I Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The End Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome to the April meeting of the Fayette County Board of Adjustments. Let's see. First of all, I'd like anyone with a cell phone to please either turn it off or turn it to silent, please. And those of you that expect to testify this afternoon, this is the point of the meeting where I ask you to take the oath. Of those of you who expect to testify, please raise your right hand, and I'm going to ask if you swear or affirm that the testimony you give here today will be the truth. Thank you. We've been provided with meeting minutes from last April. I'd ask for any comments or if there are any motions concerning the meeting. All right. Mr. Stout has moved for approval. Do I have a second? Second. All right. Thank you, Ms. Stumbo. All those in favor of Mr. Stout's motion to approve the minutes of April 2008, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? All right. Minutes approved. Let's see. Okay. Now, I believe we have nine cases on the agenda today. Are there any cases that are going to be postponed or withdrawn? Mr. Murphy, good afternoon to you. Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Dick Murphy. On the last page, page 7, item 9, case C-2009-25, Ball and Wright Capital Holding Company, LLC, I represent the applicant. Staff has recommended postponement, and we agree with that and request that you postpone this one month. We'll do our May meeting. All right, very good. Are there any motions concerning Mr. Murphy's request? I move we both postpone. Second. All right, thank you, Ms. Meyer. All right. All those in favor of Ms. Meyer's motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Murphy. All right. Are there any other cases that are going to be postponed or withdrawn? Mr. Chairman, the Broadway Christian Church, which is at the bottom of the first page of your agenda, just the variance portion of that, we have a letter of withdrawal for that. They revised their plan to comply with the landscaping requirements. So just the conditional use will remain as part of that request. So the variance is withdrawn. Now, do we need to take any action on that, or do we take it when we hear the case? It's a withdrawal, so it's just for your information. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. We'll get to you in a minute, Mr. Nunley. Yes, sir. Thank you. All right. Are there any other postponements or withdrawals? Not that I'll sound the agenda. Okay, for the CV 2009-9 Broadway Christian Church, are there any objectors here for that case? Okay, CV 2009-22, Star of Bethlehem. Are there any objectors here for that case? Is the applicant present? Okay, thank you, sir. Next case is CV 2009-23, the Greek Orthodox Church case. The applicant's here. Are there any objectors here for that case? All right. Thank you, ma'am. CV 2005-53, offender funeral directors. Is the applicant here? Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Are there any objectors here for that case? C 2009-14 Joy and Associates. Is the applicant here? Are there any objectors here for that case? C-2009-20, Karen C. Miller. Is the applicant here? Thank you, Ms. Miller. Are there any objectors here for that case? C 2009-21 Carriage Station Farm, is the applicant here? Are there any objectors here for that case? C 2009-24 Jason Shear, is the applicant present? Thank you sir. Are there any objectors here for that case? Now is there anyone here for a case that they didn't hear called? All right, CV 2009-9, Broadway Christian Church. Did Mr. Nunley leave? We thought we made it clear to him to stay, but he might have still been confused. So I think Ms. Rackerts might have gone to try to track him down. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to the next case. CV 2009-22 Star Bethlehem. Applicant to come to the podium, please. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Richard Wheeler. I represent REW Incorporated, the general contractor for this proposed project. Excuse me. The staff has recommended approval subject to four conditions. Have you and your client reviewed those conditions? Yes, sir. We've reviewed them. Okay. Does your client agree to abide by them? Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. Are there any questions for the applicant? I have a question for, I'm not sure, for staff, I presume. I guess I need someone to explain to me how this won't be an expansion of a nonconforming use. What do you consider nonconforming? Well, in my mind, it's increasing the nonconformity in front of the setback line. Well, I think by virtue of it, if you did take action that the variance was justified, then the whole situation would be in compliance. I don't think we've taken this approach with variance requests that if there's a historical structure that doesn't comply with the zoning ordinance requirement, that we call that automatically nonconforming and not able to be expanded. Okay, but it is. Rochelle might help here a little bit. It is in front of the building line, but adding more structure in front of the building line is not an expansion of the nonconformity? Give me a second. Okay. I think their expansion is just for the parking lot. They're not going to add structure any closer to. This is the one where they're adding two small additions, Ms. Bowling, to the front of the church. And the front wall of the church is at 10 feet. I'm sorry, I thought we were on the first case. I think basically Mr. Marks is correct. I mean, you could take the viewpoint that this is increasing a nonconforming structure, but because variances are available, it's not like a nonconforming use that you can't grant a variance to a use situation. We've always felt that as long as there is sufficient justification for a variance, that in essence you're taking away the nonconformity by now granting a variance that will cover it. But the variance obviously is limited to its terms, to what you're authorizing, so it doesn't give them free reign to add anything beyond what is specifically being requested here. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Any other questions or discussions? Okay. If not, I'll call for a motion. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to move that item CV 2009-22, star of Bethlehem, appeals for a conditional use permit to construct a church addition and a variance to reduce a required front row or front yard from 30 feet to 10 feet to accommodate the expansion and single-family residential R1C zone on property located at 609-611 Lagonda Avenue be approved with the conditions as set forth by the staff. Second. Thank you, Mr. Stumbo. All those in favor of Mr. Stumbo's motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Good luck to you sir. Thank you That's mr. Nunn leave been okay, thank you mr. Next case is C. 2005-53, Fender Funeral Directors. Okay. We've lost our building inspector representative. He's slippery. Welcome, Kathy. Did you want me to go ahead or wait? Okay, there he is. He's coming back here. Hey, Mr. Chairman, I'm Dick Murphy. I represent Fender Funeral Directors, and you had this on as a revocation hearing, and James Fender is here, who's owner of Fender Funeral Directors on Russell Cave Road, and Sarah Tuttle, our landscape architect from Strand Associates, and we wanted to report where we are with you on this one. You all approved, or you or your predecessors approved a conditional use permit for this property previously in 2005 for a funeral home on this property. It's located in the AU zone. There was an existing house there, which is going to be used as a chapel and is being used as a chapel. Mr. Fender has a residence above it on the second floor. On the plan that we submitted originally, there was a large expansion shown for a funeral chapel on the property. That has not been constructed. The main room in the existing house on the first floor is being used as the chapel. It has a fire rating occupancy of 50 persons, so it's limited to 50 people being in there at any one time. And Mr. Fender has averaged about two funerals a month at this location. When we applied to you, Mr. Fender's business model has worked a little differently than when we applied to you. We felt that at then I think the majority of the funerals would be here at the chapel. It's worked out that they have not. The majority of his funerals are at other locations, churches, which he takes care of, with the result that a very low volume, as I said, one or two a month, are being held at this location. At that hearing, we did have a lot of neighborhood support. We had petitions in favor. We had Missy Rogers, a longtime neighborhood leader, came and testified in support. We did have some opposition from neighbors. I understand some of those people who were opposed now have no problem with the funeral home. But there was an issue about compliance with conditions for the use, and we wanted to explain to you how we are remedying those conditions and how that violation came to take place originally. In my handout to you, I do have the, there's a certificate of occupancy that was issued for the building. As you can see, it's on page one of my handout of June 8, 2006. Mr. Crowe signed that as Director of Building Inspection, and it was approved by Division of Fire as well. So the occupancy of the building is not at issue. It is not a safety issue or fire issue to be using the funeral chapel, the existing room in the funeral home, as a funeral chapel. So I wanted to emphasize that to you. And I think a misunderstanding occurred because Mr. Fender interpreted the conditions of approval as applying if he did the expansion of the building. And I'm not saying that is the correct interpretation, but I wanted to tell you what that was, and I can understand how that occurred, especially when he did obtain a certificate of occupancy. When I meet with my clients after meetings, we always talk about, okay, what's the next step after we get approval from you? And the next step is, well, even though you've got approval from the Board of Adjustment, that doesn't mean you can come in and use the building, and you have to go to building inspection and get approval and get your certificate of occupancy. You have to comply with the conditions, get the certificate of occupancy. And usually the certificate of occupancy is the last step in the process, and I always emphasize with clients, get your certificate of occupancy. You've got to do that. Just because this board approved you today doesn't mean you don't need your certificate. Well, this, and I'm not saying, again, this is not the right interpretation necessarily, but how it occurred, the certificate of occupancy does say, must comply with conditions set forth by the Board of Adjustment. But coupled with the factor that he wasn't doing the expansion at that time and that he did have the certificate of occupancy, I can understand how the misunderstanding occurred. But Mr. Hume had notified us that Mr. Fender was deficient in four areas. I would want to emphasize that the fencing has been done according to requirements. We've retained the landscaping. There was a condition about lighting, and the condition was if lighting is to be provided, it must be downward facing with shoeboxes, and there's no lighting proposed at this time. It wasn't mandatory as part of the board action. But we do meet parking requirements. We have submitted a plan, which is page two, to the Division of Building Inspection, which meets our required parking for an occupancy of 50 on there. We understand that the Traffic Engineering Division and Building Inspection Division have not approved this plan and that we must make some changes to meet their requirements, and we understand that. But we wanted to show you that we had submitted our plan, And Mr. Fender has obtained estimates for doing the paving. I just attached a copy of one of them, which is a low estimate, just to show you that he has proceeded in good faith to get that estimate to you and get that done. The requirements were that we, Mr. Hume had informed Mr. Fender that we're out, were item three, which was the design of the street of the parking must be approved by traffic engineering and that is what we're in the process of doing through obtaining our paving permit. The second one was item four, requiring that off-street parking be paved, delineated in landscaping. Again, we are in the process of complying with that. We have retained there's landscaping on the property. If you've been out there, you've probably seen there's extensive landscaping on the property. Item six was a stormwater management plan to be approved by the Division of Engineering. Sarah Tuttle with Strand and Associates has been in contact with Mr. Brock, and I understand that under the engineering manuals that this is a small project and will not require submission of a separate stormwater study. It will require Mr. Brock's sign-off before any paving permit is issued. It's my understanding, and of course he's here and can correct that if I'm wrong on that. The seventh item was outdoor lighting installation, and again, as I mentioned, that was optional as to the owner as to whether lighting was installed. So they boiled down to the paving of the parking areas out here. And as I said, on behalf of Mr. Fender, Mr. Fender will talk to you in a minute. We regret the misunderstanding that took place. Again, I'm not saying it's the right understanding that there should have been, but I wanted to explain to you the background of it, and I can understand how it occurred. He did obtain a certificate of occupancy. The business plan has changed a little bit since a much lower volume of the funerals are held at this chapel as opposed to churches and places like that. And Mr. Fender is a licensed funeral director. He's a small business person. He's a minority business person. And he has small business administration loans that he has taken out to do this. He was backed by Community Ventures Corporation. And obviously we hope that you will not revoke the permit but allow us to continue to work with the city to get a paving plan that everybody can agree on and be comfortable with. And we'd be happy to answer any questions. Mr. Fender is here. And would you want to address them a little bit? He'd like to say a few words to you as well. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. I'd like to hear from Mr. Hume at this point. I'll kind of support what Mr. Murphy said. This has been going on some time. As far as the certificate of occupancy for the building, that was prematurely issued by an inspector who's no longer with us and basically did the inspection on the building along with the fire department. I don't know why he issued the certificate without approval from me to get all the Board of Adjustment things straightened out. But regardless of that, this has been going on for quite a few years now. I would catch it on inspection and repeatedly ask why, why, why without any response. So this revocation hearing was kind of the last bit of enforcement for me to do to get their attention. since then. They have started to work with us a little bit. They did submit a plan. It's not exactly what we expected, if you will compare it to the original site plan that was awarded. So Traffic and I are going to work with them and see if we can get it kind of form that we can actually work with. It still has many problems associated with it, but at least they're at the table, they're in good faith, and if you'll indulge them a little time, I think we can work our problems out. I'm inclined to ask to continue this case. That'll be fine. I think that's reasonable. How many months or a month? month or? I wouldn't want to continue it over a couple of months. Work expands with time. So I would think the June meeting, if we can come back, hopefully they will submit and have approved something by the June meeting. Hopefully they'll have it completed. All right. Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Hume? I have a question for Mr. Murphy. Is June time enough for you all to get this completed? Yes, we think it is. Would you agree to a two-month continuance? Yes, sir, we would. Okay. All right. Any other questions or discussion? If not, I'll call for a motion. Mr. Chair, I'll move the C-2005-53 Fender Funeral Directors. Do we approve this? this? No, you move to continue. Move to continue it. Be continued until the June meeting 2009. I second that, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Stumbo. All those in favor of Mr. Stout's motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Okay. Got two abstentions? I made the second motion. Okay. All right. So it's 6 to 0. All right. See you in June. Take care. Mr. Chairman? Yes. Mr. Nunnally with Broadway Christian Church has returned, thankfully. So that's the first case on your agenda. Thank you. Appreciate that, Mr. Marks. Ms. Rackers? You must have had a tea time, Mr. Nunley. I wish I could get out of here that fast. Now, you've withdrawn the variance, and the staff has recommended approval of your conditional use, subject to five conditions. Have you reviewed those conditions with parishioners? Yes. And they agreed to abide by those? Correct. Okay. Any questions or discussions for Mr. Nunley? Okay. Nunley, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chairman, I'll move to CV-2009-9, Broadway Christian Church Appeals for a Conditional Use Permit to expand church parking lot. Without the variance, I guess we have here, right? No. Because it says an variance to reduce the width, so that's not in here, right? Okay, so that's out. Located with the property located in our Zone 1-4 on property 179 Sawyer Street, Council District 2, be approved as recommended by the staff, minus the variance requests and subject to the five conditions. Second. All those in favor of Mr. Stout's motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Good luck to you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. The next case is C-2009-14 Joint Associates. Good afternoon, Ms. Wiseman. How are you? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the Board, I'm Rena Wiseman. I'm here today for Joy and Associates and also for the property owners, Main and Vine, two of the principals, Phil Hollaback and Les Kimbrough, are here. Since we postponed this, we have had several meetings with the staff. We have submitted a revised plan, and there are several, some 11 conditions recommended by the staff with which we agree, and ask that you approve with those conditions. And I also just for the record want to submit a couple of letters. We have a letter from Woodward Heights, Neighborhood in Support, Downtown Resident Joe Costa, who lives at the corner of North Lyme and Fifth, and some petitions from residents of Main and Rose and Urban County Government employees in support of this application. So with that, we're here to answer any questions, but we would request your approval of our application. Thank you, Ms. Wears. When one of your colleagues was here last week or last month, it seems like last week, to postpone it, I asked him to have you bring some either renderings or perspectives, something showing a three-dimensional view of what the proposed pharmacy would look like, and I'm wondering if you brought those today. We don't have those. He mentioned that to me, and we don't have those. We have been working on, by that do you mean the architecture, or are you talking about the, you want to see the cars move and all that? Well, I was hoping to, whatever three-dimensional drawings that you had, I was hoping to see those. Right. But you don't have any. No, we've been, this has been a lengthy process, and we've finally gotten to the point where we have a site plan that is acceptable. and so that was the first point to get to that. And then we've also been talking about the building itself and have gone through different elevations and renderings and that's why that condition 10 is on there. So it would be premature to show you anything right now other than just a box in 3D. Okay. Okay. Well, I guess taking that, I don't know how the rest of the board members feel, but I think it's premature to take action on this case today. I know that you probably don't and your client probably doesn't, but there's a landscaping plan, a crosswalk plan, and elevation drawings that the staff has asked for, and we haven't seen any of that, and I'm not sure that the staff has. I'm not asking you to postpone it. Right. We have provided a landscape plan. We'd be happy to show that to you. We have the revised site plan that we submitted does show the crosswalks for the pedestrian access. We've made some other changes to that plan that they asked about in terms of ingress and egress. So I think we feel like that in terms of the plan, the issues that we can work out at this point, we've worked them out. And the conditions at this point are other than, and we've actually satisfied the ones I mentioned, the crosswalk, the landscape, the wall that was mentioned. The others are fairly standard in terms of on the landscape ordinance, sign-off of traffic engineering and stormwater planned by the Department of Public Works. The only thing that would be unique about this is number 10, and that has to do with the design of the building, which really is an issue that's not the same issue as the drive-through, which is that is the issue that this board is acting on, is the conditional use for the drive-through. The actual pharmacy and parking lot is a permitted use in the B2 zone. It is just the drive-through itself that requires your approval. So we think it's ready to be acted on today, and we have worked on this plan not to your, as far as you can tell, for some time, so we would very much like to proceed with it this afternoon. Okay, well, just so I understand what you're saying, I realize that the reason you're here is because of the conditional use requested for the drive-through. But are you saying when we're considering that, that we have to ignore the downtown master plan? No, I'm not saying that. I am saying that under the ordinance, what is a conditional use in this zone is a drive-thru window. We could come in and get a building permit today for a pharmacy without a drive-thru, for a convenience gas store that wouldn't have a drive-thru. The downtown master plan at this point has not been implemented. There are certain principles that have been adopted in the comprehensive plan. There's no design guidelines yet. There's no overlay zone. It hasn't been implemented. We understand that. That's why it's unusual that we have number 10, because the people that are here asking for this want to work with the government and try to follow downtown master plan. Even though, I mean, fortunately I think for the community, this business wants to come here, and its timing is a little ahead of where we are on implementing these things. So we're not suggesting that you ignore the master plan. We are trying to implement it, and that's what a lot of the discussion has been about. What I am asking is that for the point of the drive-through, which has to do with circulation and traffic safety, impact on the adjoining roadways, we believe that we have satisfied the standard to have that approved, and that's what we would like to go forward. If that can't be approved, then we're sort of back at square one because that's a crucial part of this program. Very good. Thank you. Were there any questions for Ms. Miller? I have a question. Why do you feel the need for two drive-thru lanes? What's the rationale behind that? And the way this is for prescriptions only. You don't purchase any other products at the drive-thru with the CVS. The closest lane to the building is where you actually pick up the medicine, talk to the pharmacist. The out lane is just if you want to drop off the prescription and you don't have any contact. You just put it in a box and just move on. So that's why they're separate. Has there been discussion about the possibility of – in the master plan, the downtown master plan, There's discussion about Vine and Main becoming two-way streets. Yes, there has been a lot of discussion, and as far as these landowners and this developer is concerned, we'd like to see that happen today. But if that is not – the government is not ready to implement that. I think at this point they're only going to start with a couple streets doing that. That is in the long-term plan. There are things that we could adapt to that when that happens. We very much want that to happen, think it should happen. And Phil Hollaback could stand here and talk to you for an hour about the importance of making those streets two-way. So our site would work with two-way. Okay. Reena, I'm concerned when I read this staff report that it's riddled with comments about this design being anything but pedestrian friendly. It seems like the drive-thrus have driven the whole design process. And I wonder what the design would look like if you were not allowed to have drive-thrus. Well, that would be guessing on my part. You would still, even with any sort of retail, you're going to have to have some surface parking. Sure. Especially since there's no ability to do a parking structure downtown. And you have to cross traffic to get to Kroger's, not just because of the drive-through. You have to cross through the parking lot to get to it. So to that extent, the pedestrian issue would still be the same, and we would have to deal with crosswalks to get into the parking lot. I do have to tell you, though, that as much as we've talked about pedestrian unfriendliness, the worst pedestrian unfriendly aspect of this development is not on our property. It's right outside where Main and Midland and Vine converge with the merging aisles and trying to cross those if you've ever gone out for a walk is very challenging. I agree that this is a difficult lot to build on, but I also think that the only chance that our downtown will have of becoming pedestrian-friendly is when these parcels come up for redevelopment and we hold a hard line. It will happen one project at a time. And I don't see anything about this that was designed with the pedestrian first. It was all designed with the automobile first. Well, we can address that. If the members would like to have a full hearing on that, we're prepared. It has been, Mr. Griggs, designed not just because of the drive-thru. We are now on our 15th site plan to address all these issues. We've eliminated an access point that was a specific concern about conflict, which has an impact on how this site develops. We're at the apex of three highways. Two of them are one way, which is a challenge that we have no control over. This is a challenge to develop the site with or without a drive-through. And the drive-through is only 25% of the customers that come to CVS go to the drive-through. So the majority of the traffic will be parking and coming into the store. But it's a critical part. These days, you would no more build a pharmacy without a drive-through than you would build a bank without a drive-through. It's geared to moms with small kids, the elderly. You can go get your prescription without getting out of the car. That's what it's for. They're low impact. So it's an added convenience for people who use the pharmacy. So it's important, but the site, in terms of pedestrians, has challenges that are there regardless of whether you put a drive-thru there because you're going to have parking, and you're going to have to get people into the front of the, hopefully, retail. Well, the Rite Aid in Chevy Chase is without a drive-thru. It's been there for decades and does well. Which one? The right aid in Chevy Chase. I imagine they would not build that today. Mr. Reese, could I add to your comment some about the pedestrian friendliness? Sure. When the Division of Traffic originally looked at this project, we looked at it just like a typical pharmacy with a drive-thru like we find in so many of our shopping areas. However, after going back and looking at it, we tried to look at some of the downtown models where we have drive-thrus. that maybe are more pedestrian-friendly than the more conventional drive-thrus that were used to approving here of late. As a result of looking at things in that light, traffic engineering has somewhat had a change of heart since we were last asked about our opinion on this project, and I'd like to discuss a few items that may help your situation or may not. But one of the things that we feel that should be eliminated from this plan is the egress onto Main Street from the corner of the property. That is too many conflict points. There are better chances that you could possibly hit someone coming out like that, as opposed to just being a one-way entrance to where you would have good site visibility on the peripheral. So traffic engineering's opinion is now is that that egress point should be eliminated, and therefore converting the access point from Main Street to one way only. And I think when you simplify circulation, also what it implies is you also make that particular area more pedestrian friendly. May I ask you to make a response to that? This has been a difficult plan, and everybody's been wringing their hands over it. So that is something that, like I said, we feel very strongly about now after looking at everything else working. The other thing is, too, at first we were very avid about having the driveway connecting the parking lot to the drive-thru area. Going along with the idea of simplifying the access from Main Street, lining up for that drive-thru, we feel now, as far as traffic engineering goes, that that driveway could be optional as far as how we think it would function. We're not recommending it or not recommending it either way, but we're just saying it doesn't matter to us. We're not that driveway connecting the parking lot to the drive-thru area is there or not, which is different from our original opinion, which I think is stated in staff's report, which was done. May I respond? I'm not sure I understand. Let me get him to clarify that. I'm not sure what you're suggesting here, Mr. Gallimore. Well, what I'm saying is right now on the proposed site plan, the entrance that's off of Main Street, it shows two lanes incoming into the property and then a little escape lane exiting the property. Yes, sir. We would like to close that up until that would be an entrance only and not allow cars to exit onto Main Street. One reason being is, and we did not think about this originally, we did not want vehicles leaving the property to have to loop around Vine onto Main if they wanted to get onto Main. The difference is in this property, if they want to get back onto Main Street, they can go down Water Street and then get onto Main Street through the street system and not loop around on Vine. Okay. So that's one of the reasons that that plus, like I said, the safety aspects of that not having a throat on it like we'd like to see on access points. A throat's not required for an entrance, but it is nice to have the vehicles lined up 90 degrees to the road when they exit the property. And this does not allow that. And, of course, if there's some way to come up with that as far as a site plan change, we would be open to looking at that. So I'm just saying this configuration appears to have many issues with it. And was that the only suggestion that you made? I'm sorry? Was that the only suggestion you made? Eliminating the ingress point, and then at first we were very avid about if you're going to have a drive-through, you would have that connector one way running parallel to East Main Street. We are now of the opinion that we don't care if that is there or not. We don't see it as operationally affecting the drive-thru that much, and it would in fact simplify the operation of the drive-thru. So the way it's drawn on the site plan I have, you're okay with that? Am I hearing you correctly? The way as far as getting into the drive-thru? In our opinion, you could enter the drive-thru via Main Street, just like they're showing now that you could do. Or you could use this driveway that comes down the side of the building along Main Street. And at first, our opinion was that you needed that connect driveway to get from the parking lot area to the drive-thru area. Now we're saying, as far as we're concerned, that is optional. Now, I don't know what the applicant thinks about that. I think, like I said, we're not recommending that we're not disallowed. We're saying it doesn't really affect us. But we're all trying to grapple with this thing of making this drive-thru work in a downtown situation. And I think that's why our mindset's a little bit different now than it was originally. And to be truthful with you, I thought this case was going to be postponed and we would have more time to work with the applicant before having to make a decision. So that's just maybe misinformation on my part. But I was under the impression it was going to be postponed today. Thanks, Mr. Gallimor. Ms. Wise, before you start, could we get the site plan on the overheads? While we do that, Mr. Chairman, if it's okay with you, I'll hand out the most recent site plan. I don't think it is up to date in your packets, along with the landscaping plan that we have. I have a larger version. If you have something I could put up here, it would help you. Okay. If you're going to – Well, I'm not trying to have a whole hearing here. I'm just – I would like to say this for the rest, Mr. Chairman, is that the comments that you just heard are – we're hearing this – We're all hearing this together? Okay. We've worked on this plan. And one of the issues that we postponed for last month was that lane that Mr. Gallimore is talking about. There have been meetings since then when his division said that they were fine with that and they made no comments about the left turn lane. Now they're saying they don't like that and they thought it was going to be postponed, which we've never indicated we were going to postpone it. And they're bringing it up today when we haven't had a chance to respond to it. And this is a discussion that goes back to versions of this plan. Okay. So secondly, if you look at your agenda, the issue about the left turn was something that was raised by the Division of Planning because they had a concern about it. And what we agreed to a condition was that that could go forward, but it would be monitored for a year by the Division of Traffic Engineering to determine if it would work safely. and then it may have to be modified. If you do what Mr. Gallimore suggests and allow no exit, there is currently a driveway in the shaded area. I'm going to use my laser pointer. I've never used this before, so I'm going to put on your sunglasses. Okay. Is it where the staff's pointing? Yeah, that driveway. Now that's open right now. That is now open. Okay. That's a full in and out on the main, as is that. Now, the only way to get onto Main Street under this plan is you can turn left here, or as he suggests, you come out here and then you do this. So you put more traffic back out on Main Street. But instead, he says, well, but you could come left and go out Water Street. And you would go between the back of the visitor center and Porter's Paint. It's an alley. And it's two-way here. Now, we don't think that's a very optimal solution to getting. We now have two ways to get onto Main Street. And we were asking for one. And now they're suggesting we have none. So anybody that wants to go west, and there are people that live that way, they might want to go there. I live that way. So rather than doing this, which was another reason they didn't like this, was because that would mean people would have to get back into this traffic and come around, trying to keep people off the road. I mean, this has been a moving target for us. But at the end of the day, we think that this circulation works. It's been designed by Kevin Phillips in post-consultation with Gary Joy. We have Wilbur Smith looking at it. We have worked with the staff, and we think we have made a lot of changes, including not to forget, that this would look like eliminating the drive-thru. I don't know about the impact that it would make, but if we had that, this site would look a lot different. But that was a concern because of its proximity to this. May I ask Mr. Gallimore a question? Yes. No, sir. Well, I don't mean you are the chairman. I didn't think I was suggesting that you are. But Mr. Gallimore, now the part that's shaded, I'm not clear on what you're recommending be done with that. That it be closed? Yes, sir. Okay. That was recommended to be closed because the people coming off of Midland, you kind of have that flyaway right off of Midland, and so they don't even have to stop, and they're coming out fairly fast, and a lot of times they want to merge all the way to the left lane on Main. And so that's a pretty big conflict point to have an access point that close to that scenario. Oh, I see what you're saying. You can think of exiting New Circle Road and trying to get over to Best Buy, for example. It's that same type of maneuver where people are jumping onto an arterial and trying to sway multiple lanes in a short period of time. Okay. I just have a question. I imagine you've thought of it. So can you explain why the building isn't just shifted over so that the building's where the parking lot is and the parking's not behind the building? I'm sorry? I don't understand why the building isn't where the parking lot currently is and the parking lot's where the building is. It seems like if you had shifted everything forward, you'd have a lot more space for ingress and egress, et cetera. The designer can tell you, but I think if you flipped it, you'd put the drive-through in the front. No, you put the building where the parking lot is so that you have the design issue of somebody coming in, sees a building instead of a parking lot. May I let the designer? You're saying, Ms. Moore, you're saying to shift the building to the right? Right. I'm sure there must be a reason, but I'm not. That's a good question. There's a major concern. The town branch culvert, it's a 96-inch culvert, runs right along that route and goes down Midland Avenue, so it would put the store directly over top of the town branch culvert. It angles right through the front parking lot, but that's what's kicking the building away from the intersection. And that's not shown on the plan, so we couldn't have known that. Not on this site plan, though, but it is there. You know that. Yes, we know it's there. Okay. All right. That's a good question. Okay. So the staff recommended approval. Mr. Chairman, we do have one additional condition we want to put up. Is this an okay time? Is the applicant aware of this condition? She is now. Get ready to be. It's something that would happen through the normal permitting process, but we figured since there were a lot of complicated utility issues on this site, We ought to put it in there for emphasis. So that would be a condition number 12. We're agreeable to that. In fact, we had a meeting earlier this week with the Department of Public Works because there are easements and facilities there, which is going to be what you're going to find downtown. In fact, there's a sewer under the antique building right now. So downtown is interesting because there's a lot of facilities and they don't necessarily have them mapped because they're so old. So if you're going to get any more downtown infill, you're going to see this again. But we're accepted. We agree to that. Karina, do you all have a problem with the driveway being closed? Yes. The parallel driveway? Yes. Now does that give you, if it's open, does that give you two? ways out onto Midland or two ways out onto Main Street? Yes. If you have that, then you have the ability of cars to exit onto Main Street, and then you also have the ability for cars coming out to get into the site at the first entrance. I don't think this is working anymore. The first, the new entrance down, it's not shown on this. Can you move that slide up? Yeah, there's currently two. We're going to eliminate one. The one that's hashed out is there and that says existing entrance to be closed. And if you had to look at this plan as it is right now, where would the most danger be for the cars coming out and exiting either onto Main Street? Where would the most risk be here for not being able to see cars coming the way that you're coming out? Where would that be? I think the closer to the intersection, which is why they've asked us to close it. We've pulled it as far back as we can to our property line. I'm not aware of any site distance issues there. I mean if you drive around downtown it's fairly common to turn left or right onto the one way streets. You do this on High Street or on Vine Street and other locations and on Main Street when you're pulling out of businesses up and down those streets. If I might, the benefit of the circulation as it is now is that there is no exit across traffic if you will. You'll be exiting into traffic that's going the same way you intend to turn. You'll be exiting left on the main, the traffic is flowing to your left. You won't be crossing lanes of traffic if you will. You'll be just merging in with them or turning in the same direction with them. Same with the main and the by and exit as well. All right. If you would, I'd just like for you to keep in mind, we don't really have an issue with them exiting onto Main. What we have issue is the geometry of the way that exit is laid out. Not a problem. We'd love to see them be able to exit directly onto Main. And that's the reason I'm saying that maybe there's a compromise to where we can still accomplish an exit onto the Main. I just, we don't feel comfortable the way it's set up now. Well, I mean, on the conditions, it has the normal sign-offs, and I understood you to say you didn't want any exit on domain. I mean, we acknowledge that there's been some issues about the configuration and the geometry of that, and we've said we will work with the Division of Traffic Engineering and the Division of Planning on that. So, but what I heard you say was that you wanted to close any exit onto Main Street. Well, let me clarify. As per this submitted site plan, okay, we would recommend that that lane be closed. Of course, you have to, I don't know if there's options to where you can shift the store, cut the corner off the store like you did where the drive-through is or things of that nature, But if there's no flexibility on the footprint of the building or its location, I don't see how you can make that exit onto main work. But if there is some flexibility in shifting things around, then that's just something I think, you know, we would be glad to entertain on paper doing that. What I don't feel comfortable doing is approving this configuration and then going back and looking at it a year later about its safety aspects because that would be a very difficult thing to judge whether or not it was safe, and I think it would just end up being an argument and come right back to the board. And possibly, in the meantime, accidents have occurred because of the skewness of how vehicles are approaching Main Street. One of my problems with this proposal is that this exit onto Main was going to be resolved later, and it doesn't seem resolvable. I think that it should be resolved before we approve it. That's pretty much what I'm advocating is if there's a way that we can come up with a different site plan showing a better geometry and keeping that. And, of course, now keeping that also implies that you would keep this little parallel driveway along Main Street because it doesn't make sense to have an exit there if you don't have that driveway. So just keep that in mind, too, and I don't know what your thoughts are about the parallel drive. Like I said, we're pretty much null on that point. Well, the driveway is, in our report, it's stated that it is not a desirable feature from an urban design perspective. I think people understand the signage. I'm not sure that I would agree that that is just a drive-through. that is not dedicated to the drive-thru only. You can leave the property either to Water Street or to Main Street as submitted by that driveway. People normally frequent pharmacies. Once they start getting their stuff there, they tend to repeat. They'll figure it out that you can use that not just only for the driveway. That's what I'm afraid of. They'll run right over that paint that says drive-thru only. Right. If it's there, they're going to use it. Can I clarify? So right now, originally there were two possible exits, the one that's got the big X with the little hash marks there, and then the one right next to the entrance to the drive-thru. These are both existing. That exists today between the... Right, but what we're talking about are the two possibilities, and here you're saying close what exists. Yes. You were against the current exit because of the angle or because it's so close to the corner? Normally we're looking for a throat and an exit to where a car can pull out and line up 90 degrees to the street. The way this thing is configured, that car is going to come out at about 45 degrees and start rolling over the sidewalk. But in other words, you don't have a problem with that location if there was either a smaller building or less parking so that you could exit? You need some way to kick the cars further away from Main Street and allow them to make that turn so that they can line up approximately 90 degrees and not have to hit the sidewalk before they're lined up 90 degrees. And there again, that's where the, when Mr. Gridge talked about the pedestrian friendliness, that's where this, some of this stuff in my mind starts tying together, not just vehicular circulation, but pedestrian friendliness. I'm sorry, I don't understand. Is it basically you're saying impossible then to do what you want, or? It's possible, but I don't see a way it's possible unless something happens with the building. The building gets moved or the corner gets cut off. There's only so much room to work there. Now, there, again, there may be other ideas that I'm not aware of. Well, I have a question for the builder or the designer. Has there been any thought of not doing a box store? Can you change the design or the shape of the store itself? Does it have to be a box store? Well, that's really for the developer to decide. They provide us with the footprint, and we do what we can with that. So we're bound to the footprint that they provide to us. But I think it bears discussion. You know, you've got a spot that you can't move it because of consideration for the town branch. why does it have to be the typical footprint of a CVS that's out in Chevy Chase or wherever else it may be? This is Gary Joy. Hi. I represent CVS here in the state as its developer. And I guess to cut short to that answer is that CVS or Walgreens or Rite Aid, we all work within our prototypical designs nowadays. One foot off the side of a wall can mean one shelving of merchandise gone. One foot from the back of the wall could mean a change of merchandise on the inside. So we are required to do these box designs, period. We've got four different prototypes we can use. This is already our smallest prototype we have in the design profile now. How many do you have in an urban setting? Here in Louisville, Lexington or nationally? Louisville. Louisville. I've got one at 4th Street Live, which was a leftover store when they redeveloped 4th Street Live and that was it. So this wasn't new construction? No, it was not new construction. That's correct. All right. Any other questions for the staff or for the applicant? Well, I guess this drive-through aisle that's on running parallel to Main Street, if that was eliminated, that would be a wonderful sidewalk access for pedestrians into the store. And I think I could live with the drive-throughs if you could eliminate that aisle and move this building up near the sidewalk so that there'd be, however long that is, 136 feet of building on the sidewalk and entrance doors for pedestrians on Main Street. That would seem very pedestrian friendly. I want Kevin talk about the – there is – you may not be able to see it on the rendering, but just to the right of the crosshatched X where it says existing sidewalk, That's where the railing and shrubs for that fence is going to be held open, and there will be a walkway from the main street sidewalk into the store there. So we are accommodating getting people from the street onto the property with that walkway. Do you want to make a point about the lane, Kevin? Yeah, we were trying. I believe the real driving force to keeping that parallel lane, I know it's not desirable from your perspective and perhaps the downtown master plan people either. But considering when Main Street and Vine Street go two-way, consider that circulation. People coming inbound, let's consider Main Street for now, going two-way. So let's say the two lanes closest to the side are outbound. people going to the CVS coming inbound to Richmond Road, East Main will come up and they'll have to cross two lanes of traffic perhaps to get into the drive-through or the CVS period. And that would be an uncontrolled intersection at that point. So the safe option is coming inbound to Richmond Road, you take the left at the traffic light, turn left onto Vine Street. Now you're in the lane that's adjacent to CVS. so now I can make a very safe right-hand turn into the site. Unfortunately, I can't get to the drive-through from that side. So I make the safe turn at the traffic light at Vine Street. You turn left, you proceed down Vine, you pass Grand Boulevard, you turn left into this rear entrance we show. Now, I want to get to the drive-through. Can't do it. If the driving lane stays, the drive aisle that's on the north side of the building, then I'm able to circulate around the store and get into the drive-through without crossing any two lanes of traffic, two lanes of opposing traffic. And that's why that lane is necessary. It's for that two-lane circulation that will happen on Main and Vine. That's why it's necessary. We're trying to make the safe movements in and out of the site without crossing two lanes of opposing traffic. I haven't studied this at length like you have, but no amount of discussion is going to convince me that there's not a compromise that would make this building more pedestrian friendly. I think the pedestrians have been pretty much left out of the equation. And you all are sounding very inflexible. You have four designs and one of them has to work or you're going elsewhere. I don't know if that's what you mean, but I think that this is not the best that can be done for pedestrians. We obviously think otherwise, and we're just, you know. Thank you guys for taking so much time on this. I'm Phil Hollebeck. You know me as a downtown developer. I'm the landowner in this case. Our developments that you're familiar with are Main and Rose, Nun Building Lofts. We've won numerous awards for those. We've won the streetscape award, historic preservation awards, even for new construction. Drive-thrus in and of themselves aren't bad for downtowns. Surface parking lots in and of themselves aren't bad for downtowns. Drive-thrus done inappropriately are bad, and surface parking lots done inappropriately are bad. I think most of you that know me know that I probably put my heart and soul into downtown more than just about anybody else. I think on the downtown master plan, you'd be hard-pressed to find a private citizen who spent more time on that than I did. I think on the streetscape master plan, you would be hard-pressed to find somebody who put more time into it than I did. And I think Chris King and Shea Raybold and others with the administration would be able to verify that. So we don't take lightly anything that we do downtown. There's a reason that CVS has done 14 plans so far, and it's not just because the city has required it. It's because I, as the landowner, have required it. We've put $40 million into this downtown so far with our projects. we are fierce, fierce, fierce advocates for two-way streets. It's interesting. We wouldn't be having these discussions were we able to have two-way streets to begin with. That's a little bit of a moot point because we're not there. There are a bunch of benchmarks that need to be accomplished before downtown's main and vine can turn to two-way streets, not the least of which is the Newtown Pike extension. So realistically, two-way streets won't happen before, say, 2014. with that said this is by far the most pedestrian unfriendly part of downtown right now we try very hard to make it better with every single thing we do and I want to talk about that for one second we even shot a video I don't know if we brought it or not but shot a video of trying to cross Main Street close to Midland and if you guys just close your eyes and think with me for a second the traffic coming from Midland making a right turn onto Main never stops The traffic from Vine making a left onto Main never stops. You take your life in your hands crossing there. My residents at Main and Rose will have to backtrack to Rose Street just to cross Main to get back over here. Because of that, we have spent far more, will be spending far more money on the screening than anybody else has downtown. I don't know, Chris, can you put this landscape picture up there? the landscape screening will be better than anything else downtown. Fences with stone veneers, shrubbery behind it. The only place you can find anything even close to that, even close to downtown, is probably Dudley's. Even LFUCG, which has used Water Street as a surface parking lot for years, hasn't bothered to screen anything. So we truly care about doing the right thing for this town, not just because of our investments. I mean, we were hard on our sleeves. There will be a cutout in that screening for pedestrians to get in there. Keep in mind, until the traffic patterns change, this area will never be pedestrian-friendly. A case in point is Main and Rose. When you guys come down Main Street and look to your right at Main and Rose, notice how the sidewalk is raised two feet off the street level. You have to go up two or three steps to get there. And the reason is, it's something we copied from Project for Public Spaces in New York City. Every single park in New York City other than Central Park, you go up a couple of steps to get to there. And the reason is you don't want to feel like you're at street level. If you sit at Bellini's, you feel like a bus might hit you, as opposed to sitting on Esplanade at Natasha's. It feels more comfortable. Right now, this isn't a pedestrian-friendly environment, and I'm talking about public right-of-way as opposed to our space. We've worked very hard to make this the best that it can be, so much so that, let me put one other thing up here. Can I take two minutes or less, Peter, or Mr. Brown? Yes, sir. Is that okay? Yeah. I want to take two quick minutes and just give you the background on this site. We tried to buy this land starting in January of 2007, two and a half years ago. The original plan was to do a huge mixed-use project, which had a pharmacy on the first floor, three stories of office up above, and as you went down Main Street, first floor retail with apartments up above, it would be hidden, it would be hiding a parking garage. Parking garages can't be paid for by the public and private sector. The reason is with Lexington's parking rates, parking garage loses about $1,000 per space per year. So think about a 600-car garage, loses $600,000 a year. Private sector can't do that. It has to come from the public sector, and the reason is the public sector gets sales, property, and payroll taxes that more than offset that infrastructure investment. There are 15 parking garages downtown. There's 15 parking garages downtown. This is from the parking authority. You can see those P's up there. If you switch to the second page, please, you can see only one parking garage is on the east end. 14 garages are in the center or west end of downtown. The reason that's relevant, without a parking garage, the only option is to be one story of density, because there's only enough surface to park the people for one story. If we had a three-story building, there would be not enough surface to put all those cars. And I'm tying this to where, come back where we're going. Until we get infrastructure of parking garages on the east end, And one-story buildings are the only option, unfortunately. And because of that, that's why you don't see a lot of people developing downtown and why we're taking a lot greater risk than other people. Given that we're going to do one story, the best possible use for one story is something that's going to carry convenience-oriented retail items for the people who are coming to live downtown and the people who are working downtown. That's why, I don't know if it's in your packet or not, We've got petitions from Main and Rose residents and from LFUCG employees. Having grocery items downtown has been a demonstrated community need since at least the Pam Miller administration. We lost getting two groceries for downtown at Main and Rose. I cannot tell you how hard we worked for it because we had one-way streets. Seventy percent of a grocery business is drive-home business, and Main Street unfortunately goes the wrong way for where most of the people live that would be using that. We didn't get a pharmacy at Main and Rose because there was no drive-thru. And keep in mind, I'm the landowner, not the developer, but the developers told me in this case, if there's not a drive-thru, there's not a CVS, that's not a threat by any means that I'm making. That's what I've been told. If we have rushing traffic on Main Street, traffic that can't get out to Main Street, and we don't have a drive-thru, we aren't going to have any more retail downtown. And if you guys think we have a healthy downtown environment in terms of retail, nothing could be further from the truth. Go with me for one more second. Picture yourself on Vine Street by the Civic Center, by Triangle Park, and just walk all the way down Vine to the Triangle Park. To Thoroughbred Park, I'm sorry. How many retail things pop up in your head? Tonio's Mexican Restaurant is it. I mean, it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing for our downtown, the lack of retail, arguably one of our two busiest streets, and we can't get retail because we haven't been willing to work with them in the past. So approving a drive-thru so that we can get a pharmacy that has a demonstrated community need of selling groceries. These guys are selling groceries. They're selling an expanded list of groceries compared to many of their CVSs. It's critical. Getting out to Main Street is very important as well. One of the things we had just talked about was even the possibility of flip-flopping the ingress and egress lanes. What I heard Mr. Gallimore say was, thankfully, he's not against people going out to Main Street, because I think that would be lunacy. He's okay with them going out to Main Street as long as they can square up and have a 90-degree turn. If we flip-flop the ingress and egress lanes and the egress is closest to that existing Coach Craft building, I think that solves the problem. because that car would be squared up at a 90-degree angle to Main Street. So I just want to plead with you guys to look at this holistically, not in a vacuum, because I put my blood, sweat, and tears into that downtown master plan. There are guiding principles and idealism, and there's also reality. And if we can't get these retailers downtown, this whole house of cards falls apart. We're not going to get more residents or office workers. I'm going to leave you with one last rendering and I'm done. Take a look at this. Are you guys able to see that okay? Anthony Wright, the Economic Development Director, and I talk a lot, lot, I mean, heart-to-heart conversations about being good stewards of the land. And it's not BS I'm giving you. I mean, it is the truth. I wear my heart on my sleeve. It is the truth about being good stewards of the land. We have placed the pharmacy in a location so that even though the first half of our mixed-use project is dead now because of no parking garage, remember it was going to be a pharmacy with three stories of office above. We'll do this one-story pharmacy. We've placed it so that the rest of the block still can be filled in with that mixed-use project that's four or five stories tall, light retail on the first floor with apartments above, and a parking garage in between. It may not be me that develops it. I sure hope it is. It may be another private developer. The city could choose to put a government center there. The Commerce Lexington building could come down. The CV building could come down. But we have done our job as citizens, I feel great about, that we've masterplanned this block so that even with this location of the CVS, it will have a higher density project on the rest of the block if and when the city is able to afford a parking garage. So I just want you guys to understand that, how much time we put into this, how we're trying to do the right thing, trying to be stewards of the land. And I guess, you know, my suggestion or question to Mr. Gallimore is, can we flip-flop the ingress and egress, have the egress to Main Street line up at a 90-degree angle, and is that satisfactory? I don't know where else we can put that egress. We shifted it as far away from the point as we could. We can't go any further. So thank you for listening. Thanks very much. I think you've made your point very clear. And, you know, I will have to say I don't think anybody disputes, you know, the demonstrated need that we have downtown for retail and certainly your commitment. I don't think that there's been anyone more dedicated to downtown development than you have. And so I'm talking about your blood, sweat, and tears and doing the right thing and being good stewards of the land. And we applaud you for things like that because it has made downtown much more attractive, much more vibrant. The biggest problem that I have with this and the biggest concern that I have, and Mr. Galloway, I don't know if this might be a question for you, but I do have a little problem with the existing entrance and egress on the main street. And one of the things that concerns me, I don't know if flipping on Mr. Galloway will help the situation, but I know we also have four parking spaces right there. My biggest concern, Mr. Hollebeck, is if I come through the drive-through and I'm turning out on Main and I'm going west, and there's four parking spaces right behind me, it seems like the visibility is it. That's what I'm concerned with. I agree with Mr. Griggs. I want downtown to be more pedestrian-friendly. But until we get two-lane streets, that corner is not pedestrian-friendly. It never has been pedestrian-friendly. But my concern is the safety of the people coming in and going out of this driveway on the main street and how much of an impediment are the parking spaces on the right, and could one or two of those be eliminated because I'm concerned about visibility as you egress onto main street. Let me mention one thing on the parking spaces because I think it's a good question. And we've worked very closely with Gary Means at the parking authority on this. And this site plan, I believe, adds net new total parking spaces versus what's there right now. Mr. Means' goal – That's not what we're asking about. We're asking about the ones on Main Street. Right, right, right. And that's where I'm going. Quickly. We can – I believe we can. And Gary would be amenable to the possibility of losing one or two of those parking spaces on Main Street if that helps with a site triangle. Is that what you're asking? Yes, that's what I was asking. I wanted to get Mr. Galloway's opinion on that. As you mentioned, when you exit onto a street system that has one-way parking, and sometimes there is what we call a sight triangle issue, which means you can't see far enough out into the lane to see oncoming traffic. As you're probably aware, sometimes it's a problem when there's a big SUV parked there, but not a smaller compact vehicle. Unfortunately, we have a lot of big SUVs in this town as much as we do the smaller vehicles. It can be a problem. The other thing is, too, that you're not going to be able to see from this drawing, I don't think is the elevation. Sometimes if you're sitting up higher than the street level, then you can kind of see over those vehicles. Now, once again, something like an SUV, maybe not. But if the lot is somewhat higher than the street grade, that does help that site triangle issue at times. We have eliminated some parking spaces downtown due to site visibility problems. But to be truthful with you, if we met our defined site triangles that are defined in the zoning regulations, we'd probably wipe out most of the street parking in Lexington. So there's kind of a balance there. But you're right, it is a safety issue. The other thing that can happen, too, getting back to the pedestrian thing, is people trying to cross the street mid-block crossing between vehicles that you don't see. Mr. Gallimore, how much time do you think it would take for you and Rena and her people to put this together where it's suitable and acceptable for what this board and some of the people that have sent us letters are concerned about this particular situation and particularly the traffic? How soon could you all get together and work this out? Because it seems we're talking about one particular little area here that's creating the problem. And personally speaking, this problem probably should have been addressed before this came before this board, if there was a major concern about that particular entrance here or exit or whatever. So I don't think we're talking about a major situation here. I think we're talking about something relatively easy if the right people get together and work this out. And it can't be done with this board up here trying to determine if the engineers are right or if the developers are right or if the representative is right of these people. I think it has to be done with you and this group. First of all, my timing is very flexible, and I can get with the applicant at their discretion pretty much. I don't know how much flexibility they have on their end, and, you know, Rena can maybe answer to that. One other thing I would like for you to keep in mind, they are planning on stocking this store with tractor trailers. Part of this layout beside the drive-through area is designed to get a tractor trailer into the property and allow it to stop and be unstocked. And my point is we don't want to fix one thing and mess another thing up. And I do not want to condone a tractor trailer sitting on Main Street like some delivery vehicles do to unload. to unload. So there are some other issues that have not been brought forward that may make tweaking the process a little bit time-consuming. So I'd just like to bring that point up. Like I said, this is a complicated lot. It's complicated by the street surroundings. It's complicated by using part of Water Street as a parking area. Water Street is currently one way back in that area. That has to be converted to two ways. I don't see where they're getting the space from, but I'm going by what's on this map. It says that it's going to be two way, which would have to be to function properly. So I would very much like to have the opportunity to work with the applicant and or their representatives and make this thing work. Our goal by no means is to kill this project. Our goal is to try to make it network having best vehicular and pedestrian access. Now the issue about pedestrian access crossing Main, to me that's a little bit outside the scope of this project. That works. A lot of people don't like how it works, but it does work. And there may be some future improvements to the Midland-Vine-Main intersection that could help that, change traffic flow patterns. And we're going to have to figure out, are we going to go two-way or are we going to stay with one-way? And, you know, we can't start making improvements for sure until we figure out how traffic is going to flow. And as everybody in this room probably acknowledges, this site may function differently in a two-way circulation. And I'm not saying for the better or for the worse at this point, but I'm saying it may work Keep in mind, too, that as far as I know, every drive-through, which is mostly banks downtown, you can only get to the drive-through from one side, not both sides. And all of these drive-throughs seem to function and work. So even though, as I mentioned, if this was out in the suburbs, if this was out in Beaumont Center, and you were putting in a pharmacy, we would want you to be able to get to that drive-through from a variety of directions. But I think the downtown circuit, things work a little bit different due to traffic volumes. All right. Thank you, Mr. Gallimore. Ms. Wiseman? To respond to Mr. Stout, Gary Joy just said that if you would like us to wait a month to come and work on this access point, we're agreeable to doing that. We've worked long and hard. We'll keep doing it. I do have to make a point, a response to Jim saying something about tractor-trailer trucks are going to be delivering stock to this pharmacy. It has been 30 years since this community has wanted a downtown grocery store. I found a study dated 1982. 82, we've been talking about getting a grocery store and convenience products for the people who live and work downtown. There are 35,000 people that live and work downtown. That's bigger than Richmond. That's bigger than Frankfurt. That's bigger than Winchester. And we don't have a grocery store, and we don't have a pharmacy. We really want one. I live downtown. I really want one. Now, how do you think Kroger's is going to bring their products to a grocery store? It's probably going to be a tractor-trailer. It's not Beaumont. If we don't start thinking different about downtown, then this isn't going to happen. Kroger isn't going to happen. We cannot do it the way we've done it on the green land. We're working on downtown. I don't mean to preach, but if we come back and the issue is we're going to have tractor-trailer trucks, then folks, just forget downtown redevelopment. It's just not going to happen. But we will agree to a postponement in the speech. I don't have a problem with your tractor trailers, and I was trying to compliment you on trying to unload them on your property, which is not typically done downtown. I'm just saying that is another issue when you start pushing things around that you want to keep in mind. I'm not saying it's going to be a problem, but it is something that's not been bought up at this point. I would have to say I don't think anybody on the board objects to seeing a pharmacy downtown. I think everybody would love to see a pharmacy downtown. I just think one of the requirements we have to find is that it wouldn't create any safety issues. And I think it appears that most of us don't feel comfortable saying that it will satisfy safety concerns. And if we had a postponement with more details and traffic could say, yes, we think there's no safety concern, we'd all feel more comfortable. Thank you, Ms. Moore. I would second that. Ms. Wiseman, I want to know, I'm not clear on what you're asking. Do you want us to vote on the... We would like you to approve this this afternoon. That's what I said at the outset. I sensed a strong feeling from Mr. Stout, who I've always tried to follow, obey, that he preferred that there would be another month to let us work with the traffic engineer. We're happy to do that. We're very happy to have you approve this. We still have to work with the traffic engineer. It's on your condition. We've committed you have condition number four, which gives them review of this plan anyway. So we would be very happy to have you approve this this afternoon with those conditions. But if you would prefer us to come back, that's fine, too. We just would like to make this project a reality. I'll call for motions, then. Mr. Chair, I'm going to make a motion. Wait a minute. I'm sorry, sir. Are you an objector? Okay. Are you an objector? I'm just trying to figure out who you are. You are an objector. Okay. All right. We didn't want a chance to respond. Okay. Okay. All right. No. Let's see. see Sir, at the beginning of the meeting I called for objectors and I came a little after that. That's what I thought. I don't remember any objectors on this case. We kind of hear them based on if there's objectors or not. I'm not saying that you're not going to be heard and Ms. Weissman won't have a chance to respond. But I think there's going to be a motion to continue this. I was going to ask the legal over there. I was going to ask our attorney, do we have to postpone it or can we continue it? I think if you make it a continuance, that in essence means that everything that's been discussed today is part of the record in this case. So, I mean, I think a continuance is a little bit more accurate. Just to tie into that, if we continue it, can we not hear the objector today and hear it when we resume? I think that's up to the chairperson as long as he is given an opportunity to comment, whether it be today or at the continuance. He has to be given an opportunity, but I think it's up to you as to when that takes place. All right. Thank you. Well, I think that the motion is going to be to continue this. So if that's the case, if that motion passes, then we'll hear your objector, sir, when we resume testimony. Well, and Peter, the objector may not have the same concerns when he sees the revised plan. Good point. Thank you, Mr. Greggs. So is there a motion? Can we just clarify? Would you be able to make it next month? To come next month if you object to this. Okay. All right, so. Well, I'll tell you what, let's hear him. Let's hear what his objections are. Because if we get called on. You can vote against it. Mr. Chairman, I want to make a motion regarding this. And before I do, I want to let Ms. Wiseman know that I appreciate her more confidence in me. I didn't know I had that much influence, but if I do, thank you. Also, and that's not being disrespectful here because I have a lot of respect for you. However, I just think that when we look at these cases like this, I think all parties involved with them need to be on the same page. And I don't think we are. And I don't mean just this board. I mean from that side of the room to this side of the room to out there. I don't think we're on the same page. So I'm going to move that C-2009-14 join Associates Inc. Appeals for conditional use permit to construct and operate the drive-through facility in a proposed pharmacy in downtown Business B2 zone on properties located at 366, 370, 376 and 400 East Main Street in Council District 3 be continued for 30 days. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a second on that. And before I do, I do want to commend Ms. Wiseman as well and Mr. Gallimore. Everybody's working very hard to get this thing done. And we all just want to have the right comfort level here, Ms. Wiseman, because I think we all see the merits. No one's opposed to having a CVS downtown, and I think it's needed, and I applaud the efforts of the developers and the investors and so forth. We just want to have the best possible outcome for all concerned. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to second Mr. Stout's motion. Thank you, Mr. Stout and Mr. Stumbo. So the motion is to continue this matter until our May meeting. And Ms. Wiseman, that's okay with you and your client? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you, Ms. Wiseman. And so all those in favor of Mr. Stout's motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Ms. Wiseman, thank you very much and we'll see you and your clients in May. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Next case is C2009-20, Karen C. Miller. Good afternoon. Are you Ms. Miller? I'm fine. How are you all? Doing fine. Thank you. Now let's see. The staff has recommended approval, and there were no objectors, and the approval was conditioned on three conditions. Have you reviewed the conditions? Yes, I have. Do you agree to abide by them? Yes. All right. And are there any, thank you, are there any questions for the applicant or staff? You understand there are eight, it's up to eight children, is that correct? Right, right. I wasn't asking for anything any different. I've had six kids in my home plus my two kids for the past six years. And as the first of the year, the state decided that they needed a zoning letter on file, and that zoning letter stated that you could have a total of six kids, so that made me out of compliance. So that's why I'm here, is asking for that extra two kids so that I can keep my two children. Now, I have a question for Mr. Gallimore. I've always thought Mount Tabor was a pretty busy street. And the way I've read the report is that people would pull into a driveway, either drop or pick off the children and then back onto Mount Tabor. Do you think that's safe at where this applicant's located? Well, as you know, for commercial applications, we do not allow backing onto the street. The home daycare has always kind of been, you know, it's not a residential application, it's not a commercial application. Mount Tabor does see quite a bit of traffic. It's a fairly narrow street. I think it is now striped for bike lanes. the one thing I will say about Mount Tabor is now it has a couple of stop signs on it that didn't used to be there and slows some folks down some at one time it was almost a drag strip yes it was I'm not sure about the exact location of this home whether there's any sight distance issues or not but like I said is it a good idea for anybody to back out onto a busy street Probably not. So I don't know. I probably really didn't answer your question as specifically as you like, but we would always advocate being able to drop off and turn around, I think, and come forward out into the street. And I think in some cases, maybe with a higher number of children involved, we have asked for a turnaround pad to allow for turning around. You're not saying it's an ideal situation, but I don't see you jumping up and down either. I can't think of anything that's that bad about Mount Tabor in general. Like I said, other than a fairly busy street, it's a collector street and not a local street. You're going to be, I think you would see less traffic volumes if you were on one of the side streets off of Mount Tabor, naturally. And I'm trying to think back about our history of other daycares as far as, you know, have we really taken into account traffic volumes, you know, for the daycare. And what it just seems like to me, it seems like, like I said, the higher number of children involved, maybe the more the street system comes into play. But this does seem like fairly small numbers. And the only other thing I could do is actually go out to the site and look at the site triangles and see if there's issues either vertically or horizontally with having good vision, getting out of the driveway, and maybe she can comment on the visibility exiting the driveway if you're biking out. I'm actually right in the middle of the main stretch, so it's right direct in the middle. You can see going both directions. There is two parking spaces that's available in front of my house that they could use if need be. Also, if you're speaking of a turnaround, I could do that too. I could accommodate that. However, I have been there for six years doing this with the eight kids, and we've not had a problem with them backing out into the street so far. But, you know, and there may be more traffic in the future, and it may cause a problem. But as of right now, it's not causing any. And your driveway does not allow you to actually turn around? No, sir, it doesn't. Not the way it's set up. I mean, you can back up into the grass and turn around, if need be, in my front yard, which I do sometimes. Well, we don't want to go there. Right. I have done it, but, I mean, it's fairly possible that the driveway could be widened if it needed to be, too. I have enough space, and I have just put in a new driveway. Mr. Miller, I have a question for you. Because the site plan that was submitted with the application, I'm not opposed to your request, but the site plan that was submitted with the application indicated that the existing driveway is 17 feet wide when it's actually 12 feet wide. How did we get that five-foot discrepancy? Well, to be actually honest about it, it starts at 12 at the street, and as you go down, it widens. So at the house, it's 14, and then on down past the house, it is 17 1⁄2. I have a garage in the backyard. If you'll see where the garage sits, it's actually back behind the house. In between there, it is 17-foot wide. Depends on where you measure it, then. Right. It depends on where you measure. You could get any amount of measuring through there. I really didn't mean it to be misleading. I actually did measure at the point of the garage there. I didn't. It was raining the day. I did the measurements. And I will admit I'm not an architect, so I didn't. It's not on scale. All right. Any other questions for? Chair, I'd like to share a personal observation. I've got a friend that lives much further towards Richmond Road on this same street, and I visit them once or twice a month, and I pull into their driveway and back out, or I back into their driveway if I can, and sometimes I park in front of their house on that bike lane. You say you have two parking spaces in front of your house, but you're talking about parking in the bike lane, which means your side of your car, the paint and the side mirrors are in the traffic lane. That's not parking. That's a bike lane. I'm actually talking parking place here and one in front of it. I'm not talking to out into the street. It's actually not marked, to be honest. The street's not marked for parking at all. Right. People park up and down it on both sides, but they're parking in those bike lane areas. That white stripe that's five feet away from the curb is a bike lane. Is that correct, Mr. Gallimore? I had in my mind that Mount Tabor was striped a little bit different according to where you were on Mount Tabor, but that may be more consistent now than it was. But I do know that part of Mount Tabor is striped for bike lanes. Well, this is the portion where she lives and where my friend lives, and it's not wide enough to park a car without the side of it being in the traffic. And there has been accidents where people have went by and sideswaped cars, and they do park with two wheels up on the sidewalk. And I saw that. The main point I wanted to make was that it is very dangerous backing out of those single wide driveways onto the street or backing into them because one way or the other you've got to do some backing, and the cars are nearly continuous on that road. So I also was wondering if Mr. Hume had been to this site. Did you visit the site? Well, you might like to because there's additions on the back of the house and then an addition on the addition that connects it to the garage, and I hadn't seen anything like that before. I'm not sure if there's building permits for some of this. If they've been there over a year, Jim, we couldn't enforce anything on it anyhow. It's been there over a year, and I did get building permits. Well, it just seemed like a lot of construction, and then finally attaching to the garage, I was surprised. Well, normally it would have been beside of the house, but we had issues with my next-door neighbor, and we moved the garage back. And I did want it to be attached to the house, and that was the only way it was feasible to actually attach it to the house. You had building permits for all of that construction? Well, good for you. Thank you. All right. Any other questions or discussion? Not on an entertaining motion. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion. Item C, 2009-20, Karen C. Miller appeals for a conditional use permit to provide family child care for up to 12 children. Actually, it's going to be up to eight children in a single-family residential R1D zone on property located at 541 Mount Tabor Road be approved with the conditions as set forth by the staff. Second. Second. Now, I want to make sure you're clear that you can have six children, your two children, and no more. Right. That's all I'm asking for. All right. All right. So all those in favor of Mr. Stumbo's motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Opposed. Okay, so the vote is five to two. Okay. All right. Thank you. The motion passes. Good luck with you, Ms. Miller. Thank you. Okay. Next case is C-2009-21, Carriage Station Farm. Mr. Chairman, I must disqualify myself from this case. My husband is Ms. Bollinger's insurance agent. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. Mr. Chairman, we have an amended condition for this. I'll go ahead and put it up on the screen. Ma'am, would you state your name for the record, please? Jessica Bollinger. Ms. Bollinger, welcome. Are you aware of the amended condition? Yes, I am. Okay. Well, it just came up this morning, so it's different than what you got in your staff report, Ms. Bollinger. Okay. The existing riding arena is right up the edge of the floodplain, And so a concern came up at our final review this morning that just to be careful and make sure we don't miss anything, that federal and state permitting requirements pertaining to floodplains be addressed. There may not be any special required, but we want to make the step of making sure the applicant checks with both the federal and state folks regarding the floodplain permitting possible requirements. So we amended condition number three to add that. Well, that will take the place of the number three that's in our report. That's correct. What I'd like to, can I talk about it right then? That this riding arena has been there for 20 years. And we built up where the arena is with, we moved the Morris silt loam away and have clay and built it up with clay. and so it's been there for 20, I've been there at the farm for 22 years and we built it about 20 years ago. So in that 20 years, the steel run creek that runs next to, adjacent to this field, it's never come up and entered the arena. And what we're doing is building a cover for the arena and not any walls or anything like that. Ms. Bellinger, the staff's recommended approval. As far as I know, there's no objectives. They drift in sometimes. I do know that this is going to be a, I feel like I'm a water manager all the time on these 92 acres, that any kind of the horses coming down from the barn to the field where the arena is, I want them to stay on this. We have this little path, this little road, and that they don't get over in the grass because then that can cause, you know, a rut and then water carries down that way. So I feel like I'm constantly a water manager. And we will have more than adequate guttering systems. And we have a, around the arena now, where that built-up place is, you know, where it's built up, we have, you know, grass ditches. And we will for sure handle that water adequately. So the staff based the recommendation of approval on, with five conditions. and this condition they have on the overheads will be in the place of the condition number three that you were aware of. Yeah. Do you feel like you've had enough time to review that condition? Oh, yeah. Do you agree to abide by all the five conditions with number three as amended? Yes. All right. Does anyone have any questions for the applicant? If not, then I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I'd like to recommend C-2009-21 Carriage Station Farm, Inc. appeals for a conditional use permit to construct and operate an under-roof horse riding arena open on all sides in the agricultural rural AR zone on property located at 4470 L. Frankfurt Pike in Council District 12 be approved as recommended by staff. With the five amendments, number three being amended be approved. Thank you, Ms. Edwards. Thank you. Ms. Moore, thank you. All right. All those in favor of Ms. Edwards' motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? All right. Motion passes. Good luck to you, Ms. Mullinger. Thank you. You're welcome. Can you give me a copy of Mr. Dox? Okay. Next case. You're welcome. Have a good weekend. Next case is C2009-24, Jason Scheer. Good afternoon. You Mr. Scheer? Actually, I'm Andrew Moore at the EOP Architects. I'm representing Jason Scheer, and this is for the Tin Roof Restaurant. I was basically before you all in September for a conditional use permit to have live entertainment and you all had a stipulation on there that there was to be a limit of 72 seats and I basically asked for you all to have that removed and you all agreed but when the motion carried, the stipulation for that to be removed was not stated. So in the official recording, the 72-seat limit was recorded in your all's findings And so then when we went to get a final CO for the project, we had over 72 seats. And it doesn't matter what we do with regards to expanding parking, because it's so clearly spelled out of a limit of 72 seats. Building inspections hands are essentially tied. And so unless we reduce our seating count to 72 seats, we cannot get a final CO. And the reason we need greater than 72 seats is because basic liquor licenses are no longer available in the city. And the only available liquor licenses are essentially for a restaurant. And the stipulation with the restaurant is you have to have greater than 100 seats. So essentially what we're doing is providing 100 seats. And also that 72 seats was based on a preliminary site plan. We have 30 parking spaces on the final amended development plan that was approved. And what we're proposing is providing additional off-site parking spaces in order to be able to accommodate 100 seats. But again, and that's what we work out with building inspection, and we will show them a signed lease agreement for two years for those additional parking spaces so that we can have that greater capacity. But the fact that it's stated as 72 seats, we can provide 100 additional parking spaces, but they are still looking, they're hung up on the 72 seats. And so I would also ask that condition number three, which basically says that we can't exceed 90 without amending the development plan, be removed. Because, again, we're stuck in the same situation where we need to provide 100-seat capacity. And since we've provided all the available parking space we can on that site, our only option is to provide additional off-site parking. I have copies of what the approved amended development site plan, if you all would like to see those. Mr. Hume, if they are able to attain a lease for additional parking, will the I guess let me back up would the certificate of occupancy not be issued until they come with the lease of additional parking yeah they'll have to come up with the lease okay so you wouldn't issue that prior to receiving the lease for the additional parking not unless they don't want to serve liquor I've spoken with Nancy Maranero with building inspection and basically have an agreement with UK additional parking spaces at the Jersey lot. We don't have a signed lease agreement yet because I wanted to make sure that we made it through this portion before I went ahead and got additional parking spaces, but basically if you approve this basically with the condition that we have to provide building inspection with a signed lease agreement for the additional parking spaces in order to have the greater seating capacity. They will not issue a CO if we exceed currently the 72 seats as stated previously. I'm sorry. What's your name? I didn't catch it. Andrew Moore. I'm with EOP Architects. All right. Now, there's no objectors, don't worry. And the staff's recommended approval. Are there any questions for Mr. Moore? I have a question for staff. Is this jump from 90 that you have in the conditions up to 100? Does that give you any concern? It doesn't give us a concern, but the intent of condition number three is not to limit it to 90, only to ensure that the development plan is further amended if they go above 90. Make sure that they know that they have to do that I guess my question on the development plan is I'm not sure how we're supposed to amend the development plan Go to the planning commission and ask for an amendment Right, but there's no additional spaces on the development plan to have additional parking spaces We can only provide off-site parking spaces That sounds like a planning commission issue to me Something that Mr. Salee looked at real close when he looked at this situation, and it was his conclusion that they could amend the development plan to accommodate more than the 90 seats. Okay. I don't know. Don't take that as a guarantee. Yeah. I guess I'll have to discuss it with him. I'm unclear as how I'm supposed to amend the development plan. Okay. Is there any other discussion? If not, I entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move that C-2009-24 Jason Scheer's appeal for conditional use permit to amend a previously imposed limit on seating at a restaurant with live entertainment and neighborhood business B-1 zone, a property located at 303 South Limestone Street, be approved for the reasons recommended by the staff and subject to the three conditions recommended by the staff. I'll second that, Mr. Chairman. All right. Thank you, Mr. Moore, Ms. Moore and Mr. Stumbo. All those in favor of Ms. Moore's motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Thank you. Motion passed. Good luck to you, Mr. Moore. All right. And yeah. Where are we now? Okay. All right. Mr. Pennington, it's like you're up. CV 2009-23. I'm not going to try it. The Greek Orthodox Church. Yes. I apologize in advance for my mispronunciation. Oh, that's all right. There are a number of people that go to our church that call it St. Panagia. I just wanted to review very briefly before I introduce Alex Christopherides, our architect, and Dennis Karunas. Last time we were here in December, there was a deadlock, 3 to 3. We had staff approval then, and we have staff approval this time, but there were concerns about parking that probably weighed on the minds of some of the board members. And since that time, we've taken some of the, I guess, recommendations or advice or what we got during the meeting last time to heart and have tried to assemble some data on parking and the traffic flow and what we have there. And also there have been some changes in the plan or some things that our architect would like to bring to your attention as well. So first I'm going to introduce Alex Christopher Ease, our architect, and he's going to give a quick overview of the site plan and things he'd like to point out because I know we have one board member who wasn't here the last time, and we want to do that as briefly as possible just to get everybody on the same page to start off with. All right. Thank you, Mr. President. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Alex Christopherides, I represent the church. I'm a Greek Orthodox Church. There are a few points that I think are critical to make. We've made some slight physical changes to the plan that we proposed last December, and we've also made some behavioral changes within the community, which we've taken the time to kind of communicate with members of the parish and to make them aware of what other options there are for parking, which has alleviated, I think, much of the pressure on the on-street parking. And third, there's been an agreement with our next-door neighbor, Faith Lutheran, to allow us to have six parking spaces, which would be within the 300 feet, of the entrance to our church. So those are the three points that I thought we should make in order to answer the concerns that we heard last December. The main concern was alleviating, not increasing, but alleviating the parking strain that that neighborhood has. Could we go to the site plan? Oh, yeah, maybe it's a little bit bigger. Thank you. the suggestion of some of the board members. In terms of the physical plan, I think it's important to show, to kind of compare the proposed situation versus the current situation. I'll start with the proposed. This is where traffic would enter the site. This is Melrose Place along here. This is Tates Creek Road. from Melrose is where you would enter. You have three parking spaces, one of which right here is a van-accessible parking space. This is also a safe off-street drop-off area, which we currently do not have. If someone might get dropped off here, they can go around through the driveway here, and there's a ground sign right here which would direct people to the off-street parking areas that we have at Cassidy Elementary. So not only are we telling our parishioners individually that there's that opportunity, and many of them have started using that parking area, but there would be a permanent sign that would also direct people to the church's off-street parking where they can go to the Cassidy Elementary School. Those are the changes that we made physically to the plan. And I was going to have Dr. Carunos come up after me and discuss what the church has done to some of the parking behavior as well. And I think they've done a lot and been quite successful with it. We're going from seven off-street parking spaces to three, which is a reduction. But the fact that we have six more spaces that are within 300 feet, actually just across the street from the church, across the street from Melrose, which is a residential street, added to the three that we have on site, we have nine parking spaces versus the seven that we currently have. I think that in the staff report, it says that the Lutheran six spaces are yours if they're available. Okay. Okay. That's right. I think it's a good idea. This is a plan of the current situation. There's the church building, the parish house, and there's room for seven parking spaces. They're not marked on the lot, but if we take a standard size parking space, you can have up to seven. And it's not quite an ideal way to park. That's what we currently have. If somebody needs to be dropped off at the church, the only place we can do it would be if somebody stops on Tate's Creek Road in front of the front entrance of the church or perhaps on Melrose. But there's no place on site to drop people off right now. Also, there's no handicap accessible space on site. And there's no quick and easy way to get from these parking spaces to the front door of the church. So the proposed plan that we have does a lot more than provide more or less parking spaces. It's more than a four parking space difference on site. There's also the fact that there is that handicap access. People can be dropped off, and as they're coming out, they're being told that they can park off-street. So I think those two items alone alleviate the overall traffic and parking picture. But beyond that, Dennis Karunas is going to talk about what else the community has done. Thank you. Also, we have some other letters of support that we've received. My name is Dennis Karunas. I'm the vice president of the parish council, and I'm the chair of the building committee. Thank you. level with the existing community here so that you can see that the porch lines line up and then the roof line for the majority of the addition is consistent with the roof lines of the surrounding neighbors. So we're trying to maintain the consistency of the community. Now, one good suggestion that we received at the December 12th hearing was to ask our parishioners to sign parking pledges to try to change the culture a little bit. We've been at that site since 1948, and we've relied 100% on off-street parking to exist there, and we weren't required to have parking when we built in 1948, and so we've always parked on Melrose. But in this modern society where people are fast foods and drive-through lanes like we heard earlier, where people want to park with valet parking right smack in front. Actually, before I came here, I was down at the HIIT giving a talk to physicians about how to try to prevent diabetes. And clearly, 66% of our nation are overweight or obese and high risk for diabetes. And the key to it is trying to increase your walking. So I thought, well, to change the culture a little bit is not that difficult. And actually, in fact, if you look at the distance that parishioners currently walk, when we have Palm Sunday services and we have the maximum number of cars parking, which is 40, they park at Melrose and Castle, which is 900 feet from our church. And then if you park at Cassidy, the corner of Cassidy is 445 feet from the church. And to confirm these distances, I enlisted the help of a professional appraiser, Marshall Estep, Estep & Company, and we actually measured these distances. And then on top of that, we used Google Maps to confirm these distances. And clearly, you walk twice the distance if you park at the end of Melrose on a busy Sunday than if you park at Cassidy. So it's actually easier to park at Cassidy, much easier to get in and out. And not only can you park on the front drive of Cassidy, but the back lot. The Hart Road along Cassidy allows parking on weekends. It says no parking during school days, but there's 455 feet of available parking with only three houses across from that. It's wide open on Sundays, enough to accommodate 22 cars, which almost will accommodate our entire congregation, because on average we have 29 cars each Sunday. So we asked our parishioners, and you see a copy if you can't see it there, to sign a parking pledge. Would you be willing to park at Cassidy Elementary? And in addition, would you be willing to serve as a shuttle driver for the occasional times that we have a downpour and things and it might be easier to get a ride back to the church? And we had 40% of our parishioners sign these pledges to walk to park at Cassidy. And then some of the board members recommended that you prove to us that you could do this. We closed our lot on 918 Tate's Creek on August 1, 2008, have not used it since then. And then we asked our parishioners to park there at Cassidy. And then we did parking surveys on February, March, and April to document the number of people that come to our church. Now, one objector last time suggested that she said there were 75 cars at your church, and she has the pictures to prove it. That flabbergasted me because we have only 75 people attending church. I couldn't imagine 75 cars. And clearly, our average number of cars each Sunday is 29 cars for our 75 parishioners. and we had 40% of the parishioners basically parking at Cassidy or walking or getting alternative transportation to the church. So they clearly did this on a consistent basis. And I want to point out that they did this when we first implemented the surveys. It was when we had the ice storm. It was a little bit treacherous out there walking on the ice. They did it anyway. The next week it was single-digit temperatures, and they still did it, and they persisted to do it. Now it's springtime. It's good. And I think that the idea of walking a few hundred feet when you go to church is probably a nice thing to do on the way to prayer. And to top it all off, if you're an elementary school child in Fayette County, we require them to walk up to a mile before they're allowed to have bus service. So we ask our parishioners, if we have our kindergartners walking up to a mile, can you walk 400 to 600 feet to Cassidy? and they've done it very enthusiastically each week, and the survey that you had before you shows that. So they signed the pledges, but the other thing that bothered me was that an objector said, well, I got the photos to prove it, and I thought, no, those are not our cars. So we actually developed this parking decal, which signifies members of our church, and so we could identify that those cars were cars of our parishioners, and we took photos to verify that our data was correct, of the cars parked in these areas. And we have the photos if you like them. I won't belabor it too much, but... Come on. There we go. And this is just the inside of the church. So we actually, each Sunday, took pictures of the number of parishioners. I guess if you dim the lights, you might be able to see that a little bit better. But basically, just use the photographs to document and validate that the census that we have was correct. So we have the number of parishioners documented by photographs, and then the survey data to back it up. And the survey was voluntary, but we got over 90% of people participating in the surveys, and then if people were visitors, we wouldn't burden them with doing our survey. But we also asked people to affirm that the information was correct on the survey. Can I ask a question? Yeah. Just a second. So if you had 90% of people participate in those surveys, Doctor, I'd like to ask you why only 40% of the people were willing to sign the parking pledge. Well, you know, I think that if you look at our community, maybe one-third of the people are retired. You know, there's people with knee replacements and hip replacements and elderly that, you know, it was hard for them to sign it, or maybe families with small children. So we did it as a voluntary basis, and that's what we got. I think we'd probably get a few more people to sign those to park there. But this far exceeds the number of spaces that we'd have to gain because of our small seating increase in capacity. Right. And I know that you have some older parishioners, obviously, but I would think that knowing that parking has been a major issue during these hearings and so forth, I would think that they would be willing to be a little bit higher than 40%. Well, I think if you look at the average age of our community and things, you'll see that some people, one of our parishioners, she's 85 years old, And she said that, you know, is it okay if she's not signing? I said, that's fine. I understand that an 85-year-old wouldn't, but I know that 60% of your parishioners aren't 85 years old. I think, though, that you could say that, but probably one-third are retired. And, you know, so I think that the number is not that far off of able-bodied people that are signing. And if I could interject for a second, we weren't trying to get to a situation where everybody was parking at Cassidy and we had Clean Street, you know, during our services. We figured that what the board was interested in is at least making up the difference, and then some, of what the parking situation is now. And so we weren't really trying to herd people into Cassidy so much as say, will you voluntarily do this? It's going to help the situation with the board. If the board wants us to clear out the street, we could go back and tell our parishioners, you've got to park in Cassidy now. But that really wasn't our focus. So actually, I think 40% is pretty good. If you put it voluntarily, it'll help. But we're trying to make up the difference in spaces. Well, forgive me, but I thought that the parking on Melrose, cars lined up was one of the issues that has been discussed. Well, we've always parked on Melrose. I think it's just a matter that we didn't want to create more of a traffic problem by having increased parking on Melrose. And actually, since we've done this, there's actually been fewer cars parked on Melrose. And if you look at it, Faith Lutheran's service starts at 830. Most of the cars are from Faith Lutheran. And then they have a later service. So we have a gap that they do have spaces available when we start at 10 a.m. Another one of my concerns is, and I appreciate Faith Lutheran being able to give you all six parking spaces, But, you know, what are the odds that you all are going to actually be able to use those six parking spaces if you say they begin their services at 830? And I don't know what time you begin yours. We begin ours at 10. So there is a window that there are some spaces available there in between services. That's for the Sunday morning. There are different times during the week when they have services at one time and we have services at the other. So, you know, for focus just on Sunday, yeah, I understand your point. but also they're willing to do it. So I think we're going to have at least a few spaces each week that will be available to us. But in other times, if we have Wednesday services or if we have other services during the week and they don't coincide with them, then six may not be the most that they're willing to. They don't have services. Dr. Cronos, I have a question for you. I think I'm recalling this correctly. At the end of the last hearing we had on this case, and I realize they're separate cases, you mentioned that the parish owned a house a couple of doors down. Yeah, 912 Tate's Creek, yeah. And that you were willing to allow folks to park there. And when I review your materials for this case, that's not mentioned. Well, yeah, we reviewed that with staff, and the problem is that since it's one door, there's one house between our property and that, it's not a contiguous property, then it would require a zoning change for us to be able to use that as a parking lot. So that's why. And so we actually renovated that house, and it's rented out to a family now, and it does provide us some income for our building funds. So we'd rather not do that drastic of a change. That was the first thing we tried. I just wanted, I figured it had been in Florida, it just wasn't mentioned in our material, so I wanted to ask you. Yes, that's the reason. All right, I'm sorry, please go ahead. Okay. Okay, so this is also hard to see, but this is the back parking at Cassidy where our parishioners are parked. And also in the lower photo, you can actually see the parking sticker. It signifies that that's a parishioner there. And then on Melrose, you know, the parking includes cars that are from Faith Lutheran, you know, on that street there. And then it pretty much clears out. So at 2 o'clock on Sunday, you know, a few hours later, the street's completely empty, and that's the way it is 95% of the time around our church. And so I think we've been pretty good neighbors the whole time. So I think that this survey really demonstrates our parishioners' willingness to park off-site. And also, even along Hart Road, there's abundant parking all the way up. If you can pin the lights again so you can see this, but there's 455 feet adjacent to Cassidy on Hart Road that's readily available. There's never a car there. That's actually my wife's car parked right there. so that you have plenty of parking on Hart all the way up to Cassidy, 455 feet, and it will accommodate 22 cars. Without even having to use the Cassidy lot, although we do have permission to do that, we can get 22 cars that are 460 feet away from our church right on Hart Road. And there's only three houses across from that. So there's an abundance of parking right there, and people have been utilizing that. Yeah, so that the results of the survey then, we had on average 10 cars parking. It was 32% of the people coming to church. And then we had, compared to the on-street parking, which were 19 cars parking on street. So we had a large percentage of our parishioners parking over at Cassidy. And then the last thing I'd like to say, too, is that we are interested in – this is the survey result, but we are interested in community support. And so we've held our third open house. And so somebody had mentioned that they hadn't seen a notification of our open house. So we actually sent postcards to everybody in our notification area. We held an open house on April 11th, and actually the people that attended the open house even signed a letter supporting us too. So I think that we've been trying to be good stewards of our neighborhood. We've had the plans on display in our church during our bake sales and things, and we've given the neighbors plenty of opportunity to visit us and ask a lot of questions. And some of the people that came to the open house initially had some concerns, and we went through the whole plan in detail with them in a relaxed environment, and they were very supportive and signed our petition to support. So I think that the survey documents that this remote parking can work. We've been doing it for eight months, and that this is, I think, a viable plan and would clearly accommodate any extra spaces that we need for our expansion project. But most importantly, this expansion would provide us with access for all our parishioners to attend service. As Alex pointed out, it's actually a little bit safer. I think that this design, this is probably our eighth variation in our site plan over the last eight years. The design with the input of traffic engineering is actually much better, and I think it's better flow and better drop-off of people. So it enhances our community. It gives us the proper space to worship as Orthodox Christians, and it lets all of our parishioners attend our services. So we hope that you would vote for approval. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Crowley. Well, did you have anyone else, Mr. Pennington? Just one more thing I wanted to mention. You had talked about 9-12, and we had toyed around the idea. We can't guarantee anything with 9-12, and we don't want to necessarily go there right now, but just to let you know that the idea isn't totally off the table for in the future. There's been some discussion of possibly entering some type of deed with the person owns the intervening property, which might allow us to consider the whole property continuous and get 912 like a life estate, that type of thing. So it's not totally out of the question, but it's not something we can come forward and say that we're going to do necessarily right now. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Pennington. Well, the chair needs a break. I'm sorry to everyone. But I'm going to call a recess for a few minutes until, say, 335. come back and I know there's an objector, at least one objector here. And so we'll come back and if you guys have any response to the objector, you'll be able to hear them. I appreciate that. Thank you. The End Thank you. All right. What did you call it? It's... All right. Now, Mr. Pennington, you concluded your presentation, hadn't you? That's correct. Okay. We'll hear from the objector or objectors at this point. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Amy Clark. I live at 628 Castle Road, which is just a block away around the corner from the Greek church. And I have to say, I don't want to be here. I shouldn't be here. This has been going on for years and years and years, and I followed it very closely because I care very much about it. I've spent most of my adult life learning and teaching Greek, so I care about a Greek community as such. and the church used to be called the Greek Community Church. We just went up to Chicago, and the highlight of our visit was a concert of Orthodox music, Eastern Orthodox music, terrific. I have every kind of sympathy with the church, and I would love to see them stay in the community, thrive in the community, grow in the community. I also love my community, and I think the church is, in its expansion plans, maybe too hard on the community. There's a lot we're already putting up with. We're welcoming it. There's a lot of traffic and so on. And we haven't said a word about it. We haven't gone down and said, wait a minute, this church is out of line. Because we want that church there. We want them to stay, and we want them to grow and thrive. So here I am. I want to support the church in all its endeavors, all its wishes. It wants to expand. I heard that it needs more room because the children don't fit in the sanctuary sometimes. Well, I have to agree. It needs more room. Handicapped access is an issue. Improvements for religious ritual, the Salia area, adopting an Eastern orientation. The church has real reasons for wishing for these things. They're clinging to their old building. They love their old building and the heritage it brings. They want to stay in place. All these are things I support. Just very briefly to review the history of the Greek church in our community, the Greek Orthodox church in our community, I would say somewhere around 2000, 2002, we began to hear word of them planning needed expansion. And the first thing we heard, I welcome very much. They thought, well, let's bump back the apps. Let's just win a little more space, and we'll have what we need for our religious ritual, and we'll win a few more seats. And I thought, I actually was on the neighborhood board at the time, and I suggested, why don't we see if we can work up a meeting between the neighbors and the church so the church can really explain this and win some support from the neighborhood. The next time we heard definite or big or serious plans would be, I'm just going to show you a picture of a different church they planned on the by then consolidated lot, the United site. And there were things I liked and didn't like about it. It cites the new sanctuary on the corner. It preserves the so-called parish house, puts a lovely connection between them, employing a sort of Byzantine arches. It's not for me to choose how the church will expand and change. This particular design did have the advantage of putting the mass and scale, the largeness of it, nearest the widest streets and on the outer edge of that consolidated lot. The following plan, then we began to see the kind of drawing we see today, and it's had nudges and twitches ever since, but this is the one that puts the major new structure, the addition, on the inner part of the lot, much nearer than neighbors, farther from the width of the street. And it had more difficulties. But the church worked with it and worked with it. It got a little smaller. They kept nudging and nudging. I don't really need to show you. You remember all these plats, right? Originally, there was more church. It was a far longer nave, a full narthex in the back, and some parking was wiggled in along Melrose there. And it was kind of, to my feelings, kind of edge-to-edge building, more or less not altogether in the inner sides, the rear and the inner side. The church worked with that. They pulled that back. they introduced some parking behind the church and it shortened the nave of the the seating area if you will of the new proposed sanctuary they added some parking back there then there was concern about all the traffic flowing through the neighborhood because the typical pattern is you drop your folks and you turn down Melrose and you find parking as soon as you can so they thought well let's have a loop drive they have the loop drive behind the two church structures unified in one and take that parking right back onto the main street. I have questions about whether people will really use it, whether it will be just a little too tight, a little too slow, not convenient, or whether they really will use it. But the church is trying very hard to work with the situation and not introduce this nuisance or continue this nuisance with the neighbors. So this whole history, now it's getting kind of shortened a little and trimmed a little and so on. And to me, it begins to feel now like Cinderella in the glass slipper. And I think it's actually a really good analogy. I kept thinking about it because our neighborhood is kind of a glass slipper. It's kind of little. It's very lovely. And it's a little on the fragile side. And Panagia Panto Vasilisa, she's a queen, okay? she could be a real Cinderella and they keep the members of the community keep trying and there's got to be a Cinderella there I'm not sure we've seen it yet and what I hate to see is cutting off the toe and cutting off the heels and these difficult compromises and I have to ask at this point are we winning each step we make each compromise so this is the general history for me and as I said I've followed it for years and years and years. What I want to present to you today as a board who has to make some judgments is particular information that you don't yet have and, you know, the shape of my actual concerns, okay? Specifically, I'm concerned about the mass and scale of the proposed structure in its context within this neighborhood, this community. And there's been a lot of talk about which design guidelines don't apply, and they certainly don't apply. I think still you can measure some things and make some judgments about whether it mostly fits or whether it's kind of crammed. To accommodate a 1-8 increase in congregation, it's come down and down, but at this point it's 14 persons, 124, more than the 110 they claim presently fit in the sanctuary. So to accommodate a one-eighth increase in congregation and sanctuary seating, it's proposed to, say, roughly double the building footprint. The footprint is doubled from the present. And I have to apologize about my numbers. I'm doing the best I can. Some of it's with ruler and multiplying. But I have to say most of the numbers I've seen in the many, many months, even years of different plans are also a little off here and there, sometimes a lot off. For example, the plat recorded has a square footage that is, the lot square footage is some 600 square feet smaller than the lot square footage that's on the plan offered for our consideration today in the Board of Adjustment. So numbers. something like double the footprint from the present 2745 square feet to 5518 square feet. The lot coverage footprint ratio to lot on 0.36 acres or 15682 square feet, it's over a third. It's 0.35, so the footprint to the lot is over a third. The remainder of the two inner sides now, the side, and you could call it a rear yard, it's hard to tell where the front door is and where the rear yard is at this point is to be almost wholly paved for a loop drive. So you're losing two yards that could be some green space. They're almost wholly paved for a loop drive and parking. And even the front yard of half the lot is encroached upon with what's a solid building mass where in the rest of the street front there it's open porches. The ratio of your floor space to the lot area, that's stacking many floors. It's actually beyond calculation for me because there are two full levels in each structure, plus an upper story, and that's of some indeterminate extent. We don't even know. Some of it's building plan. It's not for us to think about today. Some of it is about, does this scale and mass? and mass, does this rough size and shape constitute influence on the surrounding properties that could be detrimental? And that's the question we can only address, we only have public comment on today. Mr. Ms. Clark, I want to jump in here. The two issues we have before us are that they're requesting to increase the allowable distance between the church building and off-street parking at Cassidy School, 300 to 475. Yes, and I have something very specific to that. The second one is eliminating the landscape. That's two variances, yes. I think I've got that right. It's right here on the... And the conditional use permit. So I would just... I know that you have lots of thoughts on this, but I'd like you to focus on those two issues, if you would. There's also the conditional use permit. Are there just the two variances and not the conditional use permit? I think the conditional use, it's all right. It's the conditional use and the two variances. Okay, what's the conditional use? For the actual expansion of the church. Okay, all right. And this is where mass and scale comes in. Okay, all right. Okay, yeah. Well, skipping over these numbers, it's got to be at least 0.5. It's got to be more than that if there's anything in an upper story. the ratio of floor space to lot area. So you're talking about cramming. You're talking about a lot of stuff, a lot of building in what is a limited lot size. There was mention made of the elevation, as Dr. Karunas said. The elevation, as the drawing furnished by the applicant indicates, I have an elevation here. Here. Okay. You can see a bit of a red line there. What it's doing is it's, it sets the first story of the new part of the structure, the sanctuary, it sets the eaves of that actually higher than the second story of what's the neighboring house there. You see that? So if you follow the roof line down to its bottom, and I'm not talking about the dome. The dome belongs to a religious structure. It has nothing to do with this. But the roof line, the eve line, is perceptibly above the second story of the neighboring house. The dining hall of the lower level is clearly above grade, so we don't know about elevation. The details are more than we can judge, but big. Okay? What I want to say in summary here is the proposed structure is unique in the neighborhood. The height, the width, the depth, the lot coverage, and the floor area all taken together. There's nothing else like it in the neighborhood, even along a wide street, Tate's Creek, with two further churches and two apartment buildings in the very immediate vicinity. So that's mass and scale, and that's enough said. The other concern is parking. and I can take any questions you have about this handout here. There was mention made of this count. This is a December count. And there's a date stamp on the photos. And what I direct your attention to is at the bottom at the end. 70 cars is total church parking off-site. And Dr. Kroonis is absolutely right. we can't know which car was Greek and which wasn't. Sometimes I can. You know, you see a Greek doll in the window. They're proud of themselves. They put decals on their cars. Some of these are Greek church parking. Some of these are Faith Lutheran parking. It's all parking. It's mostly church parking, and it's all there at the same time. On that December day, there were 50 cars on the street and 20 cars in various of the school parking lots. care was taken to remove cars that were definitely resident cars. It had snowed the night before. You could take them out if they had snow on them. So serious cars, the only other thing I'd direct your attention to is some real safety issues. If you look at the bottom of that page with the summary of 70 cars, there's a little lady getting out of a car unloaded in the street. And a close-up here, unloaded in the street, and this is an elderly person. This is the kind of thing both the neighborhood and the church want to address and remedy. Parking already renders the church a non-conforming use and creates a nuisance and danger on the neighboring streets. I don't believe there's any evidence yet offered that the church may actually make a valid contract for shared parking with the school that is regular every Sunday, exclusive, has spots for them that they can always have, and enduring something like 50 years. neither the woman who handles such contracts at the school board, the school administration building, nor the AA for the chief administrative officer there, one was Debbie and the other was Lisa, had any knowledge of the church's proposed parking agreement. There is, they often have it, there's a web link, you can make a parking agreement and And the school will do it with the school administration, will do it with charity groups, not-for-profit groups. These possibilities exist, but no conversation apparently has been begun with the school administration as such to have such a parking agreement. The church enjoys at present a permitted conditional use. It's a church in a principally residential zone. That's great. That's fine. It's actually welcome. Its parking, however, is nonconforming. Strictly speaking, then, its use is nonconforming. For the zoning ordinance, this is 4.1a, calls nonconforming those uses that would be otherwise permitted in the zone, like a church, but do not meet the requirements associated with such uses, e.g. parking, open space, and the like. which means that an otherwise permitted use, if it does not meet the associated requirements, is a non-conforming use. Reckoning its present sanctuary seating at 110, the Church offered until recently some 7 or maybe it was 10 of the requisite 22 on-site parking spaces at the rear of the adjacent parish house, but for several months now, since August apparently has blocked off even that parking area. The seven spots, as we've heard, are actually proposed to be reduced to about three. Now it's requesting a conditional use permit to expand the church and its sanctuary seating to 124. To me, this constitutes, it goes counter to the intent of the zoning ordinance, which is A, not to encourage the survival of nonconformities, and especially that nonconformities not be enlarged or extended beyond the scope and area of their operation at the time of the zoning ordinance's adoption, and who knows how many they were parking back then. There are concerns about the distance as well. With the request for a conditional use permit comes the variance request to increase the allowable walking distance. We did some GIS measured distances, too, in this parking in front of Cassidy. Well, okay, let's call it 475. We got nearer 600. past experience shows that even people who can and wish to park at a distance beyond 300 feet like the church members will regularly choose not to. It's just human nature. This count had 50 on the street and only 20 in lots but they weren't necessarily every one of them Greeks, Greek Orthodox church members. It also shows, and this shows, the pictures show, the actual number of cars is likely to be far in excess of the legally required number of parking spaces. And what this means to me is simply that you'd want to give a lot of leniency. But if you're purchasing that leniency at the cost of this nuisance and danger to the neighborhood, allowing extra cars to be streaming around and parking everywhere, some of them backwards, some of them unloading passengers in the street, then it runs into trouble. So I think it's a wonderful effort the church is making. It's a creative idea. I bike to work every day. it's a terrific idea for everyone's health and well-being. But does it constitute completely and permanently satisfying a condition under which you can grant a conditional use that you've adequately provided off-site parking? Or is it something that then would be subject to annual review and we need to go back and say, oh, it's not working anymore, we need to do better? So that's a problem. A couple of actually what I would regard as legal matters associated with what I call cramming. One is the front building line. The Planning Commission recently, as an administrative measure, changed the plat. This was in June or July, I believe. You probably know better than I. Reduced the front building line, changed it from 35 feet to 30 feet. And as I understand it, the rationale was that it was 30 feet on the Hollywood subdivision plat. So they were just fixing the particular lot plan. I think that was an error. I can show you. What you have here is an extreme detail of the Hollywood Platte. What's High Street is now called Tate's Creek Street, Tate's Creek Road. You can see the building line. It looks like a 30. It's got a little hook on it like a 35. It's very hard to tell. It's easy to make a mistake, and it's repeated up in the other block of the building line. Over there, you can't see. Well, okay. So there's a problem if you read off the platte. it looks like that number has been altered. It could go either way. Do you see that? This is a copy of the original deed for the very lot in question and the lot adjacent to it. You can't read it. You'll have to trust me on this one. It specifies the front wall of any building erected in said subdivision, the Hollywood Terrace subdivision, shall not be closer than 35 feet to the front property line of lots fronting on East High Street. It goes on to say not closer than 30 feet for nearly all the other lots in the neighborhood. My guess is the person writing it wrote in all the 30s and then whoops and changed it to 35 feet, and probably that's what someone looked at in making that change. I would not like to see the building line altered for this single new structure because it is not consonant with the rest of the street. And these are photographs from, it's not going to be visible for you, is it? Does it help to dim the lights? Thank you. Okay. If you can pull it up a little, we're not seeing the whole of the building line. Can you see that all the roof lines are lined up? Only the church on the end, which has a different orientation, but all the other houses on the street preserve the same building line, and that's 35 feet front building line. Can I ask you a question, please? Yes. Is that a requirement? It was in the original deed. It's on the plat, but the plat is ambiguous because it's hard to read the number. I cannot tell you whether you can take that into your considerations as the Board of Adjustment because the Planning Commission acted as an administrative matter to change the building line for the Greek Orthodox Church lot. In that case, it would not have been a requirement. observing a 35 foot building line. No, no, no, I'm sorry, this is a setback. The front building line. Okay. So I would ask that a front building line reduced to 30 for the new structure, the sanctuary, the addition proposed for the Greek Orthodox Church, that the building line not be set at 30 feet, but rather at 35. Now, legally, I'm not in a position to judge what you may do or ought to do. But the evidence that the building line in the plats and the deeds is there. One more such issue, and that's the back lot line, and I think that kind of wraps it up. I'll double check. There was a finding of the Landscape Committee, findings for approval of a variance reducing the landscape buffer. This is about the rear lot line. May I hand you these? Certainly. Thank you. The Landscape Committee, unfortunately, the actual lot lines on these representations are not accurately represented. They are on your plants furnished by the church. You see there's a little jog in the rear of the back lot line. Should we put that up? If you look on the rear lot line, which is the bottom of the image here, and you see the bushes, and then you see the patch where the bushes stop, and then you see the corner with some trees or bushes. And there's a little jog there of three feet, which is on your plans as well. Okay. There was a request for a variance to eliminate the three-foot, or is it four-foot? Both numbers are mentioned in the staff report. The landscape buffer there. And the argument was it was simply constrained by the ancient historical conditions of the lot. It had a little jog in there. So this space wasn't available to them. And through the fault of their own, which is clear. Well, if you look at the picture, the photographs, you can see the back lot line. And you can see that Mary Reed's house comes right up to the very edge of that lot line right there. And it was, in fact, the first person to live on that lot behind the church property who went and purchased a three-foot strip extending over not the church property at the time, the single property, but the second lot, which has now been consolidated behind the parish house. to purchase three feet there and three feet from the next house, Mrs. Beulah Conley's. They had to have that three feet so that their house wouldn't be over the edge, too near the edge. I think it's important to preserve a landscape buffer where there's no setback at all for that house adjoining to the rear of the lot. So I would say that landscape buffer is pretty important. It's absolutely through no fault of the churches or no intent, wrong intent, that they want this variance. But there it is, and otherwise there's going to be a fence right next to Mary Reed's house on the corner there. A number of neighbors who have sent letters in the past and spoken in the past are confused and discouraged. They don't understand about this process, which things are we allowed to say, which things are pertinent, which things are not. They care very much about the church and its development. Like myself, I think they don't want to be opposing our church in our neighborhood. So they're not here today, and they didn't send letters. Many did. There are quite a number of letters. Mrs. Conley, for instance, who lives next door to the church on Tate's Creek, sent a letter talking about damage to cars, talking about flooding with existing church problems. And then she went on to say she anticipated noise and traffic. She especially didn't like the fence that would be between the church sanctuary and her property, taking light away from her. So there are these other letters. And part of the reason I'm here today is because certain other neighbors are not, and they did their duty in the past. I would ask you first and foremost to think about whether this is cramming or whether it really is a legitimate use and you can put some conditions on it and everyone can get along well. whether it has a detrimental effect on neighboring properties, whether the parking is wishing or really a realistic long-term and permanent plan to accommodate this traffic need, these needs. And I have to say, I would like to work for a solution. I think almost the worst thing that could happen would be if the church felt it was forced to move to a far country, far out where land is affordable. We need our churches downtown in the city. So I thank the church very much for working very hard and trying to make this right. And I thank the board for patiently listening and listening and postponing and postponing. It's been a great distress for many of us in the neighborhood, and it's eats time. And I just ask that you think very hard about whether this conditional use has a detrimental effect, whether it is cramming, in particular about the front building setback, the rear landscape buffer variance, the parking variance. Do people really walk farther to park? Evidence the other day was that they didn't, but maybe they're all different now. And thank you for your time. I realize this is an egregious amount of time for citizen comment, but thank you. Thank you, Ms. Clark. I have 11 pages of notes, so I have to try to rebut some of these things. I think, first off, she's directly challenging my parking survey that I personally did and document with photos that it's accurate. We don't have 70 cars. We have the data that's presented with the photos to back it up. So there are some cars from Faith Lutheran. But I think I'd like to ask Ms. Clark if she'd noticed that actually there's been fewer cars parking on Melrose since we've been doing this. So I think we've actually improved the crowding in the neighborhood by doing this. I should also point out that as far as the church's conditional use, we've been doing this since 1948, parking on the street. Now, I guess if you don't allow us to expand, and Faith Lutheran has had their expansion that they're approved for, I guess then you let the bigger church sort of push us out. She said it was a traffic hazard for someone to unload in the street, and we absolutely agree. And that's why, with the help of traffic engineering, having this driveway actually eliminates the need to have unloading in the street. We can actually unload in our driveway, which is much safer. So this actually enhances the safety by having our plan approved. The Planning Commission approved their change in setback, and that was the change in setback from 35 to 30 feet was partly to accommodate this driveway for the delivery and for the handicapped parking. But if you look at the porch line and the roof lines, ours is consistent and it should be right with the existing houses. As far as the height of the cilia, which is right by the dome where weddings are performed and other ceremonies are performed, that's the only area that's raised up. But the whole rest of the church is the same height as any other two-story structures right by. So this is no towering thing. The scale of the whole project has been reduced, Dan. And as we started that, we came here April 25, 2008, when we first presented this to you, and we scaled back based on feedback. And so I think that that's not an issue. Just because you mentioned the scale and mass, I wanted to say, I think they were looking at a perspective drawing, and maybe because the church is closer than the houses in the perspective drawing, the houses look smaller. The actual height difference between the roofline eve of the church is 20 feet, and the house right next door is 17 feet. There's only a three-foot difference. So because the perspective drawing shows the church is closer to the eye, it looks a little bigger and has, I think, caused some misperception about the mass and scale. It's not as big as it looks in that perspective. that we're just doing a drawing of the church and the houses are the background. I see the dome as your version of a steeple. Yes. That's the way it is to me. That's the way I see it. So I see that as an exception because the house next door is not going to have a steeple or dome. So to me that's not – I see your point, sir, that the true roof line, What I see is the roof line is not much different than the adjacent houses. There is more mass, but that's your version of the steep one. It's a church, and so I don't have a problem. I don't know about the other members. And as far as, you know, she's saying that neighbors didn't have a chance to see it until right now and to make comment, we held three open houses, including I had to sign up in front of the church for 10 days announcing our April 11th open house, and we sent the letters to all the people in the notification area. And we also had the drawings up and the sign-up about the open house during our bake sale when people came and visited us. So we've given people plenty of opportunity to look at this in detail. And the people that did come to that, that took the time to come, we did it on the weekend so they wouldn't have to leave work. We had it on a Saturday evening, and we had refreshments, and they had plenty of time to look at the plans. And then they were reassured that there wasn't a problem. As far as the landscaping variance, Mrs. Mary Reed lives in that house. I personally went to visit her with my wife. We went over the plans, and she verbally told me that she supports us. She has no problem with that variance. I don't think that the information that Mrs. Clark is telling you is factual. She has no problem with our landscape variance. And, again, the 70 cars is not true. We have, on average, you know, 40 cars, 29 cars, and we have, you know, the cars using Cassidy. We have a letter that was in the packet from the principal of Cassidy Elementary School giving us permission to park there. And as I pointed out, Hart Road is freely open, and we could park there without having to have any administrative approval from anybody, since we're all citizens of this city. I think that the Planning Commission approved our change in setback. I think that that was carefully reviewed. It wasn't administrative. we came down and presented the information, and the Planning Commission did give us approval for changing our setback from 35 to 30 feet. And so I don't think that we are cramming. I think that we scaled back our drawing considerably. I think it will be an enhancement to the community. I think now any parishioner that has special needs can't attend services. This would enhance that. And clearly, we've been good neighbors. And if you look at our church, it's a beautiful church. It's well kept. We're very quiet neighbors. 95% of the time there are no cars there at all. We're very quiet neighbors and very helpful to the community. I think we're an enhancement to the community. We've had a lot of letters of support and even some of the members of the community that are here may even want to make some comments. So I hope that you would vote for approval. Thank you, sir. Mr. Pennington, anything else? Okay. My name's Ed Brown. I live at 712 Mount Vernon Drive, which is about four to five blocks away from the Greek Church, outside of the 300-foot limit. But at any rate, I happen to be the incoming co-president of the Neighborhood Association. I've been on the board or president or co-president for the last 22 years. I don't recall us talking a great deal about the Greek church, and I don't believe we've ever voted on anything good or bad about the Greek church. I'm here to support the Greek church because they are good neighbors. Aside from that, they make great bakova, as you can tell. I think if you keep putting obstacles in their way, they'll go someplace else. And we don't need a large, very large mini-dorm in there. An investor could buy that and go to town. And we don't need that. He's right. 95% of the time, they're not there. Parking, they complain about parking. Most of the churches in Lexington are nonconforming, if you want to put it that way. Most of them don't have as much parking percentage-wise as the Greek church. You look at some of these mega churches that are in some confined areas, and I bet you this parking is better than theirs. And finally, as far as nonconforming parking goes, I believe this church was built before the zoning laws were in effect. So why should they be penalized for nonconforming? They were there before the zoning laws were in effect. and I just would hope that you would go give them a chance to expand. And as far as expanding goes, no one expands for 14 parishioners. You're going to build far bigger because you're hoping to grow into it. You can do that with an all-steel building, okay? Just put one right back to the building if you want to expand for 14 parishioners. Give them this shot so that they can grow. And one other thing, if they wanted to pick up this church and put it next to my house, bring it on. I'd put it there in a heartbeat. And I would love their new plan. I would love the first plan that they came up with. Wouldn't have a problem. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brown. Any other questions or discussion? Peter, I was wondering if Mr. Gallimore would like to have the floor for a minute. I guess the one thing that I mentioned, if I understood the last speaker correctly, he mentioned that this church is in more conformance with parking requirements than most other churches. I guess I would have to disagree with that. I think all the churches that are put in now, typically, I don't know of any of them that have off-street parking agreements. they all meet the parking guidelines, which I think is one parking space per five seats. So I think most of your other churches have more on-site parking. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't have churches where there's overflow parking out on the street. So I don't mean to imply that. But I do think that was a misstatement that other churches do not meet the parking requirements. They still may not have enough, but they do meet the requirements that we have. or else we wouldn't approve their plans. And, of course, there may be older churches that were before the zoning laws that are like that. But any type of new construction, the churches are going to meet the parking requirements. The other thing is, too, there seems to be a disagreement on whether or not there's an on-street parking problem or not. I guess the thing that I still have to keep in mind or try to keep in mind is, to me, this expansion is going to create a higher parking demand. Even if you're not increasing the number of sanctuary seats more, I think you're going to increase usage of the church for other things. So you might not see much difference on the Sunday mornings when they have mass or whatnot, But you may see when they start having functions during the week that people start having parking complaints. I kind of like the idea of the pledge to park in the Cassidy lot. I don't know, A, if people are going to hold up to that pledge, and B, I don't know if the pledge covers these, let's say, non-church type applications. If it doesn't, maybe it could be amended to do so. So, it's, I think there's, we have seen, also as you know, there were some problems with vehicles hanging out too close to Tate's Creek and things of that nature. And as I mentioned, we may have to go stripe that area, so that may squeeze the on-street parking demand a little bit more. The parking lot itself, as you're aware, has not changed that much from what we've seen before. I would just reiterate that it is still extremely tight. You know, a 12-foot loop with a building on one side of it is pretty encumbering for larger vehicles with mirrors. We talked about that a little bit before, but I'm at the point that, yes, I would approve that, but I imagine if you go look at that building a couple months after it's been in operation, you're going to see mirror scrapes down along the side of the building. So it's still very, very tight. Right now, Cassidy School parking lot is under construction. That's just something to keep in mind. So I think it's just the front parking lot. I think people can still park in the back parking lot. But Cassidy is going through a major renovation, so there may be some interruptions in their off-site parking scenario, not permanent interruptions, while they're doing construction. And like I said, that may be an issue now. But that's somewhat out of their control, but that is where they have agreed to lease their parking. So, like I said, I don't think much else has changed in my opinion from where I spoke last. But if you would like to ask questions or get me to reiterate on anything, I'd be glad to do that. to just tell you the same thing I have been telling you about this project. Without you saying and going through and rehashing what we've been through for several visits with these folks, is this a good idea or is this a bad idea? Once again, I think the lot is tight. And there again, I think I've given the church fair warning. and so that if there are issues inside of their property, that's going to be their problem to handle. I don't want them to come to me fussy. So you're leaving me to read between that line. I think our biggest concern still is, is this going to over-empower the neighborhood? And, of course, like I said, it seems like we've heard various variations of whether or not the off-site parking is going to be an issue or not. And we see people come to us in these types of situations, and first they want residential parking. Residential parking, permit parking does have some advantages, but it seems like to me that every time we do it, half the neighborhood wants it and the other half doesn't. So you're going to make somebody mad, it's just going to which half you're on. There's a cost affiliated with residential parking. So some people don't like that. You have to have a guest pass. There's a lot of stipulations to it. You also have to go through a process to see if you are applicable for residential parking. Just because you want it does not mean that the parking authority will give it to you. I think we talked, too, about maybe some no parking areas. That, again, is another complication. A lot of people want some on-street parking. So I think my biggest concern with this plan at this point is, is it going to overwhelm the neighborhood as far as cars go? And I don't have any tool or empirical formula that I can plug things into and say it is or is not going to be a problem. You know, to me it seems a little, I think Mr. Stumbo made the comment, about only 40% of the people parking in the lot. I guess I would have thought it would have been more like 60 parking on the lot. I guess personally I'd like to see more parking off-site rather than on the street, and right now that is inverted. Now, it's possible with a further drive they can change that ratio. I don't know. And, of course, if the board doesn't see that as an issue, But I guess I just had in my mind that if you had an off-site parking situation, it would catch the majority of the cars rather than the street catching the majority. You know, I've been around here a long time, and I've listened to parking concerns, and I've listened to parking on the street and off the street. And I've driven downtown when Rupp Arena is active, basketball games. I've driven when football is in town, and I never hear anybody screaming and hollering about getting out of their car on the street when there's a basketball game or when there's a football game. And I think it's so unfair, unless we can come up with some strong reality or real statement as to why this can't be worked, I think it's so unfair for us to set in judgment over the parking issue. I really do I am more concerned about the construction aspect of this project than I do the parking issue because the parking issue is not a day to day concern for me it's a Sunday issue or a special activities of the church issue and I think we are we're nibbling at we're putting bait out that no fish ought to be biting on Well, Lewis, I disagree with you on that. I think that ball games, couple a month versus 52 weeks a year, plus fake sales, plus weddings, plus special meetings, plus kids' activities, it's two times a week, and this neighborhood is overwhelmed already. That's how I feel about it. And I think what bothers me the most is the danger from the cars not being able to see pulling out on Tates Creek Road when those cars on Tates Creek are going 40, 45 miles an hour. I'd like to point out Mr. Gallimler's comments about, you know, there's a question of whether it would be enduring for our parishioners to park at Cassidy. And as I said, with the help of a professional appraiser, Marshal Eastep, we have these measurements. To park on Castle near Mrs. Clark's house on Melrose Avenue is 955 feet from the front door of our church. to go to the front drive of Cassidy is 476 feet, and actually to the back driveway is 640 feet. So it's actually much closer to Park at Cassidy, much easier to get in and out. And our parishioners are doing that. Yeah, we're trying to get more people to do it. I'd like it to be 100%. But there's a mother with four children that she's trying to unload them, get them into the church, and then that's not easy for some families. So it's actually shorter. And I think our people have been consistently parking there as we documented in our surveys. And some people question my measurements. I'll hand these in, too. This is Google Maps that has those points to the church to Cassidy Elementary and documents it's 476 feet. I'll give you that as support of our measurements from the professional appraiser. And so I think they'll use the parking that we have been. I just wanted to make one final comment about the problem with the 40% of our parishioners parking at Cassidy. I'm a little bit taken aback by that because the last time we were here, and I don't want to single out any particular board member, but I remember almost the exact quote was, we just don't want to make the present problem there worse. if you can show us something that's not going to make it worse, then we'll consider this. And we're going to have an increase of three on site with this, and we've got people on average at least 10 in Cassidy parking now. So I don't think that argument is there anymore. Now, yeah, okay, if we wanted to drag this out a lot further, we could try to get 80% of our people parking in Cassidy. and have nothing on the street, you know, of any substance from us. But that doesn't seem like it was the understanding at the last meeting I had. That's all I wanted to say about that. And with that, I ask you to approve our plans. Mr. Chair, I need to ask a question. If these streets are public streets, unless parking is prohibited, can't anybody park there? The other thing I failed to point out, and one of my members just reminded me, we said that 40% of the cars are parking there, but there's four or five people per car. So we have a large number of our parishioners far exceeding the three extra spaces that we need for our expansion of our seating. So we have whole families that are coming four or five per car. So a large number of our members are actually parking at Cassidy. Thank you. Any other questions? I just have a comment. This parking is in everyone's mind right now. But a year from now, we don't have any prediction that these people are still going to park at Cassidy. I mean, it's on everybody's mind. You all want to have this approved, and so you're working very hard to that. And I think what you've done is admirable. But you cannot predict future behavior of parking. Well, yeah, but like I said, it's the education because it's actually closer to Park at Cassidy than to – if we have, you know, on Easter Sunday, if you have people parking on Melrose, the entire street, that's over 900 feet to that corner. So it's actually closer to Park at Cassidy. So believe me, we'll continually reinforce that and educate people. And, you know, I was in charge of our stewardship for our church. We used to have dues, and people would pay $100 dues to support the church. And then we said, no, we need stewardship. We need people to pledge to support our church. And people say, well, that's not going to work around here. You can't support a church with no minimum amount due. And I said, yes, you can. And so our church is fully supported by stewardship now. And when people make a pledge, they mean it. And we function by that. And so when our parishioners pledge to park there, they're going to park there, just like they support all the ministries of our church in their pledges now. Honestly, to address your point, I'm not sure that there's anything else that we could do in order to alleviate your concerns beyond what we have done, other than if you wanted to make that part of the condition for this, that we keep a maintaining program to keep people at Cassidy. I don't think we have any problem with that at all, but I'm not sure that there's any way to actually ensure that to anybody's satisfaction other than the fact that we have a track record for several months of having done it. All right, thank you. Any other questions or discussion? If not, I'll call for a motion. Approval, CV 2009-23. The PP Greek Orthodox Church appeals for a conditional use permit to expand an existing church, which will involve the demolition of a residential building and variances to, one, increase the allowable distance between the church building and off-street parking at Cassidy Elementary School from 300 feet to 475 feet, And number two, eliminate the required landscape buffer for 25 feet of new driveway in a single-family residential R1D zone on property located at 920 Tates Creek Road, Council District 3. We ask this be approved with the eight conditions as submitted by staff. Thank you, Ms. Edwards. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Stone. I want to ask for a show of hands in this vote. So all those in favor of Ms. Edwards' motion of approval, please raise their hand. So there's three. All those opposed, please raise their hand. Motion fails. Mr. Chairman, if it's not too late, I would like to make a remark to the folks from the Greek Orthodox Church and explain this has been one of the toughest decisions that I think this committee has had made since I've been on it. But with the additional traffic problems that might lead to public safety problems and adding almost an additional 3,000 square feet to existing space, I just think it's too much for the amount of acreage, for the amount of property that you have. And it's been a very, very difficult decision for all of us on this panel, and we wish that church nothing but the very best. You know, as far as conditional use, and I think if you're going to hold us to this standard, then, you know, if you look at Christ the King and look at the number of cars parked on the street there, if you look at Good Shepherd, you know, I took photos of these before and after church. There's many, many more cars that are parked on the streets in all these neighborhoods every Sunday. And so you're holding us to a much higher standard than these other churches that are within two miles of our church. And I find that very difficult. Thank you. Are there any items of the board? Okay. Do we not need a motion to disapprove? Yeah, you killed. Rochelle? You can certainly make a motion. I mean, no action has been taken at this point. No action means they can come back in a month. Is that right? That's correct. That's basically the reason they were back here again is that there was no disapproval last time. I'd like to make a motion. There were two tied votes. Okay, I'm sorry. Then, since that motion did not pass, I'll reopen the floor for additional motion. Mr. Chair, I'd like to move that CV 2009-23, the Greek Orthodox Church, appeals for conditional use permit to expand an existing church and variances to increase the allowable distance and street parking, off-street parking, be denied with these findings for disapproval of those conditional uses and variances. The proposed project is too intensive for this site, providing only three to four parking spaces on site for a use that requires 25 spaces. Number two, currently off-site parking is located at least 475 feet away from the property as measured to the closest parking at the front of Cassidy School, where only eight spaces are available. The remaining required parking is located to the rear of the school, much farther away. That is two times the distance authorized by the zoning ordinance for a joint parking agreement. It is unrealistic to believe that such parking will be regularly used by the parishioners. Therefore, to allow this expansion and to grant this variance would create an adverse impact on surrounding properties due to the excessive on-street parking. Finding three, currently parking at the off-site location is grandfathered in. If considered today, allowing parking more than 50% and as much as 300% farther away than ordinarily permitted would have an adverse impact on surrounding properties and alter the character of the neighborhood by causing intensive on-street parking. Therefore, without a variance, the proposed additional requiring three more parking spaces would increase the current nonconformity in the church parking. Thank you, Mr. Greggs. That's it. All right. Is there a second to Mr. Greggs' motion? I second. Thank you Ms. Meyer. All those in favor of Mr. Griggs motion please signify by raising your hand. All those opposed? Okay, Board of Three. That motion passes. Thank you. So are there any board items to discuss? How about the staff? Mr. Brown? Oh, I'm sorry. That's all right. I'd like to ask for a revocation hearing for the Episcopal Diocese at 203 East 4th Street for failure to put in the required parking. All right. Do we need to have a motion on that? Yes. We do. Okay. Okay. Then I'll entertain a motion to Mr. Hume's request. I so move. Thank you, Ms. Moorer. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Stumbo. All those in favor of Mr. Hume's request, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Any other board items or staff items? Our next meeting is May 29th. If there's no other business, I'll declare the meeting adjourned. I'm totally surprised.