Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

This Planning Commission meeting to order it is second. We are here to approve the minutes from two Meetings one was April 7th and the other was May 5th. Does anybody? See anything on the April minutes they wanted to bring up I

I think there's a discrepancy with the vote

Yeah, Chris, in the minutes, it looks like it was noted as being 3-2, and we're just not sure whether that was correct.

Okay. In an effort to make sure that everything is correct, I would like to go back to the video and double-check that and then bring it back to you all, bring the whole minutes for April back for your approval after we do check it. Is that okay? It's okay with me if it's okay with you. So we'll, with the chair's permission, we'll delay approval of the April minutes until the next meeting.

Okay, that sounds good. How about the May 5th minutes? Did anybody see anything that needed to be corrected in those minutes? I did. I pointed that out earlier. Mr. Norris was here, was noted as being present and absent, and we discussed he was absent that day. And also under the addenda to the agenda, it talks about Marshall Pickens serving as a facilitator and increasing himself. I believe that was for the April meeting and not the May meeting.

Yes, sir. You are correct. I agree. You are correct. That's my recollection as well. So we're just going to strike those? If there are no other changes to the minutes, then yes. If we could just strike those two items and approve them with those stricken items.

Did anybody else see anything that needed to be corrected or thought needed to be corrected in the May minutes?

No.

Is everybody in agreement to just strike those two incorrect, to make the corrections that Mr. Norris was absent and to strike that Marshall was present?

I'll make a motion that we approve those minutes.

Is there a second? Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Great. Thank you, Mr.

Chair and board.

All right. Is there any addendum to the agenda today?

No, sir, there is not.

Thank you. Then we will move on to new business, which is RZ26-3. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

So the site is outlined in red here. There are two parcels, actually, and the two parcels are inside that square. It's right at the corner of Fant and River. Off to the right is the Anderson County offices. Actually, St. John's is just off the screen here on the left, and we're actually a little bit further off the left. Does everybody know where we are on this? Great. Okay, the applicant seeks to rezone the two parcels, and both parcels are inside that red square in front of you, totaling about .39 acres to open a bakery. The current zoning is LO, limited office, and limited office does not allow commercial retail, and a bakery would be commercial retail. The property is currently owned by St. John's, but the applicant plans to purchase it. So again, the purpose of limited office is to encourage office and related uses. It does not include commercial. uses. A lot of times LO, limited office, is used as a buffer between a residential zoning district and a commercial zoning district. So you'll have a more intense commercial zoning district and you put LO between it just to kind of bring it down to a relatively lower residential use, if that makes sense. They are requesting, the applicant is requesting to rezone it to NC. So neighborhood commercial is a district that encourages both office and a low intensity retail use. So a bakery would fit this description. What would not fit in an NC would be a big box or a large grocery store like Publix or a big box like Walmart or Lowe's, right? So Let's look, before we leave that, let's look at this. So what you see here, everything in the blue is LO. So again, the site, you can see the two parcels outlined in red right here at the corner of Fant and River. Everything in blue is LO, zoned LO, and everything in pink over here is NC. So it's appropriate, it would be an appropriate zone because it's relatively close to an existing NC zone. You see GC up here, some residential coming in the fringes here. Does everybody understand if you have any questions about this map? Okay, great. So this application is essentially an acceleration of proposed changes to the intersection of South Fant and East River. Number one, the approved Anderson County Comprehensive Plan, which looks 20 years out into the future, has identified this intersection as having a commercial use. Now, it doesn't differentiate between neighborhood commercial and general commercial, but looking 20 years out, they see a commercial use at this intersection. Two, the planned UDO changes, and we'll talk about that a bit later tonight, but the planned UDO changes are going to fold in limited office into neighborhood commercial. so there there will be some additional requirements in neighborhood commercial to help protect those residential districts like we talked i talked about earlier but essentially these two districts are just going to become nc neighborhood commercial so With that, if their business model would allow, the owners of the bakery could simply sit back and by the end of the year, this would probably be, probably, I say probably because it's the only draft, the UDO changes are just draft right now, but would probably be approved and the appropriate uses, they could... a bakery would fit into the NC zoning district, which this would become. Does that make sense? Okay, so given all that, given that looking 20 years out, we see commercial at this site and the proposed UDO changes as is in the draft currently, staff is recommending approval as submitted. And the applicant is here if you have any questions of them. One other thing, having said all that, now this is the current, all you're dealing with is the current right now, the current zoning. So these are the limited office district section of the current code. And you can see the permitted uses here and the conditional uses below. More conditional uses. This is in your packet. And these are a list of prohibited uses in that zoning district. But by approving it and changing it to neighborhood commercial, you're not just approving a bakery. There's no guarantee that it'll be a bakery. If you approve it, any of these uses could be made on that site. And the conditional uses here. And then again, the prohibited uses. So I just want to be clear, you're not approving a bakery here. You're approving a zoning change to NC, which would allow that use because it's included in commercial retail. Are there any questions of staff?

Have you gotten any calls about this?

No, ma'am, we have not, and it has been posted. There's a little sign here.

I have a question for nobody else. And this is just something that I popped into my head. The applicant is not the owner of the property.

That's right.

And I'm asking, is it okay that that's the case?

Yes, sir, it is. We have a letter from the current owner that gives the applicant permission to make this application.

i just didn't include it in your packet because i didn't but it's on file and there so i guess you're saying that the owner is in favor of this chain yes sir and it sounds like from what you're saying your thought process is this zoning is just going to

again i want to be it's not inevitable because it's a draft form of the udo changes so and and staff is not approving those they're approved by town council there could be changes but currently yes that's what's proposed this folding in of lo limited office into neighborhood commercial is is part of the udo changes And in addition, what we look at, what you should look at for all rezoning changes is that comprehensive, that land use plan from the comprehensive plan. And that's looking 20 years out, and that sees commercial use in this intersection, at this intersection. Any other questions for the staff?

Any questions for the staff?

Okay.

Good evening, I'm Jennifer Weeks, the applicant.

Part of this recommendation is based upon, it says that if your business model afforded you time, the applicant could wait for the parcels to be potentially approved under the new stuff that we were just talking about there. Do you understand that? Does your business model allow you to wait for the new proposed changes to take place?

I would like to say no. So financially right now, we are using the commissary space in downtown Anderson. We are leasing space and time there and selling product out of another local business. We have reached out with a contractor and have already started the process of looking at renovations inside the building. Again, with the perspective that we're purchasing the building itself. So for the sake of time and contractors money and the exhaustive efforts of all the contractors and electricians and everybody's gonna need to come in there, we'd like to expedite this as quickly as possible. So that way we're not losing money as the months go by.

I have a question. Are you currently operating out of the brewery? Correct. It's just on Saturday morning. Correct. So right now you can just sell products on Saturday morning. Correct.

So the idea is to get this rezoning. With everything, everything lined up, you would then purchase the property?

Correct, yes. And then we would be able to open more days of the week and sell more hours.

So the current owner is going, hey, go for it so you can get it rezoned?

That is absolutely correct, yes. We were actually approached by the current owner to purchase the property.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you.

Just as a side note, I would also point out that this is inside the historic district, and as such, they have to come to the BAR for any renovations. I only point that out because it's a returning commercial use to a building that was built for commercial uses, so it's appropriate, even from the BAR standpoint, of that use.

Any further discussion needed on RZ26-3?

I would just say that it's a very interesting property, one that I think deserves to see an active tenant, and especially if it has to go through the processes of the BAR to make sure that there's not any sort of shoddy work going up in there. I think that this is a good rezoning, and I'd like to make a motion to approve.

Second. Okay, so there's a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? It goes for what?

It goes next week, next Monday, it goes to town council for the first reading and then two weeks after that it will be back at town council for second reading.

It's good stuff. Yeah. Excellent.

Do we have any further business for the board?

Not under new business.

Move on to other board business.

Well, the board business, that's you all. I don't know if you all have anything to bring up.

Do we need to assign a chair?

The elections are coming up in July, so I guess at the next meeting, when we seat new board members, that's when the election will be.

As far as the Planning Commission goes, though, I mean, is that an internal decision? Is that an appointed decision?

Well, so technically the vice chair would step into the chairmanship. The vice chair is just not here tonight. So hopefully he'll be here and can run the meeting until we get the new leaders, Planning Commission officers in. But it would be our regularly scheduled vote. Yes, sir. So be thinking.

What's the meeting on Thursday?

What does that encompass? That's a good question. I was going to bring that up under staff report with the chairs. So I talked about the UDO, Unified Development Ordinance, brings everything together in one document. And we have a national consultant that has been leading that charge and pulling that together. That draft is together, and they are coming down to do a workshop for Planning Commission and City Council on Thursday morning, 11 a.m. to 1.30 a.m. I think I have everybody's, but Bryce and Lamar's, I think I have everybody coming. If I don't or if you haven't, let me know because we need to order lunch for you. But at that point, they're going to run through these changes. So this new ordinance is based on the existing ordinance, but it's been tweaked to bring it up to modern standards. It's been, I think, 30 years since this has been done. There are also some changes just to help move things along that we've noticed in the old ordinance and we've passed that on to the consultant and they've written that in. A lot of things with regards to the zoning, the zoning districts, the minimum lot sizes have been tweaked a little and these are just instances to eliminate non-conformities. So I know a lot of times you all deal with, well, I can't build this house on this lot. Can I rezone it because it's too small? Well, hopefully a lot of that coming to you will be eliminated with this new zoning. Those are lots of records. So that's just one instance. There's some minor signage changes, things like that. But that workshop on Thursday will let you all know, kind of give you a... an introduction to those changes moving forward. And then Thursday night, I'm sorry, from 5 to 7, you've already been through this, but it's going to be open to the public. So if you know of anybody that's interested, you might tell them, yeah, there's going to be an open house from 5 to 7 at the rec center. And we're going to go through it all. Any questions? So, you know, I'd point out there's some zoning changes coming through. Like we talked about LO, we're folding LO into NC. There's a new district called PI, public institutional. So some churches will be rezoned to that. Again... everything's kind of based on zoning our signage things like that by doing that it just kind of eliminates some non-conformities and helps things move along but there are some zoning changes coming pretty much across the board any questions i look forward to seeing everybody there thursday

We are adjourned.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you board.