Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Right. It is 4:01. I will call to order the Wednesday, June 25th, 2025 City of Battle Creek Planning Commission meeting. Can we get a roll call for attendance, please? Commissioner Hughes here. Commissioner O'Donnell here. Commissioner Godfrey here. Commissioner Gray here. Commissioner Morris here. Commissioner Dennison here. Commissioner Motton. Commissioner White here. Mayor Binkkey here. Good deal. All right. On to approval of minutes. This being the May 28th, 2025 meeting. Are there any comments or questions regarding the minutes? Mr. Chairman, I make a motion that minutes be approved as presented. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Um, all in favor, those signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed. Same sign. Minutes approved. Correspondence. We did receive written correspondence. All commissioners should have a copy of this. Uh, we appreciate those who have taken the time to provide feedback and it'll be considered during part of the deliberations this evening. Any additions or deletions to the agenda? No additions or deletions. Thank you. We now proceed to the public hearings and deliberations which we do have one public hearing this afternoon. Um before doing so I will declare conflict on myself. I am employed by BCU who administers the TIFFA which is the applicant. Um so I myself as chair will be recusing from that part of the meeting. Our vice chair O'Donnell will be leading it. Um so public applicant other commissioners address O'Donnell at that time. Um Alana and I also am abstaining because of a conflict of interest. All right. So at this time I will hand it over to

Commissioner O'Donnell. Thank you. Um public hearing is now open for the reszoning request of uh RPZ 2025002. Is there any citizens that would like to speak right now? Uh yes, in the back. Oh, staff. I'm sorry. There got to be a staff presentation first. Yep. We'll get to you in a second. I took it out of order. Staff presentation first. Uh so as has already been stated, this is an application from uh the BC TIFFA regarding a handful of properties owned by BCU, generally bounded by Columbia Avenue to the north, Stone Jug Road to the west, and Helmer Road to the east. Um uh goal is just to keep this pretty short. The applicant is actually here to present today. Um but in short, what a conditional resoning allows is for an applicant to voluntarily bring conditions that they would attach to a reszoning of a property. Um those conditions can come in a number of different forms. They can be um conditions specific to an individual use that an applicant's proposing. They can also be to dimensional requirements. They can be specific to buffering and landscaping. um really anything that the applicant um deems could be beneficial to the greater community as a part of their application. That is what the applicant is bringing before you today. Um staff based on our right on our analysis and findings and based on the um criteria listed in section 1281.01 G5 recommends approval of this item. Um, otherwise I will turn it over to the applicant to present. Thank you. Um, yep. If the applicant could please speak. I'm I'm sorry I was out of order a second ago. I'm used to the city commission where the public speaks first before the applicant. So, uh, good afternoon, commissioners, and

uh, thank you for taking time to consider this today. So, I I kind of want to start with how we got here and some of the activity that we've done thus far, but I'm Joe Sarowski. There you go. Yep. Touch your heart, Joe. I'm Joe Sowski. I represent Battle Creek Unlimited and also uh which is the administrator for the Battle Creek Tax Increment Finance Authority, one of the land owners and um we also represent um West Michigan Land Holding. So this is a joint application between the BC TIFA and West Michigan Land Holding. West Michigan Land Holding for Disclosure is an entity of Battle Creek Unlimited. Um, address is 4950 West Dickman Road, sweet uh one, Battle Creek, Michigan 49037. All right. It's been a while. So, I wanted to start with a little bit of how we got here. So, um, what we have on the screen is kind of how we got here. So, um, the light purple is land that is already under control by the BC TIFA um, on your left side and that is the current zoning as well. That is light industrial. Our main section there towards the north of uh on the north towards Colombia is approximately 60 acres. The the sliver to the left is owned by RNL carriers uh which I believe is uh getting ready to be developed. And then if you go a little further south there is a strip of green or excuse me uh there there's the purple and the green. Um we own the purple section which is already currently zoned light industrial. The section to the right which it looks like uh four four farm field pieces is approximately 60 acres which is zoned agriculture. There is nobody actively looking at this site. We are doing this uh to be prepared for the future. Um and we are marketing we want to market this as one of Battle Creek's kind of last and premier uh light industrial sites. And we're talking clean industrial. We're

talking about something like food manufacturing. We're not looking for, you know, a battery facility or a tire recycling. We we're going to hold and covet this for high high and highest and best use harmonious with the area. Now, as we started to assemble this, we do understand that there's some uh there's some very nice neighborhoods to the south there. So we took an approach to put together some concepts of how can we assemble this achieve what the community needs housing achieve uh preparation for a nice marketable site and also try to be cognizant that there's uh neighborhoods to the south there and make something harmonious. So the image that you see to the right was one concept. Um I I will pause. We did a preliminary outreach uh on April 24th and 29th. We did two different sessions to uh we mailed out to over 300 residences in in parcels in that general area, which we didn't have to do, but we did to present this same these same concepts to get some feedback. So, um what you're seeing on the screen is not what we're landing on, but I want to explain how we got there. So during these sessions on April 24th from 2:00 to 5:00 we had approximately 17 uh residences um appear and April 29th from 5:00 to 7:00. So we did it during the day and we also did it during the evening and we also had approximately 17 individuals show up as well. So the first concept is your image to the right where we thought maybe we would put a road through um to prevent further um further encroachment on the neighborhoods and then try to market that as um residential development. Uh next slide please. And and this further kind of shows what

that looks like. That would have be approximately 90 uh lots. And then over to your right, we were um we we've proposed a multifamily development. Multifamily could mean anything from apartments, town homes, condos. Again, uh on on Helmer Road, trying to bookend the industrial because we know that there's been concern with traffic on Helmer. So taking into account needing additional residential but buffering that in so no uh industrial development uh you know a large user came and said hey we want to put a um an entrance there that that makes this really impossible when we start to to market that. Uh next slide please. So that's that's concept one. Concept two um image to your left is still the original zoning as is to the right is um concept two which is basically just creating a bunch of green space buffer space um and uh also showing the uh multifamily residential. So next slide please. This kind of gives you an idea. There's a lot of acorage there on the green what we we were calling it preservation to create buffer and you see BMS and you see a walking trail. So really trying to create that we want to get to that 120 125 acre parcel um but create some buffer between the neighborhoods and really that site and I'll show you later um as part of our conditional reszone request talks about developing an elevation so that if you're living in Jackaronda and the site is here and we've buffered some more what's your line of sight going to be and really trying to take into account hey we're going to limit such a facility at I'm I'm making numbers up here but it's in our application at uh 45 ft. So there is no sight line but should they need to go to 50 they have to take the site down further to accommodate. So

taking those items into consideration. So this was concept two and this was shown uh with with uh everybody at the meetings and everybody really liked the buffering and the potential for trails and and all that good stuff. Um, so I'm going to go on to next slide, please. This this kind of talks about the sighteline thing. It's very hard to see on the screen, but on the bottom all the way to the left would be, you know, if you were in Jackaronda and the red line shows kind of a sight line. So, and it shows some buffering and mounding. We're talking about putting mounds up of, you know, potentially 20 feet and putting vegetation on top of those. And then you still have the site that's that's got some elevation difference. Next slide, please. So this is after those two meetings we went back to the drawing board and came up with kind of a compromise between the two. Um and this is what we have in front of you today as an application. So we still have the multifamily to your right. Uh we've shrunk it down and we have added buffer in between. We've kept the buffer along the the bottom there which is um I think it's over 300 feet. It shows about approximately 300 ft, but that's approximately 27 acres. We squared off the light industrial and we we uh instead of making all that green space, um we talked about putting um or we're proposing putting in uh single family residential. And some of the comments were there were what kind of residential units? We're talking market rate. We're talking, you know, smaller, you know, 1300 to maybe up to upwards of 1,700 square foot trying to get in that price range, which we think we're seeing. Um, again, no development is planned there. This is just the first phase. Um, there's no developer looking at doing anything tomorrow. Um, so this is what we landed on. Uh, next slide, if less that's the last slide. That was the

last slide. Okay. Um just some of the comments of these uh outreach sessions. Concerns over apartments lowering home values. We're talking about only market rate housing will be proposed. Buffering and screening will be added. Um concerns over lowincome housing. Um we're proposing we're trying to market this no subsidized housing quality design and management. Um single family homes uh being too small, devaluing. Um the market's just not there for the, you know, the 2500 foot homes. But again, these are market rate 1,300 to 1,600 square foot somewhere upwards of uh 1,700 square f feet. Um Helmer Road uh some other things we talked about we heard was traffic. So one of the reasons we took the road away because it was a very good point. I think there's a couple individuals here um that were at these meetings was creating a thoroughfare uh through there. You know, you got the high school and when traffic lets out, what's that going to do? Okay, that makes sense. So that's why we eliminated the road. Um um but there was also concern about uh traffic at Colombia and Helmer, you know, should a development go in at the light industrial site. And um we talked about how depending on the development um the MEEDC does provide tools and incentives based upon jobs. That's something that could be explored if somebody were to land there to maybe see how that intersection could be changed. There's there's lots of dollars that can come with depending on the size of the development. airport airport. We we we heard about noise uh on Stone Jug. Um so we've talked about actually doing some preliminary or extra buffering maybe behind RNL and and kind of turning and going along that residential area. It's not going to fully take care of the noise, but we want to be a little bit proactive um based upon some of these concerns we've heard. um

industrial uh majority support it but want it limited so um again we're talking about putting covenants on this site so that if this site isn't developed in 10 years or whatever it lifts beyond me right I'm I'm not I might not be here in 10 years but we want to make sure this site is Battle Creek's highest and best use and coveted towards the best use um no dirty heavy industrial um we used food manufacturing as an example. Um, green space. I think we heard that we liked the support for the walk path, the buffers. Um, so we've got that all in our our application. Uh, no solar farms, none will be proposed. That's in kind of the covenants. Um, but that's generally it. We we we did a lot of due diligence ahead of this. Uh, I know there are some folks here that were there. Um, some may be in support, some may not be in support, but I think we went the extra mile here to to kind of create a compromise and and set this forward uh in in the right direction. Happy to answer any questions. I don't know if that's time right now, but if we have some questions, we'll get to you on that. Call me back up or Okay. Thank you. Okay. Now, we will do public comment. When you please come to the microphone, please state your name and address before speaking. Good afternoon, commissioners, uh, staff members, mayor. My my name is Stan Richards. I'm with Arnell Carriers. Address is 600 Gillum Road, Wilmington, Ohio 45177. Uh, I we're not opposed to the project at all or development. We applaud that effort. We're very prodevelopment. Our portfolio is much more expanded than just trucking across the United States, although we have 140 service centers across the United States. Uh we have restaurants, shopping centers, retail, industrial, you name it, we've got it.

Um so we applaud the effort here. Our only concern is this. Oftent times when we have an existing facility such as ours right there and if residential comes in close by, there's a concern that uh we're not allowed to expand our property. So we want to just preserve our right to expand in the future. We have one expansion going on right now with uh some lot improvement and shop and we want to look and preserve our right to expand the dock as well in the future. So that's the only comments that I have at this time. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Good afternoon commission. I am Rachel Knight. I live at 20 Come closer to the microphone, please. I live at 208 Kensington Circle. On the map specifically, my property line would be affected as it is part of the tree line from which the proposed uh line as far as a walking path would be um incurred in this. My position as to this is the concerns I have is that these plans keep changing. As indicated earlier in April, we were given one set of plans. Now it's changed again. The houses that I live in, specifically uh the Kensingtons are commonly referred to as the starter homes. Most of the houses there start approximately 15 or 1,800 square ft. The proposed homes that are recommended to going in at the diagram as indicated clearly are smaller and I do believe would affect property values and that is a concern I have. I further note in this diagram, the latest one, I do have concerns specifically as to the multi- I guess you could say apartment potential or condo buildings

going up. Helmer Road is very congested, especially with the high school in that area. I have concerns as to the road repair, especially just even on StoneJug. It's marked several areas that people have marked regards to that. My other concern that I have in this matter is the light industrial uh plan that goes in. I understand that they're waiting for a person to come forward. However, I do note that uh there's going to be more road traffic. Obviously, I by analogy would argue in this case I look at Clemens meat packing down in Cold Water. they had to do several things to ensure that the locals in that area had the appropriate um roads financing things of that nature and and at this point my concern is while we have ideas it seems to keep changing. I was not at the last meeting in April. I will concede that. However, the plans were uh shown to me by a neighbor who also lives next door to me and my concern is that we keep coming here getting different plans each time and I do hope that eventually something is settled on. I myself prefer the second plan that being the walking paths and things of that nature as I don't want my property values to basically digress. So, those are my concerns. I prefer the second plan because of the housing concerns that I've raised. Thank you. Hello, I'm Lisa Kerry. I wondered if the applicant is willing to continue engaging with the neighborhood throughout the project's development. No. Is that something that would we could be assured of? Just just go ahead

and ask we can ask him after. You can bring them up afterwards. Go ahead and ask your questions to us. Okay. Yes. And then the other question is, are you planning a sound study to determine uh the amount of sound pollution due to Duncan Aviation, Western's Flight School, and the airport? those of us on the west side of Stone Jug Road. I'm not sure if any of us were aware of those meetings that were held. So, but perhaps that may have you weren't. Okay. So, that was something that we this all came as a surprise to us. So, thank you. Thank you for your comments. Good evening. My name is Percy Bean. I live at 136 Abington Circle and I also have property on Stone Jug uh to the uh west of this proposal. Uh I'm in agreement with the proposal. Um I was born and raised here in Battle Creek and I have seen it go through many stages uh good and bad. And uh when I was presented this proposal uh I like the idea of the buffer. I like that it was uh restricted to light industrial. And I understand as being a developer I have developed um seven franchises from the ground up uh strip centers and and working on apartment building now and some other investments that I have done. and and sometimes plans do change and um this is one that uh once we nail it down it looks like it's just about finalized that I think it'll be a asset to our community. Also, when you're looking at

Colombia here, you have access to I94 um taking Colombia out also by Helma Road. Uh, I like I said, I have a nice home at 136 Amon Circle and I'm also worried about the value of my home, but I don't think that it will drop any. Plus, we have a u some land at u on Stone Jug that we're looking to develop uh sooner than later. Um, I like the idea personally of the uh apartments, but I will say that we would like to look at what type of apartments are going in there. Uh, that is a concern. and I understand that. But I I think this is a great project and I am in support of it. Thank you for your comments. Good afternoon. My name is Debbie Kimber and I live at 190 Kensington Circle. Um my house is in all those drawings up there. Anyways, one question I had was how big is that buffer zone? We we can ask him what 300T 300 ft. Okay. Um also as far as residential in the yellow area, I assume that's the residential area. My question is they took out all those houses on on uh Stevens Road because of the airport. Are they going to run into the same problem in that area? Okay, just keep just keep asking. We have answers when you're all done. When you're all done, we have discussions. So Okay. um little concerned about the multif family um housing there. I also but I heard the developer said that it would not be subsidized housing. So I feel a little better about that. Uh the light industrial is pretty close to the residences there even with a 300 foot buffer. Um I had another question. Oh, I want to make sure that you're not

going to put a marijuana grow facility in there. Sorry, but I saw in the definition of the light industrial that there was some approved areas for marijuana dispensaries and stuff. I'm not disputing that. I'm not arguing that. But I want to make sure there's not going to be a grow operation in in that area because it's also agricultural still. So some of it's still agriculture. Okay. Okay. That's all I have. Thank you for your comments. Thanks. Good afternoon. I'm Annie Stettler, 69 East Langley. Percy just did such an awesome job speaking. I mirror everything he says. So, am I in favor of this? Absolutely. We need to build a better Battle Creek and I do think everything Percy said had a lot to It was good communication. Thank you. So, can I have one other thing, Annie? I know you spoke earlier about this, so I thank you for your helping the community trying to better our community. Yeah, I'm I'm trying. Yep. Hi, excuse me. My name is Sally and this is Joe Texera and we're at 15119 Stone Jug Road. Uh, first thing I'd like to say is I knew nothing about these plans in April and if you are sitting in my front yard, you're going to look a little bit to the left and that's where everything's going. And I knew nothing about this. This completely took me by surprise because right now the noise from the truck place all night long if our windows are open. You hear the trucks banging into the docks all night long. You hear Duncan Aviation up to 11:00 at night revving the engines that they're working on on the planes. um the airport when they put in the new

runway, those planes and they're all mostly the Western Michigan school, they go right over my property. You can't even speak when they're going overhead. It's so close. My concern is I don't think anybody who's going to move into that housing is going to be happy with all the noise that's going on there. I mean, it's com, you know, I mean, this is directly across. I'm concerned about the traffic. I'm concerned about um the speed that people come over and I'm I'm right at the top of a hill that goes down and into this area. The cars are flying down there 50 and 60 miles an hour half the time. and we can't even use one of our driveways cuz you take your life in your hands and that's not well patrolled at all. We've complained many times. I've called the police many times about the speed that people are traveling on that road even though it's 35 miles an hour 35. Um, also I'd like to also bring up at um, Colombia and Stone Jug that you take your life in your hands because it is like a blind corner coming from the one side. It's 55 miles an hour. If you don't see someone when you first look and you head out, they could be practically right up on top of you. And then also there's um when I would come home from work and I would get in the turn lane to turn on to Stone Jug, that's also the same turn lane that they're coming into um excuse me for turning into the road that goes down Duncan Aviation. So many times we are like headon right there. They're coming at 55 miles an hour and I'm I'm at a at a standstill trying to turn on to left on a stone jug. So that's been a concern for a long time.

we've reached out, you know, and haven't had any satisfaction on that. I am very disturbed that we weren't contacted. I feel like I'm the closest person there is to this and we we heard nothing. We were told nothing. So, this is just going to add extra travel on the roads and our road. Now, our paving is we get stone and then we get a little bit of oil and then they let us drive back and forth over the top of it. That's how our road is maintained right now in Stone Jug. We've been out there over 42 years in the same property. So, those are basically my concerns. Oh, my husband has a couple as well. Sorry. Thank you for your comments. Okay. Um the airport. Go ahead and you give your name, too, sir. Joe Techer. Thank you. It's my wife. Um she's correct. We're right across from that yellow section there. We see a lot of traffic go down that road. A lot of people are walking for exercise, riding a bike, taking their dog for a walk, and you're almost getting hit. There is no concern about the speed. We, like she said, we've voiced our opinion. It used to be, it used to have a 35 mph speed limit sign at the end at the start of Stone Jug. It's been removed. So has the no truck sign and we have semi trucks coming down there in a residential area which is not the airport built a burm where they do the engine runup does not help. We we uh when they bought the houses on Steven or you know tore them down because of the noise abatement we were right at the edge of it. So, we did not get offered that. Since then, we have put soundproof

roofing in, soundproof windows. We've had our walls foamed with insulation. Does not help. You still hear the engines run up. You hear Duncan or D RNL trucking when they back into the dock or they're backing into trailers, they slam in and you can echo it all the way up to our house. And this is going on midnight and a little bit after midnight. The smell, the wind is coming out of the northwest. You can smell the kerosene. You can't even walk outside because of the kerosene smell from the exhaust of the engines. Again, I I think people moving into that yellow section are going to be very upset with what they find. Even a BM put between RNL and that residential is not going to help. Thank you. Hello, my name is Jennifer Beam. Um I'm at 1515 South Helmer Road. I'm with Jakeway Realtor. So, um housing is a good thing. Um we certainly can use more housing in uh Battle Creek. So, uh, glad to hear that at least it's on the table and y'all are, um, considering it. Um, couple of questions though, or at least considerations is, uh, the traffic on Helmer, of course, um, since we are right next to the high school, we do see, um, that traffic jam up. Uh, kids don't ride the school bus anymore. So, uh, parents are there lined up and it does get a little crazy. So with a multif family uh right there, just curious of um you know how to handle that traffic flow um and maybe what the maximum number of units um are going to be allowed in the covenants um or the you know the city would allow for proposal. I mean I I understand that it's going to depend upon, you know, the developer and um you know the type of units they're going to put in, but what

would be the max? What would you guys cap it at? Um uh would be one question uh for you. um as well as um I guess just in general. Um I we as realtors can certainly help. Um so if you guys need to employ us um not for a charge, but just in the sense of service to be able to provide estimates to um either validate or um squash the concerns of property values and how that might impact by adding the smaller units next door. um because we do understand that concept. I mean, we really do um appreciate um seeing, you know, the changes and how a new development might or might not impact um housing values as people think. So, um if at any point that you all need um assistance with that, we would be happy to provide some data um to help clarify too if that helps make some deciding um factors for you all. So, that's all I have for today. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Good afternoon. Hi, I'm Lori Van Risewick. I live at 173 Jackaranda Drive. And I guess we kind of had the same concerns as we've talked about in the neighborhood as everyone else, property values as it is, you can barely get out of Helmer Road, out of Jackaranda onto Helmer Road, especially when schools there. There's only one way in and out of our subdivision, and we've already had the senior centers to the right of us. everything going south that's basically in some people's backyards as it is and now we're coming the other way. We live in the back used to be called Jack Woods and now so that will directly impact us in the back of it there. We've already watched Hington Hills come in and that whole thing beyond there and their concerns are the same as everyone else. Is our property value going to go down? We've been there a long time. We already have the flight school with the planes over there waiting for some child to crash into our

homes every day. And they do. They have night flights all night long and that's all you hear. You can sort of hear the trucking from where we're at. We have Fort Custer blasting all the time. And you know when we came in it was hot air balloons in the airport. Now we got four days where you can't even be home because of air shows. And again that's all good for Battle Creek. Not great from where we're at. And so as it stands we're not thrilled but what we really like to know is if we're going to know I know that no one has proposed anything as far as coming in there right now. Are we going to have some idea of what's going to happen? A timeline if somebody does get approached. Is anyone going to tell us as citizens? Because we did not receive a mailing at our home, but I know other people in our neighborhood did receive some. And whether or not we're going to have some idea of what's going to happen so we can either get out or make decisions about where, you know, what we should be doing to prepare ourselves or whether we do want to prepare ourselves or whether we have some say if we don't like what happens. And so that's just kind of where we're at. and I'm here alone but speaking for quite a few people in Jack Randa and we all just happen to be working most of the time. So that's um our questions that we would like to have answered and we would like to know if there's going to be more community input at some point if anyone does approach and say that they would perhaps like to build. We're very very concerned about the apartment complex or whatever it is too sub housing smaller housing might be one thing. You know single family home that's not going to do the traffic that's going to have a little more stability than somebody just coming and going. and we're worried about crime, anything like that that can happen because we've all seen what happened with Oakbrook used to be beautiful and we've seen what happened there. So, we just have concerns and about we're getting encroached on LA Engles and we would like to have some say and to whether or not we can maintain our homes. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Is there anybody else that would like to speak at the public hearing for public comment? One last time, is there anybody else that would like to speak in public comment for the public hearing? Okay.

Uh, commission comments. Anybody like to speak? Commissioner Cry. I have a question for Joe on the extreme southern part of this the walking area in my dark green. Yep. Is that is that an area that's going to be open to the public or is that I think uh what we did is we took that trail and we took it out to to Helmer. So theoretically, yeah, somebody could get on that trail there. And where's parking? Well, there there is none. No, it would it would connect to Yeah. Someone take the sidewalk and then walk on. Correct. Is there any other commissioners that would like to comment at this time? Commissioner Gre. Yeah, I'd like to thank everyone for coming out um and giving their comments and questions. Um I had some clarifying questions probably for Joe and some others. Uh starting with the uh notices. I did hear on a couple of occasions that um the public meetings that occurred that you outlined um not everyone receded. Can you just clarify for everyone um the the radius and how you guys came to the 300 that went out uh so that that is um more clear? Yeah, we we uh followed the So this meeting here is if your property touches within a 300 foot radius. So we we kind of followed that from the early on when whatever the city provided us is what we mailed out. There was no intent to leave, you know, certain certain people out. Um but that's what we did. Thank you for clarifying. Um

I also uh heard about the the Brown area as far as the multif family homes um that perhaps those will be apartments. Um, but I also heard from Joe when he was giving kind of the overview, um, that you really haven't landed on anything. It could be condos, it could be duplex, it could be, um, apartments. Um, so that is not nailed nailed down. Just the zoning part. That is correct. And the the zoning would default to whatever the density is in in the city's, you know, current zoning. So it could be town homes, condos, uh apartments, those types of things. It just whatever fits within that definition. Perfect. Thank you. Uh there was also a question about um going forward. Uh oh, let me back up. you kind of took us through um map one, map two, and receiving the feedback from those public meetings and landing on this um uh plan, revised plan based on that feedback. And so I see that more as really taking into effect what you're hearing and um trying to incorporate um that feedback into uh this future development. And so I I do appreciate that. Uh so if if it seems like things are changing, I think as Mr. being mentioned. Um, as as more input is given, those changes could occur. However, this is what we are looking at and what this commission is is considering today.

um in doing so and and knowing that um BCU is very conscious of the public comments around this development. Can you address that at all? Is there any um plans for continued community outreach as this plan develops? So I'm going to rely a little bit on the planning staff but uh for instance I'm going to use scenarios here. There was asked if there was continued engagement. Our next step is to come up with uh a set of covenants for the industrial site and I I think it was Mr. Peavey. Yeah, he asked this during the thing. Uh we don't have anything yet down on paper but that would be that would be step one. Absolutely. We would work with the where it's like maybe go to them and say this is what we're thinking. These are the uses cuz I know Clemens was used. I'm not interested in having a slaughter house when I say food. So getting really defined on what uses we would all agree to that are highest and best used on the allied industrial side and coveting that site. So working with the residents there. Absolutely. Now, there's going to be there's already some height restrictions and things incorporated into this um conditional reszone. Um but correct me if I'm wrong on the planning side. If a single family residential developer came in or a multif family, even though that's zoned properly, they still would have to come before the planning commission. Correctly. Correct. Not positive on that. based on based on what what's here if uh if this were conditionally reszoned um and a developer came with a proposal to simply construct single family residences that are within the density allowance of the

R1 um uh I believe of the R1A zoning district. That would be a use by right at that point. So at that point there's going to be no additional public hearing, no additional no special use permit, nothing like that. That would have to be But there is a process that they have to follow. But there's no notification. They there would not Yeah, there would not be notification. There'd be no additional public hearing. Um they would be subject to the same zoning review that any that any applicant applying for a permit would be subject to at that point. Okay. Okay. If I may, there was one point uh that Commissioner Godfrey asked about a parking lot. Yes. We didn't really put that there because I'm assuming, and maybe I'm assuming wrong, that the neighborhood doesn't want a parking lot for people to park at and start walking back there. So, we're not really calling it out that it's a place to go walk. That was that was really the intent. Thank you. Um and my final observation um in in hearing from everyone today was I believe one of the residents talked about a blind spot I believe on stone jug um and some concerns over time about um signage and speeding and all those kinds of things. So, I thought that might be a good opportunity as this develops. Um, or if people see that in their neighborhood now, something that uh I think they were saying that they have been complaining about and these concerns long term and have been unsuccessful they felt in being heard. Um can you maybe just give a quick um update on how you know for this property going forward

if those kinds of concerns are part of it how people would engage with the city um to find resolve. So concerned with traffic, um we can certainly um work with the Department of Public Works and engineering to see if if they have any suggestions for that area or um um to take a look at any feedback that they may have already received in the past regarding that that um I mean that would be my recommendation. It's it's not necessarily it's not directly a planning related matter. Um but certainly it does u I mean it does potentially impact any development in that area. So thank you. Um I have no further questions right now. Thank you. Any other comments from the commission? I just have I have a few Joe. So, um, talking about that walking path, um, who would be maintaining the walking path as an, uh, is is it going to be concrete, natural? I I would assume it would be, uh, an asphalt paved uh, portion in and the way the conditional reszone is written is, you know, that wouldn't go in until a development occurred on the light industrial. Now, we also wrote in the conditional reszone that um we may start uh trying to buffer sooner rather than later. You know, putting the BMS in, allowing vegetation to establish just so um who would maintain it? My hopes is we my hopes are that we could maybe work with the city and somehow transfer that into a some sort of preservation. I I think there's something further down on Helmer towards 94 um and and and put it in a system like that. I don't have the answer to that, but um the development would put it in uh upon an an industrial user going in. Okay. I just like I just think about the future concern. Same with the

parking situation and things like that. It's u I believe you're talking there's a park further down by the church. Yeah. Yeah. That the city maintains right now currently. I didn't know if this city would be wanting to do that or would want to have that added, but I do like the idea of that green space. They allow separation of that light industrial. So I I keep working on that. Um earlier and you mentioned this um the harmonious part of the area um definitely would be hard to put solar in something like that. We don't want that. And same with the marijuana facility smell, but would there be an environmental study? Maybe this is staff. So there be some type of environmental study and and uh that would be done when we know what type of business would go on in there to make sure it is harmonious with the the build. I I might be able to answer that. Um that would be kind of when we're going back to the covenants, we're going to kind of narrow down the scope of of what we think should go in there and that's harmonious. But I can tell you that um any company that's going to look at that is also going to look at the same concerns that we just looked at about being harmonious. And I mean the gentleman at RNL talked about it pretty well. Um companies don't want to be a burden to the neighbors. So when you I don't know what kind of environment you're talking about like noise pollution. Yeah. Like an environmental study. Like if you put this here, is it going to affect the water? Is it going to affect the noise the the land? the wildlife, that type of thing. Absolutely. Yes. And we've already done uh some uh phase one, phase two, geotechnical, endangered species, wetland. We've done all that kind of preliminarily and it's it's a pretty solid site. And well, the other study was like the airport too. Same with the is it it doesn't none of that falls within the airport landing

facility or uh there is actually um right now that left corner of the purple um there is a uh because of that parallel runway there is um some height restriction there. So that that and again that's another thing that affects the height in that area. Um so there are some height restrictions there because of the airport. Okay. So certain businesses that would be super high wouldn't be able to you're not getting a 200 foot tower anywhere near Yeah. Okay. Uh the other thing is is like would cell towers or anything like that be able to be built in that area? Yeah, that I would put that in our covenants that no, we don't want that. Okay. Yeah. Which last chance anybody else have any more comments for the public hearing? All right. I declare the public hearing uh completed. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, then I have a procedural question to ask the staff and the commission. This is coming before us as a petition PRZ25-00002 and yet this single petition incorporates five actions. How do you want us to address this? Do you want us to address this as a single petition or do you want us to take the five apart and approve them individually? Um my I guess I I um be curious maybe to first hear I guess what the commission's general feeling is if if there's any additional discussion because that may help to inform sort of what the best way forward may be. Um, and then I may also lean on the city attorney a little to see what the potential what the what the

best procedural uh path is as far as motions. U, does that make sense? I um I guess my what I would like I said what I wonder is um um if there's discussion amongst commissioners regarding the proposal if that potentially if there's concern about one specific area versus the entirety of it. I don't I don't know if that maybe helps kind of inform how we go about it. Does that make sense or Well, on on page three of our we have five specific areas that you're asking us to consider under one request. So I tend to like to pull them apart so that we know specifically how the planning commission reacted to each individual. But if you want the entire thing considered under a blanket then then we need to be told that as far as the agenda item is concerned for the petition itself. uh you would need to consider what was submitted which is the five different reasons under one single discussion and one single vote. There wouldn't be as far as what's on the agenda. There would not be the uh opportunity to kind of pick that apart and then vote on or discuss each individual. You want to treat that as one harmonious petition for purposes of your discussion and voting today. Whether or not you end up wanting additional details for each one of these

proposals, that can be considered as part of your discussion underneath the umbrella of that petition. So there's nothing that's stopping you from focusing on um one particular facet of the petition or not. But for purposes of your your action item today, you do want to consider that as one action item. Even though there are those five subp parts. Yes. Go ahead. Um that too would be my preference. Um it is one resoning request and uh if there are certain pieces of uh of the five, one of the five or two of the five that need additional comments or conditions or what have you that we clearly state which one that is so that that's part of the discussion. So, do we want to break it up into five different is we don't I think it's fine as one package. I think we need to then discuss if we're going to have a discussion each one of the five under under the heading of the of the general request like the very first uh listing on page three of uh parcel 006600470- 0. It doesn't look like there's any action that needs to be taken because it says that there's no change to that parcel. I think we just like that parcel is no action necessary.

Again, that to me is discussing each parcel individually and I do not feel we need to do that individually. Um that's that's just me. Um I'm waiting to hear from everyone else. I think that's what the uh attorney was saying as well. We we would not want to strike individual aspects of it just because though and make a good point with that particular parcel. Perhaps there's no discussion that needs to take place by this commission. But as far as deciding whether or not to grant this resoning, it still should be considered as part of that vote and decision that all of you are going to make. And part of the consideration is this is one of the five. It requires no change that can be involved in your discussion. But it is just one harmonious petition uh that we want to avoid striking any items from. Just because there's no discussion though because nothing's going to change with that particular parcel doesn't mean we want to remove that. We want to keep this all together. hands. Yes. Go ahead. Yeah. So, I think one of the things that I would say about striking these and moving them separately is that when we look at the diagram, I have no idea exactly what parcel the first one what it entails. I'm looking at the whole entirety. I would them all together. I I read it as one as well. So, we would like to just discuss the whole proposal as one proposal. Yes. Okay. Mr. Chairman, if I may, on um page six of your packet, the different parcels are numbered. If

you if the commissioners need to reference those individual parcels, you may want to use that each. The one on page seven, it's got the the conditional voting request. the current zoning number page six. Yeah, page six has the current zoning. Yep. And then it's talking about the the vote for the whole package is on page seven. Correct. We're changing the ones that we're um I move for the approval of resoning request RPZ25-00002. Second. It has been moved and seconded to approve the zoning request for RBZ 25002. Is there any more discussion that would like to take place? Commissioner. Yes. Um first of all, I want to thank the petitioner for the work that they've completed um on this application. I think they were very thorough. um we're not going to be able to please everyone, but I think we have made great strides at better understanding what we need to do as the petitioner because we're affiliated with BCU um to move this forward. Um I just want to highlight a few comments that were made about the cannabis manufacturing facility. If you um watch the past history of this planning commission, we've done our best not to approve um cannabis for the last two and a half years. Um it doesn't mean that we were not going to be able to do that in the future. It depends on the petition and everything like that. Most most of those applications are on the north side of Battle Creek. Um I hope that we will not see one in this area. I will say that. Um, I also feel that there needs

to be a continued discussion with the applicant about this piece of property because it is a valuable piece of property in in Battle Creek. Um, you look at the surrounding properties, they bought um the development and I think he's taken into consideration how we need to work together and that's very important. Um, with that being said, I will support it. Uh, I also want to offer to Sam Richards that we have additional property in Fort Kuster if you need additional development property. And that'll be it right now. Okay. Um, I would like to say uh thank you uh BCU for putting together a nice proposal like this. I hope the discussions keep going a little bit further to help with uh making it harmonious and and uh in the neighborhood and uh I think everything's been uh quite good at this point. I do I am excited about getting more housing in. I don't think it will affect the housing rates too much or anything at all. more like improve um or maybe I mean it's it's light industrial so you can get a lot of different types of uh businesses out there that aren't just like big construction concrete looking buildings and stuff. So, a lot of areas I've traveled through lately, they've been very harmonious with getting housing around some um smaller shipping centers or um just um like manufacturing for um automotive parts, little little things, nothing huge, where you'd have like lots of giant pickup or big trucks, more like pickup trucks working and helping in the area, make sure that they uh fit well with the neighborhood cons concept. Thank you. Okay. Any uh go ahead and call a vote, please. Commissioner Morris, favor.

Commissioner Dennison in favor. Mayor Bkey, yes. Commissioner Gray, yes. Commissioner Godfrey, yes. And Commissioner O'Donnell, yes. Okay. Now the uh petition has passed and now I will hand it back over to our chairman. All right. Thank you all. We will move on to old business. No old business. Okay. New business. No new business. Comments by the public. Any any any comments by the remaining public? Seeing none, I will go to comments by staff and commission members. Yes. I was wondering based on the comment of the people that live on Stone Jug Road if the city could take a have the engineering department take a look of that intersection of Stone Jug and Colombia with the sweep to the if they could there there are weather affected mirrors that can be erected so that somebody stopping at that intersection off of Stone Jug Road could look up at the mirror and see the traffic coming around that bend on Colombia. It might prove beneficial to the residents that live in that area. We we will absolutely bring that to the Department of Public Works to have them take a look at it. Thank you. All right. I think we got staff taking notes, Ted taking notes, mayor taking notes. Perfect. Uh any additional commissioner or staff comments? I have I have one too around

the sound study and I'm curious if we actually have had a sound study in the area or we'll actually plan to do it because it may not be as simple as sound insulation but at least understanding concerns of residents might be helpful. So, so strictly from the city's standpoint as far as the ordinance is concerned, there's no requirement in the zoning ordinance that that a sound study be conducted, but that would be up to to either the applicant or any future potential developer. Is there there in the past there has been work done in that area regarding that? Is there anything like is that shared? Is there anything that people can refer back to or is there anything from that that can be uh we we could take a look back. Um I'm not necessarily familiar with it, but I can um I would think somebody at public works would likely have access to that if study of that nature was done. So we can take a look at that. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Let me add there real quick if I could. Um you know, obviously we have done noise studies at the airport. Yeah. And that information is readily available. I think some of the issues that you heard today too might pertain more to whether or not, you know, a a private operation was a sound nuisance. for example, and they would be subject obviously to the same ordinances and laws that any other uh you know business or even residential user would be in the city of Battle Creek. Perfect. Thank you, Ted. All right. Any additional comments? All right. Seeing none, meeting adjourned. Thank you all.