# Planning Commission Work Session - June 18, 2026 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Commission · June 18, 2026 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6806 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6806?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2026-06-18 - **Body**: Commission - **Last revised**: June 19, 2026 - **Length**: 21,113 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Planning Commission Work Session was held on June 18, 2026, at 1:30 p.m. ET (12:30 p.m. CT) in the Phoenix Building 3rd Floor Conference Room. The session covered 5 agenda items, all of which were informational in nature, reflecting the work session format focused on briefings and discussion rather than formal decision-making. No votes were taken and no public comments were heard during the meeting. Topics presented to the Commission included the Downtown Area Master Plan First Draft, a Solar Work Group Report, the Unified Development Code, the Complete Streets Manual, and the Asphalt Art: Shropshire Ave Pilot project. ## Contested Items - **Solar Work Group Report**: The Commission meeting featured significant discussion surrounding the impact of large-scale solar projects on agricultural land. Community opposition centered on concerns about soil conservation and the potential economic impacts of converting farmland to solar development. The debate highlighted tensions between renewable energy expansion and the preservation of agricultural resources. The structured data does not specify the individual parties involved by name or detail a final outcome from this discussion. ## Downtown Area Master Plan First Draft Presentation [timestamp: 00:59] Andrew Overbeck from MKSK presented the first draft of the Downtown Area Master Plan to the Commission. The presentation covered the community engagement process that informed the draft as well as the overall vision for downtown established through that process. No vote or formal action was taken on this item. The presentation was informational in nature, and the draft plan was made available for public review and feedback following the presentation. ## Solar Work Group Report [timestamp: 49:24] Daniel Crum presented the Solar Work Group Report to the Commission. The presentation addressed the potential for large-scale solar energy development in agricultural zones, with a focus on the associated considerations for soil conservation and economic impacts. No additional speaker data, specific findings, vote outcomes, or detailed debate points are available in the provided record for this agenda item. The item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken by the Commission. ## Unified Development Code [timestamp: 1:22:38] Jt Holt introduced the Unified Development Code (UDC) project to the Commission. The presentation described an effort to consolidate the jurisdiction's existing zoning and subdivision regulations into a single, modernized document designed to be more accessible and user-friendly. No outcome or formal action resulted from this item, as it was presented for informational purposes only. ## Complete Streets Manual Informational Purposes [timestamp: 1:36:44] Kenzie Gleason provided an informational presentation to the Commission on the Complete Streets Manual, covering the timeline and process for its adoption and implementation. This item was brought forward for informational purposes only and did not require a vote or formal action by the Commission. The presentation focused on updating commissioners on the current status of the Complete Streets Manual and outlining the steps involved in moving the document forward through the adoption and implementation process. No additional speakers, debates, or formal concerns are reflected in the available record for this agenda item. The item was received as informational, with no formal outcome or Commission action taken. ## Asphalt Art: Shropshire Ave Pilot [timestamp: 1:40:35] Hannah Crepps presented an update on the Asphalt Art pilot project located on Shropshire Ave. The presentation covered two primary areas: community engagement efforts associated with the project and the selection of an artist to carry out the work. 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. Additional details regarding the specific community engagement activities, the identity of the selected artist, project timeline, budget, or any questions and concerns raised by commissioners are not captured in the provided source materials.* --- ## Full transcript Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Today is June 18th, and this is the meeting of the Lexington-Faylor County Government's Planning Commission in Work Session. Our first item on the agenda today is a first draft presentation of the Downtown Area Master Plan. Boyd. Check. Is it on? We good. Okay. Good afternoon, Planning Commissioners. Today we are pleased to share the draft downtown area master plan, which reflects extensive community engagement, stakeholder input, technical analysis, and collaboration with multiple departments and partners. Following this meeting, the draft will be released to the public on the project website, which is downtownlexplan.com, and also the planning website, imaginelexington.com. The plan will be shared directly with the planning commissioners and will also be made available to the public. Over the next three weeks, community members and stakeholders will have the opportunity to review the draft and provide comments directly on the document. Staff will be available throughout this process to answer questions and gather feedback. Once the comment period concludes, we will review and incorporate that feedback into the plan, and we will be back to present that at the next work session, which is July 16th. And with that, I'd like to introduce Andrew Overbeck from MKSK to walk you through the downtown area master plan draft. Excellent. Thanks, Boyd. Again, Andrew Overbeck, planner with MKSK and been working with the city for about the last year on this work. So I know Boyd and some of my colleagues have kept you up to date on things over the last year or so. Today we're going to run through a draft presentation on the plan. We'll get a copy of that. I'll let you sort of look through it, but I want to give you kind of an introduction to that here today. We worked alongside, MKSK worked alongside WSP, some local partners, EHI and Civic Lex, and we were assisted by some of our longtime collaborators at Development Strategies that did the market analysis work that's in the plan. So full team and really I have to say I can't say enough about Boyd and Hal and Hannah and the rest of staff really helped us do the outreach in the way it needed to be done, helped us get you know exciting meeting locations every time we got together with the community and really helped this be a seamless process. So today I'll run through kind of an overview of our process, the engagement results that sort of shape the plan, give you an introduction to the vision for downtown and that's these four chapters that are sort of in the middle, and then I'll give you sort of a primer on the plan, how to go through it and look at it, give you a sense of what's in there and what you may want to spend some time looking at depending on what your interests are. So a process recap, again we started about a year ago so we kicked off in earnest with a Fourth of July sort of tabling at the parade. That was a great, great chance to get to know a lot of people and introduce and raise some awareness of the plan. We've been working through this whole year to get back to where we are today with a draft plan. We did sort of three phases of engagement. The first phase was about getting people's big ideas. So that was back in October at the Lyric Theater. We came back in March with a set of analysis and some initial concepts and really wanted to test that out with the community. So people had a way to sort of look at things in a hands-on way, helped us then design some things. So that's what we came back with in May. It was really focused about what does this look like if we accomplish some of the things we set out to do with the downtown plan. How do we implement it? So that was really the focus of our sort of third phase. In the course of the last year, and we'll get more obviously with this being online and open for comment, more than 2,200 Lexingtonians engaged in the work both at workshops, online, stakeholder roundtables, community events that staff and some of our staff went to, and then the website as well. So really robust feedback in a lot of different ways. We were guided by an advisory committee. Every step of the way helped us really shape the work, understand what the opportunities and issues were, and work through that together. So we met with them four times, again sort of concurrent with how we went through the public process. They had an opportunity to review things, give us input, help shape some of the questions we were asking, and really help us understand where we needed to spend some more time and make sure that we got the recommendations right. So they were a fantastic group to bounce things off of and get feedback throughout the process. We started back in August with stakeholder roundtables, more than 100 people. You can see the different categories of folks, so different topic areas. Had a chance to have sort of small group conversations, although the retail one got more than a small group, which is great. A lot of interest in the work. This helped us really understand what issues and opportunities existed in downtown. Helped us start to create some themes of where we'd spend our time with this work. Online, we did four different surveys throughout the process. Got, oh I'm sorry, I'm not clicking forward. Thank you for that. Yeah, online we got almost a thousand responses in four different surveys. Really excellent way to reach people. We also asked when people went to the website. Were they people who had come to a public meeting or hadn't come to a public meeting? We got new voices in those online surveys in addition to just raising awareness. So we were able to reach people that weren't able to come to meetings, which is a great way to sort of confirm that. Big shout out to Civic Lex, EHI, the city team for the work that they did reaching out to neighborhoods. So I went to 20, more than 20 different events, reached another 700 plus people. Again, going to where people were, going to festivals and events and concerts, you know, visiting, you know, association meetings and things like that that really helped spread the word about the plan but also get feedback as well. So that work was also really important for us in shaping this work. And then Civic Lex helped us reach people again that we don't normally see show up at public meetings. So students participated in a scavenger hunt. They went out and did a lot of outreach with the unhoused population and folks that helped them. And then we got downtown stories. So sort of person on the street kind of stories about you know what people like about downtown, what excites them about downtown. So again, a lot of different ways to reach people. We'll go through the things we learned at each of the workshops and I'll be able to sort of show you a few things that we did. Back in October for the downtown dreaming phase of our work, more than 200 folks showed up at the Lyric Theater and we heard a lot of things. It helped us kind of confirm analysis that we had done, also helped to confirm some of the things we heard from stakeholders. You We heard about housing, heard about neighborhood character, we want more local business, we want walkable and safe streets, we want to invest in more green spaces. These sort of gave us an idea of where people had some interest, helped us ask them the next set of questions to really understand how do we go about accomplishing this. And that's really what we did at the second public meeting. So I don't know how many of you were able to come to that, but we had stations set up where people could design a safe and walkable street. So they could take pieces and parts of what makes up a street, a variety of different transportation choices, and design that street. We did the same thing with parks and open space. We know that you've invested a lot in sort of signature open space destination parks in downtown. What else do they want? And so we ask questions to help us prioritize those types of things. That helps shape the plan. And then we asked people to think about let's take a surface parking lot or a piece of ground in downtown and envision what could happen there. So people were able to take development program pieces, retail, housing, different densities, different types of housing, and design that site. So again, it was hands-on. It helped us really understand what people were looking for. And that helped us design the sort of next steps of the work, which we'll show you today. So at the May meeting we had a chance to show people what the results of their ideas were, what it looks like, how do we go about implementing it. I think the most important thing on here is implement this plan. That was, I think, a lot of excitement and good feedback from folks. So I'll go through the sort of, I would say the meat of the plan is the vision for downtown, this downtown framework. That's where all the recommendations live. And they live around four different parts of the framework, each of which have a couple goals associated with them. So we sort of divided this up after getting that public input into a growing downtown, a greener downtown, a more multimodal downtown, and a more welcoming downtown. I'll go through these in that order. We looked at a growing downtown. people really wanted a diversity of housing and retail options in downtown. And so the first set of recommendations or strategies really revolve around downtown housing at a variety of price points. At this presentation, I'm keeping it at the strategy level. There are very detailed recommendations that fall underneath each of these five strategies. So there'd be a lot of words on slides if I went through all the recommendations, but those are in the plan. And I'll just sort of touch on a few things. I think there's a handful of things that are just really important if we want the things people say they want in downtown we need more residents in downtown. There really hasn't been a lot of residential built in the last 10 or 15 years and we need to do that at the market rate housing and also workforce housing. We've got information on a number of different tools we can use to incentivize that wide spectrum of housing, address affordability, address anti-displacement. We do think there's home ownership opportunities kind of at the edges of downtown, kind of where we transition more into residential neighborhoods. We want to focus investment on workforce and affordable housing, sort of outside the entertainment-oriented places in downtown, and then thinking about adaptive reuse so we can continue to support historic preservation and add housing. One note, we looked at the urban infill redevelopment area, which is larger than our downtown plant area, and there's 4,500 residents that are income burdened by housing. And so we look at that, how much of that share, if we capture 10 to 20 percent of that in downtown, we really think a target of 450 to 900 units for that affordable housing in downtown is a starting point. There's recommendations as we go through this and deeper into the plan on a citywide affordable housing strategy that would look at it sort of big picture, because we know that's an issue that sort of spreads beyond the boundaries of downtown. The second major part of this section is around retail, restaurant, hospitality, the business environment. And so we've looked at focus areas in downtown, what types of retail and restaurant hospitality work in certain parts of downtown, how do we start to shape that a little bit. The visitor momentum is key. That helps bring a lot of people in, they spend dollars. We have the office market that's a little bit less of an impact for downtown retail and then we have our residents and so we need to really boost that resident market to bring the kind of retail into downtown that we're looking for. So we hear the need for resident focused retail we also have to have some residents here to drive that retail demand. Another big piece to think about is student housing. We certainly heard a lot about that through the process. We are recommending that goes as close to the higher education campuses as possible, and so we have that in one of our focus areas to sort of, you know, point people in the right directions for where certain things really could work that are not just market supportable, but also support the ideas and desires that residents have here as well. So that's where this diagram comes from. It's explained in great detail in the plan, but I think a way to summarize this is we started to look at what do people say they want, where are things in the marketplace that the market will support and not take as much incentive, and then we looked at what sort of character could you create, both in terms of the ground floor uses but also in terms of the program of these sites. So it starts to tell us where might we want to focus student housing, where should we really focus on hospitality and entertainment. And so we looked at that from that lens and then you'll see that not all of the downtown core area that we looked at is filled in with a new color. It's because there's institutions, existing neighborhoods, there's parts of the downtown core that have historic overlays that already have their own small area plans. Those parts of downtown we don't see a lot of, you know, forecast a lot of change in. It's these areas that we really see where there's an opportunity for some change, opportunity for infill. So that's why I really focused in on these areas and again you're trying to guide the market to the right decisions and sort of want to give you all the tools to do that. So we visualized a couple sites that we felt like were emblematic of a set of opportunities in downtown that could be replicated elsewhere, but, you know, we're a good starting point to start to think about those typologies of uses, both market-supportable and things we'd like to see happen in other places. So we looked at three sites, and again, the development exercise that we had the community do really helped us figure out what people wanted to see on some of these sites. So the first one is at Mill and Short Street, collection of surface parking lots, kind of really in the sort of heart of downtown. An opportunity here to really think about a very dense mixed use that may have office and hospitality in it. and those are the types of uses that are really doing well in this part of downtown as it stands. We also were thinking about some ideas that people had already sort of brought forward on some of these sites. So we looked at sort of two different hotel uses, one sort of on the short street side and one on the mill and second street side that might be more of a boutique offering, so a different type of hotel use. and again interior to that mixed-use office ground floor retail sort of ground-facing uses and creating and this is one of the things was really great to design with the community was trying to break these things up into some bite sized pieces make it walkable make sure there's sort of transparency to the interior of these blocks adding green space trees you know kind of walkable vias and working around some of the historic buildings that are here so this a visualization of the Short Street side, this improvements on Short Street with a cycle track that really helps make that connection between Legacy and Town Branch trails. You can see sort of the pedestrian walkway, the mixed-use ground floor, you know, protecting the building that exists there, trying to work within the historic fabric. And again, just a visualization for what could happen on this site. The second site we looked at was Good Samaritan Hospital. working with UK and meeting with some of their staff and thinking as they start to work toward winding down that facility, this is that opportunity to do two things, student housing as well as workforce housing. And that was actually something that both came up in that conversation with the university, that they know they need workforce housing for the university staff perspective and that this would be a good place for student housing as well. So we kept certain things. The Good Samaritan Garage certainly helps from a development standpoint. You don't have to build parking. That's valuable. And it's really a set of mixed-use buildings, along with looking at their campus master plan, places where they had academic buildings sited and located. So again, it's an opportunity to add student and workforce housing. Really extend that streetscape of limestone. This is, you know, surface parking lots today. It's not very walkable. adding retail on that ground floor is also helpful. Again, breaking it up with linear courts and greens. And then really excited to start to visualize what that looks like with long-term plans for bus rapid transit along Limestone. We'll get to this in the mobility section, but you can see there thinking about right sizing that street, adding that transportation for both bike, pedestrian, and bus rapid transit. So again, visualizing that site, really important to start to think about how that functions at that edge of downtown. Speaking of edges of downtown, this is Newtown Pike, looking at sort of the warehouse space adjacent to the rail line, Newtown, West Main Street, all kind of industrial warehouse uses. Again, looking at this for how could this bring a different type of housing close to downtown. So there's an opportunity here really from a market perspective to add a different kind of residential, different scales. So sort of getting down to some townhouse scales as well as some mixed-use buildings along Newtown Pike. Opportunity for some civic uses, a middle school potentially, a school site in here. And then thinking about mixed-income housing as the opportunity here. Again, with a big site, there's a lot more you can do from that perspective. And then really have it be a gateway into the western part of downtown. So thinking about connecting up with improvements on new town and trails that can kind of get into the site, but also connect in to Town Branch and other places getting into downtown. So thinking about this as a gateway into downtown was pretty exciting for us to talk through with the community. Sort of wrapping all this up then is looking at the zoning code in the downtown core. There's just a couple things I'll highlight, again, much more detail in the plan. First is modernizing the downtown business zoning. There's a lot of things like warehouses, auto repair, things that you wouldn't necessarily see in a downtown. So getting the use mix right. looking at tailoring zoning standards to have setbacks, side yards, lot coverage, these kinds of things that make more sense for a downtown type use so there's not as much to have to work through there, and then setting up urban design standards, thinking about the public realm, how do buildings interact with the street, you know where do we need to add landscape, what does it need to look like, all of those things, and then supporting historically significant properties, those H1 overlays still very important, and how do we encourage adaptive reuse. So there's recommendations in all of these areas. I will call your attention to all of these recommendations. There's certainly a lot of them if you look at them. In total we've tried in every section to pick some that could be done in the first hundred days. So where do we start this work is really important. So I'll touch on that here, but you can read more about it in the plan. So one of our first recommendations would be to set aside resources and launch a citywide affordable housing and anti-displacement strategy, align zoning and the entitlement processes to better match the sort of residential character that's needed in downtown. Look at development barriers, do an audit of that, create a plan for tenanting, branding, and attraction. So from a retail standpoint, looking at that, evaluating revenue streams from market-based activity and development, so how do we use that to leverage some other things that we want to see happen, and then exploring tax abatements for workforce and affordable housing. So again getting those tools set up to really accomplish the goals of the plan in this section. I'll go forward into the next piece of the vision in Greener Downtown. This is one that I think was really interesting to talk to the community about because you have Phoenix Park, you have Gatton Park, you've invested in some trail systems that are really, I think, world-class. So when people said they wanted more, we're really curious. What do you want? What do you want to see happening? Because you already have some of these sort of big set pieces. And people really pointed us to creating a connected system of green space and open space in downtown. That's sort of what we focused on. So there's four strategies. We want to add things like public art. We want to create an identity for downtown. I know some of the identity pieces that used to be here have been sort of taken out. We want to showcase the uniqueness of not just downtown as a neighborhood, but the neighborhoods that surround downtown. And then we want to design gateways that celebrate the entrance points into downtown. So one of the ones we looked at, I think often looked at here, you all have considered a number of different proposals for this site at Midland and Vine and East Main Street, sort of another gateway into downtown, the opposite side of downtown that we just looked at where Town Branch Commons comes through this sort of surface parking lot and we really feel like it's a chance to announce downtown in a greater way. So thinking about a building that could occupy that site with ground floor retail that's exciting, extend that sort of energy of the Main Street streetscape, pick up the Town Branch Trail and make something a little bit more there to be a gateway, perhaps adding a pavilion that could have an artistic touch to it, and then adding a trailhead for the Town Branch Trail. So that's a place to get yourself oriented to downtown, it's a place to get some water, might have an opportunity to put in restrooms, a place to fix your bike if you got a flat tire or something, but again provide that sort of welcome into downtown from this side of the city. So that's looking at gateway pieces and then we visualize what that could look like. Again this is an intersection I think that is a little bit convoluted and complicated, a way to sort of clean some of that up, slow things down, and really tell people they're in a downtown environment. The next thing we looked at was the downtown experience, thinking about, you know, how do we connect these experiences together? So how can people go from one to the other and enjoy themselves, making sure that it's, you know, clear how to get there, what the wayfinding and signage look like, And one of the things that we were talking with the community about and people were pointing out is that Triangle Park feels disconnected. So one of the things we looked at was, you know, the fact that Triangle Park, it's situated on two busy roads. It sort of has its back to the Rupp Arena Convention Center and Town Branch Commons. How can we better connect this into the sort of fabric of downtown? And we really started to look at a couple different things. One would be narrowing Vine Street, extending that two-way operation to Broadway. So, again, we're getting rid of that sort of U-turn lane, which, again, makes it hard to sort of walk from one side of the street to the other. Again, getting rid of some of that traffic confusion. And then reconfiguring the water feature so it will allow a pathway or an opening to Town Branch Trail and Rupp Arena Convention Center area. The other thing you could do here that I think is really interesting is that could be then Vine Street at a big event. You could you could close that street for more of a festival type environment to be right at the front door of where, you know, one of your major activity centers in downtown. The other kind of design feature and you guys have done this in a couple of places. I think it's really successful when you take a park or plaza space and have that character materiality come across the street. and that's a way that you can start to slow traffic down on Broadway, slow it down on Main Street. So we've started to take the materiality of Triangle Park and bring that all the way to the edges, and so it all starts to read as sort of one big public space. And there's a visualization of what Vine Street could look like in front of Rupp Arena and having those connections back into the park. next piece I think and this is this is where I think we really got some good feedback from the community is they want to see your existing parks updated refresh they want to see you know linear parks pocket parks different types of things that really some dots that connect things together and then also improving the tree canopy and we had a sort of special look at the tree canopy but one of the places we feel like is emblematic of making that sort of refresh possible is looking at the courthouse plaza really connecting phoenix park into this space today the fountain doesn't work a lot of some of the trees been taken out so some of the shades been removed the comfortability of the park doesn't really exist in the way that it used to so again we've introduced the concept of a shared street on short street again helping that plaza park space bleed across the street, added trees, refreshed the lawn areas, updated the water feature, and then added a programmable shade structure at the Bar Street end of the park. So again, making it more usable. Obviously this will take cooperation, programming, all those things, but this could become a more usable space with those improvements. And again, these were ideas that we generated from speaking with the public. Another opportunity, again, is thinking about pocket parks and how those could be added into downtown. We start to look at these spaces between buildings, these spaces that connect blocks together, and started to look at there's a number of these types of spaces in downtown, these sort of alleyways that had turned into parking lots over time and sort of interconnect. So we looked at one here between Short and Church Street, a way to sort of make an intervention, create flexible programmable spaces, add lighting and murals, and really help connect people between blocks and other local businesses. So again, there's a number of different opportunities to do this throughout downtown. It's a bit of a light lift and a sort of early win, if you will, to invest in those types of spaces. This section wraps up with recommendations on street trees. We worked with Urban Canopy Works in northern Kentucky to sort of look at your sort of standard of care and where you have trees today in downtown and what could be done to improve those. So they've got a handful of recommendations around setting tree canopy goals, completing an inventory of public trees, starting to talk about how do we maybe take over street tree care throughout downtown for both public and private, and then regulations, tree care standards, and then planting standards for new trees to make sure that what you're putting in the ground is ultimately successful. There's opportunities as you think through capital investments that are on the table to start to do this work immediately. So 100-day actions for greener downtown. We want to look at the, make sure the programming in downtown's inclusive, elevating downtown's identity, adding public green space connections, design guidelines for those new spaces, and then setting those downtown tree canopy goals. So again, things can get the ball rolling here in downtown. Third part of this is a multimodal downtown. Working closely with staff here and WSP, started to look at a set of new downtown street typologies. These describe the sort of character of downtown streets and then start to describe the opportunities for improvements. So probably a little hard to read here, but I think the bottom line here on these streets is some streets have to do everything. Some streets can be bus-focused. Some can be bike-focused. Some can just be great pedestrian streets. But the goal is to make people comfortable and make sure every street is walkable. So this is really to help focus redesign, reinvestment, and improvements in downtown streets. So we looked at these categories and assigned streets to these categories throughout downtown. And you can see they have characteristics and they have design priorities. So this should guide, really help to guide future investment. But at the end of the day, there are a couple goals we're trying to accomplish here in creating people-focused streets. So we want them to be safe, comfortable, accessible. We know we need to keep managing vehicular movement through downtown. But we need to think about speed management. We have a lot of streets that people are going faster than they ought to be. to be. We need to think about curb management and parking, streetscapes that enhance safety, comfort and placemaking, and then we need to be thinking about future mobility options as well. So a couple places I'll point you to in the work. We looked at a handful of improvements. This is Short Street Cycle Track. I'll show a bike map here in a second about how critical that linkage is. We looked at Limestone, which again I mentioned earlier has Bus Rapid Transit on it, as well as a protected bike lane. So again, that's that key sort of campus connector. And then these are the streets that, based on 85th percentile speed, are going over the speed limit. And these are the streets that really need traffic calming applied to them. So again, we try to focus in on where the data is pointing as there are problems. We also, sorry, so Maxwell High, Limestone, Jefferson, Midland, so those are the streets for traffic calming where you've got higher than limited speeds. And then also looked at places where the high injury network has showed us that there are accidents and conflict points. These are the places where you need to think about crossing improvements. So that could be shortening the crosswalk, adding safer crossings, you know, limiting turn movements, things like that that would help people more safely navigate downtown. Also thinking about connecting things together, not just inside downtown, but to the neighborhoods that surround, and then also at the regional scale as well. So we've got some recommendations to tie neighborhoods, campuses, destinations together, improving city-wide transit and then tying into the broader region. This again probably a little hard to read from you all are sitting. This is a sort of a bike network that shows a multitude of different connections but I'll key you in on a handful of things. You look at the MLK corridor, that's really helping get you from campus to Town Branch to Short Street that allows you to get up to Limestone to get to the Legacy Trail and that really helps connect UK, Transylvania, BCTC together. And then you look at the other pieces of the network that really help those downtown neighborhoods get more connected safely and seamlessly with downtown. So work closely with with the city here on this to you know prioritize these investments in the bike network. So as you look at the first hundred days a couple things. Quick build materials for pilot improvements as we think about things like improving some of the crosswalks, the crossings, those intersections. Quick build can enable to test some ideas and see some things in real time. We want to think about ways to increase turnover in parking downtown. So you do that by making on-street parking more expensive than garages so that people are not incentivized to keep feeding the meter. We want to look at the LexRide circulators and see how those are going with frequency and maybe simplifying some routes. So that'd be another thing to look at. And then making sure that people know how to get around downtown and thinking about the influx of people from new university students to others that may need to have a little more education about how to how to use what's here. The last piece of the vision section is on welcoming downtown and that's strengthening support for Lexington's unhoused population. We heard a lot about this during the process. We know there's a lot of things already going on with other partners. The Office of Homeless Prevention and Intervention intervention, other stakeholders that are doing this work. These conversations that Civic Lex led as part of this helped us understand what people are doing and how the plan could have some recommendations to help support that. So one of the things we think of is supportive housing. That should be a key part of the citywide housing strategy we mentioned. Improving transparency and communication, simplifying access to information, and and then sharing data on what's really happening. Because I think there's a lot of misperceptions, really, from multiple parts of this. So you can see all the conversations that led to these recommendations. It's not often we do a downtown plan that really focuses in on some of these solutions and supporting the people that are doing that work. So kudos to those that were involved in that. The last piece is implementation. And this is something that we talked a lot with our advisory committee about. And it really comes down to how do you build capacity to implement the plan? What are the pieces that need to be in place? And we really leaned on our experience, but then also places that have done this work and how have they gone about doing it. So we first took a look at who's out there today and what are they doing. So you have the Downtown Lexington Partnership. You have the Management District. And you had, at one point in time, the Lexington Downtown Development Authority. And so we sort of looked at how these groups function, and then sort of compared it to others that we've worked with in different cities and other colleagues of ours that are in that world. And then we asked people who have been involved or are involved in those organizations, what do you think would be helpful? If you reformed an organization, maybe it's a development authority, maybe it's not, maybe it's an expanded capacity of an existing organization, what were the issues? And so these were things we asked to really understand what needed to happen. And we do find that this lines up with with successful organizations in different cities. So one you need a dedicated funding source You need to have formal authority And you have a clear mandate and purpose And you need to enable that group to make decisions and this is all things that were sort of lacking in the past And then we asked people What what functions needed to be done by an organization like this, but aren't set up to do that today. So what functions are missing? So what do we need to see happen? So one, development in real estate. We need a group that can 100% focus on downtown retail and master leasing space, acquiring and holding property, facilitating design and development projects, and having a team that has real estate expertise. So that's a missing function today. Also urban design and placemaking. How do you provide a vision for the public realm that we've, you know, sort of laid out here. Are there infrastructure improvements? Who's keeping an eye on that from day to day and facilitating the implementation of those projects? And then finally, economic positioning. So looking holistically at downtown as a district and starting to look at how do you attract the right development in the right places? So those are pieces that are missing. And these are organizations that we've either worked alongside or worked directly with in the region that are doing exactly the kinds of things that everyone says needs to happen as part of a new organization. So whether it's Grand Rapids, Columbus, Toledo, Louisville, they all have kind of a combined CDC and special improvement district or business district. And in some cases, they're also administering affordable housing funds. They're administering TIF funds. so they are taking a more economic more active economic role in projects in downtown whether it's a public realm improvement or it's facilitating private investment in a downtown so our first recommendation for implementing this would be to create an organization and again whether that's a new organization or an expansion of an existing one you got to have a dedicated funding source you have to have real estate development financial expertise on staff You need to be able to assist with funding sources, facilitate design, recruit tenants, curate retail, all those things people said they needed. And what we've done in other places, we did this as part of our work in downtown Gainesville, hold a session where we get those people, those experts from other places together. We get the people here that are active in this work and have a workshop that really talks about what would an implementation entity look like, What's the best way to go about it? What have been the roadblocks? How do we get past them? And that's a way to really get some lessons learned and set a really strong path forward for implementation. So that was a lot. I'm going to just quickly give you a snapshot of how to use the plan since you'll have this in front of you. I would say if you're looking at it digitally, make sure you're looking at two-page view because one side of the page talks to the other. So that's one piece of advice. But you can see we've got it laid out in these chapters. You'll see an executive summary and an introduction to how we started the work. There's a chapter on existing conditions. So if you're interested in mobility data, if you're interested in housing and market information, that's all in there. We've summarized all the community engagement. And then you have the vision for downtown. That is really the second half of the plan. And then how do we implement the vision? Eventually there will be an appendix that brings together all the recommendations in one spot in the back, but we wanted to give everybody a chance to read it first so we don't duplicate our work efforts. So there will be a supporting appendix to come. So we start off by you can sort of see how we defined downtown and did that work. Existing conditions, we've got sort of land use and sort of historic districts shown here, but again, all the background analysis and data that helped form our recommendations. The engagement work is cataloged here, every meeting, everything we did, and then going through that downtown framework, topic by topic. So growing downtown, greener downtown, multimodal downtown, and welcoming downtown. So when you look at that, there's goals and there's strategies, recommendations to support that. In some cases, there's some visualizations to help bring that to life. But then there's an implementation section in each chapter. So basically what we've shown here is sort of an illustration from the plan presentation. But this is the implementation section. So every recommendation, every goal strategy recommendation is cataloged in the back of each of those sections. That's going to have your actors, more information on things like funding, who might be involved, timeframes. time frames, and then a page number to sort of guide you back to a relevant part of the plan if you need to cross-reference anything. So that's a place where everything sort of comes together. And again, once we're done, done, we'll put all of those implementation tables into the appendix so you can look through those one by one as well. But this is, I think, a pretty user-friendly way to set things up. So that's what you can expect when you go through each chapter. And then we have a final chapter on empowering implementation. and it sort of goes into greater detail about what I just presented. So with that, happy to open up for questions. Okay. Thank you. Sorry for the slide issues I was having there. Thank you, Mr. Overbeck. That was a lot of information and we're grateful to have it. I'm happy to go back to anything at any point. Do we have any questions at this time? Mr. Mickler. yeah i wonder if you could speak to when i think of downtown i think of the place people work i think of historically the place that things were made in lexington now was the location of our you know hemp textiles and and things like that um i didn't hear you cover work or manufacturing or because we, I mean, even in the paper yesterday, we just saw an event space is being taken over by a new company that is, that is doing labs and making things. So I didn't hear an aspect of our downtown that had to do with production or work. Yeah. Thanks, Robin. That is, so definitely in, in the plan, there is a section on employment. So it's, you know, we'll cover, the retail hospitality, sort of those big pieces of downtown, but it's also going to cover the office environment, so there's recommendations on that. That's a challenge in a lot of downtowns. I don't think there's anything that would keep that example that you're talking about from happening. Those sort of inventive use of spaces, I think, is definitely supported. As you think about adaptive reuse, that's a big part of some of those recommendations. You'll find it in that growing downtown section. And then just a couple of things I noticed from the imagery that we may, you may want to look at before we approve a final copy. This is a small thing, but it jumped out at me that, you know, in your example on Short Street where you preserve the building, well, that building is owned and operated by the business in that building. And it sells cigarettes and gyros and is open a lot and is very popular, and we transition that in the image to like a nice little chic coffee shop. And I don't know that we want to emphasize gentrification in our downtown master plan. Okay, I'll take a closer look at that. And also, I don't think all the imagery needs to be changed, but I didn't notice or see in any of the architecture anything that spoke to Kentucky. in any of the material choices or in any of the design choices, looks like it could be anywhere. And so maybe in some of the images addressing that with materials, sort of the way that our downtown did with the Town Branch Trail, where we used the local limestone through that type of thing. Yeah, I think your greater point there about design guidelines, that is a recommendation, so that would be design guidelines coming forward. Yeah, I heard it in the language, but I didn't see it in the images. Yeah, I mean, we could argue about images for quite a while if we wanted to. But, yeah, we're happy to take your thoughts on that when you look through it in greater detail. Commissioner. Thank you, Chair. I had just a couple of maybe comments or questions. I think this is very well timed for what we're going to hear about a little bit later, which is the release of the Complete Streets Manual. So hopefully the things that you envision, there can now be a vehicle through which those things might happen, which is great, as well as Hannah's presentation about public street art. I did wonder, in the section that starts out about welcoming, it seems like the first thing that we have to do to be welcoming, just how I perceived it, is to house the unhoused. Is that the primary takeaway that we should have? I think it's two things. I think there's supportive housing, so you'll see recommendations on that. So that gets to that point. But also supporting those organizations that are doing the work. So when we talked to those folks, they didn't have the funding to stay open, say, Saturday and Sunday. Their hours were constrained. So what support do they need? You know, the people that are doing the work. So I think there's multiple ways of looking at that. And to your point about complete streets, there is a part of the existing conditions that looks at all the active studies and how the work we were doing sort of fits in with that or complements that work. So you'll see that in the existing conditions section. Great. And then I guess kind of on the, not that it's any negative on your part, but it seems like many of the historic buildings that we have thought were important that were adjacent to downtown have been destroyed. So it will become more important, in my opinion, to protect those historic structures that can go through adaptive reuse rather than bulldozing them. Yeah, and I think the recommendations on adaptive reuse are exactly having that in mind. So what uses could go in there, making sure that those uses are supported in the zoning code so that we don't have that hurdle, and then what incentives need to be put in place to allow for that to happen. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Okay, do we have any other questions? Do you ever envision a time where some of our one-way streets downtown can revert back to two-way? So there's a handful of recommendations in the Plan 1. Again, going back to that, existing conditions, there's ongoing studies for Vine and Maine right now by KYTC, so we're sort of acknowledging that. But looking at short, looking at second, we looked at that in greater detail. There's a study there that we sort of folded in to the work. And I'm trying to think if there's any other, Hal, is there anything else that's there? With the directionality aspects of things, we really are relying on the state studies. They're the ones that are kind of looking over whether or not that's appropriate at this time. I think in this study that second street conversion to a two-way was seen as something that is possible and would not impact any of the traveling public. It's also one of our roadways. It's a city-owned roadway. So that gets into some possibilities there. But ultimately we are kind of waiting to see what the state has to say on some things. Okay. Thank you, Hal. If we don't have any other questions for Mr. Overbeck, thank you very much. Excellent. Thank you. Look forward to your review. Thank you. Okay, next item on the agenda is the Solar Work Group Report with Mr. Crum. Good afternoon, everybody. Daniel Crum, planning staff. Before I hopped in, you have a stack of a variety of papers in front of you. This is a sort of selection of some of the documents that have been generated during this process, including some basically primer information, summaries of the work group meetings themselves, as well as sort of kick-starting the direction that's going to be coming up in the future with the updates. So just going through this document, just to give you all kind of a heads up, the very front page is the existing language. I thought I had uploaded a version that had highlighted the changes that council had made, so that is not what you have in front of you. So I will be following that up with a follow-up email that basically just highlights the new language because you all passed a framework, council changed some aspects of it. I'll get into it in my my presentation, but that's basically the starting point of where we at at the beginning. That's followed by a very exhaustive list of notes provided by Chair Davis here that summarized the the first two meetings or the two meetings that we had of the solar workgroup that's followed up by some maps and data that was requested during this process that speaks to sort of a soil map overlaid with some information about the transmission lines that are present in Fayette County we also have the red line of the council initiated text that is basically the basis of initiating the request, as well as information from the Rural Land Management Board, as well as data from a local installer who had generated the results from a local operator on solar on their property. So just kind of a variety of some of the materials that were generated initially. I'll also follow up with an email on any of the PowerPoint presentations, but wanted to make sure that you had all of the documentation that the smaller group that was looking at during the process. So just once again a very very quick background. 2024 is when this this conversation really started with a applicant initiated zone chain, sorry text amendment, that was looking to locate a large-scale solar facility in our agricultural zones. This was included within a larger effort to kind of create framework for solar across the board over the course of a number of meetings in that year ultimately the Planning Commission landed and as well as the staff of adopting a larger framework that would handle solar but crucially left the question of how we should handle ground-mounted solar in the agricultural zones left that with a no recommendation or a recommendation that it not be implemented at that time. The council, as they took that language forward, slightly expanded the capacity to do solar in the ag areas. Basically small scale and intermediate scales were allowed as a pathway forward. They also created some additional text that spoke to the kind of conditions that were necessary in order to receive a conditional use permit, as well as instituted the concept of community benefit plans that spoke to looking to get an extra benefit from those types of applications. But ultimately, still left that same large crucial piece, large-scale solar in the agricultural zones, as prohibited. At that time, or around the time of the adoption of that legislation, there was a GGP workgroup that was initiated, and it was helped staff by planning staff. They heard some additional testimony. They sought some further information kind of along those same topics that were discussed during the Zota process, but really were ultimately aimed at examining and getting information on providing a pathway forward for large sales solar within the ag areas. It came with some additional recommendations, talking about brownfield allowances, clarifying some of the community benefit agreements, but really the main thrust and focus was trying to create a text that implemented that aspect. That was not unanimous, so one of the council members involved with that was not in favor of including it at that time, but that's what was brought forth to council. So council then took that recommendation, adopted or incorporated it within its initiation text, and forwarded it on to you all for consideration. Based on that process there was a desire with the tight timeline that is associated with council initiated requests to create sort of a work group that would take information relating to solar Once again, this is has been archived online with our Lex TV So there is video of those proceedings that is available You also have once again a about a 10 page written text summary that outlined kind of the speaking points as they were made. We had kind of a variety of different speakers ranging from folks with Fayette Alliance. We had the applicant of the original text amendment with Silicon Ranch provided information, local stakeholders, a pretty wide range of perspectives and experiences. And the major topics that really came out of that, we've sort of summarized here. Once again, there's much more in depth in the actual sort of minutes that were generated as well as the report. But some of the very recurring themes really started and were led with that concept of soil conservation. So this holistic perspective of looking at the composition of Fayette County, what type of soils we have. As you can see in the maps that were generated, a vast majority of this is prime or statewide significance soils. I mean, so there's this discussions on you know, what would be the implications of installing solar on that? There was some note from the solar providers that there are some alternative means of installing some of these facilities But one of the points that kind of came back to was once that soil is disrupted There really isn't a great way to really replicate that And so that was wrapped into discussions on sort of some of the long-term impacts of these solar facilities because things like decommissioning have not yet occurred, that some of the science and the data on soil impacts, especially as it relates to agrivoltaics, other ground cover, etc., still have not been fully fleshed out. So there was a lot of conversation about sort of the aspects of the soil that really helped kind of make Fayette County one of the more unique places within the state of Kentucky and once again supports the back the whole world let's not undersell ourselves which leads kind of to the second piece we heard some information and there was some some data provided around tourism and the economy once again it's a surprise to no one that this these soils are feeding into our equine industry our ag industries that serve as sort of a major backbone for our our operations here in Fayette County but also helps drive the tourism that then helps spur other industries. So information was provided on those linkages and how those were being provided and then kind of having that dovetail into conversations on protecting those view sheds and kind of those entryways into our community and how those you know solar would impact those or not impact those. There was discussion about brownfields. One of the the outcomes of the the text that was initiated by council was providing the ability to do those under less stringent circumstances in any zone if it's a part of an identified brownfield. And so part of the data was some information that had already been obtained by council about existing brownfield sites and wanting to kind of take those as a land that is not suitable for agricultural production and looking at opportunities to kind of place solar or other renewable energy aspects with that. We did receive some new information from the folks at Silicon Ranch regarding some of their internal siting decisions on kind of where they were initially looking to locate. And essentially the takeaways for that were the location of those transmission lines shown on the map, combined with some economic considerations with the number of properties that they would look to obtain or not obtain, you know, ultimately significant properties that were not viable because of PDR or other restrictions, ultimately painted a picture of there being fairly limited locations in the community where, as Silicon Ranch sort of saw it, they would be able to feasibly locate. Once again, noting that all of these, when we're looking at text amendment, we're looking at sort of a broader perspective of any operator kind of choosing to locate here. But that was information that was provided, and we will try to get a copy of their PowerPoint presentation as well and provide that to you. The topic of decommissioning came up once again with this being sort of a newer phenomenon and we're talking about these these developments operating in the scale of decades there really wasn't any additional information provided on how these decommissioning plans really play out in a practical sense or the kind of long-term impacts on the soil and other qualities of the actual site. I mean we did get some information on Solarize Lexington on some of the not larger scale but more localized initiatives to get solar on rooftops, what that looks like as sort of a public private partnership and working with the solar installers in these homes to provide solar on kind of a rooftop level. So you know with that this moves forward to committees on July 2nd that is the time that you all will get the draft staff alternative if there is one along with the staff report coinciding with that application. It is a tight turnaround. It is going from committees on the second to a planning commission hearing on the ninth. Once again, unfortunately, due to this being a council initiated zoning ordinance text amendment, we have a very compressed timeline in order to work and hear from this. This is forwarded onto the council, which then has as much time as they would like to kind of consider and move that along its processes. But really, our work is really kind of funneling to that July 9th hearing. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. We once again have several members of that group that attended as well, so they can share any of their individual takeaways, but really the point of the presentation today was sort of serve as a primer of where we were, what we generally kind of discussed, and to provide you all with the access to the documents and the information that we gained during that time. Okay, thank you, Daniel. Commissioner Molly Davis. Thank you. I'm looking at the map, Daniel, that says existing solar projects and brownfields, yet I can't find a color that indicates brownfields stated that simply. Can you point out to me where they might be if they're supposed to be on this map? Let's see here. and as a just as a sort of clarification on this this was something that was generated as a through the council process on one of their documentations I believe those may be the parcels that are outlined in sort of a darker black but we can get some some clarification on that. The corresponding map with the acreages, I mean the corresponding chart with the acreages show that the, the extent is fairly limited in Fayette County, especially within the agricultural areas, which was sort of the, the emphasis I think for. I mean, it is a very, it's a scale map. It would be hard to see brownfields. I was just wondering if I was not, if I was missing something. Thank you. Okay. Do we have any other questions for Daniel? If not, we can move along to committee or work session discussion. But Mr. Mickler, go right ahead. Daniel, I've got a question just in terms of the sort of reconciling a couple of things. One was reconciling this with back in the, like, bigger picture of the comprehensive plan. And it seemed like the last time, based on staff recommendations, it was interpreted that industrial-scale solar really belongs in the industrial and B4 area. And that would suggest the pathway to incorporating that in the city would be to increase the amount of industrial land that we have available in the city. This is basically saying that if it has enough agriculture, it can go anywhere in the AR. Is that correct? so the the council's text and let me bring that out i guess this is the i'll go ahead and like finish my thought to the end this is sort of saying like if it if industrial solar has enough agriculture then it can go in the ar with a conditional use permit and that enough agriculture is defined by the rural land management board or another board and the Rural Land Management Board is telling us that they don't have enough agriculture to be in the AR zone. So we kind of are saying we're making a text amendment. The way that I read it is we're making a text amendment that would say if the Rural Land Management Board says it has enough agriculture or approves their agricultural plan, it can go in the AR zone. And then we have a letter from the Rural Land Management Board that says they don't, these projects don't have enough agriculture. Am I reading that correct? Yeah, I would say that's a fairly accurate reading of that. What do you mean by enough agriculture? Maybe I'll let Daniel speak to that. The council text had, there's sort of a criteria, And if I read that correctly, that goes basically to rural land management to define that criteria. Yeah. So part of the kind of big picture, the text that was brought forward from the council speaks to a series of criteria that when compared with a conditional use permit would allow a pathway for this large scale solar in the ag zones. part of the criteria the discussion that this text tried to get into was sort of quantifying the the desire to have that dual use or requiring the dual use of both the solar facility as well as some type of either livestock or other type of agricultural products coming out of that the language i think designates the that entity to kind of provide information to help guide the board's decision towards that, but the letter and the positions that sort of been outlined by the Rural Land Management Board shows that there may be some conflict with those duties or that may need to be kind of ironed out in greater detail. And so yes, some of the some of these pieces once again are do not necessarily connect in that way, but they're basically speaking to the larger desire that came out of that group of if there was a pathway for solar that they wanted it to be primarily vegetated and they wanted sort of that agricultural component but once again as it sort of the discussion on that was noted the the primary economic side of the thing of or the economic side of these proposals is the the electricity generating the solar use of that but they were trying to qualify that with that language i think this is my two cents i'm not speaking for the rest of the work group. But to me, I watched, I was not present for the second session, but I watched it on video. Sort of like I played one on TV kind of thing. One of the things that seemed to me in this process was the decision on applications for this will go to the Board of Adjustment. And based on what you just said, Robin, one of the things that was clear to me is, we don't have clear criteria in what the council has proposed and what's been to us about how they should go about making that decision. And I think you've hit part of that nail right there on the head. Yep, Mr. Owens. Thank you, Zach. Daniel, thank you for the presentation. I think you covered it pretty well, to tell you the truth. A couple of things. One, you know, as you noted, we did this a couple of years ago, sent it to the council. They tweaked it, and they approved it. What was the time frame from when they approved it until they went back into committee to start all over again? I'd have to look that up. It was in a fairly quick succession because this was adopted in 2025, and once again, we're halfway through 2026. Two months or something? I can get you the specifics on it, but off the top of my head. Okay. Fairly quick. One thing that was asked, at least maybe, I think maybe in the last committee of ours, what's the status of the Bluegrass Station ownership wise so forth did that ever get flushed out yes I actually did along with his 10 page staff report I did look that up so the bulk of the land was purchased by the federal government in the early 1940s and then it was transferred to the commonwealth in 2006 by a quick claim D is it leased to Fayette County? Oh, okay. Well, the title was held by the Commonwealth, but okay. So what is Fayette County? What is the use that they're leasing it for? Well, it started out that it was going to be government property that was abandoned. And then after all this quick-cane deed thing happened, then Lockheed came in and decided they wanted to do helicopter research. And so I don't know whether the state or the city acquiesced. That's why you got the big fire station out there and all that, because of Lockheed. But the other thing that we haven't mentioned here is that solar, and we ask the solar people who have done it in Garrett County who testified in front of us, do you cut all the trees down? And the answer is yes. Do you do any land disturbance? Well, it's minimum unless we have to. so to say that that land can be reclaimed is a pretty tough argument to make I'd just say that to understand that we just granted a 2800 acre expansion and this is an 800 acre maybe a 900 acre this is not a small project so the question stands out there you have 2800 acres find you a place you can do it it's not going to be agriculture so you know those are the type of questions this community has to deal with and this council has to answer the other point I want to make is that the council's work group was closed our work group was open we really don't know what was said in the council work group. We know what we said in this one. So just read the reports. And, Molly, if you'll look at the next page after those maps, it'll show you all the landfills, and you can find it. You may have to blow it up some, but you can find it. You've got it. Thank you. I'm going to say one other thing that jumped out to me wasn't in the room, the head of the sustainability office noted in response to questions about Council Member Boone that the city is on track to meet its net zero goal without the industrial solar. She said that apparently to Council, and she said it to us. Are there any other individuals that were on the work group? Do you have any further thoughts in addition to my poor attempt at not minutes but recollections? Do you want to do a great job? Is that awesome? Maybe. Maybe. Well, it was just touched on, but as to that point, I think you did a very, very good job at highlighting what was said and what was discussed. And you did just that. You highlighted exactly what was said for the most part. And I'm going to reiterate the fact that and commend Zach, our chairman, and the chairperson of the committee for the way the committee was structured and operated in a total open and transparency matter. I think that does make a difference. Anyone that wanted to speak to this could at that point in time. And there were several requests, and not that they were necessarily scheduled, but there were several requests, and they got heard. So that is something to be commended right there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Owens. Personally, I think the most effective aspect of the work group is not only will, do we have findings that we can present to the planning commission so the planning commission can make an educated decision on what to recommend to council. But I could see during our meetings there was a lot of education taking place for people who perhaps are not as familiar with the nature of soil in central Kentucky and even agricultural operations and how they just run on a day-to-day basis. So I thought that was a very positive aspect of it. And I also appreciated the representative from Hallway Feeds, a great example of a private business taking the initiative to do pretty significant solar installation on their own. They received no government backing or incentives. As a matter of fact, they had to come to the government to get a zone change to do it. And for me, that testimony was very, very compelling and enlightening and an excellent example of an industrial-level solar use in an urban zone on an industrial property and how they complemented each other very well. Do we have any other questions or discussion or questions for the – yes, sir, Mr. Mickler. I've just got a couple more follow-up questions just in terms of whether something was discussed. One of them is I'm wondering if it was discussed. I mean, there's a pretty big difference between a six-acre solar project, which would be considered a large solar project, and an 800-acre solar project. Were there any discussions instead of saying we would approve large scale in the agricultural zones by instead adjusting the terminology for what would be allowed in the parameters would be the first part of that question. And then another part would be just looking at it in a different way because it really, from our understanding, limits the type of agriculture that can be done on a land. Was there any discussion of using like a percentage of a parcel as a limiting factor as well? yeah at some point in the process one of the the speakers did did note that they thought the categories as they kind of stood for were a little bit restrictive especially once again starting at that five acres i mean then going kind of up to that point but the the text that you have in front of you there wasn't any any mention real mention of change during the GGP process or the text kind of coming out of that so as far as really it seemed like the council took the More or less the framework that initially was sort of put forward expanded it through the use table and clarifying it but didn't seem to really further thread that needle with a percentage of the parcel or Adjust the bands anymore. So currently the the council's proposal that staffs evaluating starts that conversation by leaving those existing definitions intact. If I remember correctly, if you look at the notes, the person who did talk about that a little bit was Council Member Sevigny. Daniel, we didn't ask this question at the committee level, and in retrospect, we probably should have. And I'll just ask it here. why would the council consider making this a conditional use when it's obviously a zone change? To go from agriculture to industrial use, I don't know how you could justify that, that that would be a permitted use in the AR zone. So what would be the staff's position on that? Mr. Chair, Mr. Penn, we wanted to collect your thoughts today. the staff has not met to form their recommendation on this so we'll take all of your thoughts and we'll have that ready for you at committee Mr. Mickler, to your point, I do recall, speaking of percentages, one individual solar representative was asked about percentages in agriculture, and he reported that the agriculture was approximately 1% of their revenue, roughly. Solar production, 99%. Am I recalling that correctly? Yeah, and there was also sort of a little bit of a, for the Silicon Ranch folks, I guess it depends on their model as well, the one they have locally in Garrett County, they essentially let the herder use that land for free in lieu of mowing services. So sometimes it's a complete external entity that's doing that, but the vast majority of the actual generation of that site, money-wise, is through the solar. I'm going to add this because I read it on the Internet, not because we heard it. They've got a 20-year project doing cattle down in Tennessee, but they're only two or three years into that project in terms of trying to do agrivoltaics with cattle, which is a huge issue for us. There's just a lot of unknowns on that area. What they've been working on is sheep. And I would add, just like I did in the work group, this is a countywide policy decision, and we can't be making it just for one particular provider. We have to do it with the entire county in mind, understanding that different providers have different models. Are there any other questions for the work group or any other context or information that can be provided, we will... Yes, sir. I guess let me ask this with Jim Duncan, his statement. Does the staff know where we are? Yes. Thank you. Little thing, but I think we have one speaker left off the list, a resource council guy. Charlie Farmer. Charlie Farmer, I think, is left off your list. Charlie, yes. And Charlie actually was, again, very, very helpful just because of his experience with Fayette County soils over the course of a 40-year career. Okay. Do we have anything else on the solar work group? If not, thank you, Daniel. And I probably will have additional data to send you for March of L9. Yes, and the follow-up, we will try to send out basically any of the information that we've received in connection with that. So PowerPoints, supplemental information, et cetera. And then we'll revisit the entire topic right before the 4th. So, yes, the red line and the very first document in your packet was once again supposed to have highlighted sections that showed the new language that council had added. So I will make sure that gets to you all. And if there's any follow-up, once again, information, questions, concerns, things to look into, your staff's always here to support. Thank you, Daniel. And I will say that. Yeah, Mr. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just thought of one thing, and I was looking to see if it was at the end of your language text here. There was two links from Visit Lex that spoke to tourism that I think is very important, and I don't know if we have it in there, but is it in here? There was some pre-formatted documents, and then the chair forwarded on some links, but difficulties printing out sort of the website text. So we'll make sure that when we send that email out. I think those links had fairly new information, recent information, which I thought was very important. Was that the announcement yesterday or two days ago that Fayette County, the economic impact, set a record for last year, I think? Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you, Daniel. I will say that I did hear from both people on the work group, people presenting to the work group. There was a kind of universal appreciation for the approach of how we went about having these discussions, collecting information. No decisions were made. It was purely folks talking to one another, which is a good thing. Okay. Thank you, Daniel. Next, we have a unified development code update. Good afternoon Planning Commission. My name is JT Holtz. I am a senior planner with the Outreach and Strategic Planning section of the Division of Planning and I'm excited to introduce the unified development code to you all today. So the purpose of this project is to consolidate Lexington's zoning ordinance, land subdivision regulations, and other regulatory documents that impact development. So we are hoping to create a modern and user friendly code, but it is important to note that this is not a new code. This will essentially be the same language that you've seen before just in a new format with a new name. So we are hoping to create new graphics and an associated guidebook that will help aid in our engagement and accessibility for the code and the public's understanding of our regulations. And we hope that this will modernize our existing standards, the way that we display our existing standards to allow citizens, developers, government employees, and elected officials to better understand the code and talk to the community about it. So the goals of this project are to be compliant with KRS 100.275. As you all recall, we had the House Bill 443 Zota that came through last year. And the primary purpose of that was to make sure that all of our language was affirmative, using shall instead of should. And as part of that, we discovered that there was a need for a little bit more cleanup administratively of our regulations. So that was where this project sort of came from. And we found that other communities similar size to Lexington and larger have unified development codes. So their subdivision regulations and zoning ordinance will be located in one spot along with other development, things that impact development. And so as part of this project, we intend to build upon Imagine Lexington 2045, comprehensive plan, the urban growth master plan, Imagine Nicholasville, Imagine New Circle, the upcoming Imagine Winchester, or Winchester Road Corridor study, as well as Blue Sky Works, the downtown area master plan, and other ZOTAs that we have had come through before you all. And like I said, this is supposed to be a user-friendly format that is accessible to the public, and it will have clear graphics and tables that supplement and clarify the text within the UDC, and it will ensure that all key terms are clearly defined. Moreover, we will make sure that if there are any things that need to be updated with the UDC, that we are very transparent about that. And if there are things that can't be updated through this process, we will put it for a later date. So the project contract, we sent the RFP out on January 5th, and it closed on February 19th. We had five RFP respondents, and we selected Tunnel, Spangler, Walsh, and Associates as the leading consultant for this project. Along with them, they are joined with Code Studio, EHI Consultants, and Frost Brown Todd Attorneys. We were very impressed by their understanding of accessible modern codes that are very graphical, especially in cities larger than Lexington, and so we feel like they will do an outstanding job with this project. The project funds were authorized by council in 2025, and then they were approved for the full contracts in the fiscal year of this year on May 14th. So this is the project timeline. As you can see, this is an 18 month from kickoff to approval and then initiation and training. So right now we're in the diagnostic phase. We had the project kickoff last Wednesday. So the diagnostic phase will be the consultants reviewing our zoning ordinance, land subdivision regulations, the code of ordinances and other regulatory documents, communicating with planning staff and other divisions and determining what this structure will look like. And then past that, we will have the drafting of the UDC. And then within the next year, hopefully summer of 2027, we will have the final unified development code. And then we will enter the adoption phase. And then once that is adopted, we will come before you all and train everyone on how to use this code. So this is a project that's going to happen over the next year and a half. And throughout the process, we will be meeting with you all a couple of times to inform you all on where it is and help you all understand what this process will look like. So like I said, we had the project kickoff last week. We took the consultants to a lot of different developments across Lexington because we wanted to show them what our land subdivision regulations and zoning ordinance create in Lexington. While they will not be proposing any new regulations for the city, we thought that it was important that they understand what they are reviewing and how they are reorganizing things so that they can see what this is creating for the city. So I bet you're wondering what could the unified development code look like for Lexington? And I have some great examples for you all. Our consultants provided an example document from Charlottesville, Virginia's code, which they worked on and got approved in December of 2023. While this is not exactly what our code will look like when it is completed, it is a perfect rough draft of what it could look like. So first of all, I'll show you our schedule of zones. I know that you all are probably very familiar with our zoning ordinance, but I will use these to compare and contrast anyways. So this is our schedule of zones in the zoning ordinance. As you can tell, there's nothing necessarily wrong with the way that we list these, but they're listed by use and by intensity, but there's not a lot of other information besides what the zoning names are and then what section you can find them in. So this is an example of how modern codes will list their zoning districts. So you can see it still has the zoning districts listed by intensity and by zoning type, but it also provides more information that people can find very quickly without having to dig through the code to each individual section. So you can compare and contrast RA, RNA, RB, RC, all the different residential zones, in this case for Charlottesville, and see what the lot width would be, what the dwelling units allowed would be, how many stories it can be, any pertinent information that you can hope for. And then they also have a summary of districts. Now, like I said, this is not indicative of how ours will look exactly, because obviously we have different zoning districts with different zoning restrictions, but this is an example of what it could look like. Next, let's look at the uses within the zoning ordinance. This is an area where our zoning ordinance currently uses an older style of zone writing. So we use what you call nested zoning, and I believe they talked about it some of the blue sky, but I'll talk about it again today. So what nested zoning is, is basically, you have a zone, in this case R4, and in R4 you have permitted uses, your accessory uses, conditional uses, and prohibited uses. But when you're looking at the zone, you can't immediately see what is allowed because you'll see principal use is permitted in the R3 zone. So then you have to go to the R3 zone in the code, and then from the R3 zone you have to go to R2, and then R1A, and even B1 as well. And so this is not incorrect, but it isn't the most effective way that we can have a code. So we want to restructure the code a little bit so that it'll flow better. So that is what the use table will be now. I apologize, these are kind of small on this slide, but the way that the screenshots came out, there's not a way to format it better. So this is an example of what a use table would look like. Now I will stress, we have more uses and more zoning districts than Charlottesville does, so it will look different, but this is an example of what it could look like. So they list by uses every different zoning district and what is permitted, what is permitted with special standards, where use standards would apply, and where it is not permitted. And so we could do the same thing in our use table for our zoning code. And it would allow us to very quickly, allow developers to streamline their process by looking at the use table and seeing, I have this zone, this is where this permitted, this is what is not permitted within the zone, very quickly without having to dig through five or six different sections within the code. And another really important thing to note with this structure is you'll see these numbers on the side under use standards. There's like a 3.4.2. When you navigate to those and click on those, it will immediately take you to those sections. So you don't have to go and scroll through the code like you may have to now. The last major changes that I wanna show you all is with the lot yard and height requirements and the zoning ordinance that we have now. So you'll see all of these are listed as text and number information, but they're listed as bulleted points, and if you are not a visual person, you may not be able to picture what this would look like on your lot. So we believe that this can also be displayed better, and this is an example of how that could be displayed. So again, this is from Charlottesville, Virginia's code that our consultants worked on. This is an example of how they display that same information. So none of the numbers would change in the unified development code from what we have now to what it would look like. It would just be a graphical change for this situation. But it would allow people in the community to very quickly see very clearly lot size, density, coverage, all the important things that they need to know for their lot and for their development. And it would also provide a graphical component so that people can look at it that way as well and understand what these actually shape the lot to be. And I like to think that because we look at plans in a graphical way where we have the lots out and people plot them out, it makes sense that we would also describe that in the zoning code. And one other really important part of this project is we will have a guidebook that comes out of this that'll be part of the development handbook. And that guidebook will be each of these zoning codes that we have now displayed like this, along with descriptions of those zoning codes that will allow us to very quickly bring those to the community and educate them about the different zoning districts in Lexington. So the last part of the unified development code is our collaboration with other divisions. So we've had a couple of meetings with building inspection, engineering, traffic engineering, waste management, water quality, and environmental services because we want to see what regulations, what manuals they have that could be included within the unified development code. Like I said, we plan to host all of this together and to streamline development we would like to have as many of the things that guide regulations and development as possible in one spot. So we currently do not have any manuals planned to be in it, but we are in discussions with them to see what that might look like. So as this process continues, many things will evolve. We are working with the consultants every single day to see what this will look like for us, but I don't want to say that these will or will not be in there, but we have had conversations and there's There's interest from each of the divisions to have theirs housed in the code, so I'm excited to see where that will go. And an example of what the review authority could look like, because we got this question a lot when we were having our meetings, there was concern that if we brought things in the unified development code, it would change the process for approval, or for edits, for different manuals, for different documents, for text amendments. And in other communities, there is a lot of perfect examples of how you can delineate between different chapters in the code, how those can be edited, what the process would look like, and it would not change review authority for anyone. So we believe that it is important to clarify that and have that within the code so that people do not get confused or think that certain sections belong to other divisions now or that planning now owns all of the things in the document. It would be a unified development code for Lexington government, and we would all have shared ownership over it with our different sections. So I wanna reiterate really quickly that this is not a new code. We are not changing regulations. It will look different and it will have a new name, but it will be the same regulations that you all are familiar with now. We just felt like it was important to streamline our development and to make the code more accessible for the community. Especially on the outreach side of things, we get a lot of questions about the zoning ordinance. And in its current structure, we don't feel like it is the best way to present to the community. And so we want to refine that and make it better for all of us. So, yeah, any questions? That's great. Thank you very much, Mr. Penn. Thank you. I want to compliment you for your presentation. Thank you. If I can understand it, it's a good presentation. The other thing is that we've learned in the last few years since UK decided to build all these dorms on our streets and roads and wherever else, that we're finding more and more out-of-town developers coming in and doing this work. Well, I hope that's going to happen with affordable housing also. So anything that you can do that somebody that's not familiar with our planning division and our quirks and idiosyncrasies, that they can get online and not see it as an impediment, but see it as an opportunity to understand what we're doing. and I think you're on the right track, and I can learn something. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have anything else on the unified development? I'm going to add to that. Just being around here for 15-plus years and what you touched on originally, you can go to one zone and say, well, go back to R3, go back to R2, go back. I mean, you change that. you're gaining a lot in itself right there. So thank you. Of course. All right. If we don't have anything else, thank you very much. That was great. Thank you all. Okay. Next item on the agenda today is the Complete Streets Manual informational purposes. Thank you. here to give you a very brief update because I have been providing those over the last several months just a couple of slides to let you know in terms of the timeline where we are with the complete streets design manual we released a stakeholder draft in early April which went primarily to the engineering development community our utility companies and our home builders as well as all the internal staff that we work with engineering traffic engineering police and fire other folks to get their input before we released a draft publicly we held workshops with some of the development community those that chose to come and interface with us on the plan or not the plan but the the design manual we then subsequently released a draft in May which we did publicly placed it on the council's Engage Lexington page that's for for items that they have in committee that's how they share information with the community and seek feedback so the public could also leave us comments on that draft we then released a final draft June the 9th so I guess that's about 10 days ago or so in advance of a presentation to the environmental quality and Public Works Committee of the urban County Council we also held an opportunity for developers once they had not once they could review the draft to ask us specific questions about the changes that were made we provided a change log as well as you know what was different between draft 2 and draft 3 so that was easier to find quickly rather than reading them 200 and some odd page document and two days ago we gave a presentation to that council committee they subsequently voted to report that out to the full council which typically occurs at their next meeting they don't meet in July so they will report that out to the full council in August which then means it goes to sort of the full full council and a full public vetting process so well that will be on a work session agenda and then it will receive two readings as well once that has occurred we will sort of simultaneously probably in the month of August be bringing forward to you changes that may be needed to the subdivision regulations to bring those into alignment with the engineering design manual and we'll walk you through what those changes are at that time with the goal of once it gets through the Planning Commission it goes back to council and ideally we can get all of that completed by the end of this calendar year so that's kind of the timeline that we're shooting for I can come back sometime between now and August and give you a little bit more depth in terms of talking about what is in the manual and and what the different changes are compared to our old roadway design manual just so you have a better understanding of that before we bring forward some red line text for the subdivision regulations That was all I had today. Thank you very much. Do we have any questions? When was the last time this manual was updated? 2005. Well, it's quicker than I thought it was. Yeah. We were overdue for a change and an update. Great. Do we have any other questions? If not, thank you very much. Our next item on the agenda, Asphalt Art, Shropshire Avenue Pilot. Hello, everybody. Hannah Kreps, Principal Planner, Outreach and Strategic Planning Section. I've got to remember how to use this thing. Okay, so I'm actually just going to give you a rousing update on Asphalt Art and where it stands right now. And the first few slides are going to sort of be a recap of what I gave to you guys in the fall. but I thought I'd refresh your memories. So asphalt art, it is two things. It's traffic calming and it's placemaking. You can have a wide range of asphalt art projects. They can happen inside intersections. They can go in what we call curb extension bulb outs when you kind of tighten the turning radius at an intersection. They can go in striped pedestrian refuge islands. They can go in medians. Those are just some examples. The durability of these projects really depends on the material that is used and the maintenance, of course. These are a few. I replaced my examples to be a little bit more reflective of kind of what has sort of emerged as something I think that we want to approach, the way we want to approach these projects. So actually kind of avoiding putting them in crosswalks specifically, largely because they won't last as long when they're in crosswalks because you have much more traffic going over them. And also because they will fit, we can fit them more easily into kind of quick build interventions that we might be doing in the future where we're kind of right sizing streets and making them calmer. So we have a traffic circle that's up in Michigan. You can see some of the curb extension, bulb outs, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, and then Rockville, a lovely sort of bike buffer use. And then just again to recap, there is data that tells us that these really do have an impact on street safety and calming behavior of vehicles. The highest impact you can have, though, is when it's not just simply done as asphalt art, but it's part of a bigger project. And just a few samples of how cities are handling these projects. I mean, there are hundreds of municipalities that are approaching this kind of work, and they do it all in different ways, which has made it very interesting here in Lexington to figure out how we want to do it here and what makes sense for us. But you can have city-driven projects. You can have city-sanctioned projects. You can just sort of have more of a passive approach. We do have precedent here, and we have a lot of support in our policy language. We have reference to placemaking and shorter-term traffic calming projects in our comprehensive plan. In the public arts master plan, we talk about activating and defining spaces. The complete streets policy that passed a couple years ago specifically calls out educating the public and drawing attention to the need to calm our streets using demonstration projects and other strategies. uh the lexington area mpo calls out incorporating public art in transportation projects and then the recently well i guess february but that's not so long ago um convened uh streets task force calls out asphalt art in a couple of different instances in the recommendations so there is definitely um an appetite for these projects uh and i think that's pretty exciting Like I said, there is precedent. I'm not directly involved. Planning is not directly involved with these two programs, but they're great, I think, sort of reference points for us as we move forward. Okay, now the exciting bit. And I realized in hindsight, I probably should have had a little bit of a juicier slide section on this part. So apologies. But I do have an exciting update. Planning has partnered with Living Streets Lexington, which is a resident-led advocacy group here in town. And they're all about sort of reframing our community's approach to transportation. Something to remember is that our transportation network, our roads and our streets, are our largest public asset. We all own them, and there's a whole lot of space there. And I think you all will understand, especially from Kenzie's conversation about complete streets, a lot of our streets are overbuilt, so we have a bit of work to do in terms of kind of transforming them, and we can do a lot in terms of quick-build interventions. So Planning has partnered with Living Streets Lexington to basically build on a very short demonstration they did at last year's Street Fest. We were going to continue that this year, and the Street Fest got canceled because of the weather that never came. So we will do that in October, which is really, that's just wonderful. You get to just delay gratification. But in the meantime, we've had many, many, many, many conversations with traffic engineering. I must commend them all. They have just been really, really supportive, very helpful, lovely to work with. And we started out, and they were about a year and a half ago. They were much less excited than they are now. They're much more into it now, so that's great. We have their approval. We also have Public Art Commission approval and funding, which I will get into. We've identified the funding and a maintenance plan. We've conducted an artist open call and selection proposal. So let me pull my notes up for that because those details are important. I know we opened, we kind of took an interesting approach, and we started with a request for qualifications, and we got, I think, 13 submissions. We were very strategic about how we spread that word. We wanted it to stay as focused in the neighborhood and the area as possible. So if you don't remember, Street Fest happens on Shropshire Avenue, right there by Charles Young Park. So it's in the East End neighborhood, and we wanted to make sure that the artist is representative of that neighborhood, is tied, has connections to that neighborhood, and is able to draw the community into the project. So we had an RFQ, and of the 13 submissions, five were invited to submit full proposals. and then we just selected the final artist in the end of May. This is the site plan. So you can see there are, I'm such a demonstrative person. On Shropshire Avenue, we have, it's been re-striped. So if you go out there today, you will see essentially the coloring book awaiting the art. But we've added curb extensions right here at Goodloe and then we've added a bike buffer section down at the bottom as you're approaching Midland. How do I do that? I'm sorry, guys. This is not my... Click it and hold it down, Hal says. Oh, my gosh. Look at that. Wow. Okay, so this is the part I'm talking about. So there'll be like a, you know, there's a bike lane here. So this whole section here, traffic engineering agreed, was just far too wide and not at all marked in any way, except now it is. So that's exciting. There will be art going in on Shropshire. And then over here on Lewis, in between the parking. And this was a pretty, the Lewis Street was an addition after talking to the Public Art Commission, basically expanding the project, which is great. makes the footprint significantly larger. And Lewis Street, because it's more of an alley, it'll be easier for the installation. Shropshire Avenue, it is somewhat changing the geometry, so that will be a little bit different. And then I guess I wanted to point out that along the way, just, I should have had this on a slide, so again, apologies, but along the way, we've had communications, conversation, with and even involved in the selection of the artist. The Charles Young Community Center Board, the William Wells Brown Neighborhood Association, Mark Johnson with Art Inc., Lori Houlihan with Arts League, Christian Adair at the Lyric One Lexington, LFUCG Opportunity Office, Partners for Youth, and the William Wells Brown Community Center. So really trying to keep it as tied to the neighborhood as possible with this kind of pilot project. This is the budget. Initially, Living Streets of Lexington, and they're sort of the ones at the face of this. The ask was quite a bit smaller, and again, from talking to the Public Art Commission, they essentially said, please ask for more money. I think there is a desire to set a newer precedent for compensating artists, so increasing it so the artist fee is higher and they have more resources so this is basically the 39,000 that first section is essentially the budget that the artist came up with and then we have 5,000 from council district one that's already committed and then 3,000 in kind from living streets lexington okay so who the heck is the artist again i should have this was the statement for the for the piece and this is his general proposal but it's Tony Wavy he's a young artist and we met our committee met it was again it was members of the East End neighborhood it was some members of LFUCG staff and Living Streets Lexington we met in the main branch library and we reviewed the five proposals and it let me tell you it was incredibly hard because they were all so good. And we took about two hours to deliberate. But in the end, Tony's design, the fact that it spoke to music really pulled him out to the top. And he has, as you see here, he's got a beautiful statement about the project. And he had an excellent plan for engaging the community. He already does quite a bit of work at the William Wells Brown Community Center. He's pretty well tied into the neighborhood, so we're really excited about what he draws out. The timeline, the next step for the Shropshire pilot, the timeline for installation is sometime in August around East End Day. I think initially it was like, well, maybe we'll do it during East End Day, but then in talking with the organizers of East End Day, that didn't seem like a good idea because there'll be lots of big vehicles moving in and out. So it will probably hopefully go in before, but we have to finalize the contract between the artist and the Public Art Commission, and then sort of figure out exactly what the engagement is going to look like in July. So we're in the thick of that. And then in general, what's up ahead? There is the potential for more of these asphalt art installations in future activations. We've got a Reimagining the Civic Commons grant-funded project along MLK Boulevard here and potential for putting in asphalt art specifically on the bridge or the viaduct, as I guess we call it. And then we've got traffic circle neighborhood pilots going in. So that's a potential perhaps for putting in art. and then in the long term, like next year perhaps, sort of implementing a community grant program because what we would like to see is that this be more accessible to the general public and not simply city-driven. But this takes considerable collaboration inside LFUCG and beyond. So any questions? Thank you for that update. Mr. Wilson. Just a couple of quick questions. Yeah. how was Swapshire chosen? It was because of Street Fest. So it's sort of a confluence of things. Street Fest is, you know, if you're not familiar, it's a celebration of streets, you know, it's not just through areas. And how long will the pilot last? We have the maintenance agreement, I believe, is three or five years. I can't remember quite. Yeah, so the artist has committed and has a pot of money. The Public Art Commission requires there to be, I think it's 10% of the total budget. So what is the formula to be used to determine whether it actually calms the traffic or not? Have you all done an analysis of what the speed limit is or whatever the case is? This is a very valid question. Part of how we're able to do this pilot is because traffic engineering is pretty confident that this is not a super high-volume, super dangerous road as it is. So it's a bit more of the placemaking in this context than it is the traffic calming. So there's no real plans to do data collection on that point, not out of the question. But for the pilot, I think the approach is let's focus on the kind of the placemaking, the activation, and the education opportunity. So it's a little bit more about spreading the awareness of traffic calming and right-sizing our streets, a little less actually doing that, if that makes sense. But the next one. I got you. Yeah. Any more? Well, you've answered the question primarily that this one is primarily for art's sake more so that it is the statistical stuff about the calming aspect. Yeah. Because obviously if you're going to extend this to the community, the question is why, you know? And, of course, it'll look good and pretty and what have you, but does it impact the way we want it to impact? Yeah, I think it's going to be raising awareness. Yeah. All righty. Do we have any questions? I'm super excited about this, and I haven't ever since you showed it to us last fall. You said there are some potentially projects coming up. There is potential. Again, like I was saying in the very beginning, I don't know in terms of city-driven. I don't know about any that will be just asphalt art, but there are other initiatives around quick build, right sizing, similar to High Street. In fact, in retrospect, that would be a site where we could do some asphalt art because there is asphalt, there is concrete that's been reclaimed and is behind the striped line now. So it's any sort of project like that moving forward. And MLK, we're looking at MLK as potentially being something like that. So do you think when I asked a question of traffic engineering lately and they said, oh, there's a neighborhood calming traffic circle coming this summer, do you think that might be a potential? Or could you and I go walk down the hall to traffic engineering and make the case for why? I think probably so. I'm a bit of a yes person, but I think probably so. The only reason I hesitate is because they are, my understanding is those traffic circles are going to be a rubberized thing at this point. Well, you know, it's cheaper and it's faster to put in. But I don't know that that precludes, like, you know, a nice little, you know, halo around it. And we, I have pointed this out to the other folks, that there is, we've now just said no to four artists, who, by the way, They were all compensated for their proposal, which was another precedent we wanted to set. But there are interested artists in doing this work here in Lexington that are capable. So we have those kind of at our disposal. It does feel like the time is ripe. Awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Okay. Do we have any other questions at this time on asphalt art? Thank you very much. That's great. Do we have any other commissioner of business at this time? Thank you, Zach. I guess, Mr. Jim Duncan, our latest, most recent hot topic. Don't shake your head. What do you know about data centers? What do we have to look forward to? Mr. Owens, how many hot topics can we handle at one time? Hey, I don't know. I'm just sitting here trying to help. Yes, an update. I think we said the council has initiated a moratorium and a ZOTA. They did not provide text for the ZOTA, so we're having to write that. But we do have plenty of guidance on that, and we'll be bringing that to you all in July. So that will also come to you in committee in July, a work session in July, and a public hearing on July the 30th. And to clarify, is that going to be the only agenda item on? Yes, you all will recall that you canceled the work session for July 30th, but then recast it as a public hearing for the data center ZODA, and that will be the only item on that agenda. That'll be part of my update when the chair calls on. Are you good, Mr. Owens? Anything else? No, I'm good. Okay. All righty. Mr. Owens. Mr. Douglas. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The government is closed tomorrow for Juneteenth, So we'll be back in the office on Monday. And then, as Ms. Davis reminded, the Planning Commission has canceled the June 25th zoning hearing because there were no items for that hearing. So our next gathering with you all will be the July 2nd committees in this room starting at 830. Oh, yeah. Okay. Do we have any other questions or anything before we adjourn? If not, thank you very much to everyone. We are adjourned. Take it to the world, in front of every kind of girl. There was long ones, tall ones, short ones, brown ones, black ones, round ones, big ones, crazy ones. Out of the middle came a lady. She whispered in my ear Something crazy She said Fill the wine, take that pearl Fill the wine, take that pearl Fill the wine, take that pearl Fill the wine, take that pearl I could feel hot flames of fire roaring at my back as she disappeared but soon she returned. In her hand was a bottle of wine, In the other glass, she poured some of the wine bottle into the glass and raised it to her lips. And just before she drank it, she said... Spill that wine, spill that wine. Let me feel, let me feel my shit. Oh, oh, oh. Spill that wine, spill that wine, spill that wine, spill that wine, spill that wine, take that wine. It's quarter to three, there's no one in the place, except you and me. So set them up, Joe, I got a little story, I think you should know. We're drinking my friend To the end Of a brief episode Make it one for my babe And one more for the road I got the routine Put another nickel In the machine Feeling so bad Can't you make the music Easy I could tell you a lot, but you've gotta be true to your code. Just make it one for my baby And one more for the road You'd never know it But buddy I'm a kind of poet And I got a lot of things I'd like to say. And when I'm gloomy, won't you listen to me till it's talked away? Well, that's how it goes, and Joe I know you're getting anxious to close and thanks for the cheer i hope you didn't mind my bend in your ear but this torch that i found it's gotta be drowned or it soon might explode So make it one for my baby, and one more for the road. The long It's so long The long Very long I'm not alone. You know it, baby. Tell me your troubles and doubts. Giving me everything inside and out. Love's strange, surreal in the dark. Think of the tender things that we were working on. Slow change may pull us apart. When a life gets in your heart, baby. Don't you? Don't forget about me Don't, don't, don't, don't Don't you forget about me Will you stand above me Look my way You'll never love me Rain keeps falling Rain keeps falling Down, down Now, will you recognize me? Call my name or walk on by. Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling. Down, down, down, down. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Don't you forget about me I'll be alone Dancing in the earth, baby Going to take you apart I'll put us back together Ah, baby Don't you forget about me Don't, don't, don't, don't Don't you forget about me As you walk on by Will you call my name As you walk on by Will you call my name When you walk away Or will you walk away Will you walk away I won't call my name Will you call my name I say la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la When you walk on by I'm out. He stands like a statue, becomes part of the machine Feeling all the bumpers, always playing clean Plays by intuition, the digit counters for That depth of a blind kid, sure plays a mean pinball He's a big ball wizard There has to be a twist A big ball wizard's got such a suffering How do you think he does that? I don't know What makes him so good? Ain't got no distractions Can't hear no buzz and bells Don't see no lights flashing Plays my sense of smell Always gets a replay Never seen him fall That death of a blind kid Sure plays an even ball I thought I was The body table kid But I just handed my Pitchball crown to me Even on my favorite table, he can't beat my best. His disciples need him in, and he just does the rest. He's got crazy flippin' fingers, never seen him fall. That damn dumb, a blind kid sure plays a mean pinball. I've got the world on a string Sitting on a rainbow Got the string around my finger What a world, what a life I'm in love I got a song that I sing I can make the rain go Anytime I move my finger Lucky me, can't you see I'm in love Life is a beautiful thing As long as I hold the string I'd be a silly so-and-so If I should ever let it go I got the world on a string Sitting on a rainbow Got the string around my finger What a world, what a life I'm in love Life is a beautiful thing As long as I hold the string I'd be a silly so-and-so If I should ever let it go I got the world on a string, sitting on a rainbow. Got the string around my finger. What a world. Man, this is a lie. Hey, now, I am so in love. Well, she's all you'd ever want She's the kind I'd like to flaunt and take to dinner But she always knows her place She's got style, she's got grace She's a winner She's a lady Oh, oh, oh, she's a lady Talking about that little lady And the lady is mine But she's never in the way Always something nice to say What a blessing I can leave her on her own Knowing she's okay alone And there's no messing She's a lady She's a lady Talking about that little lady And the lady is mine Though she never asks us very much And I don't refuse her Always treat her with respect I never would abuse her What she's got is hard to find And I don't want to lose her Help me build a mountain From a little pile of clay But she knows what I'm about She can take what I dish out And that's not easy But she knows me through and through And she knows just what to do And how to believe me She's a lady Oh, oh, oh, she's a lady Talking about the little lady And the lady is mine Yeah, yeah, she's a lady Oh, oh, oh, she's a lady Listen to me, people, she's a lady Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's a lady Oh, she's a lady Talking about the little lady Oh, she's a lady Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's a lady Oh, she's a lady I can't get me out of that little lady All you ever gave me is the blues I gave you a diamond ring You won't wear It's a $9,000 thing You don't care I set up a wedding day You couldn't make it You said all the love we made You were just faking But don't you know What hurts me the most Is I gave all my love to you All you ever give me All you ever give me All you ever give me Is the blues Is the blues I gave you my Catholic keys You don't drive I hired you a limousine You won't ride But through the house on the hill You hate the view Even wrote you into my will Gave you something to look forward to But don't you know what hurts me to know If I gave all my love to you All you've ever given me All you've ever given me All you ever give me is the blues, nothing but the blues. It's the blues. I'll try to try, but I'm mystified. I've done all that I can do. I've given you my best. You put me through the test. All you ever give me. All you ever give me, all you ever give me is the blues. Nothing but the blues. There's a blues. But don't you know what hurts me the more Is I gave all my love for you All you ever gave me All you ever gave me All you ever gave me Was the blues All you ever gave me All you ever gave me All you ever gave me All you ever gave me Was the blues Nothing but the blues Nothing but the blues I'm out. Everybody loves a clown, so why don't you? Everybody laughs at the things that I say and do. They all laugh when they see me coming. But you don't laugh, you just go on running. Everybody loves a clown, so why can't you? A clown has feelings too. I joke around at a party when you are there You don't laugh, you don't look, you just don't care If you wonder why this clown is crying Look a little closer inside, I'm dying It's not easy to be in love, you see When you're a clown like me I don't know how to say that I love you Cause you would smile and say Tell a joke or two Yes, I'm a clown But I don't wanna be Why can't you see the other side of me? Yes, I'll be the guy Who plays the part Of a clown with a broken heart Outro Music Southern Nights Southern Nights Just as good even when closed your eyes I apologize To anyone who can truly say That he has found a better way Southern Skies Every flower tubs his cold hand As he slowly walked by Weeping willows cry for joy Joy It feels so good It feels so good It's a frightening wish I could Stop this world from fighting