington is facing a housing affordability and availability crisis, which is directly impacting our ability to attract and retain workers. According to a recent housing report from the Kentucky Housing Corporation, our county needs more than 22,000 units of all ranges of costs to meet community needs. Daryl mentioned that a majority of renters are cost burdened, supplying more than 30% of their income to rent. In addition, nearly 22% of our homeowners face those same challenges. And in the last decade, it's gotten even worse. The median home price in Fayette County has risen 100%, while median wages have increased by only 30%. For housing developers, the limited availability of land and the high development costs are significant barriers to the creation of more affordable housing units in Lexington. And as you may know, a majority of our workers now are forced to commute into Lexington. They can't afford to live here, while 40% of those would prefer to live here if they could. To address these challenges, an unprecedented number of banks, of public and private partners have come together. Banks, Transylvania University, the housing developers, the city and state have all but actively engaged in supporting this project. And in addition, the Kentucky General Assembly has allocated $10 million in state funding for infrastructure development that will support this project. We believe this is a transformational housing project because of the unprecedented level of collaboration from public and private sector partners. This is a unique partnership that meets the goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan and benefits workforce needs. We believe this project serves as a model that can be replicated in other parts of the community in the future. Commerce Lexington sincerely urges the Planning Commission to approve this zone change. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Blanton. I called two names, actually three, and you can step up one after the next. Todd Johnson, Rolanda Woodfork, and Raquel Carter. Good afternoon, Planning Commission members. Appreciate the opportunity to speak before you today. I'm Todd Johnson with the Building Industry Association of Central Kentucky. We are proud to have been part of the discussion on this project development since the very beginning. And I'm coming here today on behalf of our organization, our Board of Directors, to urge you, with strength behind our encouragement to support this project and move it forward. We've already talked, and you'll hear more about the housing crisis. This addresses a huge need in our community with over 200 units coming to market. And again, the collaboration effort between the developers, between the business community, between the banking community is unprecedented. It's something that we should all be proud of that is actually meeting a huge need in our community. It's a unicorn piece of land, as you heard. It's just everything has come together so nicely for this and we hope that you guys will approve it and move it forward as soon as possible so we can get going on it. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Carter. Good afternoon. So I'm here today representing both Lexington for Everyone and I'm an owner and I've been a real estate broker here in Lexington for over 20 years now. And as you guys know, everyone's talking about affordable housing. But the need of affordable housing is not just the housing component. It's really what housing does for the rest of our community. What we understand in real estate is homeownership is actually not just the key to having housing. It's the key to education because we create equity and wealth to be able to send our kids to school. It's also the key to entrepreneurship because many of us start businesses because first we own a home that has the equity, that gives us the capital that actually allows us to move forward. So the housing component is important. We have such a shortage of it. As they mentioned, we're 22,000 units short, and we're asking this particular project to develop about 200. And so even though it's a small step in the right direction, it is important in the way that it's working together, everyone pulling together to do something that's really big. And I think another thing I don't want to overlook is where this is happening. All of the money, all of the entity, all of the attention right now is being placed in a development in our neighborhoods, in the north end, in a part of our community that often gets overlooked. So we're not putting something in the neighborhood that's not going to be accessible to the residents. The current residents, their family members, and members of their community that look like them and live with them will be able to have access to both rental, to senior living, and to home ownership in this area. And so all the money and the funds that are being funneled into that are just amazing. And so we are in full support of this project. And I hope you approve it. Thank you, Ms. Carter. Next three, we have Leandria, Shereer, Jose Ramos, and Lane Brown. Rolanda, for the historical black neighborhood association council. Like to thank the developers and planning commission and everyone who came together with this. But they didn't come together with the community. We like to thank you for leaving us out. this in the very beginning it will have been very helpful and I think you wouldn't have much of opposition and concerns if you did come to the community in the first place. They found out on TV that this was going to happen to their community. So we looking at affordable housing we keep hearing that. To whom is it affordable to? Is it affordable to the developer so he can return his investment? This is not the first time for Mr. Deaton giving money from Central Bank to affordable housing. He did it in 95 and many other times with Bill Embry. With St. James Place is one of them. So this is nothing new. This is nothing new for them. We do this all the time. Not on this scale, but we do it. But the problem is you're not hearing what the community is seeing. The community is seeing traffic, sewage and flooding, and we also want R2 to rent home ownership. The apartment complex, the ranch, the garden style housing is not bringing home ownership. Yeah, we can say, well, this is needing because we need more density and we need more of this. But this community doesn't have apartment complexes in it like the other ones do. Why not? Why can't you just continue with the housing, with the extra town housing, the fourplex? The R2 gives you all that to do. Why not? How hard is that? It's not that hard. Come on, if you want to give housing, affordable housing to everyone, let's do it. Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Jose Sicaris Ramos, and I live on Linwall, and I'm here alongside of many other folks in our neighborhood who feel very strongly and have a lot of investment in the neighborhood. It's a very, very special place. I've lived in five places, or in a lot of places my whole life. I lived in Cuba, I lived in Louisville, in Berea, in Richmond, and now I live in Lexington, and I've never been in a community so special as this one. So I'm here to voice my concerns on specifically the speeding and traffic issue that's already existed in the community. So the development that is being proposed would add approximately 234 to 250. I can't think of the exact number of units. Let's say that those units are two people per unit, which some may be more that can drive, some may be less. That would add hundreds more people to the neighborhood, and it would only exacerbate the already existing traffic concerns and issues that we have, especially at peak times going towards I-75, North Broadway, or Russell Cave. And I know that the traffic study was provided, and I'd like to, if we can get a record of that, the community, That would be great because it's hard to believe that adding hundreds more people would only add a three-second delay in traffic. And so also another thing to touch on is there's a huge speeding occurrence that happens in the neighborhood, specifically with Radcliffe Road. There is a lot of kids in the neighborhood, and that's what makes it such a special place to live, is that these children feel comfortable being there and playing outside and that the parents feel comfortable letting their kids be outside. if we were to add hundreds of more people to the neighborhood, it wouldn't just be these people traveling in and out of the neighborhood, it would also be friends, family, that would also be coming in and out of the neighborhood, and I'm sure the speeding would only worsen. You might say, well, why can't we just add speed tables? Well, Radcliffe Road, a high traffic road, you can't add speed tables because it's technically collector road, I believe, and so that's not really going to remedy the problem. Coming all over the place, but I would also like to say that we would like to keep this neighborhood as an R2 zone, single family residential, as this would lower the amount of people that would be moving into the neighborhood and also kind of keep that traffic down. It wouldn't exacerbate it as much, you know, instead of 29 single family homes, maybe we could replace the apartments in townhomes with single-family housing and that wouldn't, I feel like, exacerbate the problem with traffic and speeding as much. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Mr. Brown? My name is Lane Brown and I've addressed this council once before and expressed the very concerned about the housing period. Now those little things you had up there look like little square houses. Now my house is a, I have a split for you. Now y'all gonna make anything look like that in the neighborhood? We would like to have our houses look like our houses, our homes. That's, that's what we're asking. And those would be, like you said, those affordable houses. Now, who's going, who's going to buy an apartment? Nobody. That's not affordable. The housing, that's just rental property. Let's face it. That's all it is. And nowhere in our neighborhood do we have an alley. We do not have an alley in our neighborhood. And the way this alley is going to be set up, you're not going to have any room to get a fire truck up through there if anything happens. Fire trucks are designed so they're able to turn around, but you won't be able to turn around a fire truck up through that alleyway. And all these houses looks to me like they're going to be built on slabs. No basements, nothing like that, just slab. Run on all electricity. I asked the committee, I asked them, what was it going to be running on, gas or electric? They said all electric. And that's going to pull down our electric grid over in our neighborhood. Real bad. I see I got a minute left, but I'm just, I'm going to yield it to the next. Thank you, Mr. Brown. We have Rachel Sloan, Frank Green, and Louis Bages. If you want to come up and speak, if not, I can. Good afternoon. My name is Louis Boggess. To reiterate, the Radcliffe Marlboro Neighborhood Association is not opposed to the transit development. We are opposed to constructing five, three, and four-story apartment buildings that tower 41 and 51 feet into the air in a neighborhood where none exist and where no home is taller than two stories. We simply want what we have requested from developers at multiple meetings, only single-family owner-occupied homes. homes. This concession would better align with existing architecture and lot sizes, infrastructure capacity, and minimize additional traffic congestion. Eliminating apartments and constructing only single-family residences permits the increase of lot sizes from 3,500 square feet to 5,500 square feet, the maximum allowable under R2 zoning. This is more comparable to current lot sizes and negates the need for driveways in the rear of homes and construction of an alley for access. Presently, all driveways in our neighborhood are in the fronts of houses and accessed directly from the street. Contrary to the Council's assertion, the garden, apartment, and senior living facility renderings presented at the planning meeting on December 5th are not designed in a context-sensitive manner to neighborhood housing. The scale, construction, materials, and color schemes shown in the renderings in no way blend with the red brick undertones of most ranch homes in our neighborhood. Site topography has been used to justify construction of these multifamily dwellings since the development will descend along Haggard Lane toward North Broadway. This rationale completely ignores residents of Blue Ridge Drive, who are on the downslope, who will be eye-level with the first floor of a 51-foot tall building when stepping out onto their front porches. Apartments have recently been constructed on Winburn and Codell Drives. Plans are underway for a development on Parris Pike near Rogers Road. Unlike Radcliffe Marlboro, these neighborhoods have had existing apartment complexes in their communities for decades. The oasis at Kearney Ridge currently serves seniors and Dennis Anderson has indicated that there will be both senior living residences and apartments constructed on Leastown Road in the Great Acres development. With the need for multi-family and senior dwellings being addressed, we are simply asking for compromise from developers to truly design in a context-sensitive manner, a zone change to solely R2 will enable this by allowing only the construction of single-family homes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Frank Green. Anyway, I wanted to address just a little bit, expand upon the alley situation. Could we get a view of the alley, please? Okay, the alley. When you start there at Hagrid Court, or not Hagrid Court, the drive after Hagrid Court and start with the single family homes, when I look up there and see that the intersection of Radcliffe and Hagrid and look at the green space with the sidewalk in front of those five homes right on the corner. On a fire service perspective, most of these homes are going to be accessed through the alley. And I know that they said that the alley needs to be approximately 20 feet wide or will be 20 feet wide. That is a minimal standard. I have driven fire trucks and ladder trucks. A ladder truck is 47 feet long and And the way I see some of these curvatures in this, it's going to be awful tough to get back there. It all sounds good that you may think that it sounds good that the fire truck is going to come up to the front of your house, but in a situation like this where they're so closely packed together, you're going to have to come to the rear. And so instead of that alley being a so-called alley, it more likely needs to be closer to a street size just to allow for the emergency apparatus. As I look at some of the other issues with that, the streets, the traffic congestion, okay we've talked about what's at Haggard Lane and North Broadway at this point. They're still talking about putting Citation Road over to the, beside the Northside Public library which will be directly across from Radcliffe Road which is going to be another through way that is going to be an immense amount of traffic at some point if that still goes through and I just want to make sure you are aware because I live over there and that three second delay or I've said at that light maybe three to four light changes that is not a three second delay and when you look at the traffic that he was the gentleman was suggestion that's on north broadway uh that backs up every morning and every evening and it's not just due to the construction that's going on now that that left turn lane to go southbound on i-75 is backed up all the way to haggard so with all this influx of more folks and we're talking about 500 and something potentially 500 some more residences. Well, you let's take one third of it. We're talking about roughly potentially 150 more vehicles. And I'm not saying they're going to be there at all at one time, but it is the potential for it. So like I said, think about citation coming through there and connecting, you know, because it's going to be a part of the problem in the future too that we're already seeing. Thank you. Mr. Green, thank you. And we do have a fire here too, Mr. Green, so they may give some feedback on that question you had at the end. Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Rachel Sloan and I'm a lifelong resident of Radcliffe Marlboro. Our neighbors recognize the need for additional housing and do not oppose the transi project. Per protocol, developers engaged us and sought opinions. We showed up and responded, providing input for housing design, density, and lot sizes, along with voicing concerns over the construction of apartments and their impact on existing traffic congestion, aging sanitary and storm sewer infrastructure, and public safety. We were assured that these issues would be taken into consideration and incorporated into the final development plan. Instead, our input has been disregarded in favor of an extractive economic venture, characterized by Council as transformational at the planning committee meeting last week. This is simply micro-scale gentrification. lose nearly 13 acres of green space. In exchange, we receive at minimum an additional 234 cars commuting daily, impervious surfaces shedding thousands of gallons of stormwater runoff, and 41 and 51-foot-tall buildings in a neighborhood where the average home height is 10 to 12 feet. Our concerns about pedestrian safety and traffic congestion have been answered with proposed bump-outs to calm traffic, ignoring the impact of hundreds of more cars daily on Haggard Lane that has routinely backed up half the length of the road at peak commute times. As mentioned earlier, the Division of Engineering states, quote, there are known flooding issues on Haggard Lane, end quote. We express that a large percentage of homes battle groundwater intrusion in basements and crawl spaces after moderate to heavy rainfall. Council acknowledged last week that concerns regarding stormwater are most likely due to the age of infrastructure. Even with plans to utilize pervious parking lots, hardscaping the fields will increase stormwater runoff. Property owners will not be the benefactors of any profits generated in this project as there has been no offer to date to reinvest revenue into our community. We are asking for a loan concession, a development scaled to Radcliffe-Malboro, single-family homes that maintain the integrity of our neighborhood and do not further stress sewer infrastructure, increase stormwater runoff, or magnify current traffic congestion as constructing multi-family dwelling units will surely do. You can ensure that we receive this by amending the zone change to R2 only. We were promised a chance to be a part of the design process and we are titled to an invoice, not just lip service. Thank you. Next we have Joni Haaland, Dan Wooten, Michelle Hutchison and Timothy Mitchell. Hello, my name is Joni Holland and I have lived in the Marlboro-Ratcliffe subdivision for 29 years. A lot of the people that spoke before me have covered a lot of the stuff that I wanted to. But one point that they didn't do is we asked from the get-go, from meeting one, single family homes, R2. That's all we wanted. They were like, well, we want your input. We want your input. But they never listened. We truly did not understand what they were going to do as far as the apartments. Never had heard about the senior living until more towards the end of these meetings later this fall. And when we asked about the driveways and the parking space, they said, well, we can only have to acquire 1.5 space per home. Well, when we asked about all the space for the apartments, they said, oh, well, they can go down to the senior living and park because those people won't drive. I'm 58 years old. Those senior livings are 55 and older. I drive. I have three vehicles parked at my house. So we know the traffic is going to be an issue. Parking, they're going to come down and maybe park on the side road and interfere with somebody else's parking. And so we've been there for 30 to 40 years. People have been there longer than I have. I went on PVA and I looked at two courts and two streets. The average value of those homes were $90,000 to $260,000. That's how long we've been there because you know the lower values people have stayed because they haven't sold. Now if they go start doing these houses, it is going to increase the value because PVA's is going to come in and do an assessment. Our house value is going to go up. It's going to cost our property taxes to go up and our house insurance to go up. What are you going to do when you have these retired individuals in these homes that are on fixed income, they get forced out of their homes that they've been into for 30 to 40 years because they can't afford what they're doing. Always ask if you're going to do anything, keep it R2. Just keep it R2. We don't need the apartments and we don't need the senior living. They're just not meant for our value, for our scope, because of how long we've been there. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Dan and I live at the corner of Radcliffe and Haggard Lane. And we've been talking about traffic and traffic counts. I don't need to do a traffic count. I'm the traffic count. Some mornings I'm up at 5 o'clock in the morning or 6 o'clock in the morning. morning I look out my kitchen window and traffic is backed up from Haggard Lane and Radcliffe all the way down around that Z going back over towards the windburns every morning so that traffic comes out turns down Haggard Lane and ends up down at Broadway where it's backed up there so that's a big problem you may think traffic count traffic count is what I see every day and it's It's the same thing in the afternoon. You're coming back from wherever the people work, come back through there. They come back through that way because it's a quick way to go from Broadway over to Winburn and from Winburn even as far back down as some of the other areas going back down towards New Circle Road. And the second thing I had to talk about was safety. I had some photographs, but I'm not going to show the photographs because I wasn't here in time to show that. But there's one thing I point out is the fact that Haggard Lane is one area where people walk all the time. And Haggard Lane, as you see it on that design now, sits right next to the street. When I walk down that street, I have to keep looking back to make sure that I don't, something is not coming behind me too fast. So I don't know what they're going to do about that because the road and the sidewalk are right next to each other. So I don't see that change on what's proposed here. So are they going to change that or leave that like it is? Because it's a safety hazard for the number of people that walk. I see kids walking all the time up and down Hagrid Lane and going down around Radcliffe. Radcliffe is a main walking area because it's a nice pleasant walk every day. I see people with their dogs and their other family members walking all the time. The third thing is property values. Property values in America, the one way you create wealth is by owning a home. If you own a home, you expect the value to go up. So we all gonna pay more taxes, but at least that's something to leave my kids, and my kids leave their kids, and that's what Marlboro is now. A lot of people that are there now, that are living in there, probably lived there with their parents from years in the past. So they own that house. So the price might have been built for $100,000 that's now worth at least $300,000. So by putting in that condensed property, by putting in apartments and putting in senior citizens, the other living conditions, you are probably going to not have as much appreciation in your property. But that's basically what I want to talk about is safety, traffic congestion, and property values. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Michelle Hutchison, and I'm the president of the Marlboro Neighborhood Association. First of all, I would like to apologize to my neighbors because we've all been given false information. We started the meetings with the development, and again, communication to me is the key to our success, all of us. We had our first meeting January the 22nd. It was an introduction meeting telling us that we purchased the land. Oh boy, did I believe. Oh, they're going to communicate and talk to us and consider our feelings. meetings. Our second meeting was March 25th. We had a discussion, but still we were told we have no plans for development. A third meeting was May 30th. We met at the Lexington Public Library. The meeting was to see what would the neighbors like? What do you all want to see. We told them, yes, housing examples was passed out to us. I have a copy. There's not an apartment in here. There's not a senior living in here. Our fourth meeting was held in June. Still, no communication on what the plans were. Well, lo and behold, September After the 13th, 2024, Mr. Holmes and Mr. Peoples held a meeting at the Urban League. They requested that we did not involve the neighborhood in attendance. They didn't want that much volume of people. In attendance was Mr. Mike Moffitt, Councilman Folger, and myself. We were presented with a proposal and pizza. At the meeting, we stressed our concern for single family residents only. We were given a copy to take back to the neighborhood. Y'all take it back and share it with them. Afterwards, we had a neighborhood call meeting to inform everyone what their plans were. November 11th, a meeting was held. Hey, this is it. This is what we're doing. However, as a neighborhood, the plan had zero input from our neighborhood. We as a neighborhood would like to see the following. R2, zoning only, final results for traffic study. What's the plan for home ownership versus rental property? We want homes to look like our homes. In conclusion, the developers meeting was just a formality to say that we met with the Marlboro Radcliffe Neighborhood Association. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Council and Chair. My name is Timothy Mitchell. I'm actually the owner of 284 Radcliffe. My stepfather, Dan, was that mechanical engineer from Tuskegee, so he's concerned about traffic. He's always concerned about traffic. So I come before you to say I would ask that you oppose this, and possibly if you make it R2, it would be better for us as a neighborhood. My dad and my mom moved there in 1980. We were the only two-color family actually in that neighborhood, right? So I'll go from there to this. In 1993, I purchased 284 Radcliffe, and when I went to Fifth Third to purchase it, they said, well, yeah, you can have that. No big deal because we've considered that a low-income neighborhood. So that just goes to show you how quickly that neighborhood changed in 13 years. So I'm going to touch a couple things on the design. First, let's look at a traffic survey. The traffic survey that I just received that information said it's about three seconds. Okay, we can't actually use that as a valid traffic survey because in this design up here behind you or in front of you on the screen, you're going to have, even if everyone in this new development has two cars, it's going to be 468 cars. That's just cars. Lexington is not designed for high-capacity transportation. Lex Tran is the only bus system we have, and there's one bus stop, and if you get on a bus and you're trying to go to Richmond Road, it takes you two hours. You've got to come down here, transfer, and then you wait, and then you go out there. As the young lady said about coming in and working here from other cities, you're not going to do that. We don't have high capacity transportation to get you to Main Street. You can park and ride anywhere you can, but you're still going to take about an hour or two just to get to your job. Okay, let's go past that. Also, I want to look at, as he was talking about the fire hazard, if you look up there at the corner of Haggard and Radcliffe, you see a little red car. That little red car is to the back of my mom and my stepdad's house right there. So when you put some almost 30 houses, 29 total houses on Radcliffe, those extra cars will park along Radcliffe. You cannot get by with another car without crossing that white line. I do own 284, as I said. My tenant was actually killed in a fire, and the fire truck, without the extra traffic, had trouble getting in there to service that duplex. So these are just considerations that I have on a daily basis. We do have a very diverse neighborhood now, as a young man spoke. The racial development in our neighborhoods changed, but it is one of the better neighborhoods about getting along and those kids are out there. And I'm going to run short on time, but I ask that you consider how many homes you're putting in barely 300 yards from the start of Haggard to the silencing barrier right there at the end of that design. This is too many homes in that distance. I would still say R2. I would ask that you keep the spacing the same as with the current houses across Radcliffe right there, and make them all brick homes and keep the aesthetics of the neighborhood. Thank you all. I greatly appreciate you. Thank you, sir. Lori Benton, Greg Widener, Stephen Harris, and Vivian Walker. Good afternoon. My name is Lori Beaton. I have lived in the neighborhood for 23 years and just recently paid off my house in August. I just want to emphasize that we recognize the need for more housing in Lexington, and we are not opposed to the development of the Transylvania athletic fields. We simply want what we have requested from developers in multiple meetings. That is to have a neighborhood of single-family owner-occupied homes. This loan request would create a neighborhood that better aligns with our existing lot sizes, our infrastructure, and our traffic volumes. Pedestrian safety and traffic congestions is a primary concern since our neighborhood roads were built in probably the 1970s. The current proposal calls for single-family homes, townhomes, three-story apartment buildings, and a four-story senior living facility. If every household has only one vehicle, which is a very conservative number, this is an additional 234 cars commuting daily on Haggard Lane, which is about a four-tenths of a mile. And I'm sorry. It intersects into Broadway near the I-75 interchange, and vehicles routinely back up nearly half the length of Haggard Lane. I watch it out my back window every day. during peak commute hours in the morning and afternoon, as does traffic on North Broadway and the I-64, I-75 exit 113 on ramp. I live near Broadway, and this is already an existing problem daily. We brought this concern up to the developers at our last meeting with them on November 11th. They said that a traffic test or analysis would be taken for this intersection, but the results would not alter their development plans. Designs call for three additional entrances to the development of Hager Lane and Radcliffe Road. It's just really going to be a problem. The amount of traffic, when I go get my daughter from school, we're coming back from 3, I pick her up at 315, she goes to Bryan Station High School. So I'll come back New Circle. When I'm coming up North Broadway, I live very close to Broadway on Linwall. We are sitting there making, should we turn? Should we turn now? We're turning all the way back at Dover to be able to get on our street because you have to wait three and four lights for me to get into the turning lane to turn on Linwall. It really is a problem. To reduce traffic impacts from this development as much as possible, we are requesting that the Planning Commission amend the zoning change to R2 only. This will permit the construction of only single-family homes, allowing for larger lot sizes that will minimize the need for on-street parking and lessen the number of vehicles impacting our daily commute. commute. I also worry about where Citation Boulevard and Radcliffe Road near the Northside Public Library will become a straight shot from Newtown Pike to North Broadway that will further increase traffic volume. So, sorry, thank you. No apologies needed. Thank you. Yes, sir. Gregory Widener, thank you for your time and attention. You've been very fair with us. Thank you very much. I have some issues with the statistics printed right here on page 6 of this document, if you'd like to turn to that. It's the parking demand structure information. What we've learned today, there will be a total of about 230, that's rounded, 230 residences of various kinds. It says right here that this proposal calls for a total of 222 off-street parking spaces, as well as the potential for up to 59 on-street parking spaces. For those of us who live in the community, we cannot imagine where you're going to get 59 on-street spaces. Trust me, it will not happen. And so if you add the 222 and the 59, you have a grand total of 281 provided spaces or purported for 230 residents, which is 1.2 cars per structure. And I would like to ask the developers how they're going to frisk all new people, residents, that they only have 1.2 cars. I'd like to ask them that. Thank you, sir. Hello, everyone. My name is Stephen Harris. My wife, lovely wife, Regina and I have lived in the neighborhood for about 14 years, raised our kids there. My wife likes to say that Marlboro-Radcliffe neighborhood is one of Lexington's best kept secrets and I agree. But it's not without its issues. One of those issues is invasive water. So in our neighborhood, if it rains, it doesn't have to be a torrential downpour or even a heavy rain. It rains for about a half day. You see water rolling down your backyard, pools at the house, and eventually makes its way up to your crawl space and through your basement. When I was having work done on my kitchen, they had to take the floor up and I could hear it actually saw water just running under my basement. To date, I've paid about $7,000 to have that corrected via system that throws that out into the street with a sump pump. my neighbors on the side of me can attest to the same thing because they had to have the same work done. You look out my front door directly across, my neighbor's got an additional concrete step built onto his property. It's significantly different from where it was originally. It's sunk into the ground quite a bit due to the saturation. Now I'm told that before I arrived, about two years before me and my family moved in, the city attempted to address the issue, turned down a couple houses by St. John and built a water retention area that was supposed to address this. Well, let me tell you all it worked. It retains water really well. The problem is that that self-same water comes back into the system and then back into our crawl spaces and up into our basements. Now, I'm told because there's been nothing definitively said as to what the solution will be for water in this new complex, I was told when I asked at the meeting that a same type of system would be set up for these residents. Well, you know that's uphill from where we are, so that's not going to help the situation any for the existing community. And I know no one would want to hurt the community that's there. So maybe instead of that, and in addition, instead of letting all the runoff from those new non-chorus surfaces that are being built, the parking lots, sidewalks, alleyways, all that non-chorus offrun, it's going to run downstream. And downstream is the community that's there now. That's us. We exist. Okay? So it's going to run off to our neighborhood. And I know no one wants to hurt the existing community. So maybe instead of building that density, we go with, as has been proposed, low density, single family units built with the same visual aesthetic. And if we do that, we can reduce the strain on the infrastructure. and if they have that same visual aesthetic, we can reduce the strain on everyone's eyes as well as we walk through that part of our neighborhood. I thank everyone for their time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Vivian Walker, and I've been a resident of the Marlboro Neighborhood Association since 1984. For those of you that's doing the math, it's 40 years, and I want to speak on the rental aspect. I have seen firsthand the demise of rental property, not only in my neighborhood, but in all neighborhoods. The duplexes on Ratcliffe are not properly maintained. Renters do not take pride in their property. Renters do not maintain property as well as owner occupiers, which leads to less desirable neighborhood aesthetics. Renters do not have the same vested interest in maintaining their property. There's also potential property value decline in our neighborhoods when we have a lot of rental properties that are not properly maintained. Also with apartments, there comes a concern about noise. Lots of times when there's apartments, it's young people that rent apartments. They have visitors. So there's also a problem with noise and also transient residents. So I petition for R2 only in our neighborhood. Also, it had been mentioned that by the commissioner, the planning commissioner, there's 222 parking spaces, and there's going to be on-street parking. Where is the on-street parking going to be? There is no place on Hagrid Lane for on-street parking. There is no place on Radcliffe in that area for on-street parking. So there is going to be an issue with parking, and as many of them have already mentioned, there's also an issue with speeding and with the traffic. So this is what I am petitioning for R2 only. We do not want these two three-story apartment buildings. We do not want the four-story senior buildings. We want R2 housing only. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, is there anyone else that would like to speak? You can do so by stepping up to the podium. Hello, I'm Jean Widener. I live on Benton. One of the exits from the apartment complex is onto Benton. People in the building area, I'm sorry, it's not just the apartments, it's you have houses. We're talking about affordable housing and needing affordable housing that can be purchased. There are only 55 units that are actually affordable housing. The rest is all rental property. It's either the garden side apartments or it's the senior living. The only thing we heard about senior living is how tall it's going to look from our homes. Now, I'm concerned about the exit that goes... I only had 41 seconds. No, no, that wasn't your two minutes. I'm concerned about the exit that goes on to Benton. It is at the junction of Benton and Radcliffe, so people do have the choice of turning right or left onto Benton. But I think a lot of them are going to think, oh, I'm going to go down Benton because it'll go through. It doesn't go anywhere. It goes to Linton, and then you have to do a T and either go back over to Radcliffe on one side or the other. It's not a through street. We have trouble on Benton already with people racing down that road. And people, you know, I walk all the time, almost every day in that neighborhood. And I've almost gotten hit several times just trying to cross my street. So we have to be really careful about pulling out onto Benton already. So if we have other people trying to get down through there, it's going to be really difficult. And when people park along the street, it makes it difficult to see to even get out of your driveway and not get hit. So we're going to have more people parking along the streets, I'm sure. Now, I know that my husband was up here and he said something about, If you walk through our neighborhood or drove through our neighborhood, you would see there's anywhere from two to five cars at every residence. So when you try and say one and a half, well, I did the math that said 1.2 per every unit. Some of those are three-bedroom units. You can't tell me that there's not going to be more than one car for that unit. And when you talk about the bus system and how long it takes to get to places, people aren't going to put up with that. They're going to get their own car, get their own vehicle, and drive. And then where are they going to park it? You know, it's just a real concern. The single-family dwellings, I like the idea of the 55 that can be purchased. I don't necessarily think they're going to be aesthetically as pleasing as I'd like them to be. I support Habitat. I have built Habitat houses several other places in the United States. But I don't know if they're going to match what we've got where we are, because I've never seen habitat that really had brick fronts or brick building around the whole building. Usually it's other kinds of siding that they put on the habitat houses. And I'm not saying they can't do it here, but I've just never seen that happen when I've assisted with helping build habitat housing. If we have the apartments and the senior living, those are not going to be purchased, and it will decrease the amount of affordable housing that's actually available in the neighborhood. It's not increasing the number of houses that can be purchased. It's just providing places for people to live. Thank you. Thank you. Nick Nicholson. I'm in the 1st District. I wasn't sure if I was going to say anything today since I usually am representing a development and this certainly is not mine. I would love to be able to take credit for it, though. I was counting back there, I've been doing this for 18 years, and usually I am the only one standing up here to defend the development, and so I thought it was important that I actually did get up here to defend this development, because I do believe this might be the most important development for Lexington as a community that I have ever seen since doing this. What we also did not hear during the neighbors' comments was really arguments that this violates the comprehensive plan, because I do not believe you can make legitimate arguments that this violates the comprehensive plan, and that is the standard that you are tasked to make your decision here today. This is true, affordable, capital A, affordable housing. It is housing that is being built in multiple different styles, multiple different types, as called for in the expanded neighborhood aspect of place builder. If they would have brought this in as just a single-family development, I think there would be a legitimate argument that it did not comply with the comprehensive plan. And I also believe that the neighbors would be raising the same concerns that you heard here today. Because we just saw that when single-family development got brought in next to single-family development, the neighbors still fought it, still were concerned, still argued about traffic, still argued about it was two dips of a development. It is just what we get whenever you are dealing with this type of infill development project. Thank you all. Thank you. My name is Anthony Brooks. I apologize. I didn't sign to speak because I'm a former English teacher, and a microphone is not something that you want to give me. I did want to say thank you to Mr. Poe as he's retiring or leaving, and thank him for the work that he's done here, whether or not he'll be back for those meetings that have been put off for another date, and whether or not this meeting should be put off for another time. I wanted to work here in Lexington. I'm from here, but I couldn't get a job as an English teacher, So I've been gone for about 30 years to Miami, Florida, and I've been back with my wife for about six or seven years now, farming in Richmond and coming from a major city like Miami and dealing with traffic and the changes of the infrastructure. I've been studying home and the history of home and the redlining and people based upon the color of their skin being forced into certain areas and some of those areas being devalued. And my wife is from Jamaica, but she's always awestruck when we come down Richmond Road and see those beautiful old houses. But actually, historically, those were not the houses that we were afforded. And so we did not have the equity that would give us the opportunity to send our kids to the University of Kentucky, which historically was a college that didn't allow us to enter because of our skin color. But I say all that to say, and please time me, I won't take up too much of your time, But just my heart is full as I see people that I've seen play basketball and cheer for the UK and play for UK. And some of them may not have made it to the NFL where they could come back to Lexington and get any kind of home that they wanted. I went to the old Douglas. I see the new Douglas. I see where they're proposing to build a new subdivision right across the street from Douglas because that's going to be the land or the area that those who can afford it will love to go there so their kids can just go right across the street, which we used to be able to do at the old Douglas in St. Martin's Village to be able to walk up the street to school. Now, I'm saying all this just to break it down, that we have all of the people in this room. For those of you who are from Kentucky, maybe some of you have come from out of the country, out of state, or Richmond, Kentucky. But looking at the traffic problem that we have, when people tell me when I come from Richmond, they say, you better get out of here on Friday before people get off work. So I'm saying that we, as I surmise here, we have some critical issues, you know, and we need to be able to take the time to take a serious look at where we're going based upon the history that shows where we've been. The traffic is a crisis situation for us. home ownership and equity and being able to leave something, a legacy for our children, is something that we need to take a serious look at. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. All right. Mr. Woodall? Okay, three minutes. Thank you all once again for your attentiveness. Thank you to the neighbors and all those that showed up today to discuss this development. This is a special community that we all live in. That's why a chamber like this fills up at 1.30 on a Thursday afternoon. People have to take off work and so forth to come down here and speak their piece. We're in tough times as well in terms of where we sit as a community and in our housing crisis or shortage. whether it be affordable housing or any other. I don't envy you all, never do, especially in cases like this where hard choices have to be made, really hard choices. As an applicant, as a team, like we've said, a team that we really haven't seen come together to do a project like this before. But we have a set of rules we have to go by, as Mr. Nicholson said, and I appreciate it. I mean, bottom line is we have to comply with our comp plan. You and our council have given us a set of metrics that we have to design by. And in this community, we have prioritized infill. We have prioritized density. And we've done that over the decision to expand outward into our rural areas. However, we're mindful of the fact that that doesn't come without limits. There has to be a medium. There has to be a respect for the neighborhoods that are affected by these infill developments. and I heard, I understand some of the comments that, well, you met with us and that was really just a check-a-box. I don't look at it that way. I know my fellow team members don't look at it that way. You have these meetings to find out where people are. Some things you can accommodate, some things you can't. This multifamily, and Nick is exactly right, if this project had been postured as simply a single-family project, it wouldn't meet the comm plan, and we'd be hearing the same arguments, and we'd be dead on arrival. But the truth of the matter is, the multifamily could be higher, and staff will correct me if I'm wrong. We could have built that to higher elevations. But due to the comments that were heard at these meetings and the fact that the property topography lays as it does, it made perfect sense to design the project like Ed and Steve did. Please don't think that you were misled intentionally. You weren't. Hold on one second. Hold up one second. On to the trap, and as far as the trap, I understand that. It doesn't bother me a bit. I understand it, and that's their right. The traffic study data shows what it shows. It's just engineering data, and we represented that the development didn't have ultra negative effect on traffic, and it just doesn't. We all know about the consent decree. I mentioned this a little bit in the front end of our presentation about drainage, and that was something that we've heard a lot about. Just from watching the video last night of the stormwater stakeholders advisory meeting, This is something that is at the forefront. It has to be because the consent decree has to be complied with. These projects are happening. They're prioritized. Surely they are. But I know that just from that meeting alone, the Elkhorn Park drainage issues are supposed to be remedied by the new circle trunk line project. We go through the process as best we can. We listen to the comments of staff, which is, you know, we have a pre-app meeting, which we did here. Staff makes comments and tries to lead us in the right direction. We may have a debate on this and that before we actually file our application. This is a very exacting process that we go through. And it should be. It absolutely should be. And if this community is going to remain the special community that it is. But this process, we've played by all the rules in it. And staff recommended approval of our application. The subdivision committee recommended approval of our application. and the zoning committee recommended approval. So with that, I appreciate your attention as always, and we're willing to accept conditions laid out by staff. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Woodall. Just I want to clarify, we're also in rebuttal stage, so Mr. Woodall just gave his rebut, and I would like to have the Homeowners Association president, is she still here? Do you mind giving a rebuttal? No, you're fine. You're fine. This is your opportunity if you wanted to rebut. So I wanted to give you this opportunity. Again, my name is Michelle Hutchison, and I apologize for getting emotional earlier. But I have met with these gentlemen. And like I said, communication is the key. We're not saying we don't want any housing there. We just want to be treated fair like everybody else. I feel like as the neighborhood president, I let my community down because I entrusted in what they were telling me and I fed it back to them. If this was such a big project and so important, why didn't they all get together and present it to us? neighborhood. Don't pick two people out of the neighborhood and say, hey, you take this and you share it with them. With them. With them. What is with them? My feelings are really hurt. I feel betrayed. Lack of trust. I'm just dumbfounded. it. It's hard to be a leader giving false information. And again, I was the one that said it was just the box being checked and I stand firm on what I said. It was. Because no plan could have been developed in September and presented now when we start meeting in January. You don't have to tell us everything you're doing, but be honest with us and tell us we're not ready to reveal to you all the plan. Don't come to the meeting and tell us, oh, we want the neighborhood's input. It's very important to us. See how important it was? Thank you. Thank you. Staff. Hello again, Eve Miller. Staff would just like to clarify that the alley, oh, thank you. How about now? Better, okay. Staff would just like to clarify that the width of the alley will be finalized during the final development plan. and also in regards to fire and emergency services typically 20 feet is requested at the time during technical review committee and then finally if traffic engineering would like to answer any concerns that the commission members have about the traffic study as well as the new circle road study i'm sure that they can answer those concerns as well but we wanted to share with you that the alley discussions will be forthcoming and we'll continue to take a look at that Okay, thank you. All right. Let's bring it back to the commission for questions. I know we have a few questions here, so Ms. Wirth. Sometimes when we're looking at planning, we talk about the importance of timing and when a development is going to occur and when other things that are happening that will impact that development, making sure that we try and coordinate the timing. So I would like to ask a question about the New Circle trunk line project. When is that expected to be completed? And I think we heard mention of traffic road improvement. I don't remember the name of a project, but what's the timing on those two in terms of in comparison to when this development will take place? So I really can't speak to the timing of the development because that really is up to whether ultimately the council approves this and when they are able to secure funding and create their package and move forward. But the Elkhorn trunk line, our new circle trunk line that will go through Elkhorn Park area is scheduled to begin next year. And so it's a 2025 project, and we got that information from Charlie Martin on Friday at the stormwater stakeholders meeting, and I did ask a specific question just to ensure that we understood the timing of that and if it was correcting some overflow problems that existed. and he did state, yes, there are overflow problems that exist, and I think we heard about it in the subdivision and the zoning committee, and those issues will be rectified with the trunk line construction. Now, that will take a while, but it will start in 2025. I'll just add to that particular one. You can see that presentation on YouTube, LexTV YouTube, that was recorded on the third level, what, like 40 minutes in or something? Yes. When you ask the question, he elaborates a little more on that as well, Charlie Martin does. As far as the traffic improvements, I think most of us were referencing Citation Boulevard, that completion. We were hoping to have it this year, but it'll probably be, it's an engineering project, but hopefully let into construction next year. Probably take, the first phase I know should go next year, and that's to Winburn, the access point to Winburn. So Winburn Drive will actually have access to Citation. The phase two, they hope that the second phase will also be let next year, but that's out of other issues because this goes through UK's property and things like that. But I guess just to discuss, thinking about it regionally, there was some discussion about the concerns traffic movement through from the east to the west to access citation. I do think that's a reasonable assumption. There is going to be some traffic generated as a result of that connection. It's probably also reasonable to assume that many of those in Windberg, Green Acres, and all the other neighborhood in the middle on the west side of Russell Cave will likely utilize Citation to access the interstate rather than Broadway going forward once that connection is made. So I do think there will be a certain degree of offset with that. But again, it's just mobility, things like that. It should help alleviate some traffic congestion on New Circle, but that's not really a concern today. Anyway. Mr. Owens? Yeah. Dave, before you leave, I'm going to get a little bit more local on this. There was a couple of comments as far as traffic, obviously traffic on Radcliffe. On where? I'm sorry. Excuse me? You said traffic on what? On Radcliffe. Rack, okay. Yeah. Okay. And there's been a couple of comments, and I think we had a little bit of discussion. and subdivision as far as possible traffic calming on Radcliffe. Can you address that, Annie? So currently our neighborhood traffic management program, which is handled through traffic engineering, the way it's set up, the bylaws or whatever, it's a council set-up program from 20 or 30 years ago, probably 30-plus years ago. It's set up for neighborhood streets, local streets. So the funding that's set aside for it is explicitly dedicated to local street projects, which Radcliffe is a collector, as someone mentioned. So we developed a lot of strategies for that improvement. Now, the applicant does have some, they call it like bump outs on the segments between intersections. I intend to work some more on that with them because I think there's some strategies to help narrow the roadway a bit, and those generally help reduce speeds in that aspect. But that being said, the NTM being program is in committee next year. it's a council committee to be reviewed especially to determine what changes are needing going forward because this is kind of increased the concern and the complete streets program manual will be developed to finish developing next year and that should also allow us to employ additional strategies right now the ntp program largely results in speed tables because there's a cost share aspect so very expensive projects tend to be less practical to complete and there's even been some concern from the public safety aspect of the proliferation of speed tables impacting response times. So as far as a, it's been our typical method and as it proliferates, as it continues, there's some concern in that relation. So we need to get a better toolbox for reducing speed. So, and I think that'll happen next year as well. Do you think it will be possible on Ratcliffe in the near future? Yeah, so again, for the applicant, they put some of those, again, reduction in cross-section of the roadway does typically reduce speeds. How that's implemented is what is still, there's some things, suggestions that I've made that we could see at the final development plan stages that I think will happen. Thank you. I think I saw, and some discussion was concerning bump-outs per se. if there's parking on the street doesn't the parking negate the bump outs no the parking would would the parking so the bump outs are there their permanent structures always be there whether there's parking or not parking is additional additional uh lateral uh obstacle that also tends to reduce speeds so parking on the street actually is a one of our one of the methods to helping control speeds you tighter spaces people feel less comfortable going quickly And that's whenever people, when we have neighborhoods that request the removal of parking when there's adequate space, we typically don't recommend that because that will only give additional space for people to comfortably drive fast. Okay. All right. Thank you. There's a question about fire, so I'm going to bring you on down. Thank you, Captain. Captain Greg Lingle of the Division of Fire. I've been taking a lot of notes and been waiting my turn. To kind of address some of the questions, first we talk about street width and emergency access, and just go down memory lane, Mr. Owens, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Penn, and you probably remember me talking about this back in 2013. In 2018, we got the street cross sections changed where neotraditional standards are out. 27-foot streets are restricted on one side for emergency access, 30-foot on both sides. I believe at that time alleyways were removed too. So when we're thinking about emergency access, Those numbers that we have in our street cross section now work. So remember that going forward on the complete street guides and street cross sections. The alleyways, when I heard that, I immediately got nervous. I haven't been around too many alleyways. Just what I see on Chicago PD and the other police shows, and they all kind of scare me. Anyways, but to touch the base on the width, the 20-foot unobstructed width is our fire code standard that the city has adopted. So what they showed on their plan is acceptable if there's no street parking on that 20-foot. I feel comfortable with our engines and ladders getting down that alleyway at 20 feet with no parking. Turning radius might be a question. questions about if we would respond to that alley and yes we would if there's a garage behind there and there's a garage fire we got to get a truck back there if somebody has a ems or medical emergency we need to get ambulance back there so we plan to use that alley now if you call in at 2420 you know simpson avenue we're going to come to the front address obviously but if there's a reason or cause for us to use that alley would. I'm trying to think if there's anything else talking about the speed tables. I was in on a meeting with the big trucks talking about bus school buses, lex train waste management. Nobody's a fan of them. They slow us down gentleman for waste management says he's worried about losing drivers or riders. I'm sorry on the back that get off and empty the trash cans. So things to think about as far as traffic calming. I think the designs with the bump outs, that sounds like a good idea where you have dedicated street parking, but we still need our width for emergency access to get to and from where we need to an emergency situation. So if you've got any other questions, hopefully I didn't bounce around too much, and I hit everything that I needed to. Thank you sir. I've seen that on others. I just don't know. Mr. Holmes, I got a question for you. There was a comment from the public asking about the housing values. And I know that you're familiar with Davis Bottom and how you transition between keeping home prices a certain price throughout that project life. Was something like this work similarly to that in the sense of keeping home prices around the same going forward so that you don't have a situation where the first homeowner buyer buys it at market rate, or under market rate, and then they sell it later on for market rate? That was a question, so. I don't know if you're familiar, Davis Bottom was a community land trust that operates under the CLT model. And there's been some discussion about possibly incorporating this into a CLT model as well. And what that does is the equity and investment stays with the house and it doesn't go with the prospective person seeking to capture a windfall in equity. So we're going to try and keep that within the retain ownership in the building itself. Thank you, sir. Do you have any further questions for the applicant or staff? Okay, I'm going to bring it back to the commission, close this portion out. The floor is open for a motion then. Or further discussion. Mr. Wilson. I'd like to just make a couple observations if I could. First of all, thank you for your patience today. A couple of things, when we put together the comprehensive plan in 2018 and it was reinforced in 23, we put a very important piece in that was public engagement. But one of the things we had to be real careful about, public engagement does not necessarily denote public agreement. It doesn't necessarily mean that the public has to agree with the developers or the developers have to agree with the neighborhood. It was an idea that we put together thinking that if these organizations, these groups could get together with the organizations, that would have a better opportunity for community dialogue. So we were hoping through this process that we would get more community dialogue and more opportunities for discussion between the developer and the community. It doesn't always work as perfectly as we would like for it. Like I said, public engagement does not guarantee in any form or fashion public agreement. Now, I have listened very carefully what the community has said here, but I also want the community to know that you've got some really good, powerful organizations that are well-established with really good reputations that are standing behind this. You've got Commerce Lexington. You've got the Urban League. You've got the Lexington Housing Authority, of which I'm a member. You've got other organizations who are all a part of this suggesting that this might be a good thing. So I just wanted to say as an observation, we're listening to you as a community, but we're also listening to the organizations that are also presenting and supporting this particular project. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Mr. Penn. Have the dubious honor been through three comp plans. And I have heard for three comp plans about affordable housing and housing affordability. Defining those two things are extremely hard to do. But I will tell you that when we expanded in 96, we talked about this. When we expanded in 23, 24, we talked about this. We've learned two things. One of them is that expansion doesn't necessarily mean cheap land. The land cost in Fayette County will always be high because the demand for it is high and the people that own it aren't going to give it away. So it's taken this community a long time to get past the myth that if we just expand, we'll have cheap land and we can build affordable housing. That is a myth that we have perpetuated since 1996 and before. Now we face reality. And the reality is that in order to build affordable housing, you have to create a model and work it. And every area of the community has to participate. The people whose land was expanded have to make a choice whether they want to sell it or don't want to sell it. People in the community have to decide what their community is going to look like and how they're going to finance it. If this organization has come together, like Mr. Wilson said, and has come together with a plan, it's going to be awful hard for us here as a planning commission that has advocated for affordable housing for at least three comp plans to walk away from it. because this is one of the few times expansion has yielded an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is. And I, for one, hate to see happen to a neighborhood what you all think is going to happen to yours, and I pray and hope that we can work together to make this work. But I, for one, have to give this a chance to work because it's the first real opportunity that I've seen that has any chance other than for political value. And I'm tired of political value. I'm looking for results. So that's why I'm going to support it. And I hope that your all's greatest fears don't come to rest. Thank you, Mr. Penn. Mr. Lawrence? Oh, I'm sorry. Ms. Markstead. Okay. Just real quick. One of the things that makes this volunteer opportunity very difficult is looking out at people, some I know, some I'm familiar with, areas I'm familiar with. I'm not originally from Lexington, but I've been here for a number of years. And one thing I do see sitting here is that we have a need for housing. You know, as a real estate agent, I see it every day. And not just housing, but housing that can be affordable. And in order to do that, you know, there's some compromises that have to be made. The lot sizes that we've enjoyed in the past are becoming a thing of the past because of the expense of the land. All brick homes is becoming a thing of the past because of the expense of building all brick homes. So I think at some point we've got to understand that in order for this city to continue to build and to grow, we've got to look at things differently. And that means that our neighborhoods are going to look different. Our comprehensive plan has us more focused on building neighborhoods that serve a variety of people and housing types. And that's why you see single family homes, townhomes, and multifamily homes, apartments. And all of that can fall under the label of affordable housing. I'm glad on this project that we're seeing housing affordability for purchase as opposed to just rental. A lot of times we get lost in saying rental is affordable and we know how rent prices are in the city as well. But I, for one, feel that the ability to create home ownership at hopefully what will be an affordable level, hopefully at what will be, there will be some financial contribution to help homeowners realize what we tend to call the American dream of home ownership. Hopefully that will come out of this. One thing that I know has come out of this already is listening to the community talk about issues that really have nothing to do with this project. There are so many issues that it just breaks my heart for the people who are talking about. One lady talked about how every time there's rain, she can't take a shower. That's a shame. And that has nothing to do with whether they break ground over here on Hagrid or not at this point. And I think that just by her bringing that to the forefront, I think that brings some attention to an issue that needs to be addressed today, regardless of how we go forward on this particular project. Mentioning the electrical grid and things like that. You know, those things need to be worked on like now, not waiting for this project to happen. But, you know, so I guess I'm just trying to say, you know, your words do not fall on deaf ears. However, we do have a mandate here as a planning commission to follow our comprehensive plan. And for that reason, I'm going to have to vote for this project. Ms. Lawrence. Thank you Mr. Chair. I'm going to try and be very brief. Ms. Barksdale just hit on one of my points. We sit here and whether sometimes we like it or we don't, we still have guidelines and rules we've got to follow and the comprehensive plan is one of them. and the what does hit home to me is traffic i've been sitting here for a long time not today several years and traffic is always one of the concerns and you want to kind of think it falls on a deaf ear but it doesn't and it really doesn't in my situation because I think it was Mr. Mitchell who said he moved to Radcliffe in 1980. At that time, I was his neighbor. I lived on Radcliffe as well during that time. And I can remember vehicles screaming down the road even at 2 o'clock in the morning. So that's the reason I was asking about traffic situations, traffic common, and so forth. I'm here to say, you know, when this thing comes back to us with a final development plan, We're still going to be talking about that, and we're going to do everything possible to help in that regard. I appreciate everyone being here today. However, we do have tough decisions that we have to sit here and make at times, and I will be supporting this as it moves forward. But I will be there to make sure it goes as good as it can be for everyone. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Owens, are you making a motion? I can. Mr. Wilson, are you? I would get ready to say you, one of us could. Go for it. Okay. And I say this and we've all reflected the deep respect that we have for the people in the community and for the time that you've spent here today. And you've heard about our comprehensive plan and the public engagement, et cetera, et cetera. With that, I'm going to make a motion that we approve PLN MAR 24-18 transit property owners LLC with the tent. This is for the zone change. Zone change first. Okay, zone change, yeah, for the reasons provided by staff. Okay, so we have a motion by Mr. Wilson. Do we have a second to that motion? That's right, we can skip that. We need to delete that. Is there a second in Mr. Penn? Okay, so we got a second by Mr. Penn. Any further discussions to that motion? Okay, please vote via Granicus. All right, so that's it. Okay, so that motion passes. Okay. Now Mr. Lee. Mr. Chairman, I think the variance- And removed from the consideration. So we go to the preliminary development plan. Yes. I move that we approve PLNMJDP 24-93 with the 10, I think 10 conditions provided by staff. Revised staff recommendations? Yes. Okay. So we got a motion, do we have a second? I'll second a motion. Mr. Chair, I believe we probably should remove number seven since we no longer have a variance there. Okay. That is not good. So amend that motion to nine conditions. Thank you. Okay. Ms. Worthy, still seconding that motion? She says yes. All right, please vote via Granicus. All right, that motion passes. Mr. Owens, it passes unanimously because I know Mr. Owens and Mr. Penn. I'm there. I know you're fine. Okay. I didn't want to. There we go. Thank you. I think that's it for this round. We're going to take a 10-minute recess for everyone to use the restroom or whatnot. We'll come back at 528. We'll start at 528. Mode change and subdivision plans. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and put it in the middle of the middle. I'm going to go ahead and put it in the middle. I'm going to go ahead and put it in the middle. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I'd like to call, bring us back into session. Put us on page 16. No, excuse me, no, yeah, it's 16? Yep, page 16. We have the Zoda hearing. PLN's Zota 24-9, short-term rentals within the agricultural zones. Ms. Crum. Thank you all. Daniel Crum, planning staff. Just to give you all a sort of update of some of the documents, so since our zoning committees, staff took the language that staff had recommended and reconciled it with the recently approved other short-term rental ordinance that council approved on the 5th. So one of the documents you have on your computer there is the sheet that looks like this. This is that combined entire sections along with the staff alternative language and the council language outlined in red. So blue is staff's language, red is council's language. So just giving us a kind of quick overview as we're looking at these. How we got here. So once again, to give everyone just a quick refresher, the short-term rental ordinance was created in summer of 2023, but explicitly excluded agricultural zones. They were sort of considered a separate consideration, separate zoning ordinance text amendments to come later. Zota 24-7 was the recently reviewed zoning ordinance text amendment, once again primarily focusing on the urban zones, and once again left agricultural zones unable to have short-term rentals. That was adopted on 12-5. It changed several aspects, including occupancy limits, separation requirements, formatting and clarifying some of the standards that were involved and have been adopted. Some of those, due to the way they're worded, will carry over and apply to, if it passed, the short-term rentals in agricultural areas as well. But the consideration that you have before you is really the result of a separate process. So essentially for the last year or so, the Rural Land Management Board has been kind of considering this text, considering what framework, if any, are short-term rentals appropriate in our rural service area. And so they generated a report, which was provided after the zoning committees. It is also in Granicus in front of you as well. That is the summary of the Rural Land Management Board's findings and the framework that they put forward. That was presented to the Urban County Council, and from that text, the Urban County Council forwarded on their language that staff reviewed. Just a reminder that with council-initiated text amendments, we have a much more expedited level review, so a 60-day timeline instead of a six-month timeline for an applicant-driven process. So this is very much an expedited review of the language that's corresponding. With respect to what the Rural Land Management Board put forward versus what council adopted, the real significant change and the real significant deviation is primarily the incorporation of unhosted short-term rentals, having a pathway forward within certain contexts under certain conditions in the agricultural zones. So that's really the main large distinction there. and from the council text, staff generated our own recommendation. Giving a very quick overview of the Urban County Council-initiated text, it allowed hosted and unhosted short-term rentals as conditional uses within the agricultural rules, A-N and A-B zones as well. Once again, setting occupancy limits to individuals per bedroom, that was then modified in the Zota 2407 for the urban zones. a maximum of one short-term rental for these properties. For the unhosted rentals, they had to be parcels that were less than 10 acres in size. In the AR zone, the minimum lot size now is 40 acres. The AB zone is 10, and the AN zone is larger as well. So these are really existing parcels that are non-conforming with respect to parcel size that were created before these changes took effect, and so really limits the scale and scope in which they could operate. Staff later on in the presentation has a map that shows kind of the spread and scope of where are these 10 or less acre parcels and how are they kind of situated throughout the county. Council also put in a 500-foot spacing requirement between those and other short-term rentals. Hosted, the council's initiated text allowed them much larger leeway. They would be allowed in all of the agricultural zones, still subject to a conditional use permit, but had a larger spacing requirement as a result. So these hosted short-term rentals would still have to go to the Board of Adjustment, but could be done on a parcel of any size. And so a larger spacing requirement to prevent those from proliferating or concentrating unduly was proposed as well. One of the things that was proposed by council was the ability to utilize farm employee dwelling units. These are structures that are typically found on larger farms where you have a dwelling unit for the use of workers or folks associated with the agricultural use. There does have to be an agricultural use on the property, but the council-initiated text provided a pathway forward for that, but wouldn't allow new farm employee dwelling units that are built later to be utilized for short-term rentals. And finally, it provided additional criteria in addition to the standard criteria for the Board of Adjustment to consider for both hosted and unhosted short-term rentals. So that includes a health department evaluation of the septic, a finding about the adverse impact it could potentially have on agricultural uses in the area, fire safety measures, parking considerations, and the consideration of the number of hosted short-term rentals within a mile. The staff alternative changes, and I'll provide a summary after the end, but essentially we're going kind of sheet by sheet with the document in front of you, basically detailing where staff deviated from the council-initiated text. So definitions, the only definition that was changed was the definition relating to the farm employee dwelling units. Once again, staff's position on this has been if they are appropriate and get appropriate review by the Board of Adjustment, then it really didn't matter when it was constructed as long as it was still meeting the agricultural purpose of the property. But the staff did not find that putting an adoption date stoppage there was appropriate. And then modifying that definition to indicate that in certain instances it may be used by other entities that aren't the farm employees themselves. Within the staff alternative language, we have the chart, which essentially breaks down where these various uses are permitted. So this is the updated chart with the new kind of format that was adopted under the last zoning ordinance text amendment, but essentially sets up a very similar framework for evaluating these. You'll notice that staff has separated out the A-N and the A-B zones kind of to having their own particular categories. This is because the unhosted here, which is allowed if you have a maximum property size of 10 acres, is not possible in the A-N and A-B zones as they were created kind of subsequent to that 40-acre rule. So any rezonings to those particular zones would have had to meet that minimum acreage size. So they don't have nonconformities in the same way that there are many, many parcels in the AR that are preexisting, have been created over time, and would be eligible to host as a conditional use. So as it is not possible to meet those requirements, they have now been prohibited. But keeping that same kind of framework as you can have either a hosted as a one dwelling unit or one farm employee dwelling unit, but still having to have the primary residence still be on site. So just not having an unhosted path forward. There was some discussion at the committee levels how we handle properties that may be subject to conservation easements, specifically the role that PDR has played. And so staff is proposing the incorporation of a note that would apply to the AR, AN, and AB zone that just notes that these properties may be subject to other regulations and restrictions that impact the ability to operate short-term rental uses. So that kind of puts the operators or the folks that are looking to incorporate these uses that these conflicts may arise. It's currently staff in law's position that the federal regulations that pertain to short-term rentals, while they may change in the future, currently prohibit that commercial activity. So that is the interpretation that staff has and will kind of administer moving forward, not including language as previously proposed that explicitly barred them, allows us to be a little bit more adaptable in the event that federal guidance or the federal administration of those types of program changes in the future. So it essentially puts them on notice there, but doesn't preclude us from being adaptable in the future. One of the changes that staff made as well were a couple of changes aimed at kind of keeping this in line with the regulations we just adopted. So staff is not in favor of recommending a separate or different occupancy limit. We think that those should be subject to the same restrictions that we put in the urban zones. Once again, all of this is approved and reviewed by the Board of Adjustment as a conditional use. We are looking kind of very specifically at the facts of each particular case. So having some kind of catch-all differences there, staff did not support that. Hitting on that again, once again, just keeping those in line, Keeping the existing language, which is two individuals per bedroom plus two or maximum of ten, whichever is greater, that language was consistent and we thought it was more appropriate there. Once again, with changes regarding farm employee dwelling units, we didn't think that having that firm cap of not allowing any future constructed ones to be used for that purpose, if they could meet all the requirements and meet all of the conditions set forth by the Board of Adjustments, staff did not think that that was appropriate at this time. For the short-term rental regulations. So for the first, we were clarifying and kind of creating some consistency. A couple of points in the text, it talks about short-term rentals in the rural service area. However, there can be existing urban zones in there. So we were clarifying that this is talking about the AR, AB, and AN zones. We largely kept the same framework that was present in the initial drafts that were sent over from the Rural Land Management Board and kind of subsequently proposed by the Urban County Council. We tweaked a little bit of the language just for clarity, especially as it relates to kind of fire safety measures. And when we're thinking about the adverse impact in that second bullet there, limiting that not just to agricultural uses but any adjoining uses. So once again, kind of taking a holistic look of letting the board consider what the impact of this property really would be. And then once again, we eliminated some language that was duplicative and will be mentioned later on, but really giving them the ability to consider all of the short-term rentals within one mile, not just hosted. So keeping largely that same framework that was forwarded on, cleaning up some of the language, but most of the core provisions were the same. We eliminated some of the language that kind of specified nonconformities and the like. That was present in the earlier drafts, and so that would be duplicative. So there's existing language that was adopted as part of the 2407 that would apply there. Once again, in the second bullet point there, that language is duplicated elsewhere in the text, And so the separation requirements are larger than 500 feet for conditional uses, and so that was no longer necessary. One of the things we changed as well was the changing of an accessory use in the AR zone, the keeping of roomers and borders. We wanted to go ahead and eliminate that as the short-term rental pathway essentially handles those rentals that are not long-term rentals. So making sure that there wasn't a route to circumvent these requirements and have short-term rentals that were essentially using the accessory use instead of receiving the full review through the Board of Adjustment. The council incorporated language that clarified the farm stays. So these are a part of bed and breakfast facilities. These are separate from short-term rentals and are not considered as such. So they have their own requirements to be met, but are kind of kept separate from short-term rentals as they're providing services, and it's more than just the rental of the dwelling unit. Farm stays also have different considerations as far as KRS is concerned as well. So that was keeping us in line with the state's guidance on that and then separating short-term rentals out. Once again, short-term rentals having an unhosted limit of 10 acres, and then hosted short-term rentals having a separation distance of at least one mile. Those were put in at the request of council. Staff is keeping those there and just deleting elsewhere in the ordinance where that language is duplicative. So those requirements are still being fulfilled here. Once again, the thought process behind the 10 acres being that those parcels are a little closer to residential in nature, and so that an unhosted may be more appropriate there where these larger farms where you're kind of greater than 10 acres, a hosted is the more appropriate along with the adequate spacing between those. So once again, just summarizing kind of where the staff alternative changes were made, we changed the farm employee dwelling units to allow for hosted short-term rentals, eliminated differing occupancy limits relative to the urbanized rentals. There was actually a greater separation requirement that was just instilled with the latest Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment, and so that would supersede the 500 foot that was originally proposed. And we eliminated instances where they would never be able to meet the requirements that the zoning ordinance was going to set up. And so the AB and the AN would not have the ability to even request an unhosted short-term rental because they can't meet that requirement. adding the note that clarifies some of the, or kind of puts the applicants on notice about the PDR program, as well as clarification and consistency edits. As I mentioned earlier in the PowerPoint presentation, this is a map of Fayette County with the urban service area, kind of in this tannish color in the center. These specks and dots that you see, both red and green, peppered throughout, are parcels that would meet the 10 acres or less in size. So these are parcels that would be allowed to request an unhosted short-term rental. Notice they do kind of clump up in several different places, but as a whole, the vast majority of the land within the rural service area are parcels that are greater than 10 acres in size, and so they would only be able to request with a conditional use permit a hosted short-term rental where the primary resident is present on the site. So with all of that, staff is recommending approval of the staff alternative text. We find that it will allow short-term rental uses in the agricultural zones, but also including safeguards against overconcentration and clustering. And it will provide some enforceable limitations in order to prevent any adverse impact on the health, safety, and welfare of the local community. And then this really gives the existing property owners that are in these areas a way to utilize their property in a greater manner while also safeguarding some of the considerations with rural land. So overall, staff is recommending approval of the staff alternative text. I know the text hits a lot of different aspects, a lot of different provisions. So if there's any questions, feel free to ask any of staff. I just need clarification. The text says that no new farm employee dwelling units can be constructed to create a short-term rental. In terms of the existing farms, are they permitted to build a new either attached or unattached ADU unit under this? So ADUs are not permitted in the AARs, in those agricultural zones. So a farm employee dwelling unit is a separate listed use that has that kind of specific. So we don't have a pathway currently for an accessory dwelling unit, just standard in the same way we do in the urban zones. Yeah. Mr. Penn. Mr. Crum, I've got several questions, but I want to ask them, and not all in one fell swoop. The thing that you just said about houses being built on the farms for employees, that is so different from farm to farm that that's on a case-by-case basis. I mean, you know, to say people are going to build a house for STR, it would take them an awful long time to pay for that house rented out short term. So that house would be there because of a need on the farm. The other thing about that is if it's a general agricultural farm, they're more than likely using H2A or H2B people. And they have their own set of rules, their own set of regulations, and they have to be able to bring those people in and pass all that muster. So that's not going to be a problem there. And for the H2Bs is mainly racetrack stable employees type thing. I say all that to go to my second point. And my second point is that there are all kinds of easements in Fayette County. Not just PDR easements, but there's a lot of different easements from PACE easements to just keep naming them. I understand why we did what we did. What I want us to all understand is that it will not be long before this has to be amended. And the reason for it is it's called agricultural tourism. That is a nationwide drive that's coming. And when you live in an area like we live where you have the bourbon trail, you have the equine, you have horse country, you have all of that. The experiential level of people wanting to get on a farm to have that experience. We're satisfied now by just letting them buy a ticket and come on for an hour. But that's going to multiply and the need and the want, and that's going to be extremely hard to regulate. But all that thing needs to happen. We need to continue to work with that. I'm not opposed to what we've done here today, but do want to strictly say that we cannot have three piano keys and all three of them have STRs. You don't want to create a situation where a fraternity goes in and rents three houses and moves the whole fraternity out there for a weekend. That's just not good for anything or anybody. So that thousand that mile radius has to stay and I say this to you because when you go back before the council with this thing, that's very important. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Penn. What fraternity was you a part of? Sound like y'all partied a lot. It was? I said, what fraternity you were a part of? Sound like y'all did a lot of partying out there. Listen, I was never a party animal, but don't you tell me fraternities don't like to party. I won't ask you what your party were like. Mr. Owens? Mr. Chair, I do have three or four items, clarifications, possible tweaks, whatever you want to call it, but I'd kind of like to hear from anybody else. One stop first. Okay. We've got a couple. All right. Mr. Davis? This is just a, I don't know, maybe this is a cleanup item, but on page, what page am I on? three under number in the red text one two three four the board must find that adequate parking is available on site and that there are or will be lighted entrances that are easily visible from the roadway so my question is which entrance or is it both the farm entrance and the property of the structure entrance and which roadway is it the road that the property is on or is it the maybe an internal farm road? Which entrance and which road are we referring to? Or are we referring to all of them? And in that case, I think we just need to clarify. Yeah, I think the intent behind that language was really sort of the external. So you're coming down a road you're not necessarily familiar with. So I think that was mainly oriented towards sort of that external. But we can, I think, tweak that language to kind of specify that if there's, because I understand, you know, if you've a larger farm that can be multiple roads and yeah that very easily could be a issue on that as well thank you dan and when you say external you mean the property entrance like from public streets yeah okay yeah i mean i i think that if you're gonna have an entrance to a building a structure i think it's reasonable that it would be lit just with a porch light or something thank you you i mean i don't mind if they just drive around the country all night and just personally just i i wasn't going to say anything because the way this is written there's not going to be that many of them right now but i mean we just throw lights up everywhere and uh i mean we just did this whole like night sky light ordinance and uh i mean my this isn't something i necessarily think we have to do but since this has to go before the board of adjustments the way that these are conditional uses i might ask would it make sense just to say like an entrance or plan like an entrance plan as part of the package submitted to the board of adjustments or something because they're going to be reviewing that anyway. Thank you. Mr. Wilson? This is just for clarification on page one under general provisions and definitions. It says what a short-term rental is, is anything a tendency of less than 30 consecutive days in duration. So if a person got to 29 days and left for a couple days, could they come back and start all over? I guess, yeah. How long could they do that? I mean, in other words, if they did that rotation, they could continue. Well, I didn't know whether there was a spirit of the law saying that there ought to be a limitation on how much you wanted to push that issue. So, but they could do that, right? Yeah, there's not a limit to that, no. No limit. Okay. You don't think there ought to be one of any kind? Like three times or two times or? Okay. How are you going to police that? Well, I'm going to call the fraternities up. I don't want you to add nothing. Can I respond to that? Yes, sir. Mr. Penn. Mr. Wilson, I think you need to understand that the only reason for going through this whole exercise, whether it's inside the urban service boundary or outside the service boundary, is to try to make people be able to have the same obligation that hotels and motels have. And that's a collection of the tax on the room. To think that this just started, it's been going on for years. And it's just gotten to the point to where ag tourism is going to exacerbate it. Exacerate it, whatever the word is. So if somebody wants to pay that rate and wants to sign up again, do you think a hotel would turn them down? If they already had a reservation for that occupancy, they would say, no, I'm sorry, because someone else could come in. It's Keeneland time, and they would pay twice as much. I understand what you're saying, though. What I'm saying is the purpose is to get this in the revenue department's hands and where they are and how they're using them. So not only can we collect the tax, but we can regulate how they're using them. I understand the spirit, and I'd just like to know what fraternity you belong to. Well, I did belong to one. I still do. Mr. Owens, are you ready? Okay. All right. Anybody? Yeah, yeah. No, you were asking questions, so I want to make sure. I just want to make sure. Yeah, I'm going to get to the audience. All right. Okay, so, Mr. Crumb, I think we'll finish with you. Promise? No. No. If you're here to speak on this application, please step up to the podium. Good evening. My name is Margaret Graves. I serve on the Rural Land Management Board, and I was asked to chair the committee that reviewed this issue. As you know, we were requested by the Council to look at STRs in the rural service area and make a series of recommendations to the Council, which we did. After extensive research and understanding what other communities have done and what the issues are, most of our recommendations were adopted by the Council, but not all. So I just wanted to highlight those differences and explain the Rural Land Management Board's thinking on those particular issues. The first, most, probably the most important issue from our perspective is that the Council would now allow unhosted STRs on parcels that are 10 acres or less in size. We seem to have a conflict of maps. We've provided you with a map that shows the number of parcels that would potentially qualify for unhosted STRs within the rural service area. quite different from the map that you were just shown, and I'm not sure why there's a discrepancy, but we're talking about a significant number of parcels that would be eligible to have unhosted STRs in the rural service area as proposed by council. The concern of the Rural Land Management Board was that for unhosted STRs, you're potentially having people come and stay in the rural service area who have no prior experience in agriculture or familiarity with farming operations, horses, cattle, etc. And when we were working on the Rural Land Management Plan in the 1990s, there was a lot of concern about how kids and dogs don't mix well with horses and cattle and farming operations. So from our perspective, the committee was made up of people who were very pro-SDR, including Mary Quinn Raymer, and then people who did not want any SDRs in the rural area. So the committee's recommendations were a compromise that would allow hosted STRs as a way to address agritourism and giving people an opportunity to appreciate the rural area. But we felt like unhosted STRs were potentially a danger to the rural service area, so we recommended none of those. So the concern that we have as a board with the proposal from the council is that it opens the barn door, so to speak, to an enormous number of potential unhosted STRs in the rural service area. You're talking about on the map that we've provided everything within the first three categories and not all of those that are in the sort of peachy color. And just to give you an idea of the number of parcels that we're talking about so you can have a sense of the scope of the potential for this. So if you look at, I'm sorry, I hope we'll be given more time given our role in this. If you look at the parcels that are 10 acre tracks, there are 974 of those parcels. If you look at the parcels that are, there are, let's see, there are 2,100 parcels that are 1 to 9.99 acres that would be eligible for unhosted STRs and additional approximately 1,000 10 acre tracks. So now you're talking about 3,100 tracks that potentially could have unhosted SDRs. We think that's too many to start with, and we were suggesting that that change be made. Then also with respect to the time, the date limitation on farm employee dwelling units, The reason that we inserted a date is because we did not want to encourage the construction of additional residences on farms that would not be used for farm employees. So we tried to limit, we tried to give farm owners the flexibility of converting existing farm employee dwelling units, but not open the avenue for them to construct new farm employee dwelling units with the intent of flipping them into STRs. So again, we're trying to strike a compromise between allowing STRs but not opening the barn door to too many STRs. I think those are the primary differences. Again, we thought that the number of occupants in an SCR should be limited to two to a bedroom and no more. I think one thing that's important to remember is that residences in the rural service area are on septic systems. So there needs to be a limit to those, and that's one of the requirements that they have to provide to the Board of Adjustment. And further with respect to the Rural Land Management Board's participation in this issue going forward, if you look at the PDR ordinance, the PDR ordinance gives the Rural Land Management Board the responsibility to be involved in land management issues in the rural service area. We think we need to have an ongoing role with respect to STRs in the rural service area because of their potential impact on our agricultural activities. activities. So I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any. Yes, Mr. Penn. Mark, if we, let's say I take your number 900, I don't accept the 3000 at all, but the point is that if you put them a mile apart, how much would you eliminate? I don't know the answer to that question. It'd have to be quite a bit. Yeah, it would, and the one-mile limitation is consistent with what the rules are related to bed and breakfasts. And 500 feet in the rural area doesn't get you to the farm gate. So we think that that's really, frankly, meaningless in this context. You're exactly right. The spacing would be 600 feet, just like all the other unhosted short-term rentals. But 600 feet in the rural service area is very different. That's what the council gave us was 500 for unhosted. And then, and then, I understand. I'm just telling you, even though it doesn't say 600 in that particular section, it's in article three, that would be six, the spacing for unhosted would be 600, it would be across the board, doesn't matter what zone you're in. So again, the Rural Land Management Board's recommendation was a one mile limitation. For hosted. Well, our recommendation was no unhosted and all hosted STRs, the limit would be one within one mile radius. We think that needs to be consistent within the rural service area, whether it's hosted or whether it's unhosted. That's consistent with the bed and breakfast restriction in the rural service area. Again, we're trying to allow the use, but limit it and manage it so that we don't kill the golden goose. I want you to keep in mind that there's actual neighborhoods out there in the AR zone that are lots of lots that are less than 10 acres all grouped together. And so if you get one in Westmoreland, one in Greenbrier. Most of those are subject to HOAs which don't allow SDRs, period. That's not part of our consideration at the Board of Adjustment. Well, but it's the reality of the situation. I mean, we looked into that issue because there are rural residential neighborhoods, but they are subject to homeowners associations which prohibit SDRs. So your example is correct, but it's legally insignificant because they're not allowed. Okay. Thank you. Do we have any more questions? Thank you, Ms. Grace. Yes, ma'am. Hello, thank you for having me. I'm Joan Garibaldi and I am the dreaded STR owner host. We purchased the property way beyond our stretch of what we ever dreamed we would have in 2022. We're delighted that it actually had two homes. was in a serious state of disrepair, but we decided to make that a farm worker home, put a lot of money into restoring it. The farm worker situation was not good for us. The house is only 50 yards from our own home, so the privacy was not good for either party. In March 2023, I posted our guest house on Airbnb, which allowed me to have an office in the home, use it for storage, and also be able to pay the utilities, pay the, you know, just to keep it up and running. We're not talking about a lot of money. However, interesting that you should mention the occupancy tax. because I brought in last year all of $16,455, which pretty much with repairs covers maintaining the building. $2,758 was remitted in occupancy taxes to Fayette County. So when I look at my Airbnb statement, I say taxes are paid, and I'm in good standing with the county. October this year, I got a cease and desist letter, and I quickly got on the phone to try to remedy the situation. I did not realize that I was supposed to register. I spoke with zoning. They sent me a letter. Department of Revenue sent me a letter, so clearly they now know how to contact me. Rural Land Management, Planning, Kathy Plowman, Tracy Wade, right Tracy? And the Board of Adjustment, everyone had a different answer for me. Many of them said, you have no path forward. One said, you are breaking the law. You are pretty much like going to jail. It very much scared me. Because zoning said if I had less than two people, If I was only renting to two people, that I was legal. So very, very mixed messages. But at the end of the day, I've paid my taxes, and I've made a little bit of money. But now I'm facing staying unlisted through at least spring, which will significantly impact my income and your tax revenue. So I'm here to ask that I know this and I almost wonder if this is the place for me to be doing this That for those of us that have been operating and are within these rules that there be a portal opened so that we can register and Move forward with our business and continue to generate the occupancy tax that we have been for for the county That's eight and a half percent tax. We've been generating. I'm not, and I could go on. Can I have a few more seconds? Just because the piano key effect, I forgot what I was going to say about that, but basically I don't know how many of you have been involved in Airbnb, but you won't get like three rentals next to each other and people trashing the house because they have to get reviewed and they will never rent another house through a short-term rental again. Like the people that have used my home are so respectful of their surroundings. We did a short-term rental in Ocala where we couldn't sell the farm. Far better. The repairs I'd have to do after a long-term rental went on and on and on. Short-term rental people that come in I can use the house for when I need it. I'm just asking to streamline the process for me to continue my little business. Thank you. Yeah, I'm in a very similar situation as her, and I had actually emailed and called. Is that our name? Oh, the what? Carmen Von Unrug. So I had done a similar thing. I had emailed months and months ago because of the little area in KRS that allows you to have a maximum of two boarders as long as you, I mean, provide a meal every day, which is something that I have done, and you don't have to register for any STR nonsense, which is something that was very recently included. And by that, it was approved December 5th. Whereas I had been, I received multiple notices too, and was redirected many different places, was given multiple answers, and also was directed to the legal department where the only person I could speak to was on vacation until December 7th, two days after this was approved apparently. I left multiple messages, sent multiple emails, and I have the whole emails, I mean, I have them listed. I can send them to all of you so you can see that this was very duplicitous and not at all something that I would expect community members to do to each other, especially in such a cash cow and golden goose that would be the AG zones or AR zones, I should say, which, again, we want to promote business, not business, but we want to promote agritourism. We We want to promote people coming into this region, appreciating what we have, and again, putting more tax dollars into Kentucky and Lexington in particular. We want that. By punishing farm owners, especially those who are not as rich or do not have horses that are bringing in lots and lots of money or Keeneland, I think it is something that is forcing and very negative to farmers like my neighbors who work for every cent that they make. And if they have a property, a small house that could be used as a boarding house that they use to just pay for utilities, I don't see why you are then making this so difficult for them. I mean, I do, because legally I've read through KRS. I've sent multiple emails to these councils and have been given multiple different answers. I was given an approval. I was told, you do not need to apply for a ZCP. And then November 17th, when I have, again, emails that go and prove this, I was told, oh, no, this has to be treated as a short-term rental, which it's not, because, again, at that point in time, this was not approved or in law. That was December 5th. So I was given the runaround and legally I was totally fine. I had received, you know, again, an email with the council that it is absolutely fine. I do not need a ZCP. I am great. I'm good to go. I can keep running my bed and not bed and breakfast but boarding situation. Which then to be given the runaround again with the legal department being out of the country and unavailable to be contacted via telephone until December 7th, again, a whole two days after this was passed. It's, you know, it's interesting. It is upsetting and it is, again, duplicitous. And it makes me lose faith in something that I think the county as a whole should have good faith in. It shows you do not have the best interest of your community at hand. I'm talking to the council as a whole. Not this council who are people that are, you know, here. We don't address them, you can address us. We're the ones that don't get paid, so you can tell them. No, exactly. I'm communicating with you all because you, again, are here representing everyone. Thank you. Is there anyone else that might speak? Yes, sir. Good afternoon. My name is Gil Dunn. I'm a long-time resident of Lexington, Kentucky. I live just about a half a mile from here. I also own a house out by the Kentucky Horse Park. Frank, you're absolutely correct. Agri-tourism, bourbon tourism, whatever you want to call it, is a great source of interest and profitability for the county and the city. And as Deep Throat said, follow the money. And you are correct. Getting tax revenue for the city of Lexington for the county is a, in my judgment, a primary motivating exercise or primary motivation for the exercise we're going through here. I've had both short-term and long-term rental at my property. I'll say a couple of things. As the lady said, it's highly self-regulating by reviews online of the renters as well as the landlords. Good actors will do the right thing, bad actors will do the wrong thing, bad actors will exit the business. It's bad business to be a bad actor in the short-term rental business. One item that constantly confuses me is the difference between short-term rental and a long-term rental if it's seven days, 14 days, or 30 days. That seems so arbitrary to me. Who came up with 30 days is a long-term rental and 28 days is a short-term rental? That just doesn't make sense to me. With that thought, I was like, where are you coming up with this? It doesn't seem, not only are the ground rules and the rules that we're supposed to act by seem arbitrary, but that one item of anything less than 30 days is a short term. more than 30 days is not a short term. And I think we, as operators of short term rentals, we'd like some either explanation or some consistency, or just some under, we'd like you to understand what we're trying to do, which is to provide a place for agricultural tourism that would benefit the city of the County of Lexington, Fayette County and the City of Lexington without putting all the weight of the county government on our shoulders to show why we should be able to do what we'd like to do that has a positive impact on not only us, the county, but the people that come to visit Lexington. You put all the burden on us and it just doesn't seem fair. That's it, thank you. Thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else? Okay. Staff, do you want to say anything? So, going back, I know there was some discussion earlier on, I guess, the kind of the extent based on some of the information submitted by the Rural Land Management Board versus what's being shown on our map. The data you're looking forward here is mapped, is accurate as far as we know as of today. When this was copied, yes. Yeah, so as of five days ago, this is what was provided by GIS that specifically lists out parcels that are 10 acres or less in size. The documents you saw from the Rural Land Management Board, it includes kind of a larger, different band, so showing the 10 to 20 acres. So really staff's graphic here is speaking more towards specifically that 10-acre threshold that we're looking at for hosted versus unhosted. I know there were some comments made relative to other private agreements, private homeowners associations, things that the government is not party to, much in the same way with our urban short-term rental regulations. We do not regulate to that. We can't regulate to that. So we have to assume that any of these parcels could operate as such. So that 10-acre threshold is kind of shown in the extent that you see here that was provided by your GIS staff. and then to I guess any of the other points the 30 day requirement is not something that is being newly introduced under this ordinance it's the existing framework on the books as is so really we're looking at the agricultural provisions and so we really should keep the conversation centered on that. Thank you. Thank you sir. Mr. Pia. Daniel while you're up there You know, part of what we're doing is creating some rules and regulations that the Board of Adjustment can use in order to make the determination of how short-term rental ought to operate. This whole thing is going to boil down to where the rubber meets the road at the Board of Adjustment. And their job is going to be able to decide where STR can be and can't be in the rural area, especially if you have a thousand foot. Somebody's got to decide whether it meets the septic tank criteria or not. They've got to come up with something for that that assures that is there and works in the septal for ten more people in a house. All these things we're going through right now, it's no different than in 1965 when we had to borrow everybody off of every horse farm because barns were burning. And we started letting them back on through horse country and a lot of different things to let people back behind the gates. There's no difference here that people want to spend time behind the gates in our community. The problem is you just can't let anybody do whatever they want to do and not have any regulations with it. So when this is adopted, the Board of Adjustment will make the decision of where those things can be. And so the things we're talking about right now are going to help the council adopt something that the Board of Adjustment can back up against. And I have a lot of mixed feelings for this, but I want to get on the record as saying that it won't be long before the federal government will ease their restrictions. And the PDR board will have to be the arbitrator of whether those deed restrictions, easements, if you will, will be allowed or not allowed because they're individually tailored to whichever, whatever time it actually had it the ones we did when we first started are different than the ones we did after the feds got involved different from the ones we're doing now they're not all the same and i think bith will attest to that so i want that to be on the record but i also want if you're going to have permission to do a pdr easement i think that the board that the rural land management board should be able to make the decision before it goes to the board of adjustment and i'm putting that on the record i'm not asking to put it in the in the uh in what's going back to the council but i want it to be there because we need to understand that's coming thank you mr allens thank you a couple of couple of questions daniel first um There's statements here as far as health department, septic tank, which is understandable. There's a statement here that the board must find that adequate fire safety measures are in the unit. If memory serves me correct, each conditional use is subject to inspections on an annual basis? Yes. And is that going to be part of the criteria? Will they have to inspect to make sure there are fire safety measures in there, i.e. fire extinguishers? Do you want to take that? Well, so currently the Division of Revenue requires those measures to be in all of the short-term rentals. So they have to have fire extinguishers. They have to have exit signs. Those things are required for any short-term rental related to the license. They do not have people go and inspect each unit. They ask for an affidavit from the owner. But if a Board of Adjustment case approves it and that is a requirement, then our zoning enforcement staff will go inspect and they will be looking for that condition to be met. And if they have to ask to enter the unit, then they will. Okay. Well, and that's what I'm asking. I've seen many renditions of this and the language keeps changing and it gets better. But earlier it was a little iffy as to what was actually going to have to occur. I'll put it that way. As far as the occupancy, what is the occupancy for hosted and or unhosted in the language right now? Yeah, yeah. So that threshold is a 10. So there's a calculation, so it is two per bedroom plus an additional two individuals or 10. And so that's the threshold that basically defines in other zones, like our residential zones. That threshold is whether accessory or conditional use. Here it really isn't relevant as much because you're getting a conditional use whether you're having one person or you're having more than that. But it sort of sets the threshold of, okay, this is generally the number that's accepted. Well, and that's, as you said, I think that's what we did in the urban text as well. Yes, I would like to see that for hosted and unhosted. And if I'm not mistaken, the language was two plus two or ten, whichever is less, correct? Yes. Yes, so just as long as we're straight on that. STRs, one per property only, I've seen that, and that is still in language? Yes. Okay, all right. The only other thing I've got, and I would be very much in favor of, and can make a motion whenever anybody's ready, consistency once again i i would you know bed and breakfast says one mile hosted says one mile i'd like to see unhosted to say the same thing as far as one mile simply put i know there's various other things that come into play and but but i think consistency it's good and you had mentioned earlier to on one of your slides to eliminate clustering and so forth i mean i i think that's what's needed to eliminate clustering as far as 10 acre tracks are concerned i'm sorry that there's several 10 acre tracks or less in one general area but i think it protects the neighborhood by doing that so mr chair i'm good Good. Thank you, Daniel. Yes. With the erasure of the border definition, I don't think that's correct. I think that, and again, I know this happened, it was struck. but by definition there is a difference between a short-term rental, keeping of two or more or less borders, and also bed and breakfasts. I think that should still be applied because there is a difference. You can look it up on Merriam-Webster, I mean in the dictionary. So to strike that just seems, especially when it was already approved in the past, that doesn't sit right with me. it right with me. I don't think that's correct. I think there should be some sort of amendment or just to bring it back. Because again, you can't have more than two people. If it was already approved in the past, the septic system accounts for it and can sustain that. It is safe. It has been approved. That's all already established. And if it hasn't been, then it should be. But if it has been, I don't see why you're forcing all these people to have to go through the same process, plus pay the county for a fee for that on top of that. Again, when it was already in place, it was already approved. So to force people to then go and apply as a short-term rental, resubmit all of these documents, go to this trouble, It just seems like it's a little bit, I don't think that this is correct and I don't think that that should be something that you're forcing people to do. So I would highly recommend re-inclusion of the keeping of two or less borders for these properties because it's again, it's a different thing. It's completely different and that's why it existed there in the first place. Thank you. Sure. Thanks. Daniel, I asked about that. Can we have another discussion about it? About the rumors and borders? Yes, on page five. Keeping if not more than two rumors or borders by resident family as being an accessory use. So that's been in the ordinance for decades as a use. When we updated our residential zones, we removed it in the low density residential zones. So that happened about 15 years ago when we redefined family, but it remained in the ag zones. What we found recently was that there was sort of a loophole or a gap in the regulation. So the individuals in the audience that have received or been using the rumors and borders allowance for two people to stay or two rooms to be occupied, it's not really an issue until they advertise on Airbnb or VRBO or one of those other platforms. Because then our Granicus system catches it as an advertised short-term dwelling unit, and they are asked to get a license. And so revenue says you need a license, and when revenue says you need a license, they also say you need a zoning compliance permit. Well, our office doesn't issue zoning compliance permits for accessory uses, only principal or conditional uses. And so there's a bit of a gap there, because if we had to issue a zoning compliance permit for every accessory use, we're talking about a garage, a satellite dish. There's a long list of things that would be unreasonable for our office to kind of go down that rabbit hole. And so we didn't issue a zoning compliance permit, and I understand that's created some issues. And so the division or Department of Law suggested deleting rumors and borders as an option, and then everyone who's renting short-term to people, so again, that's less than 30 days, goes through the same process, whether you're advertising for two people or not advertising and just happen to have somebody find out about your apartment in the barn. But this way, everybody's following the same process with a conditional use and then a license from the Division of Revenue. Okay. I don't want to get too technical. It does strike me. It struck me at committee, and it did again tonight, that rumors and borders are not necessarily people who are staying in a short-term rental. I think they certainly can be two or three different types of things. And I just was concerned about unintended consequences of attempting to close a loophole over here, but are we taking something away that doesn't need to be taken away from an otherwise perfectly legitimate situation? Right. And I think that what was happening was they were advertising openly for, again, less than 30 days, and that triggers this new special license fee. And that's technically, pardon me, excuse me, and that is against our ordinance because if you're advertising for a stay of less than 30 days, you are operating as a short-term rental, and if you do not have a conditional use permit, you're breaking the ordinance. Yes. But it catches it when they start advertising. Right. So if that's the route they're trying to go, it will get flagged at some point. So you can weed out as much as you can of the loophole abusers. But otherwise... And those are the ones that have contacted our office, are the ones that have been, because they've been flagged by the Division of Revenue. Right. Because if I advertise by word of mouth, I let Mr. Penn know I have an apartment in the barn that's available, and it's never on VRBO or Airbnb, revenue is not going to know about it generally. But if you had an apartment that you rented for three months, that's a rumor and a border, right? Or if you had somebody stay with you to help for two weeks. Again, yeah, if it's less than 30 days, it's going to be defined as a short-term rental now. over 30 days, you're fine. There's no, it won't get flagged by revenue. And again, thank you for that clarification. But for example, on Airbnb, there is no, I mean, you could put a limit, but it's still going to be flagged because, for example, they book as long as they want. They can book over 30 days. They can book for a year. there is no limit. Therefore your system is still going to be flagging that. Therefore, you know, you're making a problem that's not a problem into a problem for you, for everyone. one. And it's just, yeah, I think maybe looking into the system that you're using to flag it, like the ticklers or whatever, because there is a distinct difference. And even in Airbnb.com, it encompasses more than just short-term rentals. But in your rental advertisement, are you saying a minimum of 30 days? No, it just lets you book for as long. Because you don't say there's a minimum of 30 days. But you can, but it's still going to come up. No, no, no. You have to require a minimum of 30 for it not to get flagged. It's still going to come up, though. It will come up, but Revenue will review it and say, oh, look, they're only requiring 30. So then you can't review the other boarding facilities with that same distinct eye? Because you just said you will, but before you said you didn't want to. And that's why you deleted that definition, that option. Well, thank you. No, of course. I agree with you. I'm completely in agreeance with you. It's just, no, well, you can amend it. We're going to bring this on back to us here. Yeah. Thank you so much. Ms. Wirth? I would just like to say one thing about the, I've stayed in some here, B&Bs, in a lot of different places, and I've enjoyed my stay. Thinking about this situation, when people get a bad review, that impacts the person who owns the property. This is about the people around the people who own the property. There's a difference. If the review is bad, but that information doesn't get to the horse farm owner next door, who doesn't own the property and there was something bad that happened or the cattle farmer or the in terms of going both ways people who are spraying insecticides and toxins there's all kinds of things happening out here they're not part of the regular airbnb experience and part of this has to do with context that's all i want to say about all right say one more thing sorry that said i feel like this is over regulation of what someone can do with their own property i have had terrible neighbors and the county does not regulate the gentleman next to me that had a million horses and a mud pit next to me or the people that are running a fake winery with children on four-wheelers till 4am like we're not negatively impacting my neighbors don't mind one bit what I'm doing no she's she's it is we're trying to do nice things for our neighborhood by not long-term renting to someone who is making a mess of the property and so I think that there's definitely discrepancy between how you're perceiving short-term rentals versus a long-term rental. I don't know what the regulations are in long-term rentals either. I know I've had very bad experiences with them, but I do feel like this gentleman said we are being overly targeted for trying to do good things for our community. And I know that doesn't really have anything to do with I don't know what you're voting on tonight, but you're taking on us. Well, thank you. We'll bring it back to the commission to close this part out. Yes. Mr. Owens? Yes, sir. The floor is open. You want a motion? Question first. Some of what we heard today, and I don't think we can put it in this. But I learned yesterday that as Mr. Baldy mentioned today that occupancy tax was being collected and sent to the city. That was news to me, I never heard that before. It's okay with me, but my concern is some folks out in the rural area have said, Well, we didn't know this was taking place. We didn't get any notice other than a cease and desist letter. It seems like if the city was collecting an occupancy tax, the city should have known where they were and have provided a letter to say, wait a second, you need to do this, as opposed just bluntly cease and desist. Does that make sense? It does make sense. Unfortunately, again, this is not a planning program where we keep track of that. It's revenue. So they'll have business licenses, but they won't categorize them by the type of business. And I'm not putting it on the planning staff. No, I know. But the city wasn't able to identify. But it just kind of seems like here the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. No, let me clarify that. because prior to the STR regulations, the city did enter into agreements with the platforms, and they were remitting the tourist taxes to the government. And the government didn't know where those were coming from. We just knew that we were getting revenue from the platforms. So that's how the city was collecting revenue without knowing where the locations were because that was the platforms were not going to reveal those in that capacity. That's something that, yeah, I hadn't heard and didn't know. So, yeah, that makes sense. It just seems like there should be an easier way to disseminate information and get it out there at times and so forth. Mr. Chair? Yes, sir. I will raise the language to start. I will move for approval. There's my, yeah, thank you. I'll move for approval of plan Zota 24-9 regulating short term rentals within the agricultural zone. With the staff's alternative language with a couple of changes. I really don't want to go page by page, so I'm going to trust that they cover what I'm going to offer up. Which would be one, I think Daniel said the occupancy was two per bedroom with an additional two, possible ten, whichever is less, okay? I think that might already be there. Secondly, I would like to, as with the bed and breakfast and the hosted short term rentals, I would like to include unhosted short term rentals to have the one mile limitation. As is stated on the other ones that I just mentioned, that would keep things very consistent and so forth. And as Ms. Wade said, conditional use inspections and so forth, I think covers the fire safety, parking, and health department needs and so forth. But that would be my motion to do that with those changes. Sorry, okay, can we get that up? Excuse me. Did anybody write it down? Okay. Okay, let me try this and see if I got what you said. You're wanting to adopt it, but with two changes. And the one is to the occupancy number, which currently. The occupancy number is just not correct in here. It was already adopted last week. As stated, it was adopted. Yeah, reading it, it's like, that's not what this is. We'll make sure that it's correct in here. So it's really one change. Did you say two per bedroom up to ten or whichever is less? Are you wanting the ten to be the? The language that we approved in urban was two plus two, possible of ten, or whichever is less. So that's what I'd still like to do. Yes, which puts an absolute cap of ten. Okay. No matter how many. You could have ten bedrooms and you're still at ten. Absolute cap. So if you have three bedrooms. Well, if you have two bedrooms, you've got two plus two, that's four plus two, that's six. That's where it's caps going to be. Yes. Maximum of 10. Yes, ma'am. So that's what you want. So that's already in here. It is. Yes. As long as it's already in there. So we don't need an amendment to that. No, we just have to correct our. And the second thing was you want the hosted ones. Hosted and. And unhosted to have the one mile radius. Yes, ma'am. And that isn't in here, right? Correct. It is for hosted but not for unhosted. Okay. Okay. So in doing that, yeah, did we have a second? Sorry, we can discuss in a minute. All right, we have a motion and a second by Ms. Worth. Do we have any discussion? Mr. Chair, would you hold that vote for just one second? Let me confer with the staff to make sure we've got this. That's why I wanted to get it written up, Mr. Duncan. I need to see it. You really don't take that home? Well, we got more business. Yeah, we do. Darn it. We got another one that says Dale Road Elementary School. Yeah, you think that would take long? Who knows? It's a stage, I'm afraid to say anything. They don't like to one mile on 10 acres because of Greenborough. I don't care. I'm sorry. We're trying to keep the cluster from happening. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we've got it. Thank you. Okay. Staff is good. All right. So we just want to clarify a couple things. On 3-13G, which is all the considerations by the Board of Adjustment, we have a one two three that was adopted and went into place today number four is all about the agricultural zones if we are limiting um any short-term rental in the ag zone to one mile radius we don't need to have consideration for um and then yeah number five at the bottom there where it says the board shall consider the number of short-term rentals within a one mile radius because it will be required. Okay. The one mile, so deleting that. Then under section L, where we see the 600 foot spacing, we would add except in ARABAN, where there'd be one mile radius. And then we'd adjust the language for the unhosted short term rentals to clarify that that one is also one mile. It doesn't say that now, but. Okay. Okay. Does that satisfy you? As I think I said right at the very beginning, I'm trusting you all to cover all these little minor details without us going through page by page tonight. I didn't want there to be any surprises. You're anarchists. You want the mile radius to be different in the ARABA end zones. We want it to be that, which it's not right now. So if we have to make all those changes to accomplish that, that's what you want. Okay. One mile for everybody. One mile for everybody. Yep. All right, so I'm on Granicus. Vote. Please. I'm kidding myself. Okay, that motion passes. I guess it's- Mr. Chair, can we make sure we've got that? I mean, they made me go back to this thing. And Mr. Owens, okay, unanimous, thank you. Graham left and Jonathan's gone, so that motion passes. Graham had to leave. Yes. So we got the public review, I'm passing it on to Zach, and I got to go to a band concert. It's too long. All right. Yes, see you. All right, Mr. Crum, ready? Yes, sir. All right, Mr. Crumb, ready? Yes, sir. And in the interest of time, I will be expeditious with my review. And thank you. And, Daniel, everyone who came tonight to speak, thank you very much. We do listen, and it does carry significant weight with us. Thank you for coming. Okay. All right. The last item on our agenda here is a discussion on the public facility review for a new elementary school on Greendale Road. Subject property is 1411 Greendale, and the proposal is to construct a 90,000-square-foot elementary school to serve the surrounding area. The subject property is this parcel shown here. It's approximately 10 acres in size. It is located out Greendale Road right before you pass over the railroad overpass. To the north, we have Spur Road and the industrial development here. And to the west is the Masterson Station neighborhood. Here we have the zoning of the property and the surrounding properties. Once again, solidly R3. This is an area that's been expected for some time to be residential development. It is worth knowing that the Sandersville Elementary is actually a couple streets to the west as well. So this is anticipating further residential growth in the area. And currently it joins residential uses with the exception of this AU parcel here. The Fayette County Public Schools actually owns all three parcels shown here. This parcel here, the parcel to the rear, and then this parcel as well. This parcel in the corner is not owned by Fayette County Public Schools. One of the things that we will be talking about with this request is connectivity. Here we have, sorry, come back. Currently, the properties owned by Fayette County Public Schools have four separate stub-ins to existing residential streets. This street down here actually stubs into the adjoining property. But the conversation that we'll have tonight really centers along Lucille Drive here. So here we have the plane for the request. This is essentially a two-story school with kind of a third-floor mezzanine. Parking and access is derived off of two separate points on Greendale. Greendale will be expanded slightly to accommodate the request, but essentially bus traffic and service traffic will be concentrated here, where the primary kind of pickup traffic as well as kind of day-to-day parking will be located there as well. They've got several playground areas specified as well as a geothermal well field that is also fenced in for recreational use as well. We also have the subject drive kind of curves around the property to connect the two access points, kind of shows a stub in the future. The Fayette County Public Schools have indicated there may be a middle school that's constructed out here in the future. However, those plans have not yet been provided. Up to the north, we have a pedestrian path that connects you to the roadway stub up here, but they are not showing a vehicular connection. One of the comments that staff generally has is we look at new development, we promote connectivity, we promote making those connections that have been in place or have been anticipated for 20 or so years now with this development. We have some elevations of the structure. This would be the view of it from the north and south, so its longest dimensions. The east is what would be seen generally from Greendale, and the west would be sort of the rear. Views of the subject property as they exist today. There's no structures. Greendale Road, the subject property, lacks sidewalk facilities. However, they are present for the development that's occurred kind of across the way and further down. We reviewed this under the place builder view of enhanced neighborhood with a low density non-residential land use. Generally speaking, this is meeting goals and objectives, talking about providing community facilities, providing these community meeting places, these facilities that are necessary for our county to function. Once again, kind of talking about establishing these anchors. There are a couple policies and criteria that staff will hit momentarily that still need to be addressed, but generally finding that they're meeting the majority of the criteria. However, there were a couple that still need to be addressed. The things that talk about connectivity and providing kind of accessible transportation networks were things that the staff didn't feel like this request was particularly meeting. While Fayette County Public Schools is a separate entity from the LFUCG, there are opportunities there for LFUCG to partner with Fayette County Public Schools to get some of that connectivity that we were really looking for, so that the site and the surrounding neighborhoods that have kind of had these sub-streets, the expectation that this development would be coming later and making their transportation system better were forthcoming. So the recommendations we have, we have three. The first is very similar to the last PFR that we had, making sure that we're kind of landscaping these appropriately, that these parking lots and areas have the amount of landscaping canopy coverage that is kind of called for. The second is sidewalk connectivity. Include those sidewalk facilities where they're not being provided along that frontage. And the third, that actually says recommendation two twice. The third recommendation is to coordinate with Fayette County Public Schools and to explore some opportunities for connecting and expanding those roadways. Because, like I said, those four stub streets into Fayette County Public School-owned land, and none of those may necessarily be built out. But overall, we found the request was an agreement with the comprehensive plan and that they should explore those three items. And I'd be happy to entertain any questions you have of staff. Thank you, Mr. Crum. Mr. Owens. I'm sorry. Daniel, I'm sorry. Could you go back and just ordinate me where on Greendale this is? Yeah. So we have, this is, so Green, actually it's probably easier to look at the non-zoning slide. Yep, so you're going Greendale, the subject property is on the left. This is where the railroad crosses over. And then Spur Road is at the very top of the screen here. that's the Eagle distributing site. Where are the radio towers? Directly to the south. You adjoin this parcel here. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have anything else for Daniel? If not... Yes, but yes, after we hear from that kind of public schools. Hi, my name is Billy Mottch. I'm with Element Design. I'm part of the design team for this project and I'm the representation for FCPS tonight. I will answer as many questions as I possibly can, but I can't say that I can make any promises on behalf of them. I will relay all of these concerns and recommendations back to them and we will try to accommodate what we can and what they will agree to. Thank you. Do we have any questions or comments? thanks for the green space you're welcome i would love to say it will stay green as green as it shows for a while but they they do plan to build another building which in addressing some of those connection points though like wiggington and to the south uh i forget the street um not lucille but the other one they will make some connections to some of those in the future but not with this first elementary school. We are planning to have a pedestrian connection to the south and to the north. I don't believe that was shown on the plan that you had up here, the one to the south anyway, toward, again, I can't remember, not Lucille, but the one adjacent to it. And then as they figure out where students are going to be coming from, they will probably add a connection over to Wigington, which is the one to the left. And that will just be dependent upon where they're pulling their school population from because they don't have that district yet. So I don't know if they're coming from Masterson, if they're coming from across the street. So some of those connections will be addressed, just not yet in this plan. And as far as the sidewalks along Greendale Road, we'll have to work with KYTC for those improvements to see where we can extend those to. Currently, yes, they are just in that sort of middle block in front of the school. We are expanding to either side of that and we aren't currently showing stubs but I can work with them to see if we have room. The right-of-way is a little limiting in adding some of that infrastructure on Greendale Road for those sidewalks. And there are sidewalks across the street. We do have a crosswalk to get students to both sides and we are providing the connection to Lucille to the north. Great It is a bit of a challenge there as far as getting the roadway connection through. And so that's part of why that connection hasn't happened. But also I know that there's some correspondence that has happened that I have not been a part of between FCPS and LFECG. So I don't know about all of that. All righty. Do we have any other questions or comments? If not, thank you very much. Thank you. is open for discussion or a motion on staff findings and whether or not this is in compliance with our comprehensive plan. Yes, Mr. Wilson. Mr. Chairman, I say that we approve the PFR 24-5 FCP Greendale Road Elementary School because it complies with our comprehensive plan, and we do so with the recommendations recommended by staff. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Penn. Second. Any discussion? Seeing none. All right. We'll put that to a vote. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. Mr. Duncan, I'm sure you want to go line by line through staff items, very diligently and carefully. I think the most important thing for you all to know, Mr. Chair, is that you have 27 days off before you have to come back to us. We'll see you again on January 9th. Just as a reminder, committees, everything is off one week in January because of the New Year's holidays, so committees are January 9th, and then we go from there. In the meantime, thank you all for sticking with us today. We wish you the merriest of Christmases and wonderful holiday season. Thank you, Jim. and without objection we're adjourned.