Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. Welcome to the 04/21/2026 Virtual Planning Commission meeting, Planning Commission of Chapel Hill. We'll start with roll call. Libby is here raising your hand. Chuck? Here. Jeff?

Here.

Mike?

I'm here.

Liz, let us know that she's, out of town, unable to attend. And I'm John Mitchell. The agenda tonight has a couple items, both of which should be fairly fairly quick, I think. One is a modification to the conditional rezoning for 11 Wade Oak Drive, and the other is a discussion if we wanna have it about applicants to the planning commission. No interviews tonight that I'm aware of.

Would anybody like to comment on the agenda or, motion to approve it or modify it?

Do you need a motion to approve? Yeah. I'll move.

Okay. Just raise your hand or thumbs up thumbs up if you're okay with the agenda. Okay. That's everybody. Any announcements or petitions either from planning commission members or from members of the public?

I'll say staff has not received any petitions.

Okay. Not hearing any. We'll go on to the next thing. Josh, are there minutes from the last meeting? I don't see any attached to the agenda.

Yes. I'll be honest. It had been a while, back, so I wanted to make sure I watched that meeting and have my notes accurate. So no minutes this time. We'll have them

at the next meeting for Okay. That's fine. No old business, so we'll go forward to new business starting with 11 White Oak Drive. This is one that I think we voted to recommend last year and the council approved. And as I understand it, there's a minor technical discrepancy in the way height is measured on buildings. The methodology has to be one way, but it was another way. And so it's actually something like 69 feet instead of 63 feet, and, we have to vote on that for procedural reasons. So I'll turn it over to either the developers Sharneka. Whoever needs to tell us about.

I'm Sharneka. I'm the case planner for the modification. I was also the case planner for the original conditional zoning application. John, I think you summed it up perfectly, I don't have anything else to add. So I'll I will turn it over to to Ben Stevens.

Good evening. And I'm actually gonna let Brian, who's the lead designer of the project, give you the cliff notes version.

Yeah. Sure. Toss it over to me. Good evening, everyone. Sharon, members of the planning commission. Hi, Ray. Good to meet you guys. Thanks for your time tonight. So, yeah, I just wanted to kinda present the technical discrepancy that we've kinda run across. So I'm with Well Design Studio for the objective record.

You know, I'm on here on behalf of the project team, to just request a minor adjustment to the previously approved ordinance related to the building height. Just to clarify, you know, this request is not driven by a change in design intent, density, or overall massing. Just want to be pretty clear about that. You know, the building you guys reviewed and approved is fundamentally the same building we were presenting tonight. You know, what has changed is just our understanding of how building height is calculated under the capital ordinance.

So just to kind of deep dive into that a bit more during the progression of the project as we got into more essentially a detailed design, know, we identified the discrepancy between how we had originally interpreted the height measurement, as defined by the town. You know, specifically the method of the average grade plane and the roof measurement, we took that initially based on the International Building Code, how they measure the grade plane and the building height. And so the method of measuring the average grade plane and the roof is different than the IBC in the town. And so because of just this technical distinction, the building as designed and, you know, as as we may I can share something on the screen. Have I'm on my phone, but I can share a screen visual if you'll allow me to share.

I'm not sure if that's Josh that you need to give me that capability to share because I'm I'm dialed in twice.

You should be able to share on the oh oh.

Because I'm on my computer as well too to share the screen.

Okay. Just one moment.

Great. Yeah. I'll see you twice there. Okay. Let's try this again.

Hopefully, you guys can see that now. I think it's sharing. So here's kind of building one elevation along Old Treble Hill Road. But so what I was saying was, so at you know, the the single distinction between, you know, the building as we previously designed and now, it appears to exceed the level height even though its physical form, roofline, and relationship is relatively unremained. So Building 1 along Old Chapel Hill Road directly fronts it. You can see the massing of the building is predominantly four story, flat roof in nature. You can see this flat roof portion is well below the maximum of the 62 allowable feet.

You might

want to zoom in just a tick, Bren.

Yeah, sure. And so we're at 50 feet essentially there. But so this portion, again, flat roof, well under the 62 feet and predominantly the width of the massing along that frontage. Additionally, you can see here the sloped portion as seen and experienced along Old Chapel Hill Road is under the 62 feet. We've also got looking at like another building that is fronts Old Chapel Hill Road, which is going to be the predominant visibility of this project.

This is the direct building adjacent to that building. So with and this is Building 4 in the Southwest Pod. If we look at this building, you can see the the perpendicular orientation of this building in relation to Old Table Hill Road limits its roof exposure to the street side, and it's under the 62 feet for the sloped portion. So, you know, we feel that a lot of the project massing and roofline complies with that. And so what we're requesting now is just a height adjustment that essentially reconciles the technical interpretation with the building, that you guys have already seen.

So it's not an attempt to push the building taller, introduce new impacts. You know, we're trying to align the ordinance measurement with the reality of the design. And we also understand the importance of height and shaping this community, right? We've taken care to confirm that, like, the overall scale and massing is remaining consistent with what the town, you know, ultimately desires, and there's no shadow views or adjacency impacts and, you know, continues to meet the intent and the goals of the community.

Let me

elaborate just briefly. So what Brian is illustrating is a layman's understanding of how tall a building is. You walk up to it with a tape measure, you measure the height of the building, that's how tall the building is. The town so this site has lots of grading. The the site falls, it rises, it falls, it rises.

And the way that the height is measured, we learned, we had mistakenly measured the building, is that you pick different points of elevation all around the building with its gradation rising and falling. And so when we originally submitted, we were well within the height in all these different buildings from a layman's perspective. But when you apply the way that the town is measuring the building and the grade changes that are inherent in this site and how we've accommodated them, it drops the point that you measure the building from below. Hit I don't know. I can't annotate.

But basically, the point you measure from in many of these cases is below what you would experience as the bottom of the building. That's to take account of the fact that on the backside, with the grades changing, you know, that level may have dropped. So our design has remained unchanged. What we're requesting is, a combination so that we can keep the building the way that our team has designed it, which we think is very aesthetically pleasing, and just account for the way that the grade falls and therefore is impacted that the technical height of the building as calculated in the code.

Okay. Brian, Ben, anything further before we bring it back to the commission?

I don't believe so. We're here to answer any questions.

Yeah. Thank you. So let's have any questions from planning commissioners, and then we'll solicit any public comments, we'll come back for comments and voting by the commission.

John, this is Mike. I I just had a for clarity, it's and I couldn't figure out what formula was used, but it's the actual grading of of the land that leads to that height difference. It seems like from the drawings that was submitted to all the on all the heights are correct, but I couldn't figure out where the 5.5 and the seven depending on the buildings. But that different differential came from, but I think if I'm understanding this now is the actual land, way the land was graded, okay, the land slopes that results in that. Is that correct?

It is. The most efficient way that you can design a building rather than saying, let's flatten, you know, the entire site, how can we work with the grade? That's a it's a better experience for for the resident. It's a better way to work with the land. Right. So we were happy to do it. It's the right way to design. But as the height is measured in the city code, you have to pick, Brian remind me, I think it's a three or four points around the And so as we, you know the site goes like this, and so the buildings, you know, they they, we've accommodated it. And so that's really what what drove it, and we noticed it very late in the going, that that we hit. We we would have been able decide earlier, but, anyway, so apologies to have missed that.

Thank you for that clarification. Yeah. No. I understand it. Appreciate it. Makes sense.

Jeff, go ahead.

No. It can wait till we just discuss. It's not something that

Okay. So let's let's see if there are any comments or questions from members of the public. So there are couple people on. I don't know if they're in with the development team or what. But if you're dialed into the meeting and you'd like to speak, raise your hand and we'll bring you in.

Okay. Nobody's raising their hands, we'll bring it back to the commission for a discussion. Jeff, do you wanna go now?

Yeah. No. I I have no objection to this. The only thing I would say is that this is not I don't think it's a distinction between the technical aspect of the code and a layman's understanding of of building height. I mean, the the layman's understanding is gonna differ based on your perspective. It's just there are two technical measures, which both make sense, and they picked the wrong one. So but I see no reason not to approve it.

Others?

Your honor, I agree with Jeff. I I read through the whole thing, and I'm on the same

thought. Okay.

I don't have any problem with it.

Okay. Neither do I. So there are two there's a resolution a, which is consistency with the comp plan, then there's ordinance a. We can consider them separately or together in one motion depending on what people wanna move here, but I'm open to a motion.

I move that we recommend that the, Chapel Hill Town Council approve resolution a, and ordinance a. Resolution a, the reasonableness and consistency with the comprehensive plan and ordinance a, amending the additional zoning district.

I second that.

Okay. We will take a roll call vote. Libby? Yes. Yes. It's a yes. Right? You're muted. Yeah. Chuck?

Yes. Jeff? Yes. Mike? Yes.

And I'm a yes. So that's five yeses, and that's everybody. Thanks very much, Brian and Ben.

We appreciate your time.

Thank you.

I know this is minor issue,

but we really appreciate your time and so excited about this project.

Yeah. So are we. Thank you.

Okay. Have a nice night.

Thank you. Thank you. Josh, on and thanks, Charnica. I've already left. On the planning commission applications, we're not being asked to interview anybody. Right? This is just for us to review them. And if we wanna, make some kind of recommendation to the council, we can. But as I understand it or you you tell me, has the council requested our input on this, or is it just sort of like the standard procedure to bring it to us?

Yeah. I can, kind of update on where we went from the December recommendation and what we're looking at today. The December recommendation, I think, was aimed at the traditional way of counsel doing the interview committees for planning commission. Counsel, this session, has chosen to not do those interview committees. I think we've had some little bit miscommunication between myself and the clerk's office on that, and just some issues there.

So I don't think, that's ultimately the reason why we have not yet filled Wes' seat. Council is likely to not do interview committees, and are likely to, name something with the applications and planning commission's recommendation in hand. We are also coming up on the end of John, Jeff, and Liz's terms. John and Liz are hitting the term maximum and cannot reapply. Jeff, you may reapply.

Those are that would leave us with, three to four potentially open seats, and we do want to look for some recommendations as those terms end at the end of June.

How much overlap is there in the package of applicants today versus in December? It seems like there's not total, but a lot of overlap.

Not total, very significant. We hold on to applications for twelve months. So some may have rolling off. Some may have been added on in the four months since we last, looked at applications.

Okay. And and is staff looking for or council looking for the planning commission to to interview folks? Is so if I understand you correctly, this is ultimately, it's going directly to the full council as opposed to a committee that's gonna interview and the council the full council is not intending to interview?

The full there's will not be a council committee that intends to interview is I have not seen any council appointments that have included an interview. They usually hold a ballot, at the start of the meeting and announce it at the end. I think planning commission can make a recommendation to town council, and you can conduct that how the planning commission would prefer to conduct that. I think we did want to bring the applications to y'all, tonight to at least lay the groundwork. We know there will be at least one May meeting as we have a development application item that needs to come through.

So if you would like to wait until May, we know we'll have at least one meeting to, with other items on it, but we wanted to bring this to the planning commission to see how y'all would like to, approach the recommendation, especially given the December recommendation y'all made.

Okay. Just a couple other questions. I'm gonna open up to the commission in a second. How many applications are in this 98 page? There's one that's a dupe, a duplicate that I saw.

Yes. There was.

How many how many distinct applications are there? Do we know?

Not off the top of my head.

Okay. It's occurred in the past where if we if we keep applications in the in the hopper, you know, past a certain number of months, they they essentially age out. Like, the people aren't interested anymore. They moved. Yeah. And I think if we were to discuss people or interview them, it would be good to to, like if they didn't recently apply to reach out and see if they're still interested. Let me open it up to the other planning commission to see what people's thoughts are and how to how you wanna approach this.

John, this is Mike. First, when I went through through them last night with the exception of duplicate, I think there was 14 applicant, but I had the exact same thing as you just said. I don't know if if these the same 14 are now interested as they were four or five months ago. So that's something to kind of but I went through every applicant last night just to to to understand their qualifications, their objectives, etcetera. But what's not clear from, you know, for me still is what is our role? What is exactly planning commission expect us to do or the commission expects us to do? Okay? But I don't know what the process is.

You mean a council? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I think it hasn't really been defined in the past. We've, you know, interviewed people sometimes and discussed and I think more often than not, like, our our, advice wasn't heeded or it didn't seem to have any impact on the process one way or the other. And so I'm a little reluctant Mhmm. To, particularly to waste the time of applicants and being interviewed by us if our if our say isn't really requested by the council or clearly, you know I don't think you said. To be.

Yeah. Jeff, do you wanna say anything?

No. No. I I agree with what you said. Josh, I will say I did I got an email from Brenton two months ago asking if I wanted to reapply, and I said yes. So

Yes. And I think your application has been essentially re upped without needing to be in this packet.

Oh, good. Good for you, Jeff. VIP treatment.

But more generally, I mean I agree John with what you said, I mean it'd be good to get some guidance from counsel as to what they would like us to do. And I agree that it would be good to at least email these folks and see if they are still interested in serving. And I will just also add it'd be good to have, like, a list of people instead of having to dive through a 98 page PDF, and go through all the boilerplate and figure out who's applying and whether this is their first choice or not.

Yeah. And you've made that point before, I remember. I agree with you. So what so it sounds like there are a couple of things that we wanna do. Number one, we we wanna see, if counsel, wants our advice on this, rather than just, like, going through the motions based on tradition.

We we wanna see if if they actually wanna hear from us on this. And, and number two, if so, we'd like to get, hear from the applicants on whether they're still interested. So, I'm happy to take on number number one, at least. I can just email the mayor's office and ask the question. On number two

That's for happy to do that.

Yeah. I think it's probably better better with you than than with us, I think.

Yeah. We can make sure the logistics are in and folks have, panelists out for invites, and, we can make sure that happens.

Okay. And we should be able to iron all this out before the next meeting. And if the council does want us to at least discuss the written applications and potentially interview or not the people, then I'll I'll coordinate with staff to schedule that, you know, hopefully, next meeting in May. Yeah. So how's that for an approach?

Would that which meeting in May were you thinking of, Josh? The first third first Tuesday? Give you enough time.

You said you had another item. Do you know the timing of that?

We expect to have another item, development one. It is likely to be the May 19, agenda. If you would like to meet on May 5, you obviously have it regularly scheduled and can. If you would like to meet on May 19 about this also works.

Does staff have anything else for May? Is it the fifth?

Right now, we do not have anything else on the agenda for May 5.

Taz was gonna present to us some time ago when we had an agenda item on Lumo developments or time, you know, procedural matters related to the Lumo. Do know what happened to that? And does Taz wanna come back at some point?

Yes. I think on the timeline, we had discussed if that was going to be sufficient for a full meeting, had kind of heard a more negative response and positive from the planning commission, so had not set aside one meeting to discuss it. That timeline was provided back to council in January. So we can share with y'all the timeline. I think the main announcement is draft Lumo in June. Okay. And then we spend the summer doing engagement.

I think that I I think one thing at least I was looking for was a information on this the first of all, I think it was going to be a meeting that we otherwise were having a meeting, so not a special called meeting just for that. So that's why assumed it would be this meeting since we only we were meeting anyway and only had one item. But the other part is just understanding our role and what sort of I understand you're doing public engagement, but what sort of engagement you will do with the planning commission and what sort of input and feedback that you would like for us and how that will work. Will we be during regular meetings? Will we be asked to comment at one meeting, two meetings?

I know we'll have to have a public hearing at some point. Will there be engagement before we get to the public, with the planning commission, before we get to the, public hearing stage? So just all of that.

Yeah. Okay. I think we can come to y'all in the main meeting with some information there. I can see if Taz is available to talk on it. I think the we have an idea. There's a idea of what the planning commission's role is, and I'll leave it to Taz to lay it out.

Okay. So why don't we just tentatively plan to have Taz join us on the the second meeting in May, May 19 where we're gonna discuss is it a conditional rezoning and whatever the item is and applications if indeed the council wants us to advise on that. So we would have we would have those three items at least for that meeting. And Yes. And I think unless something comes up from the staff side, that for us to review and advise on will not have the May 5 meeting. That sound right, everyone? Okay. Okay. I think that's

Quick question. Go ahead. So regarding Jeff's application does that mean if he wants to reapply he'll be automatically on the board again?

Jeff will be on the council's ballot, automatically. I think the list of applications provided to us by the clerk's office is, aimed at y'all's recommendation. And I think we do not require board members who are reapplying to fill out the application again. So it's not sitting in the clerk's immediate here's what's applied in the last twelve months pile, but expressing interest in getting reappointed will get you on the ballot.

That would yeah. It'd be good to summarize everything somewhere. Here are all the candidates and some basic data.

Yes. I think we can come to y'all at the May 19 meeting, with, at least a ballot outlining every candidate's name and keeping it a little bit cleaner than this giant PDF. Certainly understand that. Especially

when they're I thought it was at the end when I saw the same name again. Thought, oh, they're starting over. There there were there was a whole round of other

I'm gonna make sure we saw that one.

After that, it was deja vu all over again. Also, deja vu to last fall when we did this.

It is very deja vu. The other thing we can make sure we include in the May agenda item, staff will reach out over email to see if, all applicants are still interested in being appointed to the planning commission. If anyone expresses that they are not, we can make sure to note that.

I remember there's one person who seemed very interested in the downtown partnership.

Mhmm.

And I don't know if that person got on to that or if there's a separate process that's ongoing, but that'd be something to

Yeah. She was still in there.

Yeah. Okay.

Mhmm. Okay.

If there's no other business, then we'll just adjourn the meeting and yield back the balance of everybody's lovely evening to go outside and frolic.

Oh, did we what did we did we say about the meeting minutes? Is that going to be released the last meeting minutes? Is the next meeting that we're

to So we'll get two we'll get two things a minute. Yeah.

Okay. Cool.

Yeah. You gotta go back into the the archives, Josh, to recover. That may have been Gotta

gotta remember that library meeting. It's it's been a minute.

Yeah. Okay. Thanks, everyone.

See you soon.

Have a

good Sunday. See you. Take care.