Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. And welcome to the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting of August 5th, 2026. And we establish a quorum.

Yes, good evening, everyone. Mr. Payne? Here. Mr. Robertson?

Here.

Mr. Huff?

Here.

Mr. Karpner?

Here.

Mr. Swanson? Here. Mr. Lester? Here. Mr. Smith? Here. Mr. Gordon? Secretary Daley? Here. Mr. Chairman, please let the record reflect that seven members are present and we do have a quorum.

Thank you. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. All right. Has everybody had a chance to review and approve our agenda this evening?

Yes. Any changes to the agenda this evening? Can we make one amendment to the agenda? I think we need to add the approval of the minutes for our closed meeting on 7-21-26 that we had under the Open Meetings Act General Provision Article 3-30-305.

Second. I need to do a roll call.

No, you can do that. You're just revising the agenda right now.

We're just revising the agenda to put that on there, yeah. Okay. All in favor? Aye. All right. Any opposed? Okay. Agenda's revised.

So now you move into item number five, which is approval of the closed meeting minutes.

I move that we approve the minutes that I'm referencing. for the meeting held on 7 21 20 26. close meeting a second you can do a first vote for this too all in favor aye any opposed no okay accepted in for the minutes

Mike, if you would just sign that at your earliest convenience and return those meeting minutes to me, that would be great. I'll get those posted to the website tomorrow.

Yep, they'll be published and posted on the website. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Item number... Five. Just six now. Tony Town Comprehensive Plan Update, a 60-day review decision. And is Ethan here? There he is.

So just to tee this up a little bit, you heard an introduction on this at the last meeting. Ethan's going to run through some of the primary observations about the Tawny Town Plan, and this will be your opportunity to provide additional comments that you want to convey to the town. We'll put those into a letter adjoined with the staff comments on the plan and forward that on to the town and I believe we have at least one representative from the town here tonight you have any specific question I'm sorry the city not the town the city if you have any specific questions for for the town manager

evening everybody um it's going to be in front of you all again with this with this agenda item two weeks two weeks in a day after we had it in front of you um during our day meeting um so we what we want to focus on tonight um to kind of backtrack an overview we are in the 60-day review period for the city of tawny towns 2026 community comprehensive plan update We have until Friday, August 7th, to provide comments back. We've actually circulated the comprehensive plan around all county agencies to review and to solicit comments. And we have a large kind of draft comment memorandum that is currently being reviewed in the comprehensive planning division that we're going to send to the city before the end of the day on Friday to get them their comments. And if we have any kind of issues that we want to discuss tonight that you think are particularly important to relay to the city, we can put them in that comment letter before we send it out, obviously. So what we heard on July 21st, when we were in front of you last, we talked a lot about, um, the agricultural preservation program and how the administration of that program, um, impacts all of our municipalities across the county, but specifically in this instance, Tawny town, um, the interaction of, of agricultural preservation easements and the city's growth area, the growth area boundary. and the city itself. We talked a little bit about water recharge and water recharge easements within agricultural preservation easements as a tool to be collaborative in helping the city both in the past, present, and future with thinking about water allocation. In terms of, I know that at that July 21st meeting, you had asked us to look for a list of agricultural preservation easements in the county that have a water recharge element. We haven't done a comprehensive deep dive into that yet. We will provide that with you, you know, at some point here in the near future. And we'll also kind of provide that as it pertains to if there are any that are specific to the Tawny Town region and their aquifer. So in terms of coordination, um, we talked about that on July 21st as well, coordinating, um, uh, agricultural preservation easements, uh, with the city of tiny towns, future growth. We talked about how there was a recent example of an easement on the south side of town where, um, that kind of just right up against the growth area boundary and how that was coordinated with the town. Um, and we also talked about, um, the master plan and the master plan process and how this master plan process that we're currently going through gives us an opportunity. not only to look at everything, but to look at our AgPres program and how we kind of coordinate with our municipalities where they're looking to grow, where their growth area boundaries are, and making sure that we're coordinating with them closely. to as a reminder some of our most relevant sections i pointed this these out to you on july 21st as well the municipal growth element and water resources element i have printed copies of those here this evening just with me so i can reference if they if they come up those in my opinion were the two kind of most important elements from the county perspective that i was looking at to make sure i was scrutinizing and providing really constructive feedback and comments for the city But also there's other chapters of their comprehensive plan, the intergovernmental coordination chapter, community facilities and infrastructure. Actually up on the slide, the implementation steps here are from the community facilities and infrastructure piece. And if you see under goal number two, ensure adequate water sewer and storm water management capacity to support sustainable growth. A medium priority implementation step there is to coordinate with Carroll County to identify and secure groundwater recharge area beyond city limits. There's the exact kind of topic we talked about on July 21st. In addition to these chapters, some of the important themes we've talked about, agricultural preservation and groundwater recharge, but also Antrim Boulevard extension, which is the Tonytown bypass that came up in conversation at our last meeting and is an important topic. For an overview of the municipal growth elements, I provided this summary at our last meeting as well. This figure is taken directly from the plan. It's basically the summarized version and bullet points of that entire chapter. And kind of an important piece to think about here, for this comprehensive plan update for Tiny Town, but for all the municipalities whenever they do comprehensive planning updates, the water resources element and the municipal growth element They both ensure that jurisdictions plan for growth in ways that align with available water and wastewater capacity, protect water quality, and coordinate future annexations and development between the municipalities and the county. There's that kind of municipal and county coordination we're talking about. Some maps, these were also shown to you on July 21st as well. The map on the right is the future land use map that is kind of current in the final draft of Taneytown's Comprehensive Plan Update, and that red line is the kind of proposed conceptual alignment of Antrim Township Boulevard of the Taneytown Bypass, obviously, you know, subject to future changes and subject to the ability to actually potentially build that infrastructure out. You can see there's a lot of different colors and moving pieces on this particular map. Townie Town has a lot of medium density residential development. They have a pretty substantial commercial core and they have some industrially zoned areas too and some growth for industrially zoned property as well. So you reviewed, we talked about and you reviewed the Tonytown Comprehensive Plan in advance of this August 5th meeting. We are now before you today to solicit any comments, feedback, or any kind of important things that you thought about whenever you were reviewing the Tonytown Comprehensive Plan update and would like to discuss with staff. We will be preparing a letter which we already have in kind of a final draft form to then include your comments with to convey to the city your comments alongside all our county agency comments and we will be transmitting that letter here before the end of the week. So that's where we are today and we'll open it up for discussion for any of the important topics or anything that's on your mind as it relates to your review between July 21st and now of Tawny Town's plan.

First, I thought the plan is extremely well-written. It's a long plan. It's 120-some pages or whatever. 220-some. 220.

Yep.

So I congratulate everyone who worked on that and put that together. It's well-presented, well-written. One of the things I didn't see was one of my first meetings with the commission here four years ago, a little over four years ago, Tony Town was here presenting and the discussion was about water. I'll never forget it because there was a 12% waste factor in their water system. Because of the pipes. Because of the pipes. You remember too. Yes, sir. And I know they've addressed that. Because I've seen the construction on Main Street and you know all that kind of thing. What is that number now? Is it still thought to be 12%? Is it cut in half? What is it? Where is it?

I do not know specifically off the top of my head what that number would be. I know to kind of expand on this topic that Tonytown has really put a lot of emphasis on inflow and infiltration improvements in their wastewater system to improve the percentage of water going through their wastewater treatment plant that is just entering the system through old terracotta pipes and such. That would be a question that could be directly addressed in the water resources element but also potentially in our county water resources element as well. And it's obviously a question that we can relay back to the city to see if they've made progress on it.

I think that's worth mentioning in the plan. Because I would hope that there's been progress made. I didn't see any mention in the plan about needing to address that specifically. But I'd like to see a little look back and say, since whenever XX, the city has done X with a Y outcome.

And that's to the potable water system specifically, right, as opposed to the wastewater system?

Yeah, because the discussion was that heavy rains happen and the system can't handle it. The capacity that the terracotta system couldn't handle and there was a lot of waste and loss of water, and as we know in Carroll County, and you know from me personally, water is pretty critical. The other thing I thought, so that would be good, I think, to address, of the future land use map, there's a lot of ag in that future land use map, A colorful map. What percent of that is ag on that map?

I believe they break down percentages within the plan itself on... All of the categories that show up on this map on the left now in terms of what is currently open vacant or open agricultural land They may capture that in the plan not as it relates to this specific map but I believe I had a draft comment on something related to open urban land as it related to Bollinger Park in Tawny Town and some designations there, and I could go back and look at that specific chapter. Because that chapter, I think, broke down what was open, urban, vacant land currently, which I think a lot of it would qualify would be agricultural land that's currently within the growth boundary. And that's probably what you're referencing, right? Yes, exactly. Yeah, that would be, I would look back to that chapter and try to identify that and maybe ask Tony Town and try to relay that to them. There's a specific figure there.

Because that might not be usable in the future.

Yeah.

Yep. And then the, well, you mentioned it already, the water and ag pres easements. That's a pretty. A recharge. Yeah, that's an important piece of all this. And last for me, there's a lot of coordination between the city and the county. Who is that? relationship with, is it with you, Ethan, or is it, it's the staff and you, I mean, do you attend their meetings and, and all that kind of stuff to, to make sure that communication and coordination is, is happening?

Yes. Um, I am the County liaison planner for the city of Tawny town. And before me, um, there was, uh, Tiffany was in that role and some other folks within the comprehensive planning division, but that coordination goes on a kind of across all County departments as well. And across the department of, um, planning and land management as well so it's more than just the county liaison planner whoever that person is attending their planning commission meetings or council meetings um It's pretty far-reaching is what I was trying to say.

Okay, because there's a lot of action items here that we're going to require that, and for that to happen, that really needs to happen. And then there's also a lot of funding potentially here with the extension of Adrian Boulevard and so forth. And who writes those requests for grants?

I think it depends. I don't know, Daphne, do you have any kind of thoughts on?

It would all depend on what the grant is for and who's going to be the administrator of the grant. Probably I would imagine the town would have somebody do that for them. But if it's a grant that... returns to something that the county would be more involved in or that the county has some kind of um already participates in a certain program we might um have a bigger role in that yeah it all depends on what the actual grant is that we're talking about yeah michael you bring up a great point i mean one of the things we do the you know

we have all this information but i don't think at the end of the day we necessarily as a commission come up with a okay we think this year we ought to be going for this bypass and we would like to see our county's delegation our county as a whole really get behind this and Because we're paying taxes to the state, and we're not getting our fair share. Or maybe we are, right? I don't know. But let's go see what kind of state funding we can get for it. It could be a school. It could be whatever it is. But to your point, it could be sewer. It could be water. It could be this road. So once we prioritize, I think one of the things we can do as a commission is encourage our county commissioners, hey, we think this is important. And it would be important for you, I think, to tell us as the liaison, hey, this is becoming critical to the city. This needs to be the issue for 2027. Help us help them. Because, again, I think that's one of the things that we kind of heard in the economic development small group was there is coordination, but we could improve it. And I think that's one of the ways we might be able to improve it.

There's coordination, and then there's execution. We need to improve the execution, I think, in most of the county, I would say, and I think that's a fair statement. I mean, all these are worthy goals, but right now they're written on paper, and making them happen is where the rubber hits the road.

What I'd like to know is, what is the number one goal here? Because if you've been through Tauntington, during rush hour, I could mention one thing that would be a goal, and here's a question. If there's a bypass around Tawny Town, who's responsible for the funding of that bypass? Is that a state issue? Is that a municipal issue? Is that a county issue? Is it all of the above? And so I'd like to see some, maybe what is the top priority, If they put more development in, they're going to have to worry about the water and the water resources and all that. But still, if they wind up with locked up traffic control system up there which it's getting that to that point it is it's a kind of a mess up there and you know we missed a boat in the county here at different times by not pursuing bypasses where there should have been bypasses let's talk about Manchester So maybe let's not make that mistake there and maybe prioritize this and then see who's responsible for getting something like that done, which would alleviate a future problem or an existing problem that's what i'm sort of wondering about you know where do you attack this does it start at the city move to the county to the state then and then then how can we coordinate a delegate the delegation or somebody to help get this done and put a time frame on it yeah yeah i agree with you peter totally on this but i think that is a prime example of how we could all work together to get something done where there is an existing problem and a real problem.

I will say, I think, Ralph, one of the things you're saying here, too, is if we bring traffic, then we need water. So which do we do first? Do we do the water first, or do we do the road first? So, you know, it's kind of a chicken and egg thing. I think the city needs to tell us what their priority is, and then we need to, as a county, decide, okay, within all the priorities that we have, where does this rank, and how are we going to get them done? Right? Is that right?

I'd agree. Okay. Make things happen.

Just a couple of observations there based on this discussion. We did, you know, in review of this plan, we did kind of make comment back to the city or are going to about how The county included the Antrim Boulevard extension and a request for concept engineering in its FY2027 to 2032 consolidated transportation program, the CTP letter. And then in terms of projects and discussions, I believe in terms of the CIP, there's an agenda item on the August 18th agenda. Daphne, for the Planning Commission in terms of, and that's just an example of staff coordinating and bringing project ideas to the Planning Commission for discussion.

Yeah, we'll have a, we'd like to broach the subject of projects that you'd like to include or like to recommend for inclusion in the CIP. Interim Boulevard is kind of a tricky discussion because there's issues related to state ownership, developer funding for the construction of it. As Ethan noted, we're advocating for the state side of things to advance through the county's priority letter. So there's a lot of partnerships and conversations happening to try to get that moving forward, but there are also things that...

that the city needs to work through with respect to the the main development that is um is at the center of definitely they're the same issues that happened in hampstead and look what happened there we you know it was it was accomplished just didn't go far enough when he hit the next jurisdiction or the first jurisdiction i could say so that's that's what i'm getting at you have to you have to start somewhere and then keep pushing and pushing for it so that that the issues don't grow larger and larger until they're they're so large that you can't overcome them i think we're trying to do that on a lot of the things that we're looking at now in our comprehensive plan for the whole county Let's tackle these issues now before they get bigger. And I think this is one of them.

And just to clarify, are we definitely responsible for – I mean, I know we sign off on stuff all the time. But are we responsible for identifying – okay, we've heard from the various municipalities – We know what we think is critical. We've heard what they think is critical. Who decides what's on that list and how they're prioritized? Are we the ones who decide that?

On which list? On the CIP list?

Yeah. Are we supposed to prioritize that? Because right now we get information and we approve it.

Right.

But where does the priority come from?

This is the perfect lead-in for our discussion on the 18th because I think what we would like to do is begin engaging you earlier in the process so that you can have some more constructive input on those kinds of recommendations.

And just my last comment about that discussion about the bypass. Remember, Evapco, the largest employer up there, worldwide based in Tawny Town, huge company, 600 and some employees. That's who we do it for. I mean, let's say what it is. I mean, it's to make them happy. Certainly the traffic, the trucks, the things like that that go around the town, the noise, the, you know, keeping the town the same, you know, to what it's like now and all that kind of stuff is important. But it's really about ABAPCO, I think, when it gets down to it all, which is important, really important.

Yeah, and ABAPCO and FlowServe are both featured prominently and mentioned as important community features in the economic, I forget which section of the plan specifically, but throughout the plan, amongst other businesses in Tawny Town as well.

Yeah, you can't ignore those. Okay.

Any other comments?

Thank you, Ethan.

Yeah, thank you very much. I think I have what I need to... You need a motion to move this forward?

And a public comment first.

Oh, yeah, we should do that. All right. Any public comment? Seeing none. All right. So we need a motion to let Ethan continue his good work.

To convey his comments, I believe, to the town formally. Yes.

I move that we approve the City of Taneytown Comprehensive Plan update and move that forward as presented here today. I second.

So can I just make one clarification? You're not approving the update itself, but rather... directing staff to communicate your comments and concerns about the plan in the letter that is forwarded to the city.

As so amended by Daphne.

Right. Okay. I'll second both yours and Daphne's.

Roll call?

Yes. Mr. Lester?

Yes.

Mr. Robertson?

Yes.

Mr. Smith?

Yes.

Mr. Soyson?

Yes.

Mr. Gordon? Mr. Chairman, let the record reflect. We have six yays and zero nays.

OK. So passed. Congratulations. Good luck. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Good work. Okay. Item number seven, deferral code changes, self-service storage facilities and introduction. An overview of the recommendations from Michael Baker Consultants. It's one of our favorite topics.

So we're joined by Troy Trucks from Michael Baker International. It's a familiar face these days. Yes.

Welcome back. Good to be back.

Just to catch you all up, the presentation that you'll hear tonight is on the second use that Troy and his team have been digging into that are the subject of the deferrals in the Freedom Area. And this is on self-service storage facilities. So Troy is going to be here uh in two different phases the first is to share with you the findings from tasks one and two of their work and that is basically a review of our codes and some findings related to that as well as some kind of high level areas for recommendations to improve them. He'll be back next meeting on August 18th to present the first stab at those specific code amendments. And then we'll continue to revise those with you over the course of several meetings. So today is kind of the high level introduction to tee up the specific code amendment language that we'll start digging into on the 18th.

I have the floor then, okay. Thank you everybody. So just some background up slides. I believe you probably have these in front of you too, but if you had a chance to review, if not, some of the upfront, we thought it was important to provide some historical context of the involvement of storage facilities as approved or permitted under your zoning code. So prior to 2019, when the commercial two and commercial three zoning districts were created, as part of your comprehensive code rewrite, self-storage facilities at that time was called mini storage. That was allowed only in the business general BG zoning district. During the county, the zoning rewrite process, mini storage use was replaced with a new term called self-service storage facility, and the definition of that as it's in your code currently is in that red box. At the time, most existing storage facilities, in terms of their construction, were the typical drive-up, single-story, garage-style door. That was pervasive, right? But just like every other use, things evolve and change, and they get bigger and better. So accordingly, at that time, the Planning Commission recommended, as part of the code changes, that they be permitted by right in high intensity commercial districts, conditional use in the medium and density districts, and prohibited in the low intensity districts. Ultimately, through that process, the commissioners made self-service storage facilities a permitted use by right in both the C2 and C3, largely to avoid creating non-conforming uses because there were a number of those facilities already in place. But also, they were permitted or are permitted as a conditional use in your industrial one district. But only if located in the sustainable community and Finksburg is your only designated sustainable community there. They're also permitted by right in the I-1 district when they are incorporated into business industrial park and that was approved prior to April 1 2019 so as a separate individual use in the I-1 district they're not permitted but if they're part of that business industrial park they would be they're expressly prohibited in the I-1 zoning district and in the business parks in the C3 zoning district and And also too, some background information we pulled in, got some context from your county's Department of Economic Development. They have consistently opposed the allowance of these facilities in zones designated for industrial and employment uses because of the limited land space. So they'd rather, these are low employment operations. So I think that's a very wise kind of policy direction there.

just yes sir quick do you want to go through this or can we ask questions as we go which do you have absolute apps ask questions i'd be happy to so at one point did we not have c1 like a neighborhood did we not have a neighborhood commercial district kind of zoning

Yeah, prior to 2019, we only had two commercial districts. They were Business General and Business Neighborhood Retail.

Business Neighborhood Retail, that's what it was.

Business Neighborhood Retail was previously also known as Business Local, so depending on what date you're looking at things. But they were the... general and neighborhood retail which was smaller scale then in 2019 in accordance with the freedom plan and the amended County master plan the those districts were expanded to three commercial districts and this was when the zoning code was was basically redrafted. It was basically a complete rewrite of our zoning code, starting with the commercial and industrial districts. And as a result of going from two to three, everything that had been zoned to those business, general or business neighborhood retail, had to shift into the three new zoning districts.

Okay. Thank you. You're welcome, thank you. So, unintended consequences. So under this new self-service storage facility use and where they're permitted, et cetera, the Carroll Highland self-storage facility proposal revealed some unattended consequences to the way that the code was written and permitted and how those facilities were regulated or the lack of regulation. And what had happened is that, as you know, that particular proposal for that facility became the multi-story, more of a larger, big box type style. So the mini storage roll-up door was kind of, I think, was envisioned possibly when this code rewrite was done, as Daphne alluded to. That's what kind of set like, ah, we've got maybe some challenges here we need to address. And so, of course, the neighborhood residents came in, expressed concern, et cetera, as noted there on the screen. So with that background, in January 2024, the commissioners then held a public hearing on the changes to the bulk requirements in the commercial zones. And ultimately, PER PUBLIC CONCERN, THERE WAS A DEFERRAL, TEMPORARY DEFERRAL PLACED ON THIS PARTICULAR USE BACK IN DECEMBER. SO THAT'S WHAT LED TO US TO DO THIS EVALUATION. SO HOPEFULLY THAT'S SOME GOOD BACKGROUND CONTEXT TO HOW WE GOT HERE. SO GIVEN OUR TASKS, TASK ONE AND TASK TWO PRESENTATION TONIGHT, how the current, in terms of this use, how the current regulations in your code align with the adopted plans, then evaluate the consistency with best practices, and then Daphne said on the 18th, we're currently working through the third item here that will be coming before you on the 18th, is actually a specific code amendment recommendations. So the three plans, of course, are the County Master Plan, the Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan, and the Finksburg Corridor Plan. And relative to this use from a policy theme, economic development goals, what we kind of teased out here that was related to this particular use, We're related to economic development goals that prioritize employment, generating uses, and provide services and goods to residents. So I think that economic development department policy that I mentioned before aligns with that. And desire for placemaking and connectivity along commercial corridors. So from a design perspective, that's where that's coming in to this conversation. so when we reviewed chapter 155 and 158 some of the key findings of course kind of some known items here that we've talked about permitted by right in the c2 and c3 c3 zoning districts you now have this new defined use self-service storage facility inclusive of accessory outdoor storage of vehicles So as you know, these storage facilities have indoor and outdoor. So it included that. It also included retail use only if it's associated with the sale of products, like moving products, et cetera, boxes, tape, et cetera, but no other retail associated. But the regulations in the code are largely operational and functional based in terms of bulk and area. The only thing that regulates design is there's a specific standard where it says the front building facade shall be designed, constructed, and maintained to be visually compatible with the neighborhood and surrounding properties. I'VE BEEN AT THIS FOR TWO WEEKS STRAIGHT AND MY VOICE IS STARTING TO GO. I APOLOGIZE. I STARTED THE CRACK LAST NIGHT. I COULD HEAR IT. ISSUES IN DIRECTION WITH OUR REVIEW. SO THINGS THAT WE KIND OF FOCUSED OUR ATTENTION ON IS ENSURING THAT WE HAVE THE LOCATION OF THESE FACILITIES WHERE THEY'RE PERMITTED. COMPATIBILITY REQUIRES STRONGER DESIGN STANDARDS. AND THAT'S ONE THING THAT'S CLEARLY LACKING IN THE CODE THAT WE CAN MAKE IMPROVEMENTS ON. And it also related to gaps in those design standards in terms of the layout, the way that traffic and circulation, architectural quality, et cetera. And also keeping in mind that there are evolving trends. in terms of the roll up, drive up is still a use. You might have seen there's still brand new construction for those typical one story drive up. They're not as fancy or modern. They do have climate control, if you will, but the terms of size and scale, they're still relevant, if you will, both the one story and the larger big box ones. So some of our best practices we looked all over, if you will. So beginning with this, what these best practices demonstrate is that these examples demonstrate that this industry can meet local architectural design requirements. It's proven over and over and over again that if you require the design standards, these developers are accustomed to meeting those design standards. I drive down in Lancaster, PA, which I should have taken a picture. It's a classic case where they have no design standards in rural countryside Lancaster, PA, and it's a massive, massive U-Haul. And right behind it, silos. Beautiful farm country, and it's just totally out of context there. So that's a case where no design standards lead to whatever's being built as long as it's approved use or permitted use. Of course, these get sophisticated. Like that example has even, I think, solar panel coverings for kind of open but canopied storage, indoor storage, outdoor storage, all types of amenities, et cetera, associated with them. They're being strategically placed. I'll give you one example of a redevelopment of a former shopping center that is like the mixed use, reuse, adaptive reuse, what I think is positive. And such, the last two there, urban integration is a really good opportunity that I think we can consider and that's what we've looked at also in terms of your code amendments. So some of the examples here, a couple here are actually from Tennessee, where store local, Storage Bellevue in Bellevue, Tennessee. This is 72,000 square feet, and you can see it's designed to be like an office building. It has windows, treatments, front doors, but otherwise it says storage, you may not realize it's a storage facility. So some good kind of architectural detail here. They're regulated under this particular zoning code in Metro Nashville in Davidson County. It's permitted by right in the commercial zoning service zoning district. And if they're permitted by right, they obviously then have standards to achieve. So permitted by right, but they also have use standards. So in this case, many modern self-storage projects in this area use the specific plan zoning to allow for customized design. in site specific conditions. So it's not just, they actually have a lot more regulations backing up that use and I think that's what we want to kind of demonstrate in some of these other ones that compared us to other areas where we get these designs, Carroll County's code definitely has an opportunity to amend and add those types of design standards. Some of the things also evaluated here for Bellevue, this particular one, separation distance, minimum separation of 150 feet is not uncommon from any residential zoning district or residential structure. So they have that setback. The building heights you can see are regulated, also landscaping and buffering. even operations to ensure like for example loading and unloading is not facing any residential area so we have like a building that faces the the street frontage but you are trying to hide those operations from a visual perspective depending on the context that you're trying to treat that in again glazing and facades as you saw in that picture and of course environmental protection which you have really good storm water and fire protection standards here so that's not as much of a concern for carroll county on the environmental side Another example for store local, a really impressive building here. This is in horse country in Tennessee. As you can see, the design standards required them to develop this or build this, design this in the context of rural farm horse country. So this is really well done. I think it's interesting if you would kind of place yourself at the front door of that building at the front center, it's a massive structure. So just imagine a person standing there and how tall that is. It's massive. But again, it really fits into the context. You would assume it's a barn for horses otherwise. So again, what zoning was the store local storage on? So perfect segue to the next here. So this is a permitted use regulated under Gallatin zoning ordinance as a limited warehousing. That's how they define it, limited warehousing.

So that's their zoning designation?

That's correct. Their designation for the use is limited. So we call your self-service storage facility. Their use there that allows these facilities is called limited warehousing.

Okay, so what's next door?

Next door, that's a good question. This is actually here in the commercial general district. This is where that store local Gallatin is located.

So that's a commercial area. That's correct. Okay.

That's correct. I think that probably answers your question specifically, right? It's permitted by right. It has a building height of 60 feet. So I would assume that building's probably 60 feet, if you will. But also they have areas, other districts, as you can see, plan general commercial. industrial general, industrial restrictive. So they allow multiple, but again, I think the bottom line is it's either commercial or industrial areas where they're permitted in, okay? And then they also, of course, have applicable design standards and compatibility standards that obviously are getting that. I mean, you might have a great developer that actually has good intentions, but having design standards to meet those requirements is really necessary and appropriate. Oops, I'm sorry. okay this is the next one sorry I thought was it back again so this is out in King County Washington the city of Duval Duval is a very rural area in King County this is about a 90,000 square foot storage facility and again well designed you might have thought it was some type of commercial building or barn but it's a storage facility It's classified in their zoning code as a self-service storage use, permitted by right under the city's light industrial zoning district. Among the multiple purposes of that district, it also, interesting, in that industrial district, they also promote high-quality design that meets the rural context and character of the city of Duval. In their code, there's also specific guidelines and standards that include a requirement that new non-residential development should provide architectural variety, pedestrian scale, and features that enhance its connection to the natural environment. And also the last bullet there also includes standards that require building massing and composition. One specific requirement, a strong overall building composition along with a clear pattern of massing changes and modulation of building forms. is required to create interest to support the building's integration in the overall context. So if you go back to that picture, they've really done that. It's not just one block of a building. It actually has, you know, eaves and peaks. So it looks like a barn, some type of rural countryside barn structure, if you will. This is local. This is up in my backyard in Carlisle. This is actually in my township. I wanted to give you a couple examples of the traditional roll-up, drive-up types of units, and this is it. This building here was a former UPS office owned by a single landowner that has multiple commercial industrial developments at this intersection near Interstate 81. Thank you. But the bottom picture, aside from that building that he owns there, he converted that into the office now that services those storage facilities. And you can see they're traditional, aside from maybe some elevation change. There, if I can cut my pointer here, Second building here, there's an elevation change from this level to this level. So it's really kind of a two-story building. But one, this is just down a lower level. It's all for intensive purposes, all roll up. Very nice, well-designed for a storage facility. But I think it's another great example that these are very much still in existence. And I'll get to the reason why I'm showing that and the other larger big box ones. There's a reason that I think we have four in our amendments. Again, this is kind of quintessential. South Middleton Township, they actually regulate two types, mini storage slash self storage facility and just plain storage facility. One thing they really preclude, because we have a lot of warehouse trucking in our area, is that these facilities are not like transportation distribution type facilities. So that's clearly written into the code. We only allow them in the industrial and our airport development zones. if you will. One thing we wanted to bring up too is that making sure in terms of regulations that we don't allow these types of uses to become what's called contractor bays, where contractors are having, storing all the materials there, they're having almost like Home Depot style delivery, pickup delivery, or even actual fabrication going on. So that's really what this slide is getting at. And this little side-by-side chart I thought was a pretty good side-by-side comparison between self-storage and contractor bay. So one thing we think about your regulations is to make sure that we're prohibiting those types of uses in these facilities. Another example, this is a Mechanicsburg PA. I think this is really interesting. It's like a live-work type situation. A lot of times, or a number of times, I don't know if it's still prevalent, but in this case, this is very much an active prime storage is the developer that owns and manages. That building is actually a residential house. So the manager of that facility lives there. So they're on-site manager. It's not common, but it's a possibility to think about. These are all drive-up facilities, indoor and outdoor. It's not multi-story itself. The only multi-story part of it is that building, the office and the manager's residence. There's also outdoor storage included here. This is under the Hampton Township zoning ordinance. Again, they call it self-service storage facility. Just picking out, it's in the commercial district, commercial limited. That particular district also allows for residential uses, interesting enough. So getting that live-work type of unit in there, I think, is where that's allowed. And you can see some different types of regulations for building height, buffer yard, and also off-street parking area. Especially the outdoor storage would be considered the off-street parking. Definitely requires the vegetative buffer screening for that. Redevelopment. So this is the one also in Carlisle, South Middleton Township. This is the former Kmart shopping plaza. 143,000 square foot Kmart. Wow. Huge building, kind of like the monstrosity of like, what do we do with this thing? so ironically I sit on my planning commission here and we were trying to be proactive to say the what-if scenario writing is on the wall Kmart's are shutting down we don't have a plan for any of this area of what we want to see happen and the time we were doing the master plan U-Haul came about And for good or bad, they actually bought the facility, so we worked with them and they readapted it. So you can see it actually works out pretty well in this area. Further down the street is a Planet Fitness, but across the street is an historic structure, the Two Mile House, and nearby is now hundreds of acres of redevelopment, mixed-use redevelopment through this master plan that we did that's occurring. So it actually works out pretty well, but I just wanted to show you adaptive reuse. You might anticipate in your commercial corridors, there might be opportunity where you try to encourage these types of uses for an adaptive use or encourage mixed use in of themselves going forward. So market trends that we looked at, there's definitely growth in demand. It might be leveling off a little bit, but as we get more stuff, as we downsize, et cetera, we like to hold on to our stuff and we need places to store the stuff. Oftentimes our garages are our own self-storage facility, right, and cars are parked outside. That U-Haul back here is right around the corner is a ton of apartment buildings. So it's a perfect location for easy access. The Carlisle War College is right there, so it gets a lot of use in that respect. I think that talks about the adaptive reuse and design. Drive up versus indoor storage development is definitely still in play in terms of both types of uses. Growing preference for the climate control. These rec RV and boat storage is something that we have to think about. It's almost a necessity for every type of storage facility these days. And then placement, strategic placement and mixed use opportunities. Again, if you're allowing these in your commercial corridors, I think that's a perfect type of topic. So I'll try to get through these pretty efficiently in a high level. These are our basis of kind of the policy recommendations that you're going to see in more detail here on the 18th coming up. uh... but first and foremost refined the permitted uses uses in approval process we would definitely recommend and we're working with staff already on our draft you should have uh... a differentiate the uses instead of just a self-service storage facility you should differentiate them as a single story drive up facility and then also a multi internal uh... use facility so we actually have proposing two separate types of uses, two separate styles of development, and also suggestions on where do you allow them based on intensity and density of those types of developments. uh... adopt clear objective design standards i think in some of the best practice examples that's pretty evident uh... again uh... the bottom line is you only have that really one facade design requirement i think we can do better and we have a lot more uh... to offer up and suggest uh... through the amendments i think it comes down to having that balance we talked about with age restricted housing before having that balance of how much you want to require and to get out to the design achievements and impacts and lessen the impacts on development in that corridor. Plus any type of corridor plan you're doing, what's the future vision for that corridor and how do you want to see that possibly change in terms of adaptive reuse? That master plan that we did was a commercial corridor between Carlisle running out of Carlisle Borough into South Middleton Township. It's been like that since the 60s. They said, this has got to stop. It's all commercial, and we need to start to have a different vision for that corridor. One interesting thing here, your design architectural review committee, DARK, this is a good opportunity, again, to have them heighten their kind of review process when we have these types of design standards that are being recommended. Again, continue on with these design standards, some additional topics and how you place the buildings and lessen really the impact on the neighboring residential or other developments here. Site design and access management standards. Certainly, you know, the in and out of the users of these facilities isn't as demanding as like a shopping center or a Lowe's or something like that. But certainly we need to be cognizant of how people enter because they're usually gated, secure gated type facilities. And if you've got big moving trucks coming in, what the safety issues are of getting them off the main highway and into these and out of these types of facilities. Size and scale definitely is something that we've looked at and have recommendations for in the amendments. And then just basically encouraging higher quality for your development overall. This might be a good kind of theme when you think about overall development. A lot of communities are requiring it. If you don't require it, you're not going to have it happen. But if you want to see higher quality development, it's an opportune time to start to integrate those requirements in those amendments. So the next steps, like Daphne said, we have drafted already up our Task 3 code amendments. We're working with staff on those already, and then those will be presented to you starting on August 18th. So, Daphne, did I miss anything?

I don't think so.

I have a question. The examples of Sherlock and the store local, Were any of those facilities right up next to residential development? Yeah, the pre-existing, pre-existing residential.

This one right here for sure. It's right in the city of, in this case, Bellevue. It's right in the city. There's residential around it. So yeah, for sure. And then this building, to go a little bit further, To add this, right across the street is a huge mixed-use center being developed. But that's after the fact. Yep, and right behind this is a huge residential development that's already, the ground's already broken for it. So again, these are kind of, you really don't notice that this is there, and I think that's the whole point, that these types of buildings, if you would look at them, and if you'd have residential or non-commercial, non-industrial development around, They really are meeting the requirements that they're sensitive to their environment. I mean, honestly, I would have to admit, if we just use the bright colors of this, this is right along somewhat of a commercial corridor but there's residences you know older residential houses like probably back in the 60s small like single-story cottage style homes that were built back in that along the trindle road corridor coming out again this was right across right by the naval supply depot so you think about all the homes that were developed there and then this if you step back and look at that last picture this one right here and you would be standing in the residential area

Would that building overwhelm anything in that residential area?

Not at all.

See, I think our problem here is not what we're dealing with, but where we're dealing with it. It's not what but where.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I think that's exactly right. I mean, if you would put just in like an industrial district and where you have a lot of massive buildings, a lot of traffic, you would expect that. Should you include high-end design standards? Maybe not. Maybe not. That may not be what you're looking for. But I think you're exactly right. When you think about if you're placing a warehouse-style building right adjacent to an established residential neighborhood, and it's right there. I mean, it's budding. I'm not trying to point out the obvious, but it's literally right there. So it's your backyard or your front yard, however those houses are facing. It's literally, and so if you'd have something that would be smaller, that would be screened and not taller like this facility, with the exception of maybe, and that building along 26, probably wouldn't stand out. It might fit along with that corridor, and behind that, which is what that is, the one-story mini storage, it would be, and you'd screen it, you wouldn't know it's there. You'd see that building, which I think is actually fairly well designed. It's a masonry building, metal roof building, pitched roof building. You don't know that's a storage facility at all until you see those buildings on the top screen.

Yeah, I think our issue here is that we somehow, somewhere, I think we've missed an opportunity or we messed up by consolidating some commercial uses. And by that, what I mean to say is... When there's a piece of property that's zoned commercial, and it's either C2 or C3, and there's no allowance for something of a neighborhood commercial use, and I would define that property as potentially located on an intersection that's high-trafficked. It could be an infill intersection. But it's adjacent to residential. There's not a whole lot of depth to the property because there used to be a home there when the property was residential. And it's one thing to put a dental office there. And frankly, let's suppose that no one is interested in building an outstorage a storage facility. I think we'd have pushback if checkers came in and people were ordering milkshakes at 11 o'clock at night. That's still permitted on that C2 property. I think the issue is we need to have an allowance for a zoning... a zoning category for neighborhood, commercial uses that are compatible with existing neighborhoods. Like somebody wanted to put a business that operates basically from eight to six. But again, I think we gotta be careful what we wish for here. We solved this issue. which is we put design standards on a storage facility and they come back and they say, hey, we're gonna do everything you wanted. This is gonna be so well landscaped, it's gonna be two stories high. We're gonna limit access. They can't use their cards after 10 p.m. We've done everything you guys have asked for. You know, I'm not sure that would be great either. And so if they go away and somebody comes back and puts a checkers in, I think we still have the same problem. Because we've got hours of use, we've got traffic. It's one thing to have a dental office there or an architect, a surveying company or something like that. It's another thing to have something that is commercial and hours of operation or...

yeah if i may on the other end of 26 going out towards um i can't forgive me but there is office building service office buildings that are brown brick on the right hand side going towards frederick just on that same corridor and i can't remember but what you're saying if you would take a drive there i've noticed those buildings and they're like a professional office maybe there's a realtor there um it's on the other other end

There's a LabCorp.

Yeah, I think you guys know what I'm talking about. In my mind, those types of daytime service uses, professional offices, they call it FIRE. Finance, insurance, real estate, those types of uses, dry cleaner. Honestly, I think those are well designed. They're kind of attractive professional office buildings. And they're compatible. To me, I think that's where you're coming from. That's the compatible use that you're looking for to be on that type of corridor. It's not a big box, you know, high story building corridor at all. It's an older corridor with older uses, and I think that's one of the uses that I think is well designed.

Again, I think we're missing a classification. from a zoning standpoint that is commercial, but it's compatible with neighborhoods, existing neighborhoods. And that's, I'm sorry, go ahead.

So you have the commercial one, the C1 zoning district, which I don't have the specifics about what's allowed in there versus... C2, but we do still have one less intense zoning district. I apologize.

I didn't review it. I should have when I moved it. That's why I asked it at the outset, because we used to have something, some neighborhood designation that I can't recall what we called it. But frankly, it was my recollection that the site we're dealing with where the Salerno property It is now, they're proposing the commercial, the property that's owned partly commercial and partially residential that we were talking about last time we met.

Oh yeah, uh-huh.

I thought that was a neighborhood retail. I thought that was a neighborhood retail or something like that. That's what I was told years ago. This is 10 years ago, Daphne. And I'm probably, you know, I'm a senior citizen now, so my memory's probably not what it should be. But I'm thinking we're missing something here in terms of, and I think what these properties are zoned in this stretch, specifically what we're talking about, and I think there's some other things that we should look at too, where I think it's an error how it's been zoned, because I don't think the depth there is for heavy commercial. I agree.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I think that, I mean, certainly that's the feedback that we got from the citizens and the neighborhood down there about what we're talking about. And, you know, it all came down to height. You know, the thing is a monster structure. It was 45 feet tall. And I don't think that included the peak. It could be higher, I think, or maybe not. But it sits up on a hill.

It's height, it's hours of use, it's amount of traffic.

And it's the setback. I mean, you know, 20 feet, 10 feet, 50 feet, whatever, away from your property line, and you walk out in your backyard and you see a... monster building so I think there's ways to address that the storage facilities and neighborhoods I think Troy's given some good examples here the flat might be it changing the code altogether might be it Reducing the height. And certainly in all of them, I think that design standard has to be front and center on any of these that are close to a neighborhood. And even these examples that you're showing, they're not all in neighborhoods. They just made the choice to make them look nice, and they do look nice. So I think design standards are front and center as well. So yeah, so the code that you're writing and looking at and all that, I'm sure we'll incorporate all those things.

Yeah, we've tried to, because we have two different, the drive-ups type of use, we've recommended that we differentiate those uses, which we've done, and also which districts they should be permitted in. And definitely, added design criteria to that as kind of a nutshell of what you should expect.

And the other point is that there's, this is a growing segment. The growth in storage facilities is, it's real and it's on a trajectory.

Yeah, if you have a chance, if you're up in, that one in Lancaster, I've never seen one so huge. It is massive. It's probably, I bet it's 70 feet tall. I've never seen one that big. It's on steroids, and it's a U-Haul. I'm not trying to say, but it's just that's the brand, and it is massive.

The other thing is the examples here, to be fair with what we're dealing with, these are huge parcels, huge lots. That's right.

There's a scale that we're missing here.

Yeah, there's a scale piece here. So, yeah, I mean, it doesn't even compare to what we're attempting to deal with here currently. In the future, yes, potentially, but currently, I don't know. Okay. Thank you, Troy. Any other comments from here? Questions? Any public comment? Public comment. Wait a minute, I've got to read my little script here. Speakers must sign in to make public comment in the back if you haven't done so already. State your name, address, and talk into the microphone to facilitate audio and video recording. comments will be strictly limited to three minutes per speaker citizen testimony is not a Q&A session questions may be directed to staff after the meeting if any individual fails to comply with these rules the Planning and Zoning Commission chair may call the person out of order and may require him or her to leave the meeting floor is yours thank you so much my name is Kathy Martin I live 6405 Locust Lane in Sykesville Locust Lane

exits and enters on Liberty Road across from Carroll Highland. So I'm interested in this conversation. This is the second time I've actually heard this presentation. I heard it when the gentleman gave the presentation to the county commissioners, but it does help to hear things the second time. I'm just here to reiterate the themes about the zoning that I have taken from this presentation. One is that we need a vision for our community. And I hope to work on that in the future. Number two is appropriate zoning. I've taken note of the various types of zoning, light industrial, C3, industrial, airport, the appropriate zoning for this type of building structure. One of the setbacks was 150 feet minimum. What we're talking about Carroll Highlands is 20 feet. The design, the visual appeal, the appearance and the use of different materials also traffic so thinking about big moving trucks moving in and off of these properties as well as you know just the general traffic concerns and failure of our intersections in some of our communities already and then my last minute I'm going to say I did just get back from a vacation in West Denver and was immediately struck by the beauty of their buildings, the use of color, materials, the theme of exterior appeal and a coherence within from one community to the next, signage, clarity. I mean, I'm driving there. I've never been there before in my life. clarity of signage. All of those things are what I wish for our county and we have a long way to go on that. It looks more like a haphazard array of buildings and structures and ingress and egress. So I know what it can look like if we have vision and that's why I put vision at the top of my list because I think vision kind of incorporates all of these things that we are talking about today. And I hope to positively impact that in my community. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Any other public comment? We might see some hands. Here we go.

Good evening, my name is Audrey Novak. I live at 6505 Carroll Highlands Road. I'm two doors away from the proposed development. If I can just say something to Kathy that was just here, I know a quote from Helen Keller. Helen Keller said, she was asked at one time, what's the worst part of not having her sight? She said, the worst part of not, worse than not having sight is not having vision, so that, I looked back at some of the happenings that have happened over the past few years. Back in March, excuse me, May 4th of 2023, the attorney that our community had hired to look into this issue, she spoke to the commissioners and she suggested a moratorium on the uses and to study the issue to balance the interests of all parties. So we're finally here, almost two years later. I'd like to review all of the events that we've all been through. Back to the that's brought us back, rather, to the Planning Commission. But it would be a three-hour movie like the Odyssey, and our journey would be like Odysseus. Twice our community, and you know this, twice our community rallied at a capacity crowd town hall held by Commissioner Rothstein, where the only person in attendance was in favor of the Carroll Highlands storage project. The only person was the developer. since then it's been discussed multiple times by you all and by the county commissioners and looking I looked back at the minutes and I looked back at the videos and it seems to me that many of the concerns of the community as well as members of our Commission have been disregarded and the only focus has been on height and setback I have a different I wrote this before I came here tonight, but I have a different feeling. I feel from the comments you all have made that you have heard us, but by the time they filter down to actual judgments or decisions by the commissioners, it's heightened setback. Mr. Lester, in one of the meetings you had mentioned that commercial development does not bring employment opportunity and that was mentioned tonight to our community. And you also had concerns at one of the planning meetings about fire safety with the close proximity to residential community. Mr. Robertson, you felt that protecting the existing community is important. And you also raised the question about grandfathering. And the attorney in attendance at that meeting said that projects would only be vested if dirt was moved. Was that my three minutes? Yes, ma'am. OK. I do want to make one important comment. the fact that the final plans for this project were submitted on March 27th in spite of the deferral it seems to me that that's a complete disregard of the intent of the deferral and also I want to point out that it seems more than a coincidence that in May a large contribution was made to a campaign fund of one of our commissioners by a Florida developer of the Carroll Highlands storage project And also in May, another contribution was made by a company who specializes in storage facilities. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any more public comment? Hello?

Nancy Lynch, 6503 Carroll Highlands Road, immediately adjacent to the site. I've spoken to many of you many times before. I just want to thank the consultant for bringing up a lot of the things that we've been talking about for over the years. We really do appreciate the fact that some of your examples talk about a setback. The one that, actually the one in Bellevue, Tennessee has an ordinance that requires a separation of 150 feet from residential. Now, I know you increased the setback during that bulk requirement change from 10 to 15 feet with a sliding scale. So the building itself, if it goes forward, is going to be, I think, about 35 feet from our property line. But on the final site plan, there's a line right on our property line called limits of disturbance. I looked it up it's the this is not exact but the outer boundary line on a construction site plan that shows exactly where land will be disturbed we're grading excavating equipment traffic stockpiling soil will occur this is just feet from our house it's right on our property line And we just can't imagine a year plus of construction of an 89,000 square foot building, almost the size of a football field, that close to our house. Thank you.

Any additional public comment?

Hi, I'm Sarah Penn. I live directly behind the proposed storage facility. I am at the bottom of the hill. And I can show you images of the drawing that the developer has provided where it quite literally just towers over my hill. If you're a Lord of the Rings fan, you could be walking up to Mordor. If you've ever seen a cruise ship in person, that's sort of what it looks like when you're standing next to it as a person. it is massive there are still three existing homes on that property I want to make that very very clear the three homes that were there are still there one of them was lived in when I purchased my home in 2018 I can't tell you the amount of stress that this has caused me in the last five, six years that we've been fighting this. The original plans had a road through my house. There is still a road potentially through my house that's on the plans that they are grading for. there's two other storage facilities planned for the eldersburg area i'm not sure if you're aware of that so we would have three potentially of the very large ones and then three of the drive-ups in our little small town um i don't think that um what was the woman's name that used to work for carroll county that said that they didn't even look at the site what was her name Yes, Linda Eisenberg sat in a meeting with all of us and said, we didn't look at the site. It's on Liberty Road. It's commercial. But that's just simply not the case. It is a very small neighborhood. There's like 10 or 11 houses on my street. My neighbors came over on Saturday night, and we laid in our little fake pool in the backyard, and we put up a pop-up film screen, and our 10, 12, and 14-year-olds laid in the pool watching the movie theater We watched Finding Nemo, which isn't gonna be possible if that storage unit goes up, because I'm not gonna have any darkness. I'm not gonna have any sunsets. I'm not gonna have any fireflies. I'm not gonna have anything. that I've worked so hard for. So I really appreciate you guys taking the time to look at this and listen to the community and I hope that we can make changes that benefit all of us because we want to keep Carroll a community that we're proud of. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comment?

i know i'm not the public but i just want to thank all of you for listening and i want to thank these guys who are here looking at the whole corridor and this is meeting number 27 i think for this group they've been at 27 meetings over the last few years big meetings little meetings heartbreaking meetings, and I think we're finally getting some solutions. And I thank Troy and all of you guys because these people care about their homes too. And we want to make, I think we have some visionaries here, people want to be involved in these conversations. I'm so grateful to all of you for understanding it's been a long road, but we have a new road ahead of us, and I think everybody's on the right track, and hopefully everybody can make out well, and we'll have some very positive comments, and I want to apologize to you all for what you've been through, the amount of anguish and time, and hopefully I'll be worth it in the end, and we're going to have a bigger and greater vision for our whole area, and it's all going to come out positive, and I thank you all for it. And I thank you for coming out today and seeing it in person. You cannot make a decision on things from a piece of paper. And seeing stuff in reality really makes a big difference. So we thank you, and I thank you guys.

Thank you.

Any other public comment?

Okay.

So, Troy, I think we'll see you on August 18th?

Correct.

Okay.

Well, thank you. Thank you again. Thank you very much.

All right. Item number eight, Freedom Small Area Plan Amendment Introduction. DRS Consultants, Downtown Redevelopment Services, right? DRS. You guys are going to lead a discussion with us related to a possible amendment to the Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan.

So let me just tee this one up as well. So I believe we've given you kind of a high level perspective on the small area plan amendment that we're currently engaged with downtown redevelopment services to conduct for the Freedom area. This is focused on the commercial core of Freedom and looking at a few things that are sort of related to some of the things that we were just talking about with self-storage. And that is trying to assess whether the, uh, land use designations that were part of that were adopted as part of the 2018 freedom plan are the right designations based on current, uh, conditions there. So, uh, we've engaged ERS to help us with that, um, that assessment. and also to look at the potential creation of an overlay zoning district for parts of that commercial core in the freedom area that would help to address some of the community's concerns related to the creating a sense of place, creating a high level of quality and aesthetics in that area. And these are all recommendations that are coming out of the 2018 Freedom Plan. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Nathan and Ben, if you guys wanna just introduce yourself and then take us through your presentation.

Good evening, everyone. Good to see some of you again. Don't get tired of us. You'll be seeing us some more over the next few months. But my name's Nathan. For those of you who haven't met, I'm planning lead for Downtown Redevelopment Services and the project manager.

My name is Ben Levenger. I'm the president of Downtown Redevelopment Services.

So tonight we'll be going through this presentation. It is meant to be interactive. There is a worksheet that you should have in front of you. We don't need to collect this immediately after this one.

The vertical one is your worksheet.

But you can get it back to staff. You can get it to us. We can coordinate later on how to get that.

This is the second homework you've given us.

Lots of homework. So we'll be talking through some of the items, but as we talk through it, you're welcome to just ask questions, have conversation back and forth. But for those of you, if you just want to take notes, provide feedback as you think through these items, you can get these to us later at a later time. Not all the things will come to you immediately. You can take the next few days to go through it. So, as Daphne mentioned, the purpose of the project is to really build upon the 2018 plan, looking at what the current conditions are, both in terms of how development has changed, as well as the market, for a variety of uses and looking at those designated land uses for the corridor and making sure that they're accurate to what is needed today. If there are amendments that are needed making those amendments So this includes not only things like the storage unit that we just heard about that's on this corridor But other things like strip commercial development big box commercial any residential development that may occur throughout that entire corridor and So we'll evaluate how the corridor has changed over the past eight years and identify any priorities for future redevelopment. We're going to identify where redevelopment should occur, what various types of redevelopment, where those should occur, whether it be commercial or residential or light industrial for those portions of the city area. And then we'll prepare an overlay zoning district if that's applicable to apply sort of those redevelopment standards and design standards. So just to visualize the map, we have the broader freedom area and then we have the study area, which is really focused on the commercial area, generally along 26, but also a stretch of 32 as well. So it's a much tighter area, which is the commercial core of the broader freedom area. Just to overview the existing conditions, this is just one of the many maps that we'll have in our final report. It highlights the plethora of parking lots in the area, which is symbolic of the big box commercial that's in the area. But the household incomes in this area are 20% higher than the county's which really supports that commercial development A lot of the big bucks commercial and strip commercial was developed in the later 20th century So you start to see redevelopment opportunities For some of those sites as we talked about today on the site tour. There are some opportunities for gradual redevelopment Traffic has slightly increased as the population's grown in the areas. The area's generally built out. There are a few parcels that we've talked about that are primed for development, also some redevelopment as the sites age. And then there's limited housing diversity in the broader area with a little bit of multifamily, but it's generally single family, which is consistent with the character of the Freedom Area. In terms of the market conditions, the population is expected to continue to grow, as well as supporting the commercial development that's occurred. The trade area, looking at the image on the left, the 15-minute trade area which we've established, goes nearly to Owings Mills on the eastern portion, which is the largest population center, really touching those trade areas. these were established to identify areas of draw for eldersburg without them then going to larger shopping and employment centers so the 23 000 units in that trade area high home ownership rate which is really commendable it's great to have areas of wealth building opportunity for people looking to establish families The apartment market's pretty slim, only a 4% vacancy, so strong demand there with just a few units compared to the overall number of households. Median home prices are relatively high, approaching 600,000 according to sales data. And then commercial vacancy rates, both in retail and restaurant and office, are quite low. So sub 5%, that's just natural flux as tenants change in and out. So there's a strong demand for additional commercial development. And then the last figure there, nearly 2,000 businesses in the Freedom area. So strong employment center underscoring that. So as this study area continues to redevelop, there are five key things that will influence redevelopment. One's property ownership. If the property owner is wanting to redevelop at all, that's ultimately what drives the redevelopment. Obviously, they have what they're allowed by right to do, conditionally allowed. But if the property owner does or does not want to redevelop, that's their call, and that's the number one thing that will impact it. The next is infrastructure capacity, making sure that there's not only enough utilities, water and sewer, but also making sure that the roads can support it in terms of traffic capacity, access, things like that. Going into that access and circulation, one of the key things that we've heard through our conversations with staff and elected officials as well as from the 2018 plan is that there are a lot of curb cuts along 26. So just having curb cut after curb cut right next to each other creates access challenges. It also creates a lot of conflict points. So the more curb cuts there are throughout the corridor, the more opportunities there are for people to Turn left out of a parking lot onto 26. It's dangerous I did it today and it's not it's not the safest thing to do it probably even more so at 5 p.m Or a rush hour when that that quarter gets quite busy Neighborhood compatibility is a big theme throughout this planning process, making sure that any new commercial development that does occur is compatible with adjacent residential. As we'll talk about in a minute, some of the lots throughout this corridor are quite shallow There are some deeper parcels, for example, like the Walmart. Those are generally the ones that are marked for commercial heavy on the designated land uses, but there are also a lot of really shallow lots, too. Typically, these are ones that were formerly homes and have redeveloped over time, but that does create challenges for providing access as well as transitioning to adjacent residential. And then just redevelopment feasibility with market conditions, market rents, that'll determine what can be built and construction costs. So it's just a numbers game to make sure that the market rents that these spaces go for can be built with the high construction costs keep going up. So just making sure that what is allowed is actually feasible. So this is the beginning of your handout here, your homework. You don't need to fill it all right now, but we'll go over what has changed since the 2018 plan. And then there are some questions that we'll go through. So the 2018 plan for this area really focused on business growth, investment in stronger commercial areas. Since then, the area's seen some new development. Not a whole lot, but some infill over time, making redevelopment of those existing sites a higher priority, as well as some infill of outlots and things of that nature. As we talked about retail restaurants and services an office continue to experience high demand So it's only going to continue to make those development pressures more salient And then those commercial buildings and shopping centers are aging and either will require renovations or reinvestment to redevelop as the property under sees fit So one of the things and we can either talk about it now or you can write it down One of our first two questions are which economic development priorities from the 2018 plan should remain unchanged And are there new periods or opportunities that should be addressed? So that's on the first page right here Would y'all prefer that we get to the end and have conversation or discuss it throughout chime in as we go or

Let's do it, each one. Each one, one at a time? Yeah. Let's do that. Okay.

Whoever would like to go first.

Okay. Don't rush to answer. I think the focus on business growth still, we need that commercial growth because of keeping the tax base – As stable as we can, that's critically important. And historically commercial property availability in a county is low, lower than any other that's around the county. So I think that's really important. And then I'm interested in about this redevelopment. Is that saying if there's an opportunity for an existing business closes shop, when you say redevelopment, is it changing that site and redeveloping it into something more?

Modern time so there's there's a variety of things that can happen in terms of redevelopment. There's adaptive reuse which is reusing the same structure Just that's more so change of views that might require some additional build-out There's all there's varying degrees of adaptive reuse there's Infill, so let's say some of the shopping centers primarily one example that comes to mind is just outside of HomeGoods, I think it is, where there's some outlots next to Wawa. And those are primed for infill, doing some infill strip commercial right along 26, where that parking lot is not really utilized to its fullest degree. And then there's also redevelopment entirely. So if there's a more economically productive use of some of those shopping centers as shopping centers, continues to trend online, if a property owner finds it more feasible to do something else with that property, what does entire redevelopment of a big box commercial site look like?

I'll take a second here to say that in the 2018 plan, redevelopment was focusing on how do you maximize the spaces that are already redeveloped or already developed and how do you fill in as a way to preserve the other spaces and surrounding neighborhoods that are already existing around it. So redevelopment, as Nathan had said, is not just about continuing to sprawl. Sometimes it is about filling in and making the best use of the land. And that's kind of where the 2018 plan was focusing, was how do you maximize your use as opposed to continuing to just grow?

And, you know, we've actually seen some pretty good redevelopment in Freedom with, you know, you all remember the mall that was there with Kmart and it's now the Walmart Supercenter. That was terrific, you know, redevelopment of what was People's at one end and that sad little mall that we had for a long time. And then when Walmart moved out of the old Walmart, those guys came back in and redeveloped that in a way that i think was was very productive for the community and so um and and again this is before most of us were on this playing a zoning commission so whatever part you know, the staff had and our predecessors had in getting all that done, it's been all beneficial to Eldersburg, those two things specifically, because, you know, HomeGoods, Michaels, that pet store that's there, those were all not there six, seven years ago.

Right. Okay.

Any other comments on economic development?

Well, the other comment was, especially from economic development, was to leave industrial alone. You know, that what we have, don't try to diminish it in any way.

Is there a reason here that... We don't have that much.

One percent.

Yeah.

The statistics that you put here, there are a lot of things that are going well down in that area. But I think one of our challenges is that if we get into redevelopment, that we have a product that's better than what was there. think that's one of our biggest challenges here so you know how can we how can we lure better businesses so that we don't have a whole string of just say fast-food restaurants and that's all it is I'd like to see us have a plan that entices something maybe better than that I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the fast food restaurant. We all used it, used them. But if redevelopment does occur, I think we always want to be cognizant that we want to try to make that corridor, that neighborhood look better. One thing that bothers me more than anything down there is The lack is the curb that you mentioned.

Curb cuts.

So many of them that it just seems like one of our priorities, again, I sound like the broken record of Tawny Town, but how can we put enough pressure on the right authorities to improve that corridor as far as traffic? then that would make redevelopment so much better and easier for everyone. Consolidating curb cuts? Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Can we go back to your original? And you talked about it today. I was on that. You talked about there are so many pre-existing rights that are down there. So maybe we need to kind of study what can and can't be done and make sure we understand that as much as anything. How do we redevelop a shopping center parking area that only half of it is used? That was one of the best ideas I heard about. You'll probably talk about that later on here. so you're on the right track here i really believe you are but i think what we need to be most concerned about is what replaces something if we redevelopment how do we make it better instead of and and how can it enhance the community in a better way yeah but can i ask you that's what bothers me

demographics dictates often what will be repurposed so you know you just can't say here's a spot we should do this this and this because retailers won't always come unless the demographics take care of it.

It's funny how demographics repeat themselves. I would say 25 years ago, I'll take 140 as an example. Nobody wanted strip malls. Nobody wanted that strip, all that stuff up and down the road. We wanted shopping centers and areas where everybody could go in and spend a whole day under one roof. What happened? We're back to strip malls or strip areas.

They're just named different things like lifestyle centers.

They're just named something different, but it's what we didn't want 25 years ago that we have. So we changed the whole concept. Now we're back to where we were. It's like fashion. It just goes in a circle. You're exactly right. So I think that's one of the biggest challenges in that area that's so vibrant. And I mean, look at all the things that are going on there. There are no vacancies anywhere. All the restaurants are full. If you put a house up for sale, it sells the next day. You put 55 and over, I don't care what they look like, somebody's going to buy them. And these are the things that we're trying to say, let's do better on all this stuff because It's an area that everybody wants to be in.

So let me ask you a couple of questions about this providing better. Are you wanting better in terms of materials, better in terms of utilization of the sites? What are you terming that if you redevelop, it should be better?

I think all of the above, all the things that you just talked about, including how we can consolidate some of this stuff so that we can do a better job of infill.

I'm just trying to get a little clarification on that so we know where it goes.

Because it's always seemed to me that one of the things we are challenged with is traffic. And like you were saying, the curb cuts. And there was plans in place to do side streets and stuff like that. Yeah. And no one follows through or makes sure that when things get redeveloped that that's part of the plan.

Right. So we'll talk about access. I think that's two slides. Yeah. But in terms of economic development, is it just more of a – I know there was a comment about leaving industrial alone and then making sure that those businesses that do replace what is there, if there's redevelopment, that they're better in terms of, I guess, anchors is what your intention was, not just having fast food, but also those anchor tenants go a long way to bringing that traffic and – supporting those ancillary uses. Is there any other kind of economic development that you wish for this corridor, or is it more so just bolstering what is there already?

I'm sure we can think of some.

You don't have to get me an answer right now.

I guess I'd like to follow up on all those items. As developments happen, what have you guys heard that are barriers that you've heard from developers or public that would make it hard for them to move into this area? You talked about roofs and doors. Has that been an issue?

Getting plans approved and getting things done. Time frame.

Can you give me some more context to that?

Just the amount of steps that you go through. I mean, you know, COVID. I've only been on this board since COVID happened, and, of course, that made everything a million times more difficult just to get things done. But developers always seem like there's no clear path to getting anything done. You're always running the roadblocks.

And when they're building... lots of changes happen and permit, you know, what is there today, tomorrow is a different role. So it's,

Thank you, that's very helpful. We're just, you know, those are the things that when we report the numbers and we take a look at the demographics and your house sales, that's the stuff that we don't get because that's not a public information item or there's no real, you pull the census data up, it doesn't tell you challenging because there's no clear path. That information isn't there.

Yeah, it's not months before a developer can put a shovel in the ground, it's years.

That's good information, thank you.

And is that due to unclear standards and what the development standards are?

Or is it just... Well, I think part of it, isn't there 20-some agencies that have to review every plan? 24?

Yeah, I mean, there's not one specific answer. Each project is different. Sometimes it's a complex project that takes a long time to review. Other times, the review is going smoothly, but there is a lag time between what review agencies say they need to see and when they actually see that from the developer. There's all kinds of things that could influence it.

It's not just I'm not gonna say it's entirely the county's fault either often developers drag their feet quite a bit It's not all the county.

It's a lot of state mandates that we're we're working through the change on a yearly basis and then the developer has to deal with those there's changes that are spontaneous almost and It's a frustrating thing for us to to see a project moving on, and then all of a sudden, the state comes up with some other out of the blue requirement that we say, why? And they use all kinds of examples. And one of them, of course, is to make the Chesapeake Bay more pristine. And that's a lot of it. Stormwater, that's been a huge issue here.

I think the truth, though, is it's kind of like dating. When you say it's not me, it's you, or it's not you, it's me, it's probably the other way, right? So it's probably us, the state and the county. We're all probably complicit in that.

I was going to say, it's usually a little bit of everybody. That's right. That's right.

So the next item that we're going to go over is land use. This is really the core of what we're looking at to make sure that the land uses that are designated are aligning with what the vision is, what the market can support, as well as what the community supports.

Can I ask you something quickly? I meant to ask you this before. This is a pretty short, small, defined area that you're dealing with. How many areas that you've dealt with have this small corridor that you have to deal with. In other words, we can't spread out down there because if you do, you're in all residential areas. So we're dealing with this small corridor. That's why I think we're so concerned about let's try to do it better and do it right because we're dealing with such a small defined area.

Almost every project. yeah we do a lot of small area every project it's the same thing okay and you're either confined by a river a natural boundary cities we've worked in cities that literally have no parcels left to develop they're fully built out there's there's nowhere to grow our specialty is small area planning uh and so we've worked in much smaller than this okay well you know the the thing just globally that bothers me and i live in the freedom district um

from the 30,000 foot level, the thing that bothers me about Eldersburg, and again, I love the place. I'm here because I love my community. I really do. But you don't, when you get there, you don't really feel like you've arrived anywhere. And then all of a sudden you're out of it. And you blink and you're like, wait a minute, I just missed it. And so I would like there to be a sense that you've arrived someplace that you want to call home. And I think that we are at the point in the Freedom District where we can count the significant undeveloped pieces of property on one hand at this point. And if we don't pay attention to do it right, we're going to really either mess it up or mess it up. And we don't want to do either of those things. At the end of the day, I think what we all want to have is a community that we're proud of, a community that is safe. We have good schools. We have open spaces. It's a nice community. and but let's not put lipstick on a pig let's like can we not you know make it nice as we um because we're we're about to to put a bow in this thing in terms of the major developments that are going to take place down there and so and again it's my hope that eventually the county will say well we did that well let's extend water and sewer on out 26 And do it again. Do it more. And send it out past Century and Century High School and continue. Let's do it again. But that's from the 30,000 foot level, that's my hope for this project is that there will be a corridor there that is conducive to commerce. It's walkable. You feel like you've arrived when you've gotten there. And again, it's safe and you want to go back. Does that make sense? It does destination and a purpose.

Yes, sir A sense of place is one of the key things that we've heard throughout this planning process And it was emphasized in the 2018 plan. So we're looking for ways through the overlay to accomplish that There's obviously also public improvements that can occur to achieve that but we're specifically looking at how the overlay can be used to create that good So for the designated land use, which is what's shown here, the predominant uses are commercial medium and commercial heavy. I recognize that the distinction on this map is difficult to tell, but as I noted earlier, a lot of the deeper sites like Eldersburg Crossing and Marketplace are commercial heavy, while some of the more shallow lots, especially along Liberty into the south along 32 are commercial medium. The two largest undeveloped sites are commercial medium. So that really shapes the conversation. There's also light industrial to the northeast, which is built out largely, and then there's some residential high in there as well along the southern that's largely built out. So that's generally a description of the study area. Some key takeaways from the 2018 plan obviously emphasize protecting neighborhoods while supporting that continued commercial development. Along those corridors as I mentioned most of the future growth is expected through redevelopment of those existing sites either being Adaptive reuse or infill development those large parking lots especially along the edge of the site long 26 our big redevelopment opportunities And then new housing whether it be townhomes or multifamily in those commercial sites should be designed in such a way that it protects those single-family homes and that it abuts. So on this slide, the three questions that we'd like for you to answer are should the plan encourage more redevelopment and infill? Where, if anywhere, should additional housing be considered within the study area? And then are there areas where the current land use pattern should remain unchanged? And we can also expand this to where should it change? And one thing I do want to note while you're still thinking is there were some conversations around the C1, C2, and C3 during the previous presentation. And so I think that informs also where you'd like to see it change from what it sounds like the medium to the low.

Do we know how much infill is available?

How many sites are available for infill?

Mean there's there's no way to really know because the at the end of the day if somebody wants to buy and assemble parcels it could be unlimited I Mean that's a very deep pocket, but it's we've seen it done before but the amount of parcels that you're really I would say developable at three five or more acres Maybe they're an out lot something that can be built on is not a lot.

No, there's maybe less than ten Out lot sites that are primed for infill and

So it would be more about truly redeveloping a site through some kind of teardown or some other mechanism. I know that's hard to consider, but I promise developers build these buildings to last 10 to 20 years. And I don't know why they only build them that long, but then at some point in time they go, eh, new one. Baffles me.

Markets change, and so as rents go down for one use, then they're looking to maximize their revenue. They'll finance what they can for the next 30, and then they'll reevaluate after that. So we're approaching the 30-year mark on many of these, as we noted, if not passed. Any comments on the land use section?

If you want to think about it, that's why we gave you guys the homework. You can take it home, write it down, go through it.

We can pass on that. And then the next slide is on transportation and public improvements. So we talked about this significantly with the access curb cuts. But the additional thing here is that pedestrian access is really limited. Not only between sites, nobody's going to walk, well some people may, but most people won't walk through a parking lot to get from one point to another. They're going to get in their car and drive. And while it's unlikely to change significantly, there are opportunities for some pedestrian access. It also goes a long way to beautifying the corridor as well. Where there's pedestrian access, usually it's buffered by landscaping and trees. There's opportunities for multi-use paths. I think that's in the bike-ped plan along 26. So just creating a network for recreational users as well as people who may desire to walk, do their morning walk down to Tim Hortons. I think that's in our study area, right? Yep. Ben's a big fan of Tim Hortons. to get their morning coffee and donuts. So that's always an option. It's just about giving people the alternative, not that we anticipate that it'll become a significant chunk of the transportation modes trips, but it's there as an option.

You certainly don't see anybody walking up and down Route 26.

Right, currently there's no continuous sidewalk along that corridor that's safe.

We actually saw more people hanging out in the parking lots than walking down the road.

But I think as we think about what the future of the corridor could be, as you mentioned, with creating a sense of place and a sense of belonging, if there are multi-use paths built out, like in the bike-ped plan, with pedestrian access between those paths and the businesses in the new development infill that goes in there, that gives people a choice. So right now, no, but we're thinking long-term what this corridor could be.

Go ahead.

I think that would be great because I don't know if anybody is from here, but when I drive down that section of 26, it reminds me of Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie. I was born and raised in Glen Burnie. So, I mean, to me, it's just reminiscent. And again, it's like, okay, so... I mean, just putting sidewalks down there that people could walk or some type of screening again, you know what I mean? Because that's just what I see when I drive down that road. I'm like, oh, we're back in Glen Burnie. We're not in Glen Burnie, but you know what I mean? It just was always that store, store, store, store, store, store, store. And again, the road is not really one, like you said, to walk across and stuff like that. So if... you're on this side of the road and then you need to get to that side of the road, you know, you're just kind of closing your eyes and gunning it and hope you make it, you know what I mean? You did see a lot of that today. I did that today. And to a certain degree, there's, you know, some parts of Ritchie Highway, some parts do have a meeting where you have to, you know, and turnarounds and turn lanes where you can't, you know, try to do that. But, yeah, I mean, something like this, even putting sidewalks, like you said, that people could safely walk down the road, I think would be huge.

I'd like to see the county be intentional about connecting the physical assets that are already in place, that being Liberty High School, Oklahoma Road Middle School, the schools. If we start connecting one school to another, and then all of a sudden you connect, by doing that, you've also then connected the schools to commercial areas. Right now what we have down there are a bunch of enclaves that are within themselves. They're connected, but they're not connected to one to another. And so if we can systematically over, say, between here and, 2035 we're going to connect Century High School to Oklahoma Road Middle School via a network of of paths and trails. Well-lit, signed, and trailed paths. That, to me, and then, you know, hopefully landscaping, lighting, all of those kinds of things. Otherwise, what we're going to end up with is 26 is going to be generica. It's going to be McDonald's. It's going to look like any other stretch of road that is forgettable. How can we make it memorable, right? Again, back to sense of place. And so, again, we want to avoid generica, right? Let's not be that.

challenges you have so many businesses there that aren't willing to you know we built it we don't want to put a sidewalk out here and you have vacant property so then I don't know what's going to go up in that property.

Until it gets developed, it's unconnected. I agree. You're exactly right. But as we see these things developed or as we see them repurposed, that's an opportunity then to connect one parcel to another. There is no excuse to not be able to walk, as far as I'm concerned, from Liberty High School to Oklahoma. I mean, we should be able to do that here in the next three or four years. You should be able to do it without playing Frogger with your life, right, in the middle of the road.

So I do want to note that this conversation is two-fold with pedestrian access. One, there's public improvements that can occur. So a lot of the right-of-way is within the MDOT's control, working with them to make those improvements. It's county ownership. Obviously, the county would take the initiative but when a property as you mentioned does redevelop there can be requirements in that overlay zoning district to either require that they put a sidewalk in their stretch of their frontage as well as providing for access from that stretch of sidewalk to the front door of their business or whatever tenants in there

But I do think, what's it called? Dickinson Road? Dickinson Road.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

I think that had the intent to bring things up. Lord knows I don't want to bring this up, but the Beatty property is also showing a lot of interconnection there.

That's right. Because that thing, again, however it gets developed, if we do it right, it should provide a lot of connectivity that doesn't exist right now.

So we're going to move on. The next two slides, we're going to review different development typologies, which will tie into land use. Many of these are already allowed on the commercial high and commercial medium, but it'll just help shape the conversation around where these development types should go if they're allowed, what kind of buffering would be appropriate for them. So we have I believe eight here. So there's four per slide. So we'll just briefly go through those. And we have, there will be more conversation around uses and things like that when we get to the overlay standards, but right now we're at a much higher level. So the four we have here are big box commercial and strip commercial, which are a lot of what you have currently. Big box being on those larger sites, Walmart, Hobby Lobby, Home Depot, etc. And the strip commercial being in the outlets. Residential commercial makes use, I know there's only one example of this right now, the Princess Shopping Center. I think this deserves a fair amount of conversation. I think it's the planned commercial center only allows for one story of residential up top. And so what that does, I wanna note, is it limits the number of units to such a degree that the developer can't deliver the kinds of amenities that many residents desire. So you end up with generally not a multi-family product that's going to achieve the kind of rents that would support that commercial you spoke of earlier. Then we also have commercial mixed use, and so this is similar, but it's ground floor retail with upper floor office in that, but the built form is generally the same.

I will take the opportunity to say that commercial mixed use is also what predominantly you see with horizontal mixed use. So some purpose on the front along the road, then a parking lot, and then another purpose behind it. So offices behind and strip mall in the front, that's also something that's very common.

Yeah, so with this these pictures you see here those are generally examples of vertical mixed use But bent what Ben was talking about is horizontal mixed use of the same lot has multiple uses But each building is its own use so there's not they're not mixed vertically So I just want to drill down for one second on what you said Nathan.

It's Nathan, right? Yes. Okay, so By limiting what I'm hearing you say is by limiting density, because we're concerned about density. Sure. But let's take a flyer on this. If we were to increase density, we might get more amenities.

Is that what you're... We'll get higher quality units that have amenities built into the structure. So... units that have between 175 and 200 or buildings have 175 or 200 units you typically start to see an on-site leasing office the pool the gym got it that you know the really nice features that typically bring a little bit higher of a income per unit into the area all right so that's and i guess that's the push-pull we're at right guys because you know we're fighting

And I'm one of the guys who fights it, so I'll say I'll – I guess I need to get therapy over this. But from a density standpoint, we have generally fought density. But if we accept density, you're saying we'll get higher quality.

That's correct. And the other thing to keep in mind is density isn't about – If you truly want to preserve your larger lots in your residential neighborhoods, you should encourage density in targeted areas. And this area, project area, is really one of those potential options. The reason being is the more density you put here, the opportunities to preserve larger lots in the rest of the area remain. So instead of worrying about the developers can't make half acre or quarter acres, they need to go to 0.2 or 0.15 acre lots. You could say we're allowing more density in this area to preserve larger lots in the rest of the area. Okay.

And the other point that I wanted to make with my comment there is I think there's, it's worth having the conversation around instead of trying to do residential commercial mixed use, having really high quality three or four story multifamily and then having strip and big box commercial and doing both well, but not trying to do each at a half degree.

Not in the same building, so this really lends itself to more horizontal mixed use, where the front of the building is, it could be your standard strip mall, but it has a nail salon, a Chinese restaurant, take your pick. And there's really high-quality three-, four-story apartment buildings behind it. It's a model you see everywhere, and it works. There's a nice relationship between the tenants and those retail stores up front.

And that can also buffer commercial uses, which are more intense from single-family homes. When thinking about those larger lots, obviously with the more shallow lots, it's not possible to do multiple uses on such a shallow lot, but with some of those bigger, deeper lots, you can think about how you're going to stack uses from the road to the back of the lot. The next four development types that we have here are multifamily residential, which we talked about, so up to four stories, which there's case studies in this study area for that. Townhome residential, I think that's self-explanatory. Small detached residential in this area, that's about four to six units an acre. And then low-density warehouses, which we see in the northeast part of the city area. So There aren't a whole lot of opportunities for small detached residential within the core of the study area. I think when we think about transition standards between the study area and some adjacent residential, that can be a part of the conversation and we can talk about that later. And then the low density warehouses, I think it's more about preserving what you have, not about expanding or contracting.

And that's more about potential industrial, some of the things you brought up. Okay.

Correct. When we talk about low density warehouses, it wasn't the conversation about storage. So going back real quick, on this page, the questions that we want you to answer are which development types do you believe are appropriate and where? Which development intensities are most appropriate for each development typology? And then what transitions should be implemented? And when we talk about transitions, that includes things like landscaping, buffers. transitional distances, setbacks. Transitional height planes is another buffering tool that we use sometimes. So as you move away from single family residential, then it can increase in height. So starting at maybe 25 feet and then going up to 35 feet or 40 feet, whatever it may be. But just making sure that Height the the densest part of the property isn't directly against that single family, but it has some buffer away from there On this page here we have a map for you to mark out An X on the parcels where you believe redevelopment should be encouraged. This will help us target density in the overlay and then drawing a circle around areas that should remain largely unchanged and as well as areas that should be preserved in terms of transitional standards. So you're welcome to circle outside of the study area so that we know to taper down to those adjacent single-family homes.

The one thing I would give you for this is there's always a question of, well, what happens if there's a little bit of a wetland or what happens if it's a forested area? Don't stress over that at this point. We'll have to figure those things out, and the developer will figure those things out. We're just really trying to understand where you guys feel redevelopment has a purpose or a place in the parcels that are maybe not well used or parcels that are not developed yet.

And I know that will take some time to think through, so we won't dwell on that. The next section is on tools for transitions. So we have outlined different transition standards, or actually just improvements writ large. Indicating which tools that you would export supports exploring further. So the first one is transition standards to neighborhoods Those are the ones I just talked about with setbacks buffering landscaping transitional height plans as I described new public access roads for to support that commercial development either the existing or new development Shared driveways and cross-access. So when we think of shared driveways, that's four businesses that are on the same side, but cross-access, I think, what was that, Homelander Drive, where directly across from each other, two curb cuts, two access points were misaligned. So when we think about cross-access along 26 or 32, trying to line up those access points where possible to reduce conflict. The next one is street scape improvements to either 2632 or some of these other county roads. New sidewalks and pedestrian connections, similar to the street scape improvements. Parking lot redevelopment, mixed use development in certain locations, whether horizontal or vertical. I think we'd like for you to explain that further in the space provided on the right. And then enhanced architectural or design standards. So imposing architectural or design standards through the overlay.

I'll say here that these are not the only tools that are going to be considered, but these are almost a 30,000 foot tool that we can get more specific on once we gather feedback on what people feel may be appropriate. We can start to tailor it based off of market realities within the area and what can be achieved.

Did anyone want to discuss anything on this slide?

No? OK.

So for the small area amendment, we want to know what we should prioritize. Obviously we are focused principally on the overlay zoning district, but there are various things that we can achieve through that. So there's redevelopment and reinvestment, so thinking through infill development of existing sites, so those outlots, redevelopment of those larger big box stores, if that's in the future for some of these sites. Transportation improvements along 2632 and those adjacent or connecting County roads Housing choices going back to what we talked about earlier where there's the predominant Housing typology is single or single-family homes And just providing more housing choice on those commercial sites economic development which I left economic development off on accident on your handout, so you're welcome to just write that in on there. Walkability in public space, so connecting to existing buildings, homes, et cetera. and then also with public space i do want to make a note that there's a lot of opportunity to if there's going to be open space requirements for multi-family how that could be dedicated to the county to make sure that those are public access parks that they're usable open space that they're not just amount of grass that they set aside to not be developed the open space actually has purpose and then it's serving the residents of that multifamily development if there is going to be multifamily but it's not just for those residents it right it can be for more than them the one thing i want to say on these last two slides this isn't a pick which one you want this is pick all that apply

So when you go through there, this isn't just going to be what tool do you want to use or what do you want to focus on? Pick one. You can pick all of the above. You can pick none of the above. We're here to listen to you guys and hear what you have to say about it. So feel free to tell us if we missed the mark or if you want to add or delete or don't want any of them.

And the final one is corridor appearance and landscaping, which I heard some folks talk about. If you want to add any in economic development, certainly one that I accidentally left off, I apologize, but just write in the margins, and there's also open space at the bottom to add any other comments you might. And the final slide we have here, I believe, is implementation priorities. So top of mind are updating zoning regulations. We want to know where the county should focus its resources in this area to make those improvements. So zoning, capital improvements, whether it be state resources along 2632 or county resources. Similarly, transportation improvements, making for better multimodal access for vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists. I know there's some transit to some degree, but it's not a significant amount. Streetscape and beautification, this is on that placemaking item, making sure that there's a sense of place in this area. incentives for redevelopment so if the county is looking to provide incentives to achieve a certain type of development outcome that's always an option where the county can offer deferred taxes public resources in exchange for concessions from the developer I believe it's called pilot payment in lieu of taxes so in the public private partnerships so if there's a civic use to a particular development the developer can develop and maybe it includes a public park maybe it includes a civic facility in adjoining with the the private development so there's that as well That concludes the presentation. Next steps include developing and evaluating redevelopment scenarios. So just making those minor adjustments on what's likely to redevelop in this area, what those land uses look like. preparing draft land use and overlay zoning concepts. So based off of any amendments that we make to the plan, we'll make some zoning overlay concepts, present a preferred approach for the review. So that'll be in, I believe, mid to late October. That will be back before you. And then we'll release a draft plan for public review.

There's just one more thing that kind of bothers me. You talk about more business, maybe more restaurants, more places to live. But as many 55 and over housing units and developments that we're talking about in that area, what concerns me is do we have enough medical facilities in that area? That's a good question. So is there any way of monitoring? Are there enough, well, urgent care areas? Are there enough? medical doctors facilities that people don't have to drive to Baltimore County or halfway across the County to get to medical facility. Are there enough there with the increasing number of 55 and over communities? I think this is a real concern. I mean, I even pose out there Is there an area that we could have a medical campus in that area that we could And look, talk about, because this is a very, you know, I look at, and I'll take you out of this area. If you look at Mount Airy, and there's a corridor right at Mount Airy that could service not only Carroll County, but Frederick County, Howard County, Montgomery County, And we could have a tremendous medical facility there that would be a one size fits all. I'm wondering about down here where there's such growth. And the 55, listen, you go in a doctor's office today, who's in there? A lot of people that have gray hair like me. Some of them are younger than I am, and a lot of them are older than I am, but we're all old. That's in there, and we're seeing this coming into Carroll County in droves.

Right. So, I mean, I would even pose out there, we should look at accessibility for fire and EMS stations, and if you have enough in the area, too.

Well, and we're always concerned about that, and I think we've addressed a lot of that, the fire and EMS, and policing.

but if you have a higher population the call the call-out rate grows as well yeah yes I think there are quite a few you probably aren't doctors with in urgent cares but a lot of people are travel into Columbia. Hopkins is right over there. Falls Road, Greenspring, Hopkins. So, you know, we have some, not that we couldn't have them here, but we do have some areas close by that have, you know,

I don't know anybody who would go to downtown Baltimore when they could go to Carroll County for medical attention.

What kind of an emergency?

I'm talking about the whole nine yards. I'm talking about radiology, you know.

A lot of outpatient services, and outpatient services are growing significantly. That's where a lot of hospital systems are moving their investment because of just financial billings and a whole different side. But it is creating this land use demand for outpatient services, which can go into medical offices and some of these strip developments.

And let us look at some of these parcels because you were at the location for Wawa today and that outlot. That would be kind of a prime candidate for some of those on a second story that you could park underneath but still have an elevator access or whatever it may be. So we'll look at that.

So we'll collect these tomorrow or in the next few days. Take your time with them. If you have any questions, Daphne can help get in contact with me. Or you're welcome to hang around after this meeting and chat further. But I appreciate everybody's time if there are no further questions.

Public comment, sorry.

A lot to think about. So before the public comment, I just want to jump in with a couple of things that are upcoming. And I want to call people's attention to the fact that some of the content and the questions that have been shared here today are also part of a public survey that is open. And I was just going to check our... our county website, I believe you can get to it through our county website, I don't have the exact URL, but also trying to get feedback from the community along these same lines that'll help inform the the product that comes out of this effort. On Thursday night from five to seven at the Eldersburg Branch Library, there's gonna be an open house for anybody who wants to drop in anytime. There's not a set presentation, but an open house where people can come and provide additional feedback.

So that's tomorrow?

Yeah, Thursday night. And then tomorrow during open session with the commissioners, I believe the team here will also be giving the same sort of presentation and trying to get some feedback from them similar to what you've provided. So we're trying to gather a lot of feedback in lots of different ways, and I would encourage... Anybody who might be listening to this, to participate in that survey, attend the open house, and if you wanna spread the word within your networks, that would be awesome as well.

Daphne, I think, On Facebook, there was some confusion about Thursday because some people were saying, oh, they could go and get a lot of people to come and listen to it. And in fact, it's more of an open house, correct?

Correct. It's an interactive open house. There's no presentation. It's for people to come and give us their feedback. So we have various boards with prompts and information where they can review it and provide comment. So that's what we're asking for. At this point, it's more so just about fact gathering and input gathering. We don't have any recommendations to share at this time.

Right.

Okay. So is this available electronically so that we could make our notes?

No, but we can make it. Well, I'm just thinking.

I think Tiffany has it, and she can get it to you.

Or else you're going to get all hard copy back from us.

I can certainly collect handwritten things if you would prefer to type it up. We can send you the electronic version. Either way.

Well, I'm just, I've written notes, but I'm not ready to, there's a lot more to think about.

Yeah, well, I mean, we'll send it to you either way. However you want to give us your input, either handwritten or if you want to, Take the electronic copy and transcribe.

I'm just thinking about folks who can't make the trip up to the county office building to submit.

And for people who can't write and you can't read what we wrote.

I have experience in reading difficult handwriting.

It gets worse every year.

But we're happy to do electronic as well, whatever is easiest. And even if you want to just make note of what you're responding to in an email or just a Word document, that works as well. But we'll get you a PDF of this.

I just want to comment on something Ralph said earlier about malls and strip malls and town centers. As an elder millennial, I'm fully for malls coming back. I don't know why these town centers became a thing. Malls, it's dry when it's wet. It's warm when it's cold. They're cool when it's hot. I mean, malls used to be the thing. I just don't get it.

The short answer is because people want to be different. And they have to do what their parents didn't do.

It was the redevelopment stuff that went wrong.

No, honestly, town centers are still, especially like in some of the other areas, I like them, because you can go from one store, go out and...

It's funny. We're a funny group, right?

Well, thank you, everybody.

Thank you. Any public comment?

Evening, my name is Jim we practice. I'm the city manager in Tawny Town didn't speak earlier because I'm not commenting specifically about the Tawny Town comprehensive plan, but I did want to just take a moment to Thank you for the time to review that it your questions and comments showed that you really did spend some time on it and that's appreciated and There were some comments and questions about the cooperation between the municipalities and county and I just wanted to spend a brief moment to say that while I can only speak for Tawny Town I think this goes across most municipalities that certainly at the staff level we enjoy a tremendous level of cooperation and interaction with county staff. Many of the municipalities have adopted numerous county codes, so we're interacting with county staff on a daily basis, particularly in things related to development and construction and things of that nature. Here in Carroll we enjoy a very strong collaborative environment I think between the city's towns and the county government and You may be familiar with the water resources coordinating council. That's a combination of County Health Department and municipal members where we work on water resource related things and as a Probably came here for your review the water resources element recently was adopted by all eight municipalities as well as the county That level of cooperation. We don't see elsewhere in the state. So Just wanted to point that out. And again, thank you very much for your time and reviewing our plan Thank you.

Good to hear. Thank you for staying late.

Is it appropriate to ask a question sir? While you're at the mic

Well, it's not, but go ahead.

Since you weren't asked to come up or you weren't here, what is your top priority? Awesome. You're the man. I mean, is it... Go ahead. So...

I can speak as the city manager. I can't really speak for our planning commission or mayor and council. Forget about them. Because you might get different answers. They're not here. They didn't stay late. You're the expert. I want to hear from you. So certainly our comprehensive plan is our guiding document, right? So everything we do is supposed to be advancing the goals and objectives of that plan. So under that umbrella, I will say there are three overriding things for me, bypass and water and sewer capacity. Without the water and sewer capacity, nothing develops. If nothing develops, nothing advances on the road. If the road doesn't advance, we're going to see failing levels of service at the intersection of Route 140 and 194. within the next several years. That's with a no-build option. So, you know, if we don't build a single house or commercial facility, the world around us is still growing. There's a subdivision just across the Pennsylvania line on the way to Gettysburg that's gonna dump that much more traffic through Tawny Town. So I think the water and sewer capacity is probably the biggest thing. With that growth, hopefully we will be able to advance sections of the bypass. We do work, We've worked with county planning to make sure that they're aware of what we're thinking about, how we might be creative with existing road segments that perhaps could function as a portion of the bypass, considering different routes for it. We've spoken with the transportation secretary. Of course, we're here every year for the transportation tour, and very appreciative that the commissioners have added the bypass back onto the priorities letter, even if it is just a brief mention. Because we realize we're competing with, you know, we're competing with Rockville. We're competing with, you know, much more urbanized areas with much higher traffic counts than we have. But this year we're probably going to try to shift gears a little bit and focus more on things that could be viewed more as a safety enhancement involving some intersections with state roads that could also be a stepping stone to the future bypass so it's you know working with trying to work with the development community which of course as I'm sure you're aware may not always be well received by residents who like things the way they are so I would say those those three things are really what we need to do economic development downtown revitalization are important but some of those aren't going to happen if we can't get vehicles in and out of town effectively and if you can't have a conversation outside of the you know the the cafe or the storefront or walking from one store to another because tractor trailers are driving by, you're probably not gonna spend a lot of time doing that. So I think the road is of tremendous importance, but we need the capacity to be able to advance it.

Thank you.

We'll get answers to Ethan for the other questions that came up. I did take some notes. Thank you.

I do want to say I think you all made a tremendous improvement with Main Street and how you got everybody to buy into it, whether it was grants or whatever. It is a very nice improvement.

Yes, a big, big physical change, yes. Thank you. Very good.

Okay.

Thank you. Any general public comment?

Can I comment on their presentation?

Sure.

Hi, Kathy Martin again.

So about the medical facilities, your concern. So I am with you on that. What we need in Eldersburg are medical specialists. We have a lot of sort of general care providers, PAs, nurse practitioners, family physicians, that level of care. But what we do not have are medical specialists. And the property that previously was going to be a medical two-story medical building is right across from Goddard School. so I happen to live right on Lucas Lane there so I kind of got a notice about that that is a potential I would love to see a medical specialty practice come in there Johns Hopkins University of Maryland Mercy any of the above because I drive for caring Carol which is a group that drives older adults to their medical appointments and I am driving up to Westminster we are now allowed to drive out of County for them twice a year so we're driving to Owings Mills I'm GBMC, wherever. So what we need are not the generalists, and we do have two urgent care right now in Eldersburg, but we need medical specialists in our community. And I have been emailing with a guy named Andrew, whatever his last name is with Maryland State Roads, have been working on the sidewalk issue on Maryland 26 for about 10 years now. So I've done measurements and I've done calculations. It's only about six tenths of a mile of sidewalk to connect all of the little bits of sidewalk that we have. I am a person who would probably walk from my property to the library. Or to Walmart or to McDonald's or whatever, but I can't do that safely now So I really hope that we can make some progress on that I moved into my home in 1990 and I do remember a presentation by Maryland State Department of Transportation sometime in the late 90s 2000 over at Oklahoma Road Middle School about a plan to create a boulevard along Maryland 26 and you know that one by the wayside for financial reasons I understand so I am interested in seeing multiple types of housing when we talk about increased density the gentleman here of course the first thing I think of our schools And so why do we have so many over 55 structures coming? It's because we don't have seats in our schools. So that's going to be part of the puzzle to offer more multifamily housing, which I'm going to refer back to Denver. There were three story condos everywhere, beautiful homes, lots of windows, nothing huge. a one and two story light industrial office, really beautifully done. I wish we had a county planner 20 years ago that thought about all of these things that they're talking about right now. I don't think we'd be in the situation that we're in with Maryland 26. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Any other general public comment? Yes, I see.

Hi. I'm just going to offer a quick little different perspective, maybe. I have a 10-year-old, so I spend every weekend of my life and every weeknight, except for tonight, at fields. Lacrosse fields, soccer fields, lacrosse fields, soccer fields. There is not a field that I'm at within 10 minutes of my house. Most fields, I'm driving to Westminster. I'm driving to Woodbine. Our local fields, Freedom Soccer plays at Eldersburg Elementary on Saturdays. Good luck. Go take that ride. Try and find parking. It is horrific. There's no other word for it. People fight. People yell. People park in the grass. The neighbors put up signs. The other thing that you guys wouldn't be aware of, because most wouldn't, is when I go pick up my 10-year-old from aftercare. Her aftercare is at Merritt, the gym. And you see the Liberty kids that play baseball or lacrosse park in that parking lot. And then they run across 32 with all their stuff. and then they have a little bit of sidewalk, and then these teenagers, and sometimes much younger kids, are just walking down 32 to get to their fields. I bought on my street, because it's a dead-end street, and I was like, well, I don't need sidewalks, because I live on a dead-end street. But we do desperately need them. Fitting two large mountain bikes in the back of a small SUV is the bane of my existence currently. So just some extra perspective that maybe I'm making an assumption that none of you have a 10 year old, but you could. So that's it, thanks.

Thank you.

JOG MY MEMORY. WE ARE GETTING A, I THOUGHT IT WAS TOMORROW, BUT I'M LOOKING AT OUR SCHEDULE FOR THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS. I'M SUSAN KREBS, FOR THE RECORD. I THOUGHT WE WERE GETTING A PRESENTATION TOMORROW FROM REC AND PARKS BECAUSE WE ASKED FOR A SURVEY MONTHS AGO OF VERY SPECIFICALLY HOW MANY FIELDS FOR THE WHOLE COUNTY. IT'S A SURVEY OF THE ENTIRE COUNTY. HOW MANY OF X NUMBER OF FIELDS ARE THERE? HOW MANY KIDS PLAY IN EACH OF THESE SPORTS? AND WHERE DO WE NEED OUR FACILITIES? BECAUSE THERE'S NEVER REALLY BEEN A PLAN and we want to do it comprehensively whole county and i know in our area i did my kids haven't played sports for 20 years but um it's almost embarrassing that we have not acquired a new property for sporting anything in 30 years for freedom there's never it's never part of the conversation so the three fields that are listed for us are hodges road which is a sand landfill that is sinking in that I'd never been to before, but I drove past there, I drove down there, it's down a road and it's got all the little gas things coming up, and it's sinking, and that's one of our open spaces, that's one of our fields. Oklahoma Park Road, that's part of the school, I don't know why, it used to be a park, but it's not a park anymore, it's been a school for 25 years, and you can't use school property during the day. And three of our elementary schools have no fields because they were given to us the property by developers years ago nicely, but they weren't really usable because they were like the extra piece of property and they don't have any field space and they're on steep slopes. So accepting free property is not always the best thing to do because it's not always the prime property. So this survey that we're getting done is coming from Rec and Parks, and I thought it was going to be tomorrow. It's for the whole county going to tell us, where do we have space? How many kids play softball in Westminster? How many people play softball? How many play field hockey? How many fields do we need? How much inside basketball space? And I think, Mr. Soyson, you should be an expert at this since you used to run the program. That way we'll have a comprehensive view of the whole county. Where do we need things? I know we need them in freedom, but we also need to make sure that we look everywhere, and how are we spending, or are we spending any money? Because when I first came here, I interviewed with the Rec and Parks guy, and we have not bought any place for 30 years, open space in the Freedom District. The towns do a very good job of finding those spaces, they're good when they do development. So hopefully we'll have something to look at. And then I have been speaking with the state about Springfield Hospital. I had a conference call with many people from their public works to see if there's any more space down at the state level, down by Freedom Park or down by Springfield Hospital. Unfortunately, we're a little bit late on that. We're still looking, but they've done a bunch of tree reforestation on the Springfield property on potential property that we could have used. So there's not much land left. That's why we're looking, but we've got our kids are playing. They're going and renting space in Howard County and paying a lot of money to do it so they can place work because we have not added any space. But this whole study of the whole county will let us know where We need it, and if you get one of the land use maps, Daphne very nicely put on all the, where all the open space was, where all the field space, and you can see right on the map, you know, and the towns have done a beautiful job of doing things in their town and having properties, having pocket parks. You know, Sykesville has like 13 pocket parks. They've done a beautiful job, but there's, the things in Freedom are Hodges Park, which is a sinking landfill. There's nothing there, so keep that in mind. Don't know how you have the bandwidth to do all these things but we've got to figure out a way that that's a priority because It's you know, our young people need a place to play as well. So sir, thank you for bringing that up We're working on that as well So all these things are happening at the same time and it's exciting time and we're gonna make some of them be a reality But we're looking at the whole County Thank you All right I'll take a motion

Motion we adjourn a second all in favor. Thank you everybody