Environmental Matters Committee - Regular Meeting

All right. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm calling to order environmental matters committee meeting for July 9th. And you're gonna do roll call, Alderman Hawley. Present. And Alderman Conte is not yet here, but we're gonna get started. So I have an approval, motion to approve the agenda. So moved. I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. And approval of the minutes. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes from June 11th? So moved. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. General discussion of ID 526, Planning and Zoning Development Update. Mr. Meekins, please join us.

Thank you, Alderman Savage. Good afternoon, how's everybody doing?

Doing great, fine.

Good. I trust that you received a copy of the spreadsheet that you typically get?

Yes, thank you.

So Mike Meekins, Senior Planner for Current Planning. This is more or less the quarterly update that I present to the Environmental Matters Committee. with current projects, major projects that are happening in the city. And just to give you a rundown once again, everything in blue, there's pretty much no change from the last report. Everything in white with red text is the updated, or are the updates for that specific project. Oh, yep. All right, so I'll, as usual, go down the list, and please stop me if you have questions. So the first one is actually Bay Village II, Bay Village Suites, which is a 105-unit independent living facility in the Bay Village, I'll call it campus, adjacent to Bay Ridge Road and at the intersection of Edgewood Road. This application was seen or heard, excuse me, before the Planning Commission back in 2020-ish. And unfortunately the applicant, the application expired, the approval expired from the Planning Commission. So they had to basically do a reboot of that application And that recently happened last Thursday night. It was heard before the Planning Commission in a virtual hearing and it was approved. The opinion is being drafted and will be available once it's finished.

Did anything change as far as either from the Planning Commission or from the applicant?

it was pretty much a ditto of the exact same uh the exact same approval the one thing i might add uh is i think that there was a grease interceptor that was moved so pretty minor but um uh they just had to go through the process again

yeah i really don't have any concerns about it i did get some i did get contacted by some folks in the county down on the neck but i tried to explain that nothing's changed i personally have no interest in re-litigating anything that's already been decided i'm glad that the large trees protected it might be worthwhile if Brian Adams hasn't looked at it in a while just to assess the health of that tree. But otherwise, I don't have any concerns.

So they had a arborist actually recertify with the new documents that they submitted, recertify the tree's health and it's in good condition. Okay. So that's a positive.

Yeah, that was one of the big asks we had last time was just to have them work around that tree and they did incorporate into their whole...

you know um i think the whole direction they're going with that senior center yeah so they did do a refresh on with a couple of the documents one being the assessment of the tree the other was the reassessment of the traffic traffic study by the same traffic group that did the original basically everything was the same so um they are in for uh both building or grading permits and they are like at the finish line for those so unfortunately they kind of stumbled here uh prior to getting their approval so they had to go through this process and i think uh you know development as what what i understood was they're hoping to get started in the fall so

Only thing I wanted to add, I guess, because I did notice this time around that they had an excess of parking. If there's any leverage we may have to get them to remove a couple of those excess spots to put in, I don't know, tree or vegetation of some kind might be nice.

Or pick a table even, I don't know. The meeting was virtual and I did, you had reached out to me regarding that and I did forward that to the applicants. Um, I did not hear back, uh, so whether or not that's possible or not, the majority of the parking is. Structured on the 1st floor under the building. Um, and I think the periphery, it's probably like a dozen spaces, maybe at that. So, I don't know, I don't know the likelihood or the feasibility rather. Of, um, creating, you know, uh, a space for. Street tree or whatever, but that's out there and, um. the commissioners are aware of that too. So I might basically just remind them if they wanna put that in, but it didn't come up as an additional condition in this past approval.

It works, thank you. Any other questions on this one? Nope, all righty.

All right, so moving down the line, the lawsuit Eastport Landing. This is a redevelopment in the Eastport Shopping Center at the end of the shopping center nearest the post office. It's basically a vacant lot, deals produce is there seasonally. It's part of that existing shopping center, which is the old Eastport Cinemas is being demolished. to make way for this multi-story residential with commercial on the bottom. That, right at the end of the month of June, came in for both grading and building permit applications.

Any questions on that? Alderman Thorpe?

So yeah, just a process question of what that means for the future. So how long does that process, that permit process roughly take, no commitments?

So that's an excellent question.

And if there's not an answer, that's okay too.

Yeah, I mean, I obviously depends on. The completeness of the submission, um. And, uh, review comments, so I'll just answer it this way. The building permit review is due at July 30th, excuse me, July 20th. The grading permit review is due July 30th. Typically grading permits take much longer than building permits to review and generally, something of this size takes longer, but a typical, I'll say, single family house, even though this is an apples to apples, can take up to six months for a grading permit. They have an expiration date on their SDP, and I think I have it noted on here, they need to have permits in hand by the 16th of October. okay thank you um so it's a big push in our office to get that reviewed and get it out the door um i almost 100% certain there will be another iteration. I don't think it's gonna be approved on the first go. Something of this size generally never is. So it'll be back in their court and basically the architects and engineers will have to address the questions and modify the plans if necessary. I have started my review, actually I'm assigned to it in current planning. From a current planning standpoint, it's really a check between what was approved for the site design review versus what is the building and grading plans. So, knock on wood, it's not going to be a huge review for me, but this is a review that The architectural reviews and all the utility, interior, electric, plumbing, so on and so forth, fire, it's gonna be, it's quite a bit of work. We have two, we've asked for paper plans, and we have two sets of plans. One, I'll say mechanical, and one grading and building, and they're both an inch thick, 24 by 36. It's quite a review process.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you.

I was gonna ask basically the same thing as Alderman Thorpe, but just trying to get at when do we expect this to be done? And it sounds like what I'm hearing from you is there's a ton of variability and probably doesn't make sense to answer that.

yeah i would estimate from when you say done like a finished a finished product yeah occupancy certification i would say uh easily a year and a half maybe oh okay that's that's a little bit better than what i thought maybe maybe two years gotcha but uh that's i'm just i'm just winging that one yeah yeah yeah just giving us a sense like two years from

from when they get all their permits, or two years from roughly now?

Two years from when they get their permits, and ideally that would be in October, so two years from mid-October.

All right. Thanks, Mike. All right. Yeah, and just to be transparent, I made a note I'm going to look into that. It's not a question for you so much, but I want to look up the stormwater management plan, and just I'm curious what they're proposing for the outfall. I know there were some questions about the outfall improvements last time.

Yeah, and so I'm coming into the tail end of this, obviously, just because it's had so much history and I've only been here about three years. I don't know off the top of my head. And the conceptual obviously was improved, but those boxes will be verified and checked by the stormwater folks in DPW.

We talked to Mike about that.

Yeah, that probably would be good.

All right, anything else on this? Nope, all right, thanks.

All right, so flip the page. I do have one edit here. For the Rocky Gorge Athens project or saga, as you might refer to it as, there is a appeal of the director's decision to expire the project. And that was penciled in or slated for the Board of Appeals meeting, which was Tuesday night, but it got pushed. I don't know all the ins and outs of why, but it's tentatively right now on the Board of Appeals agenda for September, because they don't meet, generally they don't meet in August. So that is on the radar, I'll say.

of a building board or a Board of Appeals? Board of Appeals, yeah. All right. Any questions on that one?

Moving on, West Village, which is 161 West Street, three-story mixed-use structure, first floor restaurant, and then dwelling units on the second and third floors. That one, similar to Similar to the Bay Village Suites, the SDP approval expired. And they had to go through the same process advertising and to be heard before the Planning Commission. And that was, so I was, let me just say that I should have updated that this list months ago because that actually was heard and approved on the 4th, December 4th of last year. So it was, again, a reboot. Coincidentally, I think the only change was the sewer connection. They changed the sewer connection, but everything else is the same as the original approval.

All right, no questions? Nothing for me.

That's what I'm glad to hear it's known for. actually on the just because i'm curious on the sewer connection how did they change it do you know

So that project sits on the corner, West Street, and I can't remember the, it's right behind. Colonial. It's Colonial, right, right next to the garage, right next to the lemongrass and that section. I think they moved it either from connecting to Colonial or to West Street. So it was basically like a 90-degree flip one way or the other.

Gotcha. Yeah, I figured that would be what it was.

Okay, thanks. Sad to have the shaved ice.

truck uh we'll put them down at 245 west street at least until that gets going oh there you go because i know that's been popular yeah i'm not hoping if it doesn't thunderstorm to go there later today

Okay, so moving on, the last one in the current project list is the Thomas-Somerville property. And that's basically a plumbing warehouse and showroom. That sits in parole off of Somerville and Old Solomon's Island Road adjacent to, or across the street from Chick-fil-A. And that property is bisected by the city county line. And I talked about this before, but they're gonna, the final is they're demoing the large building, it's a large green, looks like a warehouse, and moving their whole operation into the city. um with uh so they'll have a new building with showroom warehouse it's going to be probably half the size of what you see today but it will be entirely in the city and it is it has also supporting features like access parking And that is currently in Monitor Site Design Review. We just issued comments, I'd say in the past two weeks, for the second iteration of that review. They've posted everything. We had no public comments. There are, again, knock on wood, minor comments from DPW that need to be addressed. uh and hopefully they actually i reached out to the applicant they have a meeting next week with dpw to try to iron everything out so this will be the last iteration of that review um and Hopefully they get that resolved resubmit and. They'll get their approval from current planning standpoint. Again, a project that I'm involved in, I've looked at it and it checks all the boxes. It looks like a. Looks like an attractive building and attractive project. They actually did also, they also have their building and grading permits in for review. They kind of jumped the gun on that prior to getting their SDP approval. So they've already, their building and grading are kind of on pause right now, but they're already in. So once they get their approval, then those will go full steam ahead. And hopefully that'll be a project that they might break ground before the end of the year, possibly in the fall.

Yeah, I'm certainly positive on the redevelopment. The only thing I still wish we could have, I think we need to be a little more aggressive with our annexation powers to just annex right up to Route 2, because the building's split right now, right? Just go ahead and... Because I think we're allowed to do it in cases where it makes, I forget the exact wording, but geographic sense to annex. In this case, you couldn't get a better situation.

Yeah, well, sure. I mean, along that same line, you look at where the division line is that runs up to West Street. and you have the same situation bisecting a building, and in fact, that's where the dispensary is. It sits right outside of the city line, or city property.

Yeah, so we have the headquarters in the city.

Have the headquarters, yeah.

So we get any of the downsides, and none of the tax revenue. I love it. Sorry, that's my finance committee coming up.

Yeah, so obviously, that whole, that building that happened what five six years ago maybe more uh and given the different jurisdictional laws that's why that happened so okay thank you any other questions on that one all right here nothing

I appreciate the updates, and I appreciate you worked in here. Wasn't there one more?

I have one more. The work sessions, right? The work sessions. Yeah, I was going to bring that up. Yeah, you asked me to add the work sessions just as something you see that's in the pipeline. And I don't have specifics on those because... there's no formal application but there have been work sessions and so um they're actually four um the first one is 245 west street and that's the old gas station that's been sitting vacant for a very long time and so the applicant has come in they've had a work work session and those are proposed residential townhomes

Oh, that's the one in your. Yeah, it's they had a community meeting. I think they've gone to a work session. They're looking to put nine townhomes and very similar to the ones that are to the left of it, but a little bit similar design, a little bit different architecture. And I would love to see them, right now their plan is four in the back and five in the front, and I'd love to see them swap that so that there is a little bit more of that, the green space is a little bit more facing west, right? They wanna have the space between them is supposed to be a little bit of a community space. I think it would be very beneficial to have that facing out in more of a U shape rather than facing in in the way that the one sitting next door kind of have like people only really congregate in between the buildings as opposed to the it's not great access to the streetscape that's what i'm saying well and i think it made me think of something mr meekins just to kind of plant a seed in your head um if you do you know in any of these especially the ones that are

you see in the pipeline where they encounter various barriers in our code, please, this is not necessarily this committee unless it's environmental or related, but in general, I think please keep the council in mind, because I know a number of us would like to see the development be the best it can. So, you know, if they're running into some obscure, I don't know, parking requirement or even some obscure environmental restriction that gets in the way of just common sense, please, happy to work with you and try to get something passed. I feel like most of the time we're just not often told until it's too late, too far along in the process, but we really do wanna get common sense back in this.

code when we can yeah no i i agree with you i understand and we can certainly do that communication is obviously in my mind one of the biggest issues that i face in working and in in general in life is you know the more we communicate the better off the end product seems to turn out so So, moving on Robin would redevelopment that is ongoing. They've had a 1, 1 work session. That's the redevelopment of the whole, the whole tract of Robin would. Um, actually there, I believe they're going to retain some of the existing structures, but they're proposing some, uh. Residential new residential town houses and, um, uh, multi story building. So that's that's also in the works. Bay Ridge Road is, forgive me for not having a street address, but I'll say the old CNC liquor site. And that's also residential towns. I believe actually this one might be going back to Planning Commission for a work session this month. But I have not looked at the agenda yet. And then lastly, right across from Robin Wood, the old Annapolis Seafood site. This has been to, I believe, two work sessions, and it's a redevelopment of that site, commercial. It's a new concept for Royal Farms. It's a fresh market. Also, they are incorporating some gas pumps. But through the work session and that process, The fuel station has been scaled down, and the fuel station would sit more or less behind the building. So you would have Forest Drive, the building itself, and then the fuel stations and canopy behind that. They're also proposing EV charging stations. But again, the owner of Royal Farms was in and very receptive, and he's excited about a new concept, not just uh what you would see at a typical royal farms but maybe a higher end and like i said like a fresh concept fresh fresh food concept yeah personally i still have concerns about adding another gas station contaminated site there but

Yeah, I don't know that it's going to be relevant to this one, but I think this adds an additional data point for why we should have something that says we really don't need any more gas stations in the city. We got enough. We're good. And they're going to all be stranded infrastructure in 20 years anyway, or 25 or 30 or whatever you want to call it. So recognizing, like I said, we're not necessarily going to change this project, but it's a good argument for... You know, I like the phrase, best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, second best time is today, right?

Sure. And just one last thing on my end, on the Bay Ridge Road, I can't remember if I, I may have brought this up last time, I can't remember, but I was glad to see that Planned Zoning was pushing the idea of the Dutch-style pedestrian streets. I always forget the term. But my understanding, and again, connecting it with my comment about common sense in the code, is my understanding is that because of some nuances in the fire code, they're making that, they might need to make that very wide, or at least they're getting pushed by your department i don't think but either fire or public works to make that road wider because of fire concerns even though it's i'm not sure if it's gonna be a private road or public road um but again i just feel like it's we're getting in the way of ourselves um from having really good innovative infrastructure that emulates what we have downtown. And I really, I've been trying to push back on that, trying to figure out why exactly that's popped up if it's a requirement or if it's just a preference from a department to see if we need to change anything.

So I can generalize. DPW typically, moving forward, would like to have those public roads so they would be responsible for maintenance of some sort. Fire Department does definitely have Requirements for turning radiuses and the ability to extend their support system for their vehicles. if you know they're raising ladders or what have you so i don't i don't believe at this point either dpw or the fire marshal's office has really weighed in on that but it's a concept and it's it's a notion that obviously in our code we have standard road widths uh and turning turning requirements so the applicants engineer design team typically would take that into account when they're doing the design um but just to add to um like the connectivity and infrastructure they're definitely uh sidewalks or path paved paths along forest drive and actually this proposal similar to what was proposed i think with lidl who's the property owner that it's going to be connected from bay village drive and then to the signalized intersection there at bay ridge road and georgetown so it kind of it it kind of creates a A more flowing a more, you know, uh, I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. My point is, though, just if. If we have roads that have to be. Taken by the city city ownership, then they have to follow our standard here to our standards. Problem is our road standards are. one size fits all but in reality it doesn't fit all because it makes no sense to have a highway in the middle of a residential neighborhood i'm exaggerating but we need to really adopt standards that have a pedestrian street standard throw it in there city ownership that's fine city maintenance but right now we don't so it gets defaulted to these way over wide roads which does not it's not constructive towards community building right what you all are doing in your department so i'm trying to get my head around what to do about that but yeah so more or less overkill like maybe more that's that's really necessary yeah precisely understood um i'm gonna cut it there unless there's something else because we need to get to jackie super briefly i'll just agree with you and say that we should have the fire trucks fit the streets rather than the streets for the fire trucks yeah exactly thank you all right thank you mr meekins thank you Deputy City Manager Guild, you're up. And we do have a hard stop at 4.15 for the studio.

That works. Good afternoon, Jackie Guild, Deputy City Manager. So I, oh, here you are. I have updates for July. I sent them out late. I did send them to you. I didn't spend a lot of, Sure, thank you. How helpful. I didn't spend a lot of time on updating on my part due to other priorities this week, but our environmental program managers did provide updates. So everywhere that, again, just as Mike does, I put update or new in red for those things that haven't had a change in the last month or have been added. Before I get started, I do provide this document not only to this group, and this is the main group. It's supposed to be the recipient of it. I also provide to the Annapolis Environmental Commission. That would be the secondary group. And last administration, I was asked to send it to all council members, which I started doing. And then I provided it to various people in the mayor's administration just as something to refer to, including the community ombudsman. But I had a comment from... the administration that this is too long and too in-depth, that I had to remind them this is not intended for them. This is intended for this committee and the commission, and I do this as just an informational service. And I was asked if I could provide something shorter. So I will work on something shorter for the general counsel and the mayor's office in my copious spare time. So I'll do that probably next starting, well, not next month because you don't meet next month, but in September. So I have a break. All right. So on the new issues, I'm going to go through what is new and updated and then leave time for you to ask me questions. We are focusing heavily on both transportation initiatives and clean energy, reliable energy, energy savings. And to that regard, we're working quite a bit on solar initiatives. So the first page, we have the solar, the third paragraph, The solar inventory and strategy coordination with Anne Arundel County and the Resilience Authority. So the Resilience and Sustainability Team is working through Resilience Authority through their subcontractor, Council Fire. We're looking at opportunities to create a city solar strategy in any ways that we can do work also with the county and piggyback on the county's work. So as part of that, we're looking at three city sites with a consultant for solar, either most likely roof solar. And so we're just beginning that process, but we're trying to save money and partner with the county in whatever way we can. On the second page, near the bottom, I have an update there. We just really started this last month. We were working with Empower Maryland, BG&E's program, Empower Maryland, and LED Lighting Upgrades. So trying to work with central services on a project with BG&E and Empower. to have LED lighting retrofits at no cost and upgrades for businesses and municipal buildings. Empower Maryland works with a company called Matrix Solutions. And so as the city's first pilot, we have picked the Forest Drive Fire Station and that work was completed on May 13th. And now we're looking at other buildings in the cities for lighting upgrades at no cost again to the city. And so we're looking at Department of Transportation, Stan Center, and Eastport Fire Station to begin with, and as well as ballparks and parking garages. So there'll be more information coming on that. The program with Empower ends in September, the end of September of this year, so we're trying to take as much advantage of that as possible. no cost to the city again. So Ashley Diaz, one of our environmental program managers, provided on the next page, on page three, kind of a breakdown of which facilities we're looking at, the value of the upgrades, what the energy savings are in kilowatts, and the estimated annual utility savings. Again, we're doing this at no cost to the city, but we can save quite a bit on utility savings, and she's showing us what we're saving by not paying for it ourselves and doing it through BG&E's Empower program. So I found that rather useful from her. And then at the bottom of page three, I have our greenhouse gas emissions inventory and climate action plan update. We are entering the final round of edits and the way it will look. I worked on some graphics because I think that's really important. Some people just look at the graphics to interpret it and understand it and they're very easily used when you're explaining it to other people. It's mostly based on recommendations. It's based on greenhouse gas inventories that we updated this year, and then we've made recommendations based on that. And it covers almost every department in the city. So when we look at these recommendations, we are making them realistic to Annapolis. A lot of them are very similar to things that the state is encouraging, but we're our own unique municipality. And although we strive to meet the goals that the state set in the Maryland Solutions Now Act, you'll see they've modified a little bit to meet up with what annapolis can do and so a little bit more specific to annapolis you'll see that in the final version that we hope to get to you i don't think there's any problem at all getting it to you by september after the recess that recess provided us a little bit more time and then also as an appendix to the climate action plan we have a document that compares what the former Climate Action Plan did that Alderman Savage did work on about 10 years ago. There were recommendations in that plan, and the appendix are showing what we did do from that plan, what we didn't do and why. There could have been a technological change, preference to electric versus natural gas, which was preferred before, and how far along we are in meeting the old plan. And then some of those recommendations were put in the new plan as well that we didn't meet. I think that will be useful to say, you know, it's one of those things where people say, you've done this study, but what did you do with it? We can show what we actually did with the old cap and how, why we're doing things differently with the new one.

I wish it was only 10 years ago, but it's more like 20.

It was way overdue to do a new cap. So on page four, about halfway down, we have, again, residential solar here. As I mentioned, it's the city trying to find ways where we can make a difference for the community. We don't have control over utility rates, but we can try to explore ways to help the community, make the community more aware of what is offered through BG&E. We have some other suggestions in the Climate Action Plan, too, that may or may not need help from City Council. But this is a program that the city's partnering with Solar United Neighbors, and they have this annual switch-together effort that other counties and municipalities engage in this. And this is an opportunity that provides people, interested residents and businesses, actually, with the opportunity to have solar installed in their homes at a cooperative and competitive price. So the city, we've just had to sign up for it and say that we would make it open to residents to look at and they can either apply to it individually or as a community or a cluster of homes or other apartments, et cetera.

So... Well, it'd be nice to get something like that installed on like Robinwood when it gets redeveloped. Yes. Just put it up on the rooftops because I think they'll put it up at no cost because it gets paid for over time. You don't like that?

No, I mean, we've talked, I believe, on all of the housing developments we have, particularly public housing. We need to require or encourage the developers or the management of the company, whatever, whoever manages that, to do that.

So what we're working on with planning and zoning and resilience staff are looking at that for all of our community housing projects. It's part of the CNI project. We actually, the city actually received a technical assistance grant for a microgrid there, so a solar backed by battery storage, which was good. We didn't think we were going to get that, but they're doing a technical analysis to see if it would make sense there. You may recall, Durbin Savage, probably about six years ago, BG&E and the city and one of their partners, SEPA, Smart Energy Power Alliance, I think it's called, did a technical analysis for Eastport Harbor House, whether it made sense to put a microgrid there. And that was at no cost to the city as well, that analysis. But they determined that it would make more sense in an area that would serve a larger group of people, the expense of installing a microgrid would be better spread across more homes. It's not to say it wouldn't make sense there, but it wouldn't be just for those two lower income communities. They thought it'd be good to explore spreading that microgrid, the power you would get from that into the adjoining communities in Eastport.

Scott, lightning round, three minutes left till I cut off.

Okay, so looking at everything solar everywhere, especially for low-income redevelopment. And then on page five, I've had a little update on the electric streetcar project. We had established June 12th as our deadline for proposals for a technical feasibility study to explore electric streetcar system for Annapolis. The Resilience Authority was leading this effort for the city and the county, and we received about six proposals from very well-qualified, experienced companies, and we were reviewing those now and hope to make a selection in the next couple of months for the company that will do our feasibility study. And then with electric transit, underneath of that is our city ferry pilot project. A revised RFP was drafted last year based on a hybrid electric diesel system, and that was because of Trump administration requirements that would no longer fund all electrics, so we modified that. There's been a landing plan RFP that's been drafted but has not been released yet. And we're looking at other landing sites that are potential sites, Hawkins Cove, Cars Beach, et cetera. And also the funding sources that we have in hand and can be added to meet our local match of $525,000. We're about halfway there with one fee that was paid to planning and zoning by a marina owner in Eastport for certain permit concessions. They had to pay us $250,000. And we're looking at other sources where we could meet our local match. We're putting together right now, I don't think it's in this update, also an RFI request for qualifications and information for an operator. And we should have that ready to hit the streets in just a couple of weeks. So Central Services is partnering with the Harbor Master's Office to put that together. And I'm going to leave it at that.

All right. Thank you with a minute to spare. All right. Just in time to have anything else we could do to the order before we adjourn? I had a bunch of questions, but. they're going to get done in a minute so if you have questions you always reach out to me you know i'm happy to get together with you at any time thank you you're welcome do apologize but the studio needs time to transition so can i get a motion to adjourn all right all those in favor of a journey please say aye aye aye meeting is adjourned thank you