# Planning Commission Work Session - April 16, 2026 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Commission · April 16, 2026 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6747 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6747?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2026-04-16 - **Body**: Commission - **Last revised**: April 16, 2026 - **Length**: 16,860 words - **Speakers**: Chair, Clerk > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1, with speaker labels folded in from Granicus closed-captioning. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Planning Commission Work Session was held on April 16, 2026, at 1:30 p.m. in the Phoenix Building 3rd Floor Conference Room. The session covered four agenda items, all of which were informational in nature, including an introduction to the Winchester Road Corridor Study, an update on the Downtown Area Master Plan, a review of the Economic Development (ED) Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment, and an update on Planning Commission Motion Procedures. No votes were taken and no public comments were heard during the session. No presiding officer is recorded for this meeting. ## Attendance The following members were present at the Commission meeting on April 16, 2026: - Iris Dooling - Boyd O. Sewe - Daniel Crum - Tracy Jones No members were recorded as absent or late. ## Contested Items - **Economic Development Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment** — This item generated heated discussion among commissioners regarding the effectiveness of the Economic Development (ED) zone. The debate centered on whether site-specific text amendments to the ordinance were an appropriate approach, with participants raising concerns about the zone's track record on job creation and the prohibitively high cost of land within ED-designated areas. No specific outcome, vote tally, or named individuals were recorded in the available meeting data. ## Winchester Road Corridor Study Introduction [timestamp: 00:30] Iris Dooling presented an introduction to the Winchester Road Corridor Study at the April 16, 2026 Commission meeting. The presentation covered the project's goals, timeline, and the advisory groups that will be involved in guiding the study. The item was informational in nature, providing commissioners with an overview of the corridor study as it gets underway. No vote or formal action was taken as a result of the presentation. ## Downtown Area Master Plan Update [timestamp: 14:33] Boyd O. Sewe presented an update on the Downtown Area Master Plan during this agenda item. The presentation covered community engagement results and outlined next steps in the planning process. This item was informational in nature, and no vote or formal action was taken by the Commission as a result of the presentation. *Note: The available data for this agenda item is limited to a high-level summary. For full details on the community engagement findings, specific next steps discussed, and any Commissioner questions or concerns raised, viewers are encouraged to consult the meeting video beginning at timestamp 14:33 or review the full meeting materials.* ## Economic Development (ED) Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment [timestamp: 27:26] Daniel Crum led the discussion on proposed changes to the Economic Development (ED) zoning ordinance. The presentation focused on two primary areas of amendment: residential use flexibility and supportive uses within the ED zoning district. No vote or formal action was taken on this item. The discussion was informational in nature, intended to brief the Commission on the proposed text amendments under consideration. Further details regarding specific provisions, concerns raised by commissioners, or additional context about the scope of the amendments were not available in the provided materials. ## Update on Planning Commission Motion Procedures [timestamp: 1:32:20] Under Agenda Item IV, Tracy Jones provided the Commission with procedural guidance focused on the proper method for making motions during Planning Commission meetings. The presentation centered on ensuring that commissioners make clear, well-structured motions, with particular emphasis on two key components: - **Conditions:** Motions should explicitly state any conditions attached to an approval or action, so that the record clearly reflects what requirements apply to a given decision. - **Findings of fact:** Motions should also clearly incorporate the relevant findings of fact that support the Commission's decision, ensuring that the basis for each action is documented in the record. No vote was taken on this item, as it was informational in nature. The update served as guidance to help commissioners articulate their motions more precisely going forward, which supports the integrity of the Commission's decision-making record. --- ## Full transcript Good afternoon. Today is April 16, 2026, and this is the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government's Meeting of the Planning Commission in Work Session. Our first item on the agenda today is the Winchester Road Corridor Study Introduction. All right, can you hear me all right? Yes. Hi, everybody. My name is Iris Dooling. Thank you so much for the opportunity to address the work session. I am a senior planner with the Long-Range Planning Division of Planning. I'm in my eighth month here, so I'm excited to be here. I'm going to be the manager of the Winchester Road Corridor Study, and our team has been invited today to introduce ourselves to you and then also give you a high-level overview of what the corridor project looks like and everything you need to know at this point. So today, we're going to be covering introductions, project foundation, our goals and objectives. We'll talk about the consultants that we've selected to work with us on this project, our timeline, and advisory groups, and then at the end, we'll have some time for questions. So, I'm over here on the, well, you're right, again, I'm the project manager. I have a history of working in affordable housing. I came to LFUCG about eight months ago. I'm really excited to be here, and the rest of our team is here, too, and I'm going to let them introduce themselves. I'm going to start with Stuart, JT, Hal, and Chris. So, Stuart. Do you need a mic? Yeah. I don't really need a mic, but... Hi. Don't drop the mic. Yeah. I'm Stuart Currens. I'm with the Lexington Area MPO, or the Transportation Planning Section, and I'm going to be the project manager on the transportation side of all this, so good to be here. Okay. Yeah. Chris, I'm the director of the Lexington Area MPO, and I'm going to make sure that Stuart stays on task. Good luck. Hi, everyone. JT Holt. I'm the outreach manager for the project. I'm with the Outreach and Strategic Planning with the Division of Planning. Hi, everybody. Hal Bailey. All right. Excellent. So, that's who's working on our team, and I just wanted to give you just a brief overview of what gives us the right to do corridor studies, what's our foundation for this project. This might not be a surprise to you, but it's our comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan calls for us to do corridor studies in Theme D, Pillar 2, Placemaking. In Placemaking Policy 12, you'll see that we call for corridor land use and transportation studies, and so, if you're not familiar, a corridor study is a project that's going to analyze the relationship between transportation route and the surrounding land use. It's going to be looking for any deficiencies, any future needs we might have, and it'll result in a prioritized list of multimodal improvements. So, that's where we're going. You might remember this is going to be the third corridor study that we've already completed. The first two are in our comprehensive plan up here. The first one was Imagine Nicholasville Road. That was adopted into the comprehensive plan in May of 2021. That is in process with implementation. They are doing a feasibility study for establishing bus rapid transit. That's one of the big outcomes of that project. And the second corridor study, Imagine New Circle Road, was adopted into the comprehensive plan in June of 2023, and that's included in the Highway Safety Improvement Program. So, that's where we've been, and I want to tell you just a little bit about why we picked Winchester as our third project. As you imagine, we have a lot of corridors in and around Lexington, and why did we pick Winchester Road? So, first of all, in selecting Winchester Road, it has a lot of connections to completed and ongoing studies that we are doing. So, it connects the North New Circle corridor study, and it also connects to our downtown area master plan and the urban growth area master plan. So, it's related to a lot of different things. It's also, as we'll see, and you will probably remember, with the urban growth master plan area too, there's a lot of residential density that's coming into the corridor. That's another reason why we selected it. Winchester Road is not without its challenges and also hallmark points. So, some of the things we know it for, it's a large regional commuter route, it's a significant gateway into downtown, but it also has challenges in the terms of high traffic volume, and it's on Lexington's high injury network. Specifically, as we're looking into the future, I mentioned the residential density. So, we'll talk a little bit more about that in a future slide, but one of the things I wanted to highlight here was the goals and outcomes, so what we're trying to do with this corridor study. And so, these goals and outcomes are pretty much so the goals and outcomes we've had for each corridor study preceding this. So, they're all similar goals and outcomes, so I'll refresh your memory on them. We want to improve multimodal traffic safety and access and reduce the risk of any injuries. We want to make sure that future development is dense and mixed use. We want to improve connectivity. We want infill and catalytic site developments to be looked at. And we want to have a cohesive sense of place along the route. So, the next couple of slides are going to dive a little deeper each slide into looking at this section of the corridor that we've selected for our project. So, the project limits run from East 3rd Street or Midland Avenue all the way out to Bahama Road, and if you're not familiar, that's in that Greenbrier area. The corridor study covers a length of 5.8 miles, and it's also in a variety of different council districts. So, this relates to all of our at-large council members, but it also touches District 1, 3, 5, 6, and 12. And this is just a slide from the Urban Growth Master Plan, Area 2. What I want to show you here is just where Area 2 is. So, Area 2 is bounded on the west by I-75 and on the north by 64, Winchester Road to the south. You'll see Polo Club down here. So, this is our space for Area 2. And what I want to highlight here is a variety of different proposed development types. We range from low to high density and also a village and a town center. And that is all going to come up to an estimated increase in unit range of about 5,600 to 9,200 units. So, we're looking at this to be a significantly increased area of density. This is the corridor study map that we included in our RFP. There's a couple things to look at here. We've got our urban service area in red. The market analysis study area is going to be a quarter mile off the corridor. That's outlined in green on this map. And then in blue, you'll see the transportation analysis area, which is a half mile off the map. And then highlighted here in our yellow and orange, we have six-year plan items. So, that's the traffic plan. There are a variety of other plans that are touching Winchester Road. So, this is going to be an active study area. So, when we submitted our request for proposal, we broke the target corridor into five different segments. And you can see our segments here. So, our first segment is from Midland to Delaware, then Delaware to New Circle, New Circle to Sir Barton, Sir Barton to 75, and then 75 to Bahama. And so, we think that each of these segments has a unique character. And if you think about driving the corridor, and I actually really recommend that you do that with kind of these segments in mind, you'll be able to see some of the different things that show up in each of these segments, both transportation and land use. One thing to note on this slide is our annual average daily traffic. So, these AADT numbers. And you can see that right now, even before we have that increase in residential density out here, we're really looking at some pretty significant numbers. And even out here, as we get out to Greenbrier, we still have 15,000. And then we're looking at additional growth coming. So, that's why we've picked Winchester Road. And here's the consultant team that we've selected. We published our RFP on Halloween of last year, and it was open until the beginning of December. We received six applications. All were excellent. And we had a review team review all of them. And the team led by consulting firm WSP came out on top. A few things about this team. So, it includes WSP, MKSK, EHI, and development strategies. A few things that we really liked about that application, among many, but a few that I want to point out. WSP was the lead consultant for the Imagine Nicholasville Road. So, that first corridor study. And the project manager for our corridor study, Ann Warnick, was deputy project manager for that. And then she is also leading the feasibility study for Imagine Nicholasville Road with the BRT. So, we really liked this group. You might be familiar with them. They're also the group that's doing the downtown area master plan. So, this is kind of a brief overview, a high-level overview of our team. Basically, WSP is doing the transportation and land use side. MKSK is working on the catalyst site development. Stakeholder engagement. EHI is working with public engagement. And the market analysis is being done by our development strategies partner. So, wrapping things up here with an overview of our budget, funding, and timeline. Our project budget is $350,000. That's funded by the MPO and also a match from LFUCG. We're looking at a timeline of 12 months, not to exceed June 30th. And here's an overview of our detailed project timeline. So far, we have formed our project management team and our various advisory groups, both our steering group and our internal advisory group. We had an online kickoff meeting on March 23rd. And in April, we are looking for our website to go live. And then in May, we're going to be beginning an in-person stakeholder meeting. We're going to be doing our public surveys. We're going to have a corridor tour. And then you'll be hearing from us around – I'll be catching you up throughout the project, but there are specific times in September, October, and January this coming year that you'll be hearing especially from us. These are the steering committee and internal advisory groups that I mentioned. So first and foremost, the planning commission is the ultimate decision-maker on this work, as with all small area plans and corridor studies. That's your job. We also have our steering committee and the advisory group, which are made to help us have the best products to deliver to you. So you can see the members on the steering committee. And a giant thanks to Commissioners Davis and Michler for representing this body on our internal advisory group. You can see we've also selected county council members, Vice Mayor Dan Wu, Council Member James Brown, Tyler Morton, Lisa Higgins-Hord, and Hill Boone to round out that internal advisory group. And I've covered a lot of information. I think I just – ooh, I just did 15 minutes. Perfect. So I am the project manager for this. I'd like you to keep my name and contact information in mind if you have any questions or you need any additional information. I'm the person to come to. Let me pause here and see if there's any questions you have. Thank you very much. Sure. Do we have any questions at this point? No. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Dooley. Thank you. Okay. Our next item on the agenda today is the downtown area master plan update with Boyd. That's hard to follow. Good job, Iris. Okay. Thank you for being here this afternoon. Can you guys hear me? We good out there? I'll just yell. If you don't hear me, we'll talk after this. Thank you for being here. I'm here to present an update to the downtown master plan, if I can get this in the right direction. Hold on. Okay. We're in the right direction. So we are almost a year into the project. The consultant signed on to this project in May 16th of last year. So we've been making progress. I'm just here to update you on the last community engagement project we had, which was at the Gray Line Station. And we had two versions of this. We had the in-person attendance at Gray Line Station with about 150 people showing up. We had a lot of activities, a lot of participants, and also there was entertainment and all the good stuff over there. And then we also had an online survey, which had about 258 people take the survey. And of the 258 people, 90% of those people did not attend the Gray Line Station event. As you can see, 53% of those who attended that, who filled out the survey, work or live downtown. And 405 or 402 had 12% participation, and 405 or 408 had about 25%. At the end of this, I'll show you the breakdown. The survey was taken by people from all over Lexington, not just the downtown area, which was pretty impressive. That shows that the word has spread throughout the Fayette County that we are working on a downtown area master plan. So this is what we've had so far. The main things that people want to see in the downtown area is a growing downtown, a greener downtown, a multi-modal downtown, and a welcoming downtown. I'll stress on the welcoming downtown. This is not just welcoming to visitors or people who live outside the downtown area, but this is welcoming, especially to the unhoused population, which we have kind of overlooked in most of the projects that we do. But this time around, talking to the community, they really wanted us to do something about it. So we are looking for ways of supporting that community. Talking about a growing downtown. Adaptive reuse came out as the top priority for people. This will help with some of the anti-displacement policies that we are looking into. And then if you... Getting you straight. We'll be there. This was done... This resulted from people who participated in the Gray Line event. Then when you look at the online event, we had about 77% of those who filled out the survey saying they wanted to see more mixed use in the downtown area. So you can see it's almost the same as what was done in person versus what was done online. And then during the Gray Line event, we had people try to design what they would like to see downtown. So it was an interactive activity. We gave them these blocks you can see and told them to design a downtown the way they would like to see what downtown would look like. And as you can see, most of the concepts, almost 80%, had at least an acre of green space, which was pretty interesting. If you look at the other surveys we've done previously, a lot of people did not want big spaces like Garton Park, but when they were told to design a downtown area, you can see most of them want at least an acre of green space. Also another interesting thing was the mixed use building. About 60% of those who participated wanted to see mixed use developments in the downtown area. Office building came at almost the bottom with about 20%, which surprised us. We did not expect that, knowing that 53% of people who participated in this work downtown, they did not want to see more offices, which was kind of interesting on that. And then we looked for a greener downtown just to create more beautiful spaces. As I said, if you look at this, about 80% wanted more green space. But when you look at the greener downtown spaces, pocket parks was one of the things that people wanted to see the most of, not the big spaces. People wanted to see pocket parks, more street trees. Those are things that really showed up when looking at the numbers that we looked at. With this station, we had an activity where people were given $100, not real cash money, and they were told to spend it on various things, like street trees cost $10, all the way to a whole new event space, which cost $80. As you can see, the difference of people who participated in the new street trees, the numbers were way more than any. The closest thing was public arts, which came in second, almost as half, as many people wanted to see more street trees. And when we took this to the online survey, same thing happened. New street trees came out on top with about 65% of people wanting to see more street trees. And then when we looked at the multi-modal downtown, most people wanted to see a more walkable downtown compared to more vehicles. And if you look at the, we had an interactive station during that Gray Line station event. And you can see, I'm not sure if it shows here. There was about 20% of people did not even want to see vehicles on the streets. They wanted streets with no vehicles, just pedestrians and bicycles, which was pretty interesting. And then when we went to the online survey, same thing. The top three things were streetscape improvements, which included trees, multi-modal transportation, safer crosswalks, and traffic calming measures. Those were the top three when it came to online surveys. So mobility had the most feedback of all the events that we had. A lot of people were concerned about issues to do with mobility. So as I said, welcoming downtown was not just to welcome visitors, but it was a way to strengthen the support that we have for our unhoused population. And with that, you can see the top things people wanted to do was affordable housing, expanded mental health, and supportive services. Then people, as I say, online, 52% also wanted to see more supportive housing. And so, so far, these are the top three things we've had, and this is what is going to guide the downtown area master plan, transportation and mobility, affordable housing, and green space, trees, and parks. And then, as I mentioned earlier, the participation of people in the online survey, and when we put together the online survey and the in-person event at Grey Line Station, people from downtown were the most, and the top five was that downtown, Kenwick, Castlewood, Northside, South Hill. You might say Castlewood and Northside were closer to Grey Line, but online also you could see the difference. This was from all over Lexington. The age group was also very interesting. We had someone under 18 years old participate. The consultants said they were very surprised at the 18 to 34 age group being very active in this survey, and we need to put some more work into getting people above 75 into the survey, because that's part of the fastest growing population in Lexington, and we are all headed in that direction. So the next steps when it comes to this is we have our downtown destiny event on May 7th. It will be at the Phoenix Park. We'll have, again, we'll have interactive activities. We'll have food trucks, and you'll see what this one year of hard work has led to. So that would be one of the, it's our final public event before we start bringing documents to you to look at and approve. Then next week on Wednesday we have our project advisory committee meeting, and we hopefully by mid-June we should bring this back to you to see if we want to adopt it or we want to make changes to it, and then after it's adopted into the comp plan we will present it to council. Questions? Yes. Thank you, Boyd. Thank you, Boyd. What time is downtown destiny? Downtown destiny is on May 7th from 5.30 to 7.30. Once again, Thursday night live will be going on, so on your way to Thursday night live, stop by, talk to us, play some of the games, give your opinions, then go to Thursday night live, think about what you saw, then come back and talk to us again on your way home. Okay. Commissioner Nickel. Boyd, when you were, when we saw on a previous slide talking about our downtown homeless population, was that an organic response to the question of what we would like to, what the participants in the survey would like to see addressed downtown, or did you ask specifically a question about our downtown homeless community? I would say a little bit of both because what we did is, at every meeting we had at the beginning of the project, that's a topic that kept on coming up, and so we started taking a deeper dive into that and looking at that. And we've met with so many support groups, we've met with, we have actually met with the homeless population, and then when we have these events like the Gray Line Station, there was questionnaires where you had to choose from and you could also fill in answers the way you felt about it. Okay, so it sounds like it did come about organically. You all took a note, and you've been putting your effort to get the right stakeholders together to start addressing this. When you gave the surveys, on the survey, was downtown homeless population a write-in, or was it on the list of possible concerns and recommendations for our downtown development plan? There was a list of, these are the top three, these were the top three from the list. There was a whole list of stuff that people asked, and then these are the ones that kept coming up. So instead of focusing on everything that was on the list, we focused, we actually started off with eight different topics and we've narrowed it down to three, three still capture most of those eight. Okay, I was just, the reason I was asking this is to understand what the community's perception of how we're addressing the downtown homeless community. So it sounds like we've got a pretty good understanding of what the community would like to see, and you all are making an effort to reach out to all the stakeholders to figure out what can be done to provide the services that are needed. Thank you. Commissioner Gordon. I don't know that it was the intent of these activities, but did we make any progress on defining the boundaries for what constitutes downtown? Oh yes, we defined it. I should have shown you that. Yeah, it's defined, and since you last saw it, I think there's been two areas that have been added. One was after meeting with developers, and the other area, that's between Newton Pike and the cemetery, that rectangle, it's a rectangle, triangle. That triangle from 4th Street to Main Street, cemetery on one side, Newton Pike on one side. After meeting with developers, it's zoned industrial right now, and developers say that that's a developable land. And then the Davis Bottoms was also added, that was from council, council wanted to see that added to the downtown. Both were added to the downtown core. Okay. Do we have any additional questions? If not, thank you, Boyd. Thank you, everyone. See you on May 7th, 5.30. All right, our next item on the agenda today is the Economic Development Zoning Ordinance text amendment. Good afternoon, everyone. Daniel from Planning Staff. This is a little bit of an unusual, I guess, approach for some of the ways that we've handled text amendments in the past. So today, we are going to be going over sort of some of the background of the history on the ED zone within the expansion areas. The applicant that's sort of related to this overall proposal is here as well. You have in front of you the most recent staff alternative text. So the text in front of you is what staff recommended approval on, and we presented at the subdivision committee, but not ultimately the zoning committee that was indicated that the larger group, to have kind of a conversation at the same time about it. So the text in front of you reflects what staff was recommending approval of. The blue portions were the applicants' changes. The red reflects our additions. Largely, that framework was largely the same. So we'll kind of go through at the end of the presentation kind of what those implications are. But starting off as sort of a very brief primer, the ED zone was established as a part of that 1996 expansion that created the EAR zones, the community center zones. The ED zone was really intended to be sort of the workhorse of that expansion. This is where those jobs-producing, office-uses, light industrial-type users were going to locate to provide jobs that was going to kind of offset that additional residential development. So the stated intent of that zone is to provide land within the expansion areas for employment opportunities that are compatible with the character of the development, and then once again guided by that 96 expansion area master plan. That initial staff did not include any residential capacity or supportive uses, and that's really been sort of the conversation in the time since 1996 that this site is really kind of focused on. So just as a kind of reminder of where these uses are generally located, the ED, and these two were taken directly from the expansion area master plan, but we have this area that is currently the Baptist and the Cowgill developments out Winchester Road. We also have outside out Newtown, which is the Dennis Anderson, Anderson Communities development. Important to note that the Anderson Communities development does directly adjoin some of our more agricultural areas, and so one of the themes throughout the whole life cycle of the ED zone has not just been what is the correct way to kind of get the jobs-producing land and to get the most use out of it, but it was also the relationships between, in some cases, active agricultural uses and kind of how those coincided. So those are the two main established areas that exist today. There's been a couple modifications over time to the ED zone, and they've actually been spaced kind of regularly apart. Basically from 96 to 2006, we had one major change, and that was to add regional medical campuses. This was done by Baptist Healthcare, and it was a text amendment to allow sort of a medical component, so something that wasn't originally included in the allowable uses in the ED zone were actually medical offices, those types of clinics, as well as the larger medical campus doing more intensive care. That has been since established out in the Baptist property within that expansion area. But part of those conversations was what is the scale and scope? What is this bringing as far as jobs-producing uses? A lot of that conversation did hone in on the fact that the medical field, especially medical offices, those assorted uses are high-paying jobs typically. They are sort of these attractors and have sort of a larger regional draw. So the Planning Commission, when they looked at that, did make some tweaks and changes to some of the allowable uses that they brought forth with that. A lot of the conversation was, well, what is exactly included on a regional medical campus? How many restaurants? Do we allow hotels? Those sort of supportive-type concepts were discussed and ultimately were included in sort of these conditions when you establish these kind of large-scale developments. You put an acreage requirement on it that basically made sure that really we were talking about a large-scale development, not something small, something that really was going to serve as a driver. And the Planning Commission ultimately unanimously voted for approval of that particular item. So flash forward another 10 years, and we start getting into really one of the more impactful changes to the ED zone. That was in 2016 where we had the supportive-use ZOTA that handled a lot of the issues that we had been seeing with the ED zone. So in the span of 1996 to 2016, there were still concerns from the property owners and the folks at these. Still, the ED zone was having issues developing, things like floor area ratios, height limits, these development standards that were really kind of bottlenecking, in their opinion, the development that could occur on the site. And so as a part of an ad hoc committee that started really in 2014 and was noted in the corresponding comprehensive plan, there were discussions on how do we improve the ED zone to get really that job development, job creation that we were looking for as it really had not really fully developed. So part of that discussion, once again, stakeholders at the time included the property owners. There was a lot of discussion from the folks at Fayette Alliance and sort of the rural interests as well. But ultimately, there was these 2014 meetings that led to an initiation from the Planning Commission to take a look at the ED zone. There was a conversation about supportive uses. So one of the topics that was brought forth in the ad hoc committees was, okay, we have the jobs producing uses, but sometimes those need other supplemental uses to really thrive. If folks are going to be working out here, do they have places to kind of address the rest of the needs? So basically, understanding that the intent across the board was to keep this land that was going to be productive, but what changes can be made to kind of accommodate that and help us fill out those developments? And so one of the aspects that really occurred out of this was the incorporation of residential. Before residential had not been included, so 2016 is really where that first stab at trying to accommodate that, there was a lot of discussion between the committees, between the Planning Commission, and later on on what that particular number was, how we landed there, and what that generally looked at. And so essentially, the framework that came out of that was they would establish a category of uses called supportive uses. These were things that were tied to the principal uses on the property that could help contribute, but were limited to a particular percentage. The Planning Commission ultimately voted 7-3 to advance a framework that allowed up to 20 percent of the allowable use in an ED development to be the supportive uses, and then allowed a residential up to 15 percent of that cap. So to be clear, 20 percent of the development, as recommended by the Planning Commission at that time, could be a supportive uses of any of those kinds, and residential uses could only compromise 15 percent of that 20 percent. So it was a very limited kind of first proposal that was advanced by the Planning Commission. Ultimately, at the Council level, that changed and adapted. There were some further meetings that Council had with the applicants or the stakeholders in that instance. And so one of the changes that occurred was that supportive uses that the Planning Commission said, well, 20 percent of that total area can be supportive uses, that dropped down to 18 percent. But they made a pretty significant change in that they allowed 8.5 percent of the overall developable acreage in these areas to become residential. So instead of being a percentage of the supportive uses, it was its own designated section. And then in order to kind of have some guardrails on that, they produced some maximum densities and capped for each development a total of 360 multifamily and 360 townhouse uses. I know that was a question before of where those numbers sort of came from that are carried over into our current ordinance. So the Planning Commission advanced sort of a limited framework. It was then expanded at the Council level, and then that cap was introduced that the Planning Commission ultimately was not the originator of. So where that takes us to today is kind of that last framework. So it really hasn't been updated since that 2016 time. So once again, the entire point of the ED zone are those principal uses. You can have up to 18 percent of the development be those supportive uses, which would include things like mixed-use buildings as well. You're allowed to have 8.5 percent of your land as that residential. It is capped at a density of 12 dwelling units per acre for the townhome units, and then 24 units per acre with the multifamily. So there is a kind of tie and a cap that's based on the amount of land that they have as well as an overall, so that larger developments still have limits associated with it as well. There is also a timing restriction that a maximum of 20 percent of the supportive uses can be constructed prior to this principle. So a lot of that framework was, okay, well, we'll let them do more than just the jobs-producing uses, but how much and when? And so taking us to the applicant's original proposal, so that's flashing forward to 2024, it was a much more expansive text amendment. It was seeking to modify things like open space, the percentages that could be supportive uses, the timing behind the supportive uses, the open space, densities. It basically was a false shift in many of the things that had been discussed since that 1996 expansion. And so staff had a lot of concerns. Ultimately, what we were looking to tie this into was the intent behind that 1996 expansion plan, the comprehensive plan as well, but making sure that we weren't losing the jobs-producing intent of the zone. And so ultimately, over the past two years or so, the applicant has forwarded on multiple revisions of text. Staff has countered with multiple revisions of their own. And ultimately, they've landed on the framework that's in front of you here. And so it abandons a lot of the original changes that they were looking to make. What it hones in on is essentially flexibility with the amount of dwelling units that they can provide in mixed-use buildings and just clarifying how that's generally calculated. So they did make two minor additions to the proposed uses. They added athletic club facilities as supportive uses and laundry facilities that would be associated with those principal uses as an accessory. Staff didn't find any issues with those particular additions. The largest changes were the changes to the residential categorization. So they are asking for additional flexibility with how they implement mixed-use. Essentially, if they have a mixed-use building, only the first floor would count against their supportive total. Everything above that, that was residential development, would not be subject to a density restriction but would have an overall cap. And so to help kind of explain it all out because, once again, the ED zone may be one of our more complicated zones as far as calculating what is allowed and what is not. So the framework that the applicant has proposed and that staff has made some small adjustments to keeps the existing framework for solely residential uses. It's still that 8.5% of the grossed acreage. You are allowed to have that ultimate cap of 360 townhomes at 360 multifamily units at the same densities as before. When it comes to residential on the first floor of a mixed-use building, that counts against those supportive uses. They're not that principal jobs-producing uses that we're looking for, so they should count against that. That is, once again, capped at that 18%. So those are really in line with what the existing language is. That third column to the right here where we're talking about residential when they're above the first floor of the mixed-use buildings, the applicant is proposing no explicit density limit on that, basically arguing that land is already going to be used for supportive use then we can more efficiently utilize the vertical space above it. But ultimately, the applicant has created a hard cap that says, regardless, they can't go over 720 dwelling units. And so essentially, that represents the total cap that they're allowed to under the current ordinance where we're talking about those solely residential units. So basically, if the applicant on a particular development says that we do not want to go the townhome option, they have the ability to develop a mix of designated multifamily and mixed-use to get to that same dwelling unit cap. So really, the applicant's proposal is about really getting additional flexibility for the mixed-use densities, but keeping a overall dwelling unit cap. The staff alternative language is minor tweaks and clarifications, really just trying to stay consistent with the way we've worded our language in the past and just making sure that each section refers to the correct standards. And so staff recommended approval of the alternative language, finding that in similar areas we had in the past that this does increase the flexibility for developers within the ED zone. We're really trying to maintain that majority of that land for the economic development purposes, but does give them the additional flexibility and still keeps on that overall cap of limits on residential density, which is supported by the comprehensive plan. So that was a lot of information very, very quickly. So if you have any general questions about the process as how we got here, as well as any questions about the particular text, the applicant is also present and I think can answer any particulars on their end of things. Yes. So the schedule, as indicated, the applicant has said that they would like to go back to committees. So this would show up on the committee agenda, I believe, May 7th, the first Thursday in May, if that date holds, and then would proceed if there weren't any additional comments or changes kind of called for within the committees, would show up on the agenda on the 28th of May. So with that, once again, any questions that you all have and try to answer them best we can. Thank you, Daniel. Mr. Penn. I had a dubious honor of sitting through all of this, including 96. And the 800-pound gorilla in the room is that this land has been here, but we're not using it for economic development. And so when I read this, this to me is a site-specific text amendment that we have hassled over and over and over and over. We don't have the jobs there. We have the need, but we don't have the jobs. Yet we're going to build supportive uses for jobs we don't know. We don't know how much they have to be submitted. We don't know what's going to be manufactured, what it's going to wear out in, or what it's going to be, technology. And yet we're going to set out all these things that we've done since 96, and the 800-pound gorilla is the land's too expensive. Now the question becomes, how does this help make the land any less expensive, or how does it make it any more attractive? I can't answer to the specifics of the expense or the attractive, but the intent, I guess, as far as the applicant has weighed it, is the supportive uses do in some measure provide additional feasibility for some of these uses to locate there. Now what this text does not do is expand the percentages of that land that are allowed to be allocated towards supportive uses. So really it's reshuffling kind of the framework that we already have in place. The applicant's original proposal to expand and say, oh yeah, we need to do even more supportive uses or even more solely residential uses, really is just mixing those existing allocations around. But it doesn't impact anything to do with the price of land, which most certainly factors into whether those developers want to come in. What else we're doing, we're just carving up some of our economic development land for other purposes. And we're saying it's supportive, we're saying it's primary. Either way, it doesn't create any jobs. And that's supposed to be the purpose of ED. Commissioner Nichol. I agree with you 100%. We've been looking at this since 1996, and we have failed as a city to attract businesses. Period. We have businesses leaving. It's not a thriving business community as we've seen in other areas. Back in the day we talked about Lexington possibly being the next Atlanta after Atlanta started booming in the 80s. Then we thought maybe we could be the next Nashville after Nashville boomed. Then maybe we could be the next Asheville, North Carolina when Asheville boomed. We haven't seen any of it. And I'm not pointing any fingers. I'm just pointing out the fact that the matter is we don't have the jobs, but we do have the land. And the land is very expensive. And you're absolutely right. It looks like we're spot zoning the remaining of our ED land because we were unable to drive economic development in those lands. Let me follow up. Sure. Love to. Can I respond back to Bruce just before he gets there? Yes. No, I'm in agreement with him. You know, the honest thing to do is zone some of that land residential and build a residential. Zone that land commercial and build commercial. But to take ED and try to put the square peg in a round hole, and Mr. Murphy and I have debated this over and over. This is a site-specific tax amendment for Calgary property that we have massaged. We have done everything in the world to it to make it. It doesn't create one job other than the people that work in those. It doesn't support anything. Dennis Anderson built a shell of a building out there. Now he's building all this housing. Now, why would you jump through all these hoops and hire all these people and do all this legal work when the honest thing to do would be down zone it to residential and build your houses? So I think we're in a situation now where we've got to get honest with ourselves. This city's got to decide what they want to be. And do I want this site-specific tax amendment? Well, I don't like site-specific tax amendments, but I really don't like them when they come from the guys of economic development. So that's just one man's opinion. But I've said through this and floor ratios and this and that. This one doesn't count against the acreage. This is airspace. We can do something later on with the airspace. Well, I don't have any problem with that. I have a problem with the original premise, and I don't know anything in God's green earth that's going to make this land any less expensive. Farmland's gone up. Housing land's gone up. The cost of everything's gone up. We'd have to have a severe depression for this land to go down, and yet we're sitting here depending that this is going to save the world. Well, it's not. So let's call it what it is. It's a site-specific tax amendment to build residential and commercial uses. Now, does the staff have any way to answer that that makes any sense to some dumb farmer that sits out here and looks at the land? Okay. Does staff want to respond? I thought that was a good question. Okay. Okay. Just we have been in situations before when we've taken really good ideas, like MU1, mixed use 1, 2, 3, 4. Those were all really good ideas. But as you've seen in our updated land use, that's not something that was really successful in our community, and it's not being used as much. So we moved on to allowing for higher and better uses in B1, B2, and B3. So I fully see Frank's point on this. And if this gets economic development going in the best way that we possibly can, this is a really unique piece of property they've spent a lot of time on, and I'm in support of trying to do whatever we can to make it happen. Yes, sir. Okay. This is just a comment, because I wasn't around here in 1996. Thank God. Sorry. The thing that I find confusing about the Anderson property and this property is, for me, it's a little bit like apples and oranges, because this property, I believe there's a commitment to build health care there, so we know there's job creation going on here. We don't have that same kind of commitment with Anderson property. So I don't know how to create a one-size-fits-all when the situation is so different in those two pieces of property. We haven't even talked about the fact that we've got 200 acres that the city owns and that they put the infrastructure in. The dairy farm. The dairy farm. They trade from the U.K. So I know they're not subject to the same rules and regulations, and I hope I'm around to see this thing develop, because I want to see how the city's going to do this without any oversight. But that's another subject. What my concern here is is that if we're going to do this, let's call it what it is. And I'd like to hear Mr. Duncan's comment. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Mr. Penn. When you all ask us a question, we generally like to give you an answer. But just a little reminder of context, most of the tax amendments that you all see are initiated through the comprehensive plan. So they've been vetted through a public process. You all have already initiated them by adopting the plans, and then we bring them to you over time. And so at that point we are in the position that we are really responsible for addressing and defending the tax amendments that are before you. This was a citizen-initiated tax amendment. The comprehensive plan does not call for this. The staff did not call for this. So, therefore, we're not in a position, Mr. Penn, to defend it. We're responding to it, and as Daniel presented, the staff alternative, we're taking what the applicant brought to us and turning back to you all what we believe, under those circumstances, is the best outcome. But, again, this is not the staff's to defend one way or the other. Okay, Commissioner Nichols. I really appreciate that. That's exactly the way that we were faced with this situation. You all are addressing it and bringing it back to us, and I appreciate your work on this. And as they say, it is what it is, and we've got an opportunity to do something with this property. Thank you. Mr. Bickler. Well, I had a couple of specific questions, and that had to do with kind of the mixed-use component to this. One thing that stood out was the juxtaposition of 15% in principal use on the last page seems odd. If it's the principal use, I would think it would be the majority of that floor. So this would be item F on the last page, what we're talking about? And that ties into the item G on page 2, where we're basically tweaking this to allow residential on the first floor. And so if I read this correctly, residential would be allowed on the first floor, and they would only need to use 15% of the first floor for the principal use. And so the question is sort of two parts. One, is that enough to really justify it being the principal use? And two, if we feel it is, would it make sense to bring back that sort of idea that we talked about in the expansion area, where the first floor is built to retail standards? And so instead of striking the entire provision of provided the units are not located on the first floor, saying something like provided the first floor is built to retail-ready standards. Yeah, yeah. So I think there is just a quick distinction between when we're saying principal, we're not saying that this is the majority use of the first floor. We're talking about, hey, these are the principally permitted uses. you're right under this situation I understood the the meaning but it is sort of yes so juxtaposition of the principles uses with oh and it needs to be in 15% of the building is sort of an strong contrast there yes and I think ultimately the the important part is that square footage is being accounted for in that supportive use total so the framework for we're looking at on on a particular development the first floor is still getting counted like it would be if it was any of the other supportive uses so whether it's residential whether it is just a pick one you know out of a hat here see here supportive uses whether it is a barbershop whether it is you know library those uses are not going to be our jobs producing uses and they're included within the formula that sort of already exists for looking at okay well it's not producing jobs you can only use this percentage of your land so really what we were looking at is in instances where we have that I think the 15% was something that was proposed by the applicant to give a little bit better faith when we're talking about some of the other aspects so for instance in the b1 zone one of the things that we've seen since we've updated our mixed-use building criteria is we used to have a very similar couldn't be on the first floor it had to be behind now we've opened that up as long as you have another principally permitted use it's allowed so you've seen a sort of smaller footprints where a smaller amount of office space would let you build you know a larger amount of residential so with that I that was an attempt by the applicant to kind of give a balance to that that number could be adjusted if we wanted to do that the retail ready really wasn't an aspect that we looked at so much in in this particular plan but was sort of getting at the same thing if you don't build it as you know reservoir commercial now have the ability to come in and retrofit it if needed that type of perspective could be could be applied here ultimately we were looking at just getting some tie to making sure that it wasn't just a small token amount and at least had some kind of measurable scale for the rest of the building but understanding if we wanted to tweak that or change that to to get a truer mix and then my second question was we've talked about this before and we've seen the data that the over the last decades since this zone was originally created the average number of people living per dwelling has had a slow decline and I did wonder if keeping the zone with a dwelling unit number cap sort of unintentionally incentivized larger three and four bedroom apartments instead of more one or two bedroom apartments which may be particularly appealing to younger people coming in and working at health care or some of those uses that are these are supposed to be supporting and if there was a logic to keeping that as a fixed dwelling unit when it doesn't really I guess when we have all these other percentage and restrictions a little bit what is that logic unit and are we unintentionally sort of incentivizing a certain format of development which doesn't actually make sense in a broader sense yeah yeah so there was multiple different ways to kind of approach residential development that have been floated through kind of since that we've really been having this discussion really since 2016 around that time there were iterations of that plan that included instead of once again dwelling unit caps it was square footage which kind of gets at some of the same things as far as shifting the framework we have today was really what was carried forward with this so already having explicit dwelling unit caps was sort of the basis with that it is something that can sort of be verified at the building inspection stage very well these are you know eat this building has this number of separately a lot of dwelling units they meet all the requirements whereas things like bedrooms can shift but a square footage requirement was what was discussed in that ad hoc committee and then early stages that Planning Commission discussion in 2016 so really that could be accomplished but it would be a shift from what we have now and so I think the applicants intent with the language was to kind of tweak as little as possible to get where they were looking at but that would respond to trends whereas a dwelling unit that is one bedroom and a dwelling unit that is three bedrooms or more is reflected that kind of same way okay mr. Molly Davidson Thank You chair so I'm the newest appointee to the Planning Commission and I am really kind of lost could you simply tell me what kind of acreage are we talking about with the area on the left and how many property owners are there and what what's what's the what's the is it are there many places for economic development projects to occur and where what's the status of this land I just am having some trouble understanding because like mr. pins as it seems very much like spot zoning and where are we talking about sorry it well the the spot zoning kind of conversations in general is a little bit tough to avoid no matter what changes you make considering that these areas are very concentrated so we have the this portion here which is the the ED zone that adjoins Winchester out near Polo Club etc really is under two operators so there's the the Baptist facility which is kind of the southern piece that it has a development plan it is building out and I believe they're still I've been in that building but I think they're still making the finishing touches I'm bringing yet there is land associated with that development plan that is not filled out the Cowgill development is the the piece that's closest towards Winchester Road the applicant can kind of fill you in on some of those conversations but the University of Kentucky has been partnered or coordinated with them for some time the scale and the scope of the facility that they've planned there has sort of shifted but we have been in contact and that's that information is being sort of carried forward on the development plans it's a little bit of a messy situation because the University of Kentucky isn't subject to the same zoning restrictions so that is a separate fun aspect of this to work through but those really are the two main pieces of the actual job development in that particular area that is sort of are developing out we can pull the I don't have the the acreages in front of you but I can we can pull that information for y'all an order of magnitude is all I'm looking for yeah 215 acres for for both of them in this in this area here and then Anderson yes for UK and cowgill so the the entirety of the approved rezone area here they've indicated this 215 acres and we can pull the numbers for Dennis Anderson's land here which is 350 it's good to have help yes yeah so there's the other development is is a little is less sort of centrally dominated by a couple employers so we're looking at some flex space some residential that is already sort of occurring and had entitlements to occur so that's sort of the just to clarify all the areas which are in yellow which usually means residential those are not areas we're talking about no we are it's just it's just this little pinkish red here okay thank you okay not the yes do we have any additional questions or at this point do we want to look at the straws thank you mr. chair thank you Daniel much unlike Frank Pena I was not here in 1996 you weren't here in 2016 I was you've had a lot of reading to do to catch up on this I've got a couple of global things and then and then something specific not to try and get into any trouble but we just heard acreage wise 215 for what I'm gonna call the Cowgill Central Baptist sure and 350 for Dennis Anderson's I'm gonna go back to the 720 units you said that was a council thing yes so the the yes that was added after the Planning Commission's recommendation that's probably why I don't remember it but obviously there's got to be minutes and so forth on that what was that based on the 720 units yeah so those were after the Planning Commission voted 73 to advanced let me bring the slide back up that talked about the differences yeah so the the framework that the Planning Commission advanced was then taken to council council considered holding a public hearing but in that interim they met with the stakeholders so in this instance the property owners I'm not entirely sure of in the same way that our meetings have sort of records and minutes so there was some some involvement with council and those property owners so that when they brought that back that's what they were looking at as far as where the original genesis of the the 360 units I don't there wasn't any firm record and they adopted minutes that I could kind of pull from but we do have some some staff that has been around so if we find a better tie to where that specific number kind of came from but I think it was just a in those discussions with the developers okay we're gonna give you more flexibility and more residential development potential than what the Planning Commission called for but we want to institute a cap on that but no indication of the actual underlying basis you know over the years and more recently than not there's been various discussion and various possibilities and at one point I was hearing that it was based on the 350 acres not this track but Dennis Anderson's 350 acres and this being much less acres I was just wondering why the same amount would be going to something with less acres so that that's where I'm coming from with that let me ask you this maximum of 20 percent support of uses initially this way I'm gonna say there's a statement in there as far as what can be built for supportive uses so does that mean until they build something commercially they're gonna be limited to 144 residences that's like 20% see here so referring to the the back page their maximum of 20% of all supportive uses may be constructed prior to the construction of other principally permitted uses in the zone so yes that would apply the residential is a component of that assorted support uses so they could only build literally build 20% until they get principal uses built that's that's what it's saying correct okay yeah all right then one other thing it's it's getting minor I'm just curious you're there's two things that's been recommended for changes here to be included the athletic club facilities as supportive use and laundromat as a as a accessory use to me I see those as the same why wouldn't both of them be supportive uses well I think the the applicant suggested both of those I think the intent behind the laundry being accessory was it was going to be a part of the operation of one of the other principally permitted uses and not really envisioning say a standalone you know facility that same scale so it would be something that would be integrated not a standalone separate use I can see that if that's the case the way I was reading it it's a coin laundromat that's on the corner that anybody can walk into and use if it's if it's part of a principal permitted use that is for lack of a better definition to do uniforms for that business I don't see a problem with that I've kind of will go along with Robin's thoughts as far as the I just don't like the language as far as minimum of 15% of floor area on the first floor you you mentioned I mentioned a week ago in a different situation seemed like it was a broom closet to me I would like to see more simply put but but that's a discussion for another day thank you okay do we have any other questions for Daniel at this point or we would we like to move on to the applicant okay thank you Daniel thank you mr. gross I was not going to mention that mr. Owens Brandon gross here on behalf of the applicant we appreciate the time as the staff has said we've been working with them now for almost two years year-and-a-half on this going back and forth this is not where we started but we're comfortable with where the staff has ended with the their proposed language and so I'm here to answer questions if you guys have any but we're comfortable with where the staff is at this time okay where would we like to begin are there any questions for mr. gross mr. Penn did you ever considered asking for a zone change well the issue is is that be honest with you there aren't a lot of good zones in the expansion area they're all generally low density zones so you know you ea are three what's the is a 24 per acre and something like that so that's a low density zone the commercial or not the commercial the community center it caps your building at 48 feet it requires a minimum of 40% residential so if we're talking about moving further away from the ED possibilities the CC zone is even worse than what we're proposing given the ability to do anything and then there's also lots of caps on the size of the building like you they want 20 they want buildings that are 20,000 square feet in the CC zone generally an apartment building is running at 70,000 square feet for example the apartment buildings were proposing are five-story tall would be kept at four stories with the CC so if we were to go to CC we would have to ask for a soda to make the CC workable for today's standards because generally once we build an apartment building you want 40 units per acre to 60 and we're capped at 24. Well I understand everything you say. I don't have any problems with that at all. What my hope would have been in 96 and all the way through is that we'd get away from South Pacific tax amendments. Now sooner or later this city is going to decide what they want to do because this thing's gotten so convoluted that unless we sell this land for ED purposes it's not working for the same reason the CCC didn't work but we don't ever get rid of those zones we just decide they don't work and move on try to work around them. So I'm not going to hold your situation up but I wanted this body to hear and I didn't want to do it in a public hearing but this just doesn't make sense for long-term planning to do what we're doing. The African comes with a specific need and we spend two years trying to make it work right here and that's the very thing that Frankfurt says we got to stop. And I will say the two year the reason it is taken long is because we are a little bit strapped in by that 1996 plan. If you are proposing a petition to seek the Planning Commission to throw that plan into the garbage can and come up with a new plan I will sign that petition because that plan is based upon what was going on in the marketplace in 1996. The comprehensive plan, our zoning ordinance, we are so far away from where that plan is to where we are today and it does hold us back. And so and as to the specific we have a citizen driven process because in the reason it seems like it's specific sometimes is because property owners out in the wild come across a new idea or a new proposal or a new concept and we have like most zoning it's Euclidean and it is prohibitive so it says you can do A, B, and C and if we don't say you can do it then you can't. And sometimes you get in situations where it's like well it says we can't but that was done in 1983 times has changed it makes sense to be in this zone now and we bring those ideas to you and you guys can we work with the staff and you guys can say we agree that you're right things have evolved in society and this makes sense to have this particular use in this zone. I'm a proponent of keeping citizen driven ZOTUS. I know that's not everyone in this room agrees with that because we get to bring ideas if not then I get to go and try to meet with every single one of you to convince you of an idea but it takes that time to work through the staff to get the staff on board with the idea before it comes to you guys. But Mr. Gross here's where I disagree with you. There's no you're you're the only person I know that has initiated meet with every Planning Commission member. I haven't seen that before. I've seen some people some of them talk to two of them or whatever. So I don't want that to get to be the norm. I don't want for us to get in a situation where if we're going to have a site-specific or text amendment that we got to divide and conquer because that just wastes everybody's time. And I would agree with you Mr. Penn and I think I we like being here at the work session you'll talk to all you at one time. Unfortunately there was not this procedure. This is the first time to my knowledge that we've had this give-and-take other than maybe I can't recall if this the solar was this broad but this was generally the first time. All I'm saying is that we're supposed to be making these plans easier and faster and to make it work and when the staff has to work around and then you all feel it's necessary to meet with every one of us, to me that's just overkill. I mean there's not anybody sitting here that can't read this and have a few questions. And unfortunately there's there for example this ZOTA does not go to your subdivision subcommittee underneath your bylaws. So automatically half of you do not have an official procedural mechanism to be in front of you before the public meeting. Which is why when we was requested we came to the subdivision subcommittee to permit that half of the body. And so I totally understand the reason we met with Planning Commission members is because we wanted your feedback. We wanted to know your thoughts and the problem is is we can't meet with more of you outside of one of these meetings because of open records. And so but yes what I'm saying to you is is that we're just making this process more complicated. Development plan, development plan, after development plan. This just doesn't work. We'll do whatever we're going to do with this. But don't make this the blueprint of how to do these things going forward. I mean that's just we haven't learned anything. I mean unfortunately the other the only other option is go back to how the bylaws are which is we file the application, we meet with staff, we come to the zoning subcommittee, and then we show up the Planning Commission. Okay. I mean you're following what they're asking. Yeah and so we prefer this process but that's but the bylaws or something would need to change. I can't do that unfortunately. Not again the staff. That they could work with you but that's a Planning Commission process item. I'm gonna put my two cents in because I'm one of the people that asked to do this here. I when I envision a work session I envision it to be you know I think we need the updates and I think we need opportunities to ask about the updates. But for me work session is also the kind of conversation we're having here before it comes into a public hearing. And I would encourage planning staff to allow us to have opportunities to have these kind of discussions. We don't have to have them all the time but I think when it's something this big and this important we need an opportunity to have this conversation before we get any hearing. Thank You Commissioner Worth. I certainly would agree with that sentiment and I don't I don't see any downside to it. But all every opportunity for positive results and Mr. Penn you're right and we apparently have been very consistent because it was put in place in 1996 exactly ten years later 2006 it was changed exactly ten years later 2016 it was changed and now here we are again in 2026 talking about it. So we might as well budget time in 2036 to talk about it again. And I agree entirely with Mr. Gross that the world of 2026 is very different from the world of 1996 in this regard. And I don't believe Lexington is losing jobs but the types of jobs have certainly changed in 30 years. And yes the fact that it is restrictive in that manner seems very counterintuitive for not only Fayette County but Central Kentucky and specifically even that those interchanges being next to the interstate. So do we have any other thoughts or Mr. Owens? Thank you Mr. Chairman and as Judy Worth said I too was one of the ones I was asking for a discussion like this in a work session and I think it's important and as much as anything the way Daniel started this with history as to the ED zone leading up to everything not as much what they were asking about but to get to a certain point so everybody's got a clear understanding and not to throw Daniel under the bus but two weeks ago in subdivision I heard well there'll be more discussion about this this afternoon and that's leaving half this Commission out in this situation. Maybe it is bylaws maybe we need to change the bylaws I don't know but I do appreciate the opportunity for this discussion and I do have an other business thing when we get to that. Okay thank you Mr. Owens. Do we have any Mr. McClue? Sort of drilling into just a couple of those specifics that I asked Daniel. One of it was with that dwelling unit cap being specified by the dwelling units did that enter into your all's thought process on what type of development to do or how to structure the apartments? Generally when we're looking at building new apartment buildings we're gonna look at essentially what the marketplace is telling us that will fill up and be leased so normally those are one and two bedroom apartments is just as you know just a this community that we're sitting in here is you know ask yourself you know around the shoehorn how many of you are one or two household person households living in a big house? A lot of us you know me personally I'm still not I got kids at home still but there are a number of people and so if they're not always needs for that three four bedroom apartment building I'm not aware in Lexington of that particular product and when you're investing 10, 15, 20, 50 million dollars you're generally gonna invest in what you know the community wants not what you hope they want and so that's the reason the dwelling units but most apartments are being built today or one two maybe three bedroom apartment buildings I don't see a lot of four. I'm not thinking about the four but I'm thinking about Robin's comment about who would be working out there and thinking about health care because that was originally planned as a hospital and when they looked at the health care economic projections they changed it those are gonna be physician offices they're gonna be treatment they're gonna be other kinds of things there and given what we know about the economics of health care right now the regional hospitals are gonna be closing we're gonna be moving more to mobile health care in those rural areas and people are going to be coming here for doctors visits and for treatments and when I think of the people working in those units I don't think of them as being like university apartments the people I know they're working in those kind of places typically are often married they often have children you know it's a different population from the ones we typically are thinking about and I'm not thinking four bedrooms but I'm thinking if you think of somebody who's a nurse somebody who's a lab tech who have med tech or you know all those kinds of jobs very often those are people with at least one or two kids they may or may not be married they may be divorced but it's not a one-bedroom appointment apartment place and that's why I would imagine where we would have one and two and then there are three three-bedroom apartment products that Calgill puts not to try to make this specific exactly but no this will we do this is not going to be what we see close to campus these will be traditional apartment buildings in which there is a unit and the unit will have between one and three bedrooms more likely than not just as an example my wife you know until she was in eighth grade they lived in a three-bedroom apartment her two sisters share a room she had her own room and then my mother-in-law had a room and so we would imagine that we would imagine that these have these apartments would capture workers hopefully at the UK facilities and at the Baptist Health and others who and we may you know there may be doctors who who live in East Kentucky or somewhere else they know they're in when they're on there they stay because doctors have in nurses they all have really weird schedules compared to the normal ones of us and so and then there are I know I've talked with not on this project but I've talked with another large health care provider and they actually rent apartments for their employees so they could get traveling nurses that will come and work for six weeks know they have a furnished apartment and then when their contract is up they go to the next traveling and then it's the hospital that actually rent is your tenant and they just bring in their employees and so we would imagine that that would be another option that we would see for this so this will not be quote workforce housing price-wise necessarily it'll be market-rate housing but it will be focused towards the workers in this area at the two medical facilities is what we would expect who would be using this these apartments and once again we're kind of just tweaking a little bit because we don't want to build town homes on in our development and so we would much rather take those 360 town homes or whatever we're allowed and put those in mixed-use buildings rather than building the town homes what's the objection to town homes well once again they're less efficient use of the land so I can get on town homes how many times can we build it on an acre dick or 12 you can build 12 units on an acre rather than getting you know you're 25 26 30 40 units per acre if you do an apartment building yeah so just if I heard that correctly and then I'll move on to my second question basically that total unit count is not affecting the actual building that you you all are building it's it's based on the market still it will it's not skewing the that 720 cap is not skewing how you define the correct that the 24 per acre would skew the fact that we would be building we'd be using less airspace when we build an apartment building so we would essentially waste two floors that we could otherwise house people with that 24 per the other component to my question is also specific to one of the lines well two of the sections but the component about the sort of looking at the first floor that minimum of 15% I guess I'm well my largest concern there is that if the minimum is 15% what we'll end up with is an 85% parking garage space on the first floor and a very small sort of activated space on the first floor the second component would be if it is all building just making sure that first floor is flexible to change and add other uses in the future which we discussed in the expansion area about building at first floor tall enough and to the standards of a commercial building so yes so two things what I'm seeing more in the community is the podium parking in which part of the first floor is built on peers and you park so you don't have surface parking and so if you were to say you cannot do that we will then likely just see more surface parking like classic surface parking not surface parking covered within kind of the building and the reason you do it more of a podium rather than a garage is because it is less expensive to build than if you did a classic garage with a classic garage then you have how you you know you can't see through it you've got the walls you've got the other issues and so the reason we went with the 15% is because we looked at the mixed-use one and we kind of looked at the other ordinances and our thought was okay well 15% you could put a bodega or you could put a coffee shop or you could put something else in this building that would otherwise be able to be self-sustaining potentially with the users versus if you had we built out the first floor to commercial standards then we're not going to lease the first floor for commercial uses and so what's going to happen is when we do our pro forma we're going to strike out any rental income for a big portion of that and we'll just raise the residential rents until such day that those that areas be so if you look at for example the Lex I drive by it every day on my way home from that that's slightly different just to clarify because in the discussion we had it does allow the first floor to be rented as residential as long as it was built to the standards so that it could be converted at a later time well even that's not striking it completely well because it doesn't necessarily sit vacant well even with that we the rents would increase because you would be building you would be over building a space so the rents will increase well I hear you but you're also asking us to change an economic development zone and you're proposing to add a lot of residential and basically get permission to not count it as long as you put a bodega surrounded by podium parking spaces so it seems to me that that is not sufficient for the request and as I indicated to staff I would like to see more activation on that first floor and it could be a combination of retail and residential as long as there was flexibility for that retail to be converted I mean that residential to be converted into retail or other uses or we just need to alter the percentage so that we don't have 85% parking garage on the first floor with your bodega in the corner okay do we have any other questions for mr. Bruce seeing none thank you thank you okay our next item on the agenda is an update on Planning Commission motion procedures mischance oh this won't take very long I promise you all don't see me up here very often but we just wanted to give you a little bit of a sort of a reminder and the reason why is because we've had some questions or issues come up lately in relation to how our motions are being made or what they might mean in in the context of down the road when we're going back and looking at minutes or looking at videos of what was actually said versus maybe what was actually meant so let me give you an example and this particularly is going to apply to the cases where you are approving development plans subdivision plans not necessarily zone changes although we'll talk about that in a minute almost without fail every single one of those includes conditions the statute and the zoning ordinance say that you all can make a conditional approval you have basically have options of every time you approve those to approve them disapprove them approve them with conditions and almost all of yours have conditions which include those sign offs include you know if there needs to be a correction or whatever so all I'm asking you to do and I'm giving you a heads up here because if you don't I will be interrupting you and asking you to do it in the meeting because I want you to I just want us to be very careful and very deliberate about how we're going to do this so it's not anything different and most of the time for the most part most of you do this when you make your motion you say you know I make a motion based on the conditions however many there are and if if they're revised or you delete one or you take one out you note that as well the problem that seems to be coming up a little bit more lately is when you spend maybe I don't know 15 minutes 30 minutes an hour discussing it and you've discussed those conditions sometimes based on the conditions falls out of your motion and so there has been an interpretation which we do not agree with but and it's not published in a case and I don't want to get into details of that you know here but that said the motion didn't say based on the conditions therefore it wasn't a conditional approval so we're trying to avoid that in the future so what my advice to you is going to be is particularly with development plans and things that have those conditions that every single motion say based on the conditions you know provided by staff the conditions in the report the conditions as we've revised them and if you would like to enumerate how many there are great but I think you're covered if you just say that now as for zone changes those are a little different because you generally are are adopting the the reasoning the findings of fact from the staff if you go with their approval or disapproval recommendation as you all know if you go with a different route if you go with something opposite of what's been recommended to you you can't rely on that for example if the staffs recommended approval and you want to disapprove it you can't rely on their their recommendations to you and findings that for for approval right because you're disapproving so you can't do that thus we the law department have to show up and help you and sometimes we have to take a break to come up with the proof with findings that will justify whatever your motion is going to be so we don't typically have that issue with that because your motions are typically either to approve it based on the staff findings or we take it a break or a minute and give you different ones but just to be cautious also on those if you make a motion however you're gonna make it what you know and that's your all's decision I'm not trying to dictate what way you go or how you make your decisions but whatever decision you make on his own change let's try to make sure that you're basing that on whatever findings you need to do that whether it's the what those recommended by staff or those that have been you know written and drafted and come out of the meeting separately so we just we just want to be a hundred percent clear we know what you mean pretty much everybody in the room knows what you mean unfortunately sometimes when we get far removed from those instances other people looking at them either don't know what you mean or don't care what you meant and so we just want to be careful and have the record justified if we go forward so that there's no question so does that make sense that I mean it's pretty straightforward I don't want it to be confusing or long-winded but we just thought we felt like it was kind of important to go forward and give hit touch base with you on that this first statement is a note to self okay when we're doing waivers we also have to look for conditions and we need to state those as well I think it's wise yes because a lot of the waivers do have conditions so um you know and they also have findings so my my real my question I intended to ask was we get confused sometimes about when we can combine motions like can we do zone change and waiver together you have to have separate do you have any instructions to us on that I think it it's it's best on instances where you maybe have an approval on his own change or an approval on a development plan but you also have a waiver if you do them separately just because it makes the record more clear but please by any means don't hesitate to ask either you know on the mic in the meeting or you know you can come over and have it you know I'm just what I'm gonna do can I do them separately I know the chair sometimes puts us you know ask that question as we're going but I think it's more clear when you go back and you're reading the minutes which I'm sure is on a regular course you don't enjoy doing but and you probably don't nor do I but if we have some issue come up that's what I'm gonna be doing and so sometimes it is less clear in the minutes when you go back and you're reading them after the fact and you haven't been sitting in the meeting for several hours so I think if you do them separately it makes it more clear that's my my take on it but we're glad to answer questions if there's a confusing turn of events and just to clear or go further down the road of what Judy was asking for example last week when we did vote to grant a waiver in that instance can the record just reflect that the applicant did demonstrate that a strict interpretation was a hardship and this was not an unreasonable and so that's the finding for the that that was the funding if I'm if you're talking about the one I'm thinking about was this Commissioner Mickler's motion I think there was there was a motion last week where you all were doing something different than what was recommended and whoever made the motion because I was listening and I can't recall whoever made the motion I think I think it was you because I was listening very carefully to what you said and because because we we didn't do anything separately for you for that which we don't have to but sometimes it's easier but the motion did go through this is these are the reasons why I think and so I felt like the reasons were in them in the record and in the minutes so we didn't stop you or anything if we felt like for example if the motion had been you have a recommendation to disapprove we want to approve it and the motion had been I move to approve we would have probably had to jump in on that one and say wait a minute if you got to have some basis for why you're change you know you got some basis for that decision but I think that in that case it was stated so we're we're watching for that we are particularly watching for that you know in instances where it appears that you all may be leaning a different direction okay thank you do we have any other questions before I was on my long hiatus there was a time when we had a hearing and I think I asked for a break and and someone said oh are you trying to get consult with Tracy for findings of the opposite sort of thing I guess how it how does one best how does one best do that with the chair you know but in kind of in the in as you're going along because it's hard to sometimes think of all the right things when you're right at the moment a couple different ways that can happen you know some of you who have been on here for as long or longer than I've been doing this will often like come over and you you know and say hey this is what I'm gonna do can you help me which I'm happy to do and any of our staff will be happy to do that or some of you who have my cell phone number text me and say hey this is what I'm thinking some of you pass me pieces of paper that say here's what I'm thinking can you correct the all okay with me I'm not gonna say no to that I don't want to obligate people in the future who may be doing this job said that they have to do it that way but all of those things work but if you but sometimes even in that instance we need time to process what you're telling us and make sure we get it in the correct form and so you can either ask for a break by the chair he can you know break the meeting at any time he chooses you know we may if we see that happening or sometimes people just say I want to make a motion but I think I'm gonna need a break to get some help from law that's okay too so but you know don't don't forego that option just to keep going because then if you don't have the right findings then then we have might have a bigger issue down the road okay if we have nothing else for mrs. Jones thank you very much Tracy do we have any other Commissioner items today I have a question for mr. Duncan I read the text in the Herald later today about the mayoral candidate debates and there was a statistic quoted in there about how much time for approval for plans have you read that yet it was good news I was glad you're not that not the one we've been hearing about it takes a year to get something done but the good news when can you talk about that a little bit I have not I did not read that article nor did I participate in the debate so I don't know what was reported to you but I do know that we have reported to council an update on the timing that it takes various plans to go through the process and the number is lower than it then the study indicated several years ago it also is more clarifying than that study was the study really combined several processes together to come up with a super number and we're in a much better position now to say well it breaks down this way and it looks far less alarming than the statistic that was presented several years ago did asking because I have been in conversations two or three conversations in the last month where I've heard that big number and I've said no I don't think that's accurate but I didn't have any ammunition to go back with so I'm looking for some ammunition yeah we don't but that is not accurate and we have made that report to council I don't have that numb those numbers in front of me but we have made a report to council about that okay thank you mr. Sharon Molly just to give you an indication I did give our chairman a note a moment ago saying I wanted to bring up something in the other business category so anything is possible and maybe Tracy Jones should have stayed up here for this it'd be this this be for Tracy or or Jim Duncan and I wanted to look at a distance between our one of our earlier discussions but considering what we did discuss very globally our wonderful EAMP that was formed in 1996 I guess since the 18 years that I've been around it kind of seems like when that came up it was really kind of been talked about as one of those wonderful four-letter words that you know it's like geez you know it yeah if this if that is there a way to bring that up and as someone offered to throw it in the trash can and do something different now yeah so mr. Owens let me say back to you what I think I'm hearing and please correct me but are you are you saying that is there a way to either update or move beyond the expansionary master plan from 1996 yes sir okay or improve it right yes we believe there is and if you all go back and look at past comprehensive plans we've been calling for that and then all of a sudden we found ourselves as a community in the throes of trying to go in a different direction with the exactions program up to and eliminating it and so that has that has really stifled anything to do with in with updating the expansionary master plan as long as we are uncertain the outcome of the exactions program we are prepared to bring back to you all a proposal to update the master plan as soon as we know what we're going to be doing with exactions we are concerned that some of the resident that the residential densities as mr. gross indicated are inadequate to meet our needs now particularly on an area that has not had any development at all on it and so we'd like to see a different a different future for that and then looking at the the commercial zones and the economic development zones in the expansionary can we do better and we believe we can so yes we concur we are ready to do that but we do need some closure on the exactions program we have any idea where we are on it that you can know mr. pin I we are on the periphery of that so we are we are not active participants in that that is much really much more of a financial decision at this point and a legal decision on how we untangle this and I do know that it is still very much a work in progress but it I don't it's not imminent that's one excuse me what are exactions oh dear yes let's go back to the orientation but just as a reminder in the 1996 way expansion week we the community came up with a different way to play pay for public infrastructure in the exit in the expansion area and it was through the exactions program and other communities that similar to an impact fee but that's that's the general idea it's another one of those four-letter words to give me an extensive look list of wonderful for I would reiterate do appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion in this format today and I did my best to keep it in a very global aspects but thank you and just a quick question when was our last bylaw review 2012 so maybe it is to mr. grosses point maybe it's time and I'm I'm happy to go through them with anybody who would care to and maybe mr. Duncan and I mr. chair and you and I can talk about this we can certainly give you all about I suspect the bylaws also make a provision for how to update the bylaws so we can check in on that and get back with you on how to do that and certainly guide you if you all want to get into that that's great well I mean they're not terribly extensive so it I don't think it would be too laborious but well you all may recall a couple years ago mr. pin wouldn't recall this because this was happening before he stepped back on but when mr. pin was brought back on to the Planning Commission we were faced with a the process of the Planning Commission making a decision about its members and we talked at that time is that something we also want to include in the bylaws so you know we could consider a number of updates to the bylaws if we wanted to okay thank you we will discuss that does anyone have anything else today if not thank you we are adjourned