Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Today's meeting was noticed in compliance with the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act. This commission acts in review and recommending capacity for comprehensive plan amendments, text amendments to the Charleston County zoning and land development regulations, ordinance, reszonings, and plan developments. The commission has decision-making authority on road name change requests, public project reviews, appeals of administrative decisions on final plats and subdivision matters, as well as other matters pursuant to chapter 29, title 6, section 6-29-340 of the code of laws of South Carolina as amended. If you wish to speak, you should have signed up out the at um outside the door. Please fill out this and fill out the signin sheet. Um, I'm Cindy Floyd. I'm chair. To my right of Pete Pelotus, Luke Morris, Gary Lasain, and Adam McConnell. To my left, David Kent, War Zone Jones, Logan Davis, Susan Cox. Seated to my right, Commission Attorney Mark Bell. And seated to my left, Andrea Melich White, Deputy Director of Zoning and Planning. Andrea, would you please um introduce your staff?

Okay. We have Nikki Grimble, Mare Miller, Win Carile, Chris Conn, and Tamara Avery, who will present the subdivision case and at the workshop as well. Um, do we have Eric Adams? Nope, he's not here. Okay. And Stephanie And of course. In order to get a good recording of the meeting for the minutes, please speak loudly and clearly into your microphones and do not talk over each other. The first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from the October 13, 2025 meeting. Is there a motion and a second? Move to approve. Okay. Okay. Commissioner Davis. I. Commissioner Lasain. I.

Chair Floyd. I. Commissioner Jones. I. Commissioner Kent. Hi. Commissioner McConnell. Hi. Commissioner Morris. Hi. Vice Chair Palados. I, Commissioner Cox. I, the eyes have it.

Okay, thank you. The next item on the agenda is SBDV-06-25-03116, a subdivision plat application taking one existing lot and creating a total of two lots at tax map number 577-0000-00-41, 2718 Hamlin Beach Road, a property within the Hamlin Beach Community Historic District. Chris Con is going to present.

Thank you. We're getting it up right now. Thank you, Win.

All right. Good afternoon. Uh, we have our SPDV case 03116 uh for TMS number 577-00-00-41, 2718 Hamlin Beach Road. uh proposal the applicant is proposing to take one existing lot and create two lots. So here we have the future land use uh the current zoning which is S3 special management district uh current zoning map showing the parcel. Here we have the aerial view uh the 10mi historic district and buffer and the parcel is in blue. The FEMA flood zone uh site photos looking at the property on Hamlin Beach Road and Alfred Campbell Road off Alfred Campbell Road looking at the site location. And here we have the plat showing the existing parcel being proposed into two lots. uh SC state law section 6-29-340 functions powers and duties of local planning commissions uh section B regulations for the subdivision or development of land and appropriate revisions thereof and to oversee the administration of the regulations that may be adopted as provided in this chapter. See an official map and appropriate revision on it showing the exact location of existing or proposed public street, highway, and utility rights of way and public building sites together with regulations to control the erection of buildings or other structures or changes in land use within the rights of way building sites or open spaces within its political jurisdictions or a specified portion of it as set forth in this chapter. Charleston County Historic Preservation Ordinance Section 21-6A Subdivision Plat Application Reports.

The purpose in order to encourage the preservation of the historic character of historic properties and historic districts, preliminary and minor subdivision plat applications as defined in the Charleston County zoning and land development regulations ordinance for historic properties, districts, and properties located within 300 ft of the historic properties and districts must be evaluated by the commission prior to final determination by the Charleston County Planning Commission. Section 21-6D. Commission public hearing and report. Commission evaluation. The commission shall evaluate each subdivision plat application subject to section 21-6. Subdivision plat application reports for compliance with the cultural resource element of the comprehensive plan. The commission shall provide a report on the application to the planning commission that addresses whether and how the application is or is not consistent with the goals, objectives, and policies of the cultural resources element of the comprehensive plan. A majority of the HBC members present in voting should be required. The commission shall not defer subdivision plan application. uh applicable notice newspaper posted community interest neighbor and parties and interest notice of the commission meeting shall be provided in accordance with the requirements of section 21-8 notices of this ordinance HPC can't approve deny or defer subdivision applications uh Charleston County comprehensive plan 34.3 cultural resources element goal and here we have 3.4.4 Four, cultural resources element strategies and time frames criteria CR1 through CR5, CR5 through CR10, CR11 through CR15. Historic preservation commission report. All nine members present of the historic preservation commission stated the proposed subdivision is consistent with

the cultural resources element of the comprehensive plan citing consistencies with the element goal statement and strategy CR1 through CR7 and CR9 element goal cultural historic and archaeological resources unique settlement patterns of traditional low country communities such as historically African-American communities and family settlements and traditional activities such as Sweet grass basket making should be preserved and protected from potential negative impacts of growth and development. Again cited CR1 through CR7 and CR9. ZLGR section 8.3.2 for the planning commission review determine whether or not the proposed subdivision is consistent with all requirements of this ordinance and the goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan. Staff recommendation. Uh the S3 special management residential zoning district implements the urban suburban cultural community protection policies of the comprehensive plan. The urban suburban future land use designation states the communities in this designation are located in the urban suburban area and are characterized by lowdensity single family residential development, limited commercial activity and some agricultural uses. Many of the roads are paved with connections to county or statemaintained roads. However, Earth and Roads still exist. Many of these communities were recognized in the 2016 Charleston County Historic Resources Survey update as eligible or potentially eligible for the National Register of Historic Places due to their unique development patterns and significance to post reconstruction era and civil rights history. Future development should be compatible with the existing land uses and development patterns and the residential density should be a maximum of four dwellings per acre. The application complies with all requirements of the Charleston County zoning and land development regulations ordinance, including those of the S3 zoning district. Because the application is consistent with both the

comprehensive plan and the ZLDR, staff recommends approval. Public input uh October 15th uh for the Historic Preservation Commission meeting. The owner of the property spoke in support of the request. Uh, one person spoke in opposition of the application at the meeting. As of November 10th for the planning commission meeting, one letter was received from an adjacent property owner with concerns regarding easements for utilities. Notifications. Um 298 notification letters were sent to individuals on the historic preservation and east Cooper area interested parties list as well as property owners within 300 ft of the subject parcel on September 26, 2025. Additionally, this request was noticed in the posting courier on September 26 and signs were posted on September 26th.

Want to go ahead with public comments? Yes. Okay. We have one person who spoke or signed up to speak. Garrett Bean.

Hello. Thank you. My name is Garrett Bean. I'm one of the owners. Cut on your mic. Oh, or or speak get it closer to your Is the green light on? That one might not have a green light. Okay. on. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Get closer in.

Uh my name is Garrett Bean. I'm one of the owners of 2718 Hamlin Beach. Um we recently met with the um Ham Beach Road Historic um community and we just respectfully request if we could defer this application uh for one more meeting. We've had a pretty productive meeting with them. We'd like to get their support in this uh project as well. And I think we both mutually decided to if we could do one deferment. Um we've had some very productive conversations and we're both exploring some things and there may be an opportunity to do a sale of this property to to the community. So we'd like to uh just have a little more time to explore that if we could.

Okay. Do do you need to make a comment, Mark? Okay. So you're asking for a deferral? If we Yes, if possible. I'll make a motion to defer. Okay. Do we any discussion? Okay. We want to call the role on the move to defer. Commissioner Davis. Um I Commissioner Leain I. Chair Floyd. I. Commissioner Jones. Hi. Commissioner Kent. Hi. Commissioner McConnell. Hi. Commissioner Morris. Hi. Vice Chair Palados. Hi. Commissioner Cox. Hi.

The eyes have it. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay,

the next item on the agenda, proposed amendments to the zoning and land development regulations ordinance. When Carlile will give the presentation, good afternoon. Um, in September, uh, council directed staff to explore amending the ZLDR to add infrastructure as a consideration for requests of higher density intensity than allowed by existing zoning. So, the proposed uh amendments would implement the council directive in two ways. Uh, the application process and the approval process. Uh for the application process, comp plan amendment, zoning map amendment and plan development applications would require letters of coordination from the applicable entities uh relating to impacts on trans the transportation system, storm water and water sewer and letters of coordination would also be required from CCSD, emergency service providers and Carta for the approval process. an infrastructure criterion uh would be added to the comp plan for u added four comp plan amendments and zoning map amendments that request higher density and intensity in all plan developments uh for plan developments. There's already a similar approval criterion in place. Uh the proposed amendment would change the wording of that to match this language on this slide. There's also a proposed amendment to require a letter of intent for resoning applications to explain the reasonzoning request and how it meets the approval criteria. Also, there are proposed amendments to require traffic impact studies for all plan development applications and a PD approval criterion

for compatibility with the neighborhood. Uh, this compat compatibility criterion already exists for resonings. Uh we're requesting it be added for PDs also since PDS are reszoning requests too. And finally, uh Zelda currently has a violation provision for short-term rental properties that have a permit. This amendment adds one for STR properties operating without a permit. Okay. for public input. 55 comments in support and one general comment were received for the infrastructure criteria amendments and 10 comments in support and two in opposition were received for the short-term rental amendments and the proposed amendments were noticed as required.

Okay, thank you. Um does anybody Okay, we'll now hear public comments.

Michael Ramsey. Thank you. Good afternoon, chair and uh planning commission committee members. I am Michael Ramsey. I'm here today with Charleston Trident Association of Realtors.

Could you give us your address, please? Ma'am, your address? Yes, it's 5006 Wetland Crossing Road, North Charleston. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. And I try to be uh summarize what I've uh given y'all this afternoon. Um, on behalf of the Charleston Trident Realtors, we appreciate the county's continued efforts to thoroughly manage growth, maintain the character of our communities, and uphold property rights. We value the partnership between the county and real estate and development community, and we recognize the intent of the proposed ZLDR infrastructure criterion amendments. We understand the need and desire for common sense perspective to consider infrastructure when approving reszoning and planned developments. However, the policy as proposed is too broad and unfairly targets small property owners who may get caught in the bureatic maze. Primarily our concern is the commercially zoned parcels that may need to see a change of use and such a zoning change. We are still taping a deeper and more formal review which will be completed by the public hearing date. However, our initial review suggests several areas warrant further clarification to ensure the ordinance is workable, predictable, and consistent with the county's broader priorities. Quickly, the letters just a time presume um even something as the school district.

Sometimes getting a coordinated letter from one of your partners is not as straightforward as or easy as one would think it might would be. Not to mention with staffs already fully maxed out in many times. So I think uh it would be prudent to consider that there be a time frame to these letters of coordination because you might have uh situations where months and months go on and by the time you go through all your partners no letters have have been provided. Secondly, minimum size threshold. Um, please consider adopting a minimum size threshold before coordination requirements uh required because I think sometimes you have those mom and pops that are out there or you have smaller parcels where it's going to make sense for a reasoning to occur and it's going to be something that is going to be within Charleston County's desires and character of what we're looking to achieve. Uh so a minimum threshold would be something reasonable to consider. Thirdly, lack of consideration for other county goals. Real quickly, attainable and affordable housing strategies, infield development, and properties that are located inside versus outside the urban growth boundaries. um would want to clarify that a little bit. The difference between some of the properties that would be within the overlay and some that would be outside I think would be a reasonable consideration. Lastly, um we're again we're still evaluating these changes. Um we share the goal of responsible growth management and infrastructure planning. We very much deeply value the leadership

of the current council and staff in working on this development. As we seek to preserve Charleston County's character and quality of life, we are open to further discussion. We're open to providing additional input and also even participate in stakeholder meetings as the county continues to revise this proposal. I very much thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions for um what's his name? Mr. Ramsey. Mr. Ramsey,

I kind I would like for you to clarify the properties located inside versus outside the urban growth boundary. Um what considerations would you that one do you want? Do you want standards looser outside the urban growth boundary or ma'am? Do you want looser standards outside the urban growth boundary or

Yeah. Well, we know we have different desires, some within this within the overlay and without the overlay and we would think it would be prudent to potentially tweak some of the uh requirements that would be uh required for that because in some areas you want more growth and other areas you're trying to limit it. So that's that's what we're saying. Take a a differentiate between the two areas. Differentiate how

I guess it would be a matter of the the standards of of what you're looking as far as the requirements. If you know there's an area where you want the growth, you might not necessarily have all these uh amendments that you're looking at for that area. Would be a thought to consider. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else? Do we I mean do we know how long these letter of coordinations take? You know, I mean, I can say from experience firsthand that uh the point that uh what's your name again? Michael Ramsay.

Michael Ramsey is making about these letters of coordination are very very factual. There are times where a month may pass and you may not get a response at all. And at the end of the day, I think what he's the point that he so eloquently put out there is that uh time winds up being money. So having a a holistic view in this approach might give us the opportunity to implement some of the aspects of attainable housing and and how do we reach those those types of barometers as well. So putting a some thought process into it I think is definitely warranted. Some additional thought process I'd say.

Okay. Any recommendations on size? You said minimum lot sizes as far as uh possibly not having, you know, like a twoacre track of land or halfacre track of land having the same coordination letters. Is is there something that the realtors have looked at as far as minimum size? I think that's something we're going to would need to discuss with staff and really look at the whole county and try to see well how many partners or how many parcels that we're looking at that are commercial that are in nature that um and come with some kind of consensus. So the answer is no. We don't know what the size should be yet, but we do feel that there should be some kind of cut off, some kind of uh differentiation for those smaller parcels because we understand the intent is is looking at some of this big development and and some of the burdens that traffic and and additional infrastructure puts on the community. But however, when you look at those mom and pops or you look at a a acre and a half or two acre or three acre or maybe even a 5 acre, when you look at some of those smaller parcels and it's something that the community and the county and everyone agrees upon that it makes sense, but it might perfect example is affordable housing. We might have a parcel that is going to require a resoning in order to get higher density and to get more affordable housing on that parcel. and all the partners are are are bought into it, but there needs to be a little bit lesser consideration. And so really what we're saying here today is we're not saying we're for or against. We're saying that it needs to be tweaked

and these issues that we presented needs to be further explored. And we are further exploring them. We're looking across the United States and we're looking across the entire state to compare similar type reasoning that we're talking about here today. We've seen this many times with with future plan development with PUDS and so forth where the requirement such as this is put upon, but I don't know personally of this much requirement for a potential reszoning. So, that's really there's a lot of good ideas and a lot of good intent, but we want to make sure that the county gets it right and be helpful with that.

Thank you. Anybody else?

Thank you for allowing me to speak. Thank you,

John Logar. Good afternoon. Uh, John's Logar, uh, 5528 Frisco Lane, speaking on behalf of the John's Island Task Force. I always like to go last. Um, first of all, don't mess with the area outside the UGB. Okay. Um, second of all, um, address the, uh, acreage areas. There may very well be an acreage issue, but it's more than acreage. It's it's density. Putting five houses on five acres is one thing. putting 50 houses on five acres is another thing. So if you do do look uh at this in terms of tweaking it don't think about acreage only. Think about the density impact for it. But you know I've been coming these uh meetings for about what well over five years now. I'm some of you know be my site. Um and you know I don't think there's any ZLDR amendment that's been more impactful than than this one. It's going to be really impactful. Um and there's none that's more obvious and more common sense too. uh if the nearby infrastructure is not adequate to support a resoning request then staff should be able to recommend against the resoning. And that's pretty what could be more obvious. Um um yeah. So so finally um you know you always hear from certain um folks about affordable housing and everybody's for affordable housing. Question is where does it go? And the thought that you want to put affordable housing where the infrastructure doesn't exist. Carter doesn't run there. You know there's not grocery stores next door or nearby. I mean to to not have infrastructure and affordable housing tied together I think is is the wrong thing to do. You're doing a disservice to those folks that are going to live there. So like to ask you that you approve these ZLDR amendments and would be happy to work with you and others and in tweaking them. Thank you very much.

Okay. Anything else? Anybody have any questions for Mr. Zul? Adam. Uh just quick question for staff. So currently, if I understand this correctly, you require no letters of concurrency with any of the other utilities or DOT. Well, it depends on the application. So like plan development applications require them. Yeah. Um this would basically so comp plan amendments resenting requests um would would add it to those requests too. So currently they do not require them but this is fully adding all of these requirements back to that's to the resoning

correct in comp comp plan the comp plan amendment request. Okay. Just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. I have a question for staff too. Um regarding comprehensive plan amendments. What about like during our comprehensive plan rewrites um that we do every five years with mapping? How would that kind of play into it? Would we be encumbering ourselves with confirming infrastructure or?

No, these are only for applications. So, someone submitting an application to amend the comprehensive plan. We usually see those when someone wants to change the zoning of a parcel in an overlay, right? Because they have to change the zoning map itself and the corresponding comprehensive future land use map. Um, so it would only be for applications which our amendments are part of state required reviews and um updates. Um, and just um to clarify, you know, this these letters of coordination would only be if you're asking to increase the density or intensity. If you're asking for something that isn't increasing the density or intensity, then you don't have to do it.

Increasing the um density from what's on the map. Okay. Okay. Right. Any How does that work with um some of these commercial overlay districts? Yes. So, we thought about that because um you the way it would work is the planning director would determine whether or not you're what you're asking for is more intense than what you currently have based on the uses and the densities that are allowed in the the change that you're requesting.

So, it would be an administrative decision. as to whether or not it's an increase in the density or intensity. Correct. Okay. Yes. Would would staff be able to kind of look at these three points that the realtors made and come up with some recommendations by the next meeting that we could possibly have a little more, you know, I I worry about the small um mom and pops that have to deal with this letter of coordination and getting all the all the letters and they may may not know how to do it. They don't even know who to reach out to. So, I would think we'd want to possibly kind of dive down a little bit and find maybe there's a minimum lot size or as John said, density or whatever that we need to look at than just a blanket like it is.

Yeah, of course. We can certainly do that. Well, I'd like to make a motion that we defer this till the next meeting. Second. Okay. And one more comment for staff. Uh, so PDS currently require these letters of coordination. Any idea, rough estimate how long it takes a typical applicant to receive them all?

It's hard to tell because the way it works is someone will submit their application. Um, and once it's complete, we'll review it and give them comments. If one of the comments is you're missing your letters of coordination from all the agencies or some agencies, we're not sure if the amount of time it takes that person to turn and back and resubmit is because of the time it takes them to address all the other comments or the letters of coordination or combination of both. Um, at least with plan development, sometimes if they can't get the letters of coordination from some of the agencies, we will just add that as a condition. Of course, we don't have that ability if it's a regular resoning to do um

that is a concern if you have at least for me on a regular resoning request to not have that leeway if you have one agency that is notoriously slow and dragging out the process.

Oh, okay. Adam, I said Adam. Okay, thank you. I appreciate it. Uh just a quick question about um traffic impact studies were one of these as well. And there's no uh minimum requirement for that to happen. So if you had a halfacre lot that went from single family residential to a business neighbor business or something on that idea, right? That would presumably be an increase in use. And then would that require on a singular lot an additional traffic impact analysis for that quarter acre law? Not necessarily. No.

No. So traffic impact studies would not be required as part of these are just letters of coordination. So plan developments right now you are required to do a traffic impact study if you trip the thresholds that are in our traffic impact study of our ordinance. Yeah, the changes we're making to the plan development section are to keep that, but also in addition to that, even if you don't meet those thresholds for a plan development only, if you are increasing the intensity or density, then you will have to do a traffic impact study. If you're just reszoning from one zoning district to another, even if you are increasing density or intensity, all we're asking for is the letters of coordination. Okay. So, when does it trigger the traffic impact? If you, let's say you get that resoning and then you come in for site plan review or subdivision.

Yeah. Then if you trip the thresholds that are in our traffic impact study of our ordinance, then you would have to do a traffic impact study. Okay. Well, just to piggyback on that, to clarify further, um those requirements are there already, so we're not doing anything with that.

I'm certainly in favor of what this is trying to do, but my goodness, the questions that have been asked raised the question, should we be moving on it at this point? I think this is important. I think the public would be given more time to consider and I guess staff to consider some of the comments. So I certainly will vote to defer in anticipation of making this more amable and understandable and less convention and less controversy. Don't we already have a motion for that? We have made a motion and Yeah. Okay. So you're just saying you're in support of the motion. Sorry. You were saying you are in support of the motion. Okay.

Okay. Logan, I'll just ask during the deferment if the county can look into some kind of carve out for these um overlay districts with businesses because I do think that there would be some beneficial workaround here where you know if if the county is already saying we're going to have these overlays for you know um it's usually light business operations um and I think we'll see more of that in the future. If they're already saying these are the areas where we need that, then I think to burden these small businesses with some of these additional um coordinations um might not be necessary.

And I apologize, maybe I misunderstood your question before. If we resone someone in an overlay process, then this doesn't apply to them because they have that zoning district. It's only if they wanted to go in and change their zoning in that overlay to something higher density or intensity. And I apologize if I misunderstood your question before. I my understanding is let's say you have one of these overlays and you have, you know, 15 houses that are in this overlay that can be used for business purposes. The second that someone tries to use it for business purpose, this would be at issue. Correct.

No. because if it's zoned in the overlay to allow that particular use, that business use, then all they would do is go through site plan review um and through that process and then you know we have already have as Luke pointed out you know requirements for transportation studies and things like that at certain thresholds that would kick in through site plan review but they would not have to reszone as long as they were going through a byite process whatever they're allowed to do. Okay. So the overlay is the reasoning. Yeah. I I've personally been through it and I've had to do coordinations before and that was through the site plan review process. Okay. Which anyone who's changing from a residential to a commercial would have to do. Okay. Yep.

Okay. Anybody else? So, do we vote on the deferral? Yes. Okay. All right. Want to call the role? This is to um in support of the motion to defer. Commissioner Davis. I Commissioner Leain. I Chair Floyd. I Commissioner Jones. Hi, Commissioner Kent. Hi, Commissioner McConnell. I Commissioner Morris. I Vice Chair Palados. Hi, Commissioner Cox. Hi.

The eyes have it. Did that include the short-term rental regulations um amendments or was that just for the infrastructure criterion? Um I apologize. Should I ask that question before?

We can bring both back to December. You want to do that? Sounds good. Okay. All right. So, that's deferred. So, now we have um the meeting. The next item on the agenda is approval of the 2026 planning commission meeting schedule. Just in your packet. Find it. Okay. Do we need to do we need to vote on this? Move to approve.

Okay. Any discussion? Okay. Call the roll, please. Yep. Oh, was there a second? Either one. Yeah. If two move then one is a second. Pick it. You pick. Commissioner Davis. I. Commissioner Leain. I, Chair Floyd, I, Commissioner Jones, I, Commissioner Kent. I, Commissioner McConnell. Hi. Commissioner Morris, I, Vice Chair Palato, I, Commissioner Cox, the eyes have it.

Okay. Um, um, a planning commission workshop featuring a conceptual PDU development plan presentation. A presentation on missing middle housing and a discussion regarding subdivisions will begin immediately following the conclusion of today's planning commission meeting. Um, if there's no further business, what did you say something? You're fine.

Okay. If there's no further business, this meeting of the Charleston County Planning Commission stands adjourned. Um, the planning commission will hold its next regularly scheduled planning meeting on Monday, December 17th, beginning at 2 PM in council chambers. Okay. All right. Welcome to the November 10th, 2025 Charleston County Planning Commission workshop. The workshop has been noticed in compliance with the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act. The first item on the agenda is a conceptual plan development workshop. The enchanted oaks plan development. Mr. Jared Crosby or Miss Danielle Crosby.

Good afternoon. How are you? My name is Jared Crosby. This is my wife Danielle and our daughter Asyn. Um, thank you'all for taking the time to hear about our home and our project that we've been working on. Give you a little visual before we get started. I feel like that always helps kind of understand what we're talking about as we speak about it. Put a piece proper.

There we go. Um, so we wanted to give you a little bit about our story, go over our vision and our core values, who we are as a family, you know, um, how we plan to impact the community obviously in positive ways. Um, and just again go through uh, by sharing visuals and and imagery of things that we've been able to do with our home and um, kind of be able to convey that story. So um, in order to know what we're doing, you have to know a little bit about who we are. Um, I am a former educator. I taught for five and a half years at College Park Middle School. Um we were born and raised in Savannah, but we lived in the North Charleston area for about 10 years. Uh my wife does ultrasound and um it afforded us the opportunity a couple years ago to sell everything that we owned and um travel for a year with her job. So we ended up in Huntington Beach, California for a year um patiently waiting to move back home and look for land that fit what we wanted to do. Um my daughter Alen uh homeschooled her while we were traveling and now she attends Low Country Leadership Charter School. It's been an amazing experience. This her third year there. Um it's been really cool. I've been able to go in twice, well once this year, once last year to do some um plant-based lessons with them as well, and so we can't wait to be able to partner more with them in the future. Um here's some other pictures of we had Brooke, our neighbor, she'll speak in a little bit. Uh she had some friends that were doing a summer camp and they asked could they come out and bring some students out just to meet our animals, meet her animals and do a little plant lesson. So we had them out. It was a great great time. They uh took cups and was able to take seeds and uh propagate little plants to take home to their gardens and but their most their favorite part of course was the goats, not us. But um our objective and our purpose uh we want to create a community space. So um in order to do that obviously we have to

generate income. So our goal is which we'll speak more about is to host small um like micro weddings and small events. Uh just from over the past couple years we've constantly molded what the need will be. Um and so if I had to guess I would say our most um lucrative thing will actually be rehearsal dinners. We've had so many people uh in the area that have reached out. We've hosted some friend things as well and it's been amazing just to have people out. Miss Anna, you can see her here. This is actually at my daughter's birthday last year. So, um she's a local musician. So, she comes out all the time um and plays at our place which is cool. And then this field trip on the right was actually last year. Uh the young naturalist came out. Uh that's the I'm sure you're all familiar with Edostop and Land Trust. They have a group of usually about 20 25 students. Um, and it's usually they come out, they do different places, but it's always to generate an idea and an awareness of um, of the environment, how to protect it and be good stewards. So, that's something that we're super passionate about. Um, we actually went to the land trust uh, oyster rush yesterday and I'd say there was probably 500 people. There were maybe 15 kids under the age of 10 and maybe less than 20 adults under the age of 40. So, it's there's definitely a gap there and and we've been able to make connections and and we're excited about the, you know, just it not being all 60 year olds and above that are involved in the community. Um, here's a location and our overview. I know it's a little bit harder to see on here, um, but we are, uh, 861 Little Britain Road. We are, um, less than a mile off the corner of 174 where you have, uh, Megot uh, Park and then you have Roxberry Merkantile. Um, that's a restaurant. I actually work there now. Um, I didn't think I'll be back in food and bev, but after teaching and moving out this way, I'm I'm holding it down right down the road. So, and like I said, Miss Jackie,

the owner, is here as well today. Um, the subject property that is our residence is 9.9 acres. Um, like I said, we've lived on it now for two and a half years. We have an amazing barn that we've been able to add on to and and and enhance essentially. Um it had great bones but it needed a lot of work and we've been able to continuously work on that. Um one thing that we obviously was aware as when we started this journey was even before this property was making sure that we found property that align with the Charleston uh future land use. So our subject property does fall into the parks recreations and open space again which is amazing having the park diagonal um Roxbury Park. So, we don't know how we'll be able to partner with them in the future, but I've talked to certain people about the future plan for that. And and again, I think for having field trips and stuff, it would be cool because our space is so small, they may need we may need larger space and areas to spread out. So, um excuse me. Uh this is another little overview that just kind of shows you um our area. And then there's a plat which we added it for more of y'all to have access to beforehand, but obviously today you won't be able to read it. but it shows uh the parcels and um an older plat. Oh, there we go. So, here's our site plan. Um Mar can attest that this has been a work in progress several times to the fact that we were like, did we give you the right one for this one today? Uh but it shows um when you pull in, does this have a laser? No. Anyhow, when you pull in, um, we have a very nice rock gravel pathway because the guy who built the barn originally, uh, stored very high-end kayaks and, uh, was with the intent of doing a nature center. So, um, lucky for us, he put a lot of time and money into the drive and whatnot, which has been really cool. So, um, you can do the loop around. Um, anything that we've

had, for example, like Alen's birthday party or the garden tour, we've kind of used things like that as a trial just to see how people naturally flow, whether it be pedestrian wise or traffic-wise. Um, and so we typically have people pull in, they drive around, and then we have one big uh grassy area in the back uh where we tend to park cars, and that's also where our goats go and eat when they're not pinned up and so that they're not in our gardens, of course. Um, this is just some before and after. So, you can see sometimes it's nice for us to look back because some we feel like, man, we've been working on this for so long, but it's cool to see the progress. Um, we had a community workshop this past spring, which I'll talk about in a little bit. But, it was really neat for some of our neighbors to come out and say, "Whoa, I I didn't realize that this was even back here." And, you know, or people who had looked at it because it was on the market for a while because it was such a unique property. Um, so this is just a picture of our bathroom that we remodeled. And you can see everything is nature driven and recycled for the most part. Um, here's another little cutout. So we had a lot of great native ferns and crepe myrtles and all that good stuff, but we've since just added some curb appeal. Um, and this is actually a view. So if you look to the left of that picture, that's out on Little Britain Road. And our favorite part is the natural buffer that we have. So when you you really in the winter you can kind of see through the woods, but it's nice. It kind of creates a little a little hidden oasis. Here's just another um another video of the additions and a little inside of the inside of the main um barn. is actually a lot of neighbors say it was called the car wash barn because they would there used to be double doors on either end that you could pull through but the guy before us was going to do a barnaminium so he started closing it in. Um we've kind of already hit this but obviously we're huge stewards of the land. We if you know us you probably have a plant that we've

given you or you might have stole some cutings out of your yard but anyhow look Sher can second that. Um, but really just having kids out, whether it be a local group or our neighbors, if if you call us and you're like, "Hey, we're coming over, we'll your doors are always open." So, just give us a heads up so we can clean up. But, um, anyhow, so this again, we've only had three field trips over the past year um because it's just been local people reaching out and we're trying to partner with with the schools, but we're not to that level yet. Um, and also we have to take off of work every time we host something and we both work full-time and our project and anybody who we've worked with knows that traffic impact studies and wetland that it adds up. So um so we can't wait to have a more financial um blessing from the land to be able to be more available to do more fun stuff. Um here's a little picture in the afternoon. So, um it really is like a a great little spot. Anything we've had, um it's been fun just having neighbors out and stuff. It's Brooke always laughs and she'll call me and say, "Hey, I'm bringing over somebody. I want to show them what your lights look at night." I'm like, "All right, come on." So, it's a it's a cool spot. Um this is just some more pictures. So, with the land trust this past year, we did um we built little green Danielle did where the kids be built the green houses out of plastic and then um we did the seeds of course. I went and picked up a microscope from College Park Middle School and actually four and was able to teach the kids parts of microscope. So, it's kind of again it's educational but they're out and about and then um they love taking home things. Rachel and Steve, they're here as well today. They actually volunteered. Um, the last time we had some kids out and helped me with we grafted a sagghorn ferns to old pieces of wood. Some of the pieces were actually cutouts from the barn, which I thought was really cool. Um,

here's one of our goats. And then this was um the summer camp I was telling you about that you saw them just walking up. They were they were real fun. Um, of course we want to be this is our this is how we're going to change Alen's future. We grew up not how we're raising her. And so, uh, we definitely want to change the, you know, legacy of our family, but more importantly, we can't wait to bring people with us. So, um, one of our friends does photography. She reached out last Christmas and said, "Can we can Santa come and take pictures in the back of your bar?" And I'm like, "Of course you can, cuz not often do we get Santa to come and hang out with you." So, that was really cool. Um, you can see another friend sell soap. She wanted to take some photos just with the gardens in the background. So, um, feel like I'm being redundant here, but we definitely are environmentally aware. We try to protect and educate any way that we can. Um, because, you know, we do have some wetlands on the back of the property. Um, which is not good for me trying to water my grass on the top part cuz we can have a storm and the next day I have to turn the sprinklers on because it pulls it, but that's what it's meant to do. So, um, down to like signage. So, um, everything we do, we try to use recycled. We have a little recycled window greenhouse. This is our the top left picture was the original portter potty for the nature center. So, we turned that into our chicken coop, which is

interesting. Um, and then another picture of the other bathroom. And then, as we've worked with staff, we've actually attained all of our um, letters of coordination. And um so we have all that which I'm sure I don't think y'all have access yet to our PD, but we've it's is check mark complete. We just need to make edits based off of, you know, what suggestions y'all may have. Okay. Can you give us a a bottom line?

Yes, ma'am. Um actually, I will not talk about this. My bottom line I will use for this. This was our um probably our favorite day we've had. We did a community picnic and garden tour this past spring. Uh, Anna played music, people brought picnics, and it was just really neat to have our neighborhood come out. So, thank you for your time. And so, you want to set up a business to continue to do this kind of stuff. Is that

Absolutely. So, so we'll So, this, like I said, is our primary residence. We can we will continue to live on the property, but be able to generate income. Um, and also, I'm glad you asked that, we don't want to generate income from things like garden tours and field trips. we will generate income through like the rehearsal dinners or small weddings so that we then can give back cuz I taught for five and a half years and we went on two field trips because of funding and so that's something that's super important to us to not limit students locally who would be able to come out only because they may not have the funding. Okay. All right. So what do we do now? Any questions or comments from commission members comments?

Okay. Um, anybody have any questions or comments? Yeah. What is the present zoning? The pre Thank you for asking. The present zoning is a 10 and that is not sufficient for you to do what you want to do because

because of the Thank you for asking that. So we we have to do a PD because of the special events or if there was a food truck to be used on the land. So everything that we do is compliant already with Actton with those two exceptions. they're significant, but maybe staff could correct me, but I didn't think that improving the economic uh feasibility of a project was grounds for a reasoning that was that seems to be a major feature of your potential application.

Yes, sir. I'm sorry. So what what you're saying now your plans are not feasible with the A 10. So you need this change to make your project feasible. Yes sir. Is that legitimate

staff? The reason that they're asking for this, you know, it's the special events aspect of it. So we allow you to have five temporary special events per year. where we issue those permits for any property. They want to go beyond that. Um we have an allowance in the A areas to go up to 25 special events per year with a special exception approval, but you have to have a 10 acres. Yeah. And and their property isn't that size. So they can't get close. Almost 10 Highland acres. Yeah. So Highland Yes. Highland acres. So they'd either have to find more Highland acreage property, go through that special exception process, or do the plan development to to get to what it is they they want to do.

And we're super excited to the proposal of the new aggra tourism because I think that is such a need for our area. Um, however, with most of our aggraic things that we're doing, they're not going to be generating income. So it's still it's great, but we wouldn't make money on those, if that makes sense. Got a question.

Yes. Um so are you guys not able to utilize uh the special permits to do what you need to do to gen to generate sufficient income to operate your agro tourism. So, exactly what what they were stating, we could, but it would cap us at 25 um and obviously mixing different some being profitable, some not. It wouldn't um it would not generate the income to pay for our land and our us to be able to back away from our full-time jobs to be able to do more stuff. There in lies a bit of stickiness that it's just a little difficult for me. I would probably say just because I feel what you're saying.

Yes, sir. You know, but in other circumstances, people would need to either go out and buy some more property to uh get to that 10 acre threshold. Yes, sir. uh or limit what they're doing based on the 25 permits that they could get per year. Yes, sir. Ord and I will say personally if we had unlimited income, absolutely we would do that. But we or we sold our house and took our earnings from our home to purchase this land. So it was just the most appropriate thing for our budget and what we could afford. I'm going to clarify. Thank you for asking.

All right, before there's other cl uh questions, uh we will let one clarification from the planning staff, make sure everyone's on the same page as to what is actually going on and what is being requested today.

So today, anyone on any property, regardless of zoning in the county, can get up to five um special events permits per year. So now in the agricultural areas, you still have that, but we allow you to go up to 25 um events per year, but you have to have at least that 10 Highland acreage. And there are some other requirements. That's the one that that their property doesn't meet. Um but that requires you to go through the special exception process and get the board of zoning appeals to approve. So really what they can do today by right are the five temporary special exception or special events um permits. Thank you. Did you you have a question? Yeah.

Um just really quickly, your site plan, I assume I see that the bridal suite and the barn are existing and the roundabout you already mentioned was existing. Um is the additional or the road in blue and pvious uh grass parking area I assume. Is that existing or is that proposed?

It is everything. So we live here so everything. It's kind of such a weird thing because you know when we watch other things here's a you know plot of land and these are our plans with ours we kind of been working backwards to take the satellite aerial to then show you where those things are. So great question. Then the very wellbuilt U rock drive is the one that goes around the roundabout and then we've then created a little side road and then the back is um is a grass area. Yes sir.

Yeah. because I'll be honest, whenever I saw this, I wasn't really sure why y'all needed to have a workshop on it because it all looked existing. Um, and obviously the exception makes sense or the need for a PD in order to meet that. I think that it's a fine use for the property and it looks like you have a lot of community support. So, um, I don't have anything else to add from that.

Um, I was going to ask if you could just quickly describe the surrounding properties. I mean, I see kind of the written breakdown on here, but if you could just describe that to us. Yes, sir. Let's see. What would be the best one? It freezes videos.

All right. This one. You want to talk about that? Um, yeah. So, excuse me. So, you can see where Lansburg Lane is at. We're our property is right to uh to the right of that. Next door to us is also 10 acres of agricultural land which is also taxed as single family residential which is that's Miss Bert Magcguire who's here um to speak. And then to the left of us um how many acres? It's it's a lot. It's a lot. I mean bottom right that's 10 and 10 and Mr. Roy smoke owns all of

the big large square and that is just agriculture land. Um, and then behind us, um, you can see where it says agric agricultural, that's, uh, Mr. Lee Lansburg, and he has 20 something acres behind us or 30 something acres behind us. Um, if you keep going to the left, it's a lot of agricultural land, but um, of course, it's taxed with residential. And then, of course, at the front near 174 is Roxberry Merkantile, which is a restaurant. There's also a church. And then Town of Megat um owns the Roxberry Park at that top left corner.

Pet so what do you in what's your intent on I guess the number of events that would be outdoor you know maybe have live music um and what what do you foresee as your hours of operation that you would allow that? So, I know that um thank you for asking that because there's so much to talk about. We were like, I don't know how you put everything in in 10 minutes, but um so yes, we we actually already have a typed up rules and proposed um things for the future, but our u music would be off at 10. Um one thing else that's it was always important to us and it just you know like a crazy amount of music would not fit the vibe of us anyways. So, um we do make sure you can only have acoustic music outside. So, no live bands or DJs set up. So, we though we're outdoor, it's an outdoor experience. If you wanted to have a DJ or live music, it would have to be inside the barn. Um, again, anytime Anna's played, she does guitar and stuff outside, but we've never had obviously a live band or a DJ. Um, also, there's some other things we want to do with the barn. Um, so you see the the sliding open doors. Um, just to ensure again with noise being obviously a concern, it would be to me as well. Um, we would like to so those doors that you see on the back, those open, but they actually have some screens that are there. Um, we want to take those screens out and put in glass at some point so that you can have them consider them as like shutters where you can then close up the glass, still get the view of outside, but obviously with bugs, noise and heating and air kind of create it where it turns into an indoor facility depending on the event.

And and you anticipate it being available year round or is it seasonal or? It would definitely be seasonal a because after tonight our gardens are not going to be they're going to be all burnt back. But um kind of sad about that. We got to get home and bring plants in. But uh so yeah, I would I would say that obviously spring and fall would be our two um this when our gardens are the most beautiful for sure. Susan. Um, my question may be something I should already know, but this is a 10 underlying zoning. And should there be a PD approved and they sell it? Does the PD go with the land? PD goes with them. Yes, PD would burn with the lands.

I love that you stated that because that has been our number one misconception that we've heard over the years, including us, is that people say, "Oh, oh, this is going to be commercial." I had someone just this past week that no, if they turn it to commercial, what if someone comes in and builds a convenience store? I'm like, well, it's not zoning to commercial, it's zoning to PD, which is its own written rules that you kind of design your own your own zoning and it protects it because again, this is agricultural. It's our primary residence and we will be generating income. So, it I'm glad you addressed that. That's actually on my notes to address on my two minutes of speaking if anyone had a question about that. So, um, are there any plans to do any short-term rentals in the future?

No, sir. We would like to build So, this is our primary residence right now, which has been a modification for living, but it's been the coolest thing we've ever done. However, um, the only additional buildin that we would do is we would love to do an accessory, 1500 or less, uh, tiny home on the back of the property, and that would be tiny home to rent out. No, for our primary residence. Primary. Yes, sir. Okay. So, where do you live now? In the barn. Oh, okay.

Yeah. So, we have um we have our barn. We have a little camper that we kind of store our clothes and stuff in. Um we have our we kind of laugh when we have people over. I'm like, you can stop by. We have to clean our laundry off the floor. So, we've designed it as an open open air entertainment space, but we live out of it. And that's what I'm I don't want to be emotional, but that's what I'm excited about for Alen. like she's it's been a great blessing for our family, but it' be cool when she has a room have to keep her toys in her Tupperware and you know live so on the fly, you know.

So, this would be a question for staff. uh should this pass, would this I don't want to use the word playbook, but you know, would this approach work for anyone else that has these same types of guidelines, the 9.9 acres, etc., etc., to be able to get a PUD. Yep. So, anyone could come in and request a plan development to do what what they're doing. Um, and we have had some in the past. um not as many um you know as as some other types of plan developments, but of course someone could submit an application for something very similar. Okay.

We haven't f the closest thing we found was story farms that was still so different in John's Island, but we've kind of used them as as a model because it's really there aren't a lot of samples um that kind of are doing what we're doing. Adam,

another question for staff. Thinking about this in the future, might this be an opportunity for staff to take a look at the special events provisions and where they're allowed and not allowed. Seems like a lot of hoops to jump through for something that's bringing a vision that's supportive of agurism and that areated as goals of the county and the plan. opportunity that a little bit instances as a expanding the conditional use so to speak.

We can certainly do that. Um just um for those of you who weren't here um we we have back in 2008 when the economy went down. Um we kind of loosened up the reigns on these types of events in the rural area to try to help folks you know have a different way of making money. Um we did get a lot of complaints um about you noise and traffic and those types of things and so we probably in maybe like 2015 16 time frame really pulled back with that these amendments but we're happy to again if the comm desires of course comments all right we'll open it up to public comments now the first speaker is Van Lear Hi, good afternoon. I'm

What's your name?

I was getting ready to say that. My name is Van Lero. I live at 9142 Lahi Pope Road on Edestto Island. I'm a permanent resident on Edestto. has been there 34 years and our community desperately needs a place to have a private event. We uh at the present time there is not a place on Edestto Island to have a private event. Our restaurants there are not set up to do that. They don't have capacity to um have people rent their place and have a private event there. In the past, um, our private events were held on some of the plantations on Edestto. None of the plantations are open now for private events because they're all owned by elderly people like me and they just can't keep up with what goes on to to produce a private event. Um, this came to my attention actually last year. I didn't realize that there was not a place for a private event until my granddaughter came to me. It was always her dream to marry on Edestto Island and to have her reception at a private event place which at that time was always a plantation. Um so I started calling around my friends that own some of the plantations and like I just said they were no longer supporting that because of their age. Um, Enchanted Oaks is the perfect place. We are rural. I live about 15 minute drive from their property. The property is be beautiful and well taken care of. I would have definitely had my granddaughter's reception there had they been permitted to do that at that time. And I ended up having my granddaughter's reception

at my home. Um, which I wouldn't have been able to do that if it had not been for Jared and Danielle and Roxberry Restaurant and some of their staff. They helped me out. And our community is like one big family. And it's very important to us to have somebody like the Crosby's having a place that we can use. Okay. Thank you. I see that there are sorry I see that there are a number of people that have signed up to speak. Um how many of you are in support of what the um these folks are trying to do? Okay. Does does anybody have anything unique that they want to add? Okay. Why don't we go with those folks first? Just come up and tell us who you are. Hi, my name is Brooke Maguire. Um, I share a property line with Jared and Danielle and Alen. Um, and have so for two to three years. My husband Ron and I are in total support of of their having a small event um venue next door. He's put living barriers between our property and his. Um, we've listened to Anna play acoustic guitar and when it got late, it went into the barn. We both go to bed early and we didn't hear a thing. So, noise was not an option for us and and they've made it so that communication and and understanding what we need as neighbors is something that they've taken into consideration.

Um, beyond beyond the fact that they're environmental stewards, um, they're beneficial to our local economy. Small venues like this create Charleston um, real opportunities for small businesses like caterers, photographers, musicians, florists, educators, artists, and countless other service providers. I was in the education field as a fifth grade teacher for 25 years. I'm especially supportive of the fact that their commitment to work with local schools and nonprofit organizations make this land accessible and affordable space for people that wouldn't automatically have it. They've expressed a clear intention to host school functions, student activities, educational programs, and nonprofit fundraisers, creating positive community impacts that extend beyond our a traditional land event. This isn't just for weddings. It's not just for rehearsal dinners. This creates a community for us. I've been constantly impressed by the Crosby's responsiveness, their respect to our nor our noise ordinances, their willingness to communicate with us, and provide peaceful coexistence. Um, they've demonstrated genuine respect for our surrounding neighbors. Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration today. They deserve this. This is their dream and you guys are in charge of it.

Thank you.

Who's next? Steve Ki 68 Palmetto Boulevard Edesto Beach. Uh that was all of what I would have said, but I'd like to add that uh you've heard the word barn mentioned a lot. This is a very l This is the best barn you ever saw. This is beautiful. Uh the whole property is beautiful. Uh they've done a wonderful job. Uh I know that they have the greatest intentions as you've heard much about. Uh the property as it's set up. I couldn't imagine there being a traffic or noise issue especially with them living there. Uh but these are the type of young hardworking uh serviceminded uh entrepreneurs that are an asset to a community and I think they should be supported.

Thank you. Come on up. Move it. Move it. I'm just going to speak briefly. My name is uh Jackie Barnwell. My husband, William, and I own Roxberry Merkantile, which is at the top of the street. We are 7/10 of a mile from the Crosby residence. And your address is I'm sorry, your address.

My my personal address is 7810 Little Britain Road. My husband's family has been in the area since the late 1800s. I'm sure you know the Bible name all in between. any um on that being said, we're in full support of their project, not only because it'll actually facilitate us to be able to expand our business options and job opportunities for the community. Um we just love working with them in general. If they put any sort of passion that they have into this that they've worked for me and doing, I mean, they'll just blow it out of the water in terms of just connection and support and even respect for their community members and even the people that they host. Uh we often do get requests for to rent out our facilities and we like Ber said we just don't have the capabilities of doing it without completely shutting down which then we disappoint the rest of the community which in the hospitality industry the last thing you want to say is no. So it's really hard but it's actually really great to be able to have another opportunity to support another small business and family and a friend. So um that's something that we would like to support. also allow me to expand on catering options, which I have denied 10 to 15 applications in the last couple months from people because I just didn't have the employment. But this would give me an opportunity to expand my employment options.

But that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Leland Landisburg and I own the property directly behind uh the property in in question, the Crosby's. Uh they've been very friendly to me. I I enjoy their company. I actually helped them uh build the barn. Uh used my tractor to do so. But I do have some concerns um and let's call it unintended consequences. Uh you have Act 10. It was designed to keep the neighborhood peaceful to help the agricultural community um abate the taxes as it were. Uh but I see kind of a creeping urbanism. The fact that you're uh thinking about changing a 10 and adding a commercial aspect to it to raise money. Um I I don't see that as being a positive because it it can in the future and keep in mind there were four people that own this property and although he says he's going to be there permanently, we don't know that. so that the next person that comes in could very well uh want to institute some other commercial aspect and I'm concerned about that noise I'm concerned about. Two weeks ago there was a an event held there and a number of our neighbors complained uh came out to the road to see what was going on. So even if they have events like that inside u the the the building acts as a hemholtz resonator. I'm in the audio business so I know about sound abatement. Um it's noisy. I'm concerned about traffic. Uh my rideway is about 2 ten of a mile just alongside this property. Spent over $50,000 to maintain it to stone it. And I'm concerned about the traffic. They say there should be no traffic. Well, if you're going to have

multiple events like this with a number of people, uh it can in induce uh some congestion. Thank you for your time and I understand you all seem to have similar concerns and uh I hope you are able to resolve them because I'd like to see a venue like this but not with the commercial aspects that we're talking about. Thank you very much. Thank you. Who's next?

Hi. Hello.

Hi, everyone. So, my name is Alexis I obviously I'm a chef. Um I'm also a board member um for Low Country Leadership out in Megat, South Carolina. I live at 5028 Waty Way in Hollywood, South Carolina. Um, I own a business, um, pretty much zoned for the city of North Charleston, um, down the street on Dorchester Road. So, um, and then also my, um, in-laws are from Edestto um, island. So, it's pretty much like I'm between here and there all the time. Um, I, you've heard, you know, obviously that they're amazing people. um they're caring. I just want to reiterate the importance of accessibility. Um and then also just understand the importance of being progressive when we need to. Everything cannot stay the same all the time. We're getting left behind and then we end up in trouble when we get left behind. We have a lot of aspiring chefs. We have aspiring like we have an amazing agricultural program at Low Country Leadership. All of these people are looking for a home. And with there not being a place, where do we go? We end up losing people because they have nowhere to go. I can't imagine being a South Carolina born and raised originally from King Street, South Carolina, relocated to

Charleston in 1996, but I'm a country girl at heart. I can't imagine not having a place to go to be creative. A place where children can roam free, a place where people can see a goat who may not see a goat. Okay, it's important so that they know it's not a cow. I have seen it. I told you all I had something to say. It's been walking. If they don't see it, if they're not exposed, how do they learn? Right. So, so you're you're in favor of what they're trying to do.

I'm in favor of Yes. I'm in favor. I'm in favor of access. I'm in favor of having events because guess where some of the workers are coming from? These rurer areas. Okay. Well, thank you. Yes. Thank you. Um hello. Um first I would just like to go ahead and thank y'all for giving me the opportunity to speak on this issue. Um to start off I am very much so for um what the Crosby family is trying to put together and do and what they have already been successful in trial running doing. Um

can you tell us your name and address please?

My name is Anna Caroline Hayes. I live at 28 Battery Park Road. Um, I'm actually living down in Edesto, so I'm not necessarily local to Megat, but I do work there and I spend most of my week up in that area. I've become close with the Crosby family. I've been part of what they're working on and I've seen a lot of the back like the, you know, the I guess the back the backstage kind of work they've been putting into it. But um a couple things I want to go ahead and address is as far as noise complaints go. Um I've been I have played at their property a couple of different occasions and I understand there is a 70 decel limit. Um I do not personally go above 70 dB and the amount of space that there is on the property for the sound to travel while I'm playing outside it uh it it shouldn't be it shouldn't carry um as far as as far as I'm hearing that it's carrying. So, for that to um I I guess what I'm just saying is that I don't I don't personally think it's as loud as as what it has been made out to be. And um if that is the case, obviously I can always uh turn things down. Um if I had been told to turn things down, it would have been turned down. It wasn't uh it wasn't like raging loud or anything. Um let's see here. Uh the other the other part is obviously having having a hub to go to to meet people and um you know just basically expand yourself as an artist. Um so photographers, caterers, chefs, um small artists, this is a great spot um to basically uh just I don't know. It's a it's it's a good uh spot to meet people obviously. Um, thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Camille Campbell. I live at 5001 Stone Oak Plantation Drive in Hollywood, South Carolina. I'm here today to speak on behalf of the St. Paul's Garden Club, which services Edestto, Adams Run, Megot, Hollywood, Ravenel. We pull our membership from a great area that's very rural and we're very spread out. A lot of our members are education have an educational teaching background. And so when the enchanted oaks was on our garden tour last spring, we were very excited because Danielle and um Jared's vision of opening up this space to education was right in our uh wheelhouse. And um as educators, we know the importance of hands-on seeing and learning. as the young lady just spoke about seeing a goat. You know, a lot of us take things like that for granted and we shouldn't. Um, our children deserve the opportunity to see the growth of plants maintaining native plants in our areas. And Jared shared with you that Edestto Island Land Trust um actually uses their event space. And to have a an open land trust like that um supporting you in that area, I think is priceless. Just priceless. Um and our area as the young lady spoke of too is in need of economic growth. Um you know providing an opportunity for chefs, photographers, I think is just a a great opportunity for this particular area. And um I think the person who spoke best today was the grandmother of the daughter that says there's just nothing available out there

for what Jared and Danielle and Alen are offering to the community. And to leave it in such a small space as you're seeing I think is very important too because as I think most of you have the questions you have asked about um traffic and things like that the events that they're offering and I'm sure they have this in their contract is probably limited to a certain number of people in cars. Okay. Um so any questions? Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Did you sign up? Probably not.

Hello, I'm Kip Bowman. Uh, my address is 5265 Ken Co. Lane, otherwise known as Whipperville Farms on Young's Island. Um, good to see you all again. Has the pay and benefits gotten better since I left? Um, it's always interesting to witness these. Uh, I think Warick and I used to have these discussions a lot. Um, not everything fits squarely into a zoning category. Thank goodness we had the PD. So, as I sat there in David's chair for 12 years, we used that PD several times. It was on big projects and and of course that's one of the use, but the other use was a wildcard zoning. I wish we had a differentiation. We do own traffic study in some things. I wish we had more of a differentiation to allow exactly what we're seeing right here because when you come out to my area, this is 5 minutes from my house. Now you're in my backyard. So I'm not representing anybody. I'm not here in a capacity as the owner of Kogal Bank or Commercial, as a developer. I'm just here as a neighbor and somebody who really likes the the the um environment that we have on our our end of town, which is agricultural, which is environmental. And it's very different because I've always challenged the board here that you you look at things through three lenses. Urban, suburban, and and rural. And often times, unfortunately, a lot of people are sitting there and they're only looking at it through the lens of of urban and suburban. When you get on the rural end of things, you get into agriculture, you know, you have properties like mine. You know, when you move out there, I know that most people that move out there will ask their realtor, "Well, is there an HOA?" Well, no, there's not an HOA. So, they move in. Then, they turn around and they come back here and they want this board to be their HOA. The problem with that is is that, you

know, I had a farm I moved into 2004 and people next to me hold events and yeah, is there sound next door? Yeah, that's part of it. Is there tractors running? Yeah, they're agricultural. Are there people hunting and firing weapons? Yeah, we embrace that where I live. Um, do you have motorcycles running around at high decibb? Yes, you do. Do you have neighbors right next to me who play music loud at times? Yeah, they do. So you try to limit that and I understand that. Thank goodness we have the PD because the PD allows us to do that. You know, it was mentioned earlier that agriculture is not a commercial zoning. I would just challenge people who come out there and buy property that's AG10. If that's not the case, then come back in, reszone your property residential, and give up your agricultural tax exemption. I bet you won't find one of them that'll do that.

Okay? So, I'm going to be real brief because I know my time's up, but if it's not commercial zoning, if we look under AG10, the things that are permitted and conditional are horicultural production, winery, agricultural process, roadside stand, agricultural sales, farmers market, lumber mill. Um, we've got uh courts of law, safety service, group home, cemetery, library exhibit, kit. So, you think what they're doing fits into those categories? Is that what you're trying to tell us?

I just want to for the record, not for y'all, this is not for your your consumption. This consumption is for the public to understand that AG10 is not a residential zoning. It's simply not. And what they're asking for is actually very good for the community. I live out there. I want to support especially the Merkantile. There's only a few restaurants like them that that are out there. and I have the personal privilege to have had a small event there at their request uh them to allow us to use the facility and it gave me a chance to actually watch how they're going to operate it. So now I can personally witness to the fact that as they had this event and I was playing for a a time outside. When she came inside, I personally walked all the way out to my truck to observe if there was any noise that I would consider so loud that the neighbors would um that it would would concern them. And the answer was no. So I'm coming at it as a neighbor. I'm coming at as someone who understands what the the area there is all about, why we have AG10. I realize there's a couple things that they don't meet in there, but I I would really stress this point. Going back and looking at at some of the things that you were talking about, Adam, is is probably warranted because

Okay. coming from a farm family that had 4,000 acres. You need to be winding up, okay? Because you're way over your two minutes. Sure. Yeah. And I realize I have a lot to say and I had a lot to say when I was there, too. Yeah, I know. And we have we have to keep a curve on you. The point of the matter is is is simply this. Agriculture in our area is not expanding. It It's shrinking and that's a shame. I wish we had more things that we could do to actually shore it up. What's really happening is AG10 is property being bought up and used as residential. Having a horse farm that I personally operate, we raise show horses. Okay. Knowing the people that are out there, I would love to see

agricultural tourism and things like that. Yeah. Hello. Uh, my name is Casey Burks. I live at 640 Saratina Court. Um, I'm here actually reading a letter from a former or from a neighbor of Jared and Danielle. Um, her name is Marne McClennon. She lives at 7967 Little Britain Road. I must admit, when I first learned of Jared and Danielle's plan to create a commercial space down the road from our property and soon to be house, I wasn't thrilled. We were drawn to the road. Um, we we were drawn to our road because of the privacy and rural setting. I was concerned about new exposure and subsequent curiosity about our road and homes surrounding Enchanted Oaks. Also, the traffic depending on how many events were going to occur down the road from us. But after observing the creation of this amazing space, its years of vision, hard work, sacrifices, and perseverance, and having spent considerable amount of time with the Crosby family, I very much am in support of their dream coming to fruition. This is an honorable, kind, quality family that deserves the opportunity to flourish on their own accord and will be ones that will bring a lot of folks along with them. A pay it forward movement that will benefit our community. As a small business owner, a local restaurant, the existence of Enchanted Oaks opens up more revenue opportunities for not only myself, but other small businesses that can collaborate and create a network that can support Enchanted Oaks in their success. I hope that my twofold perspective sheds some positive light on the enchanted oaks and even the slightest way helps Jared and Danielle Crosby get that much closer to the starting line. Respectfully submitted on behalf of my husband as well, Marne McClennon and Roco Maserelli. And also me as myself, I'm best friends with them and highly support this mission. So please consider these words. Thank you.

Okay, maybe it works. Good afternoon. My name is Shelby Benton. Um I am here today to show support for two of my dearest friends. Um also our daughters are best friends. Um not saying anything different than what you've already heard. Um, I have worked at Roxberry Merkantile for seven and a half years and there is a lot of need for event space. We do try to accommodate what we can but sometimes we just can't. Um, and then just that they are a lovely family. They've worked very hard to do what they have done thus far. They are very considerate. They are wonderful people, wonderful friends. Um, I've actually met a lot of great people through them. Um, and then just to give back to their community with these field trips and teaching children about plant life and nature and it is just an amazing place to be. Thank you.

Thank you. Hello, my name is Aaron Douly Jackson. I am Oh, my address is 104 Shirley Drive um in Ladson, but I am the manager at Roxberry Merkantile. So, I have effectively been Jared's boss um since January. Um, and since then, since then, I have gotten to know the Crosby's very well. Um, they are some of the best people I've ever met, but they are hands down the most hardworking people that I have ever met in my life. Anything they do, they do well. They will never have do anything. Um, which kind of is the whole point of this. um like if you were give to give them the PD and everything like this isn't something that they threw together and came up to ask you for like this is something that they have dreamed about. This is something they've worked towards um like the only thing that comes to mind with them is the phrase like the American dream because they have built themselves up and sacrificed everything um to be able to do all this. Um, so it's just they make the biggest impact on the community. Like they bring people together. They I've lived here my entire life. Um, and they're introducing me to people that, you know, they've met for the last three years, four years. Um, they really bring people together in a way that is just, it's imperative for the community to have something like this. Um, because like whoever said it, the change is coming anyways. um if we don't a lot these types of things to the local mom and pop business um the develop the

developers are going to get their hands on it one way or the other. Um so I kind of think that this is the way we prevent that by giving it a purpose and a very environmentally friendly venue and everything like that. Thank you.

Yep. Hi guys. I'm gonna make this short and sweet because I don't do well talking in front of people, but my name is Holly Jones. I live at 4743 Lab Run Road, which is right off of Tucu Road. Um, small business owner, familyrun horse farm. We board horses um for income. And I'm totally in support of just this young family trying to live off their land, support their family. But like a huge thing for me is the education. Like giving back to schools. I have two children that are now in high school. They haven't gone on field trips in years. And I know me myself like learning doesn't all take place in a classroom. Like I love what they're doing like with the gardening and meeting the farm animal farm animals and everything. That's super important. And um I'm in support of it. I think it's an awesome thing that they're doing.

Thanks guys. It is easy to keep it in two minutes.

Good afternoon. My name is Michael Baronson, 640 Saratina Drive in Mount Pleasant. Um, so my wife Casey and I just spoke on behalf of their neighbors. Uh, we both been best friends with with Jared and Danielle and the Crosby family for several years now. For me, uh, seven. Got to see them raise their daughter Alen, their niece, um, Lindsay, and Danielle's sister Kaylee. um that you can't speak any more highly about the character for them as people and what their plan is for the community. All they ever talked about in their career and in their life is how to bring back to the community. How they were raised was a little bit um unique in situations out in Savannah and how they got out of that and what they want to do for it in the future. Like this property is for them. Jared is fantastic. He he knows almost every single person I think now in Edison and everyone knows him and the fact that they all want to support this besides maybe one or two people is I think speaks bounds as well. So I highly am supportive of their project and I hope you guys are as well. Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Rachel Shuck. I live at 608 Pimea Boulevard. I am a retired school teacher. I taught 33 years right here in Charleston County. I met Jared when I was eating dinner. He was my waiter. He started to talk to me about his vision for this place. His enthusiasm was contagious. I was caught up in it immediately. I went to see the place. I could not believe how meticulous and beautiful the gardens were and just everything was just gorgeous. And I said, "If you ever do anything with children, call me on the phone and I'll come and help." So he did and I went out there. They had the children from Jane Edwards and the young naturalist group come out. It was a half day of school and I was thrilled because I'm thinking what else on a half day a lot of kids might go get on their iPad or whatever. These kids came out here. The joy in their faces, the activities that they did, seeing the animals lit them up. They did things that they took home. He taught them about plants. I mean, I just could not say enough positive things about these people. and they're just good people and mainly for the children. I mean, anything that benefits our children benefits all of us and I think Danielle and Jared are those people. Thank you.

Thank you.

Sherry Alvia, 1123 Roseme Road. I don't think that there's anything else I can tell you about their dream that hasn't been said. But I do want to say because I know there are people watching the live stream, there are a community of people out there that want to know or they want to think of where can I see this great place. I'm going to tell you where you can see it. You go to Roxberry uh restaurant where Jared is going to be taking care of people and he's going to talk to you the whole time you come and dine with him about his plants and his dreams. And then he's going to invite you to his home and that's where you can go see it. And he will show you himself and his beautiful wife Danielle and they will all show you about what they're doing. So if you want to see it, go see it and you will be blown away and you'll be a believer. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Danielle Crosby again, the um applicant. I just want to make a brief note. Um when Mr. Lee Lansburg was talking about the easement that he put in, um if you pull the plaque up, it actually was used to be called Wilkins Lane that John C. Wilkins put that in when he owned the property. Mr. Lee Lansburg then chose to extend that easement. Um 2,279 ft to his property. And then if you look from Little Britain to where his house is, that is about.7 miles away that he lives. So, I just want to make point that he did not put the entire easement in and the that one part that's on our parcel, that's our land that he has access to the rightway that he then extended and put rocks in and a gate. So, just want to put that out there. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you all for coming. Um, you We can chat further more. I know that we'll be back into it via email, but we didn't get into a lot of the logistics of numbers and all that. Okay, we understand. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Well, we've given you plenty of time, so I think we need you need to wrap it up and Okay. Yes, ma'am. I I So, okay. Thank you. My daughter read her letter. Do what? My daughter signed up to read her letter, please. Sure. Can you put it out to the side so we can see her?

I can't wait for the place to open up.

You want to wait? email it to her. We'll email it to you.

Actually, I will read it because I I think she's nervous because she thinks that she's being hurried at the moment and I'm not a big not happy about that. But anyways, thank you. Uh I can't wait for this place to open. It's like a dream come true for me and my parents. I love when my parents are proud of themselves and it makes me happy to see them happy. They feel the same with me. So that's why I love this place and I love them and my neighbors Brooke and Ron. They are the best neighbors you could ever ask for. I love them all so much. Thank you for coming. And when I asked her what, which is really crazy, I said, you know, we're going to speak as a family. You, you know, if you're nervous, you could write something down. And she said, well, I actually already wrote my letter. So she had that written ahead of time. So I thought that it would be nice for y'all to

be shared. Thank you for your time. All right. Do we know when this will come up for a vote? Right. We don't have an a formal application yet. That's their next step. They had to do this before they could submit their formal application. So once they do, then we'll get it on the next available agenda. Okay. Great. Okay. The next item on on the agenda is a presentation on the missing middle. Apologize in advance. Perfect. Okay.

Um, so I'll just jump right into it. Missing middle housing. Got a little agenda, but I'll keep on moving with it. So, uh, first off, thanks to the staff for, uh, you know, giving me this opportunity and also for planning commission, uh, indulging me on this. Um, but hopefully we can make a lot of strides into missing middle housing. And, uh, when staff asked me to give the presentation, I was like, well, I think that we all generally know what missing middle housing is. Um, and so this is just a quick slide essentially from single family houses at the bottom which are pretty much pervasively allowed by zoning up to mid-rise apartments which are also pretty pervasively allowed by zoning which is why this is called the missing middle. that's missing because zoning has essentially made it nearly impossible to build um in any practical sense which includes duplexes, forplexes, triplexes, uh you know, town houses, um things like that. So, I didn't want to dwell on that. Um I wanted to dwell on why don't we have it, give kind of a the lesser told story of how we got to where we are. Um, and so just like a 30,000 uh foot, you know, view of the brief history of zoning, as exciting as that sounds. Um, so I want you to kind of uh take a step back. Um, essentially what zoning or uh like as an architect, we're supposed to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the community. Um, well, zoning really started uh in 1666. the Great Fire of London, or at least that's the example that I'm going to give. Um, but generally speaking, uh, this triggered, um, what were essentially building codes. Um, back in that time, there wasn't really a distinction between zoning and building codes, but it included fireresistant materials. Um, overhangs of streets were

prohibited, standardized wall thicknesses and heights, window insets, and wider streets. Um and by and large they didn't uh or they didn't have the capacity to enforce some of the things like the wider streets or the more rectal linear rectal linear streets they weren't able to um dictate but uh it it is kind of the predecessor of what our modern-day zoning code turned into. So that's the safety aspect. Then we kind of fast forward to the late 1800s, the city beautiful movement. Um, think of like Oliver Twist London, uh, with fac industrial coal burning factories right inside of your residential neighborhoods. It was dirty. Um, their water quality was terrible. Um, there were like cemeteries right next to their water supply, sewer dumping right into the river. Um and so the city beautiful movement uh became a little bit more polished in the zoning aspect where it starts to separate uses um and it has that mindset towards health um for uh the people that live there. And so that's kind of separating industrial from residential. And in fact, it's where you start to see some modern-day zoning codes in uh the United States of America. Um, so 1916 New York City zoning. Uh, now we're kind of going to welfare. So, uh, the way that people can enjoy the city. So, certainly there's still that aspect of health. Um, but in the early 20th century, we finally had uh the type of construction technology to build as high as we wanted to almost. Um, and what ended up happening was it was kind of like stack them and pack them. Um so extremely high density tenementss. Um people were living in pretty squalid conditions without access to light inside of their units and it created

this kind of uh streetscape where light wasn't getting down to the street. So this is where you start to get that concept of setbacks um and famously for New York City uh their setbacks actually go back um as you get higher um which we've adopted some of that too. city of Charleston. Um Charleston Place has that concept as well. Um but then we start to get into like the bad part of zoning. So 1933 the Athens charter. Le Corbuzzier was an architect, a modernist architect at the time. He should have stayed an architect. He became a city planner too, which was terrible for the world. Um so this kind of started to to expand on that public welfare uh concept and in architecture. And there's going to be some back and forth because the original city planners were architects. Um, and so architecture in the late 19th century started viewing and definitely early 20th century started viewing buildings as machines. Um, and this is kind of expanding on that to the city as a machine. So Lake Corbusier um the Athens charter was essentially a bunch of architects and city planners that got onto a cruise ship uh in the Mediterranean and they came up with this whole laundry list of things that they wanted to do and that's um essentially what you see having been developed here. This is Puitigo um in St. Louis that was torn down but it's an example of what came from that Athens charter which was essentially Lake Orbuzzier's concept of towers in the park. So the Athens charter essentially started to separate uses much more finitely uh than had been previous done it previously done. It wasn't just about separating industrial from residential. It was about separating residential for every from everything else. That every use in the city had its own different quadrant and then that the transportation with the advent of the car was completely separated from everything else. Um so if

you look at some of his city planning work um this is a less grandiose version of that. The problem was it's extremely top-down dictation. So likeier's concept or the Athens charter concept is that this this group of like elite city planners and architects we can dictate how land is used and how people interact with their environment. But that's not true at all. Um and in fact he was kind of into like a social reformation um of sorts. So it completely separated humans and human nature from how they interact with their city. Um which is why Prudiggo was torn down because of really bad social issues. Um so anyway, kind of bringing it back to p post World War II. Um I don't know where this picture is taken, but it's pretty similar to kind of our suburban neighborhood um uh design that we have like in Aendale. Um so you have Uklitian zoning now adopted throughout the country. Um called so because of Uklid versus Amler realy company which established zoning as a valid exercise of police power. Um United States was effectively the only remaining manufacturer superpower manufacturing superpower leading to an economic boom. um because you have to kind of remember how we were able to expand the way that we were. This is um a time in history where we were extremely economically um successful and we were able to put these concepts to use. Uh of course you have the dominance of the cars primary means of transportation and then this led to a divestment in urban areas. So coming forward to today, this is 61 in Sam Rittenberg. Essentially, uh you are required to use a car in order to do your day-to-day activities. Um aging infrastructure lacks funding, housing unattainable for many due to restricted

supply, depleted natural resources due to sprawl, which that's kind of a concept of we want green space in our in our cities. Absolutely. Um, but you you have to find the right balance or else you start destroying essentially larger fauna. Um, so like let's say a wolf, a wolf needs more land than a squirrel needs. And so as we continue to sprawl, which is basically pushed by um our current zoning code, uh you end up having um issues with with that with larger fauna. Um, and then essentially what I want to kind of impress is that building codes make many zoning considerations obsolete. So if you kind of reverse back to why did we get to where we were, um, things like setbacks uh, were for fire spread considerations. Um, city of Charleston actually had a fire in the 1830s that created a kind of quasi zoning code of the time that wasn't enforced. Um but uh those considerations are now antiquated in zoning in my opinion because we have um a codified building code. And then so history as a guide I'm getting ahead of myself. All right. Um so this is one of my favorite drawings if I've never sent it to you, but the top is kind of like imagine a downtown area and then you have land to expand because you built a bridge. Um the middle image is essentially what we do because of zoning. uh what we had in like downtown Charleston is now essentially illegal in zoning code. Um but what we should be aiming for is that bottom image where we're having organic expansion through duplication of what actually worked in history. Um, and so that's why I've been kind of I've mentioned to y'all before, but radiating from nodes um of high ground and high commercial activity. Um, and then having a higher connectivity um within the urban grow growth boundary at these

nodes. Um, so downtown Charleston is a guide. This is a figure ground kind of showing that scale. Um, and I won't get too far into that for time, but essentially the way that all this started with staff asking me to give this presentation was um, talking about dup like the potential of duplexes. Um, so the current ZLDR essentially duplexes, triplexes and quadlexes and town homes are allowed as a conditional use as long as the density doesn't change. And I noticed that and I was like that doesn't make any sense because then what's the incentive? Um, and so speaking with Joel and Andrea, they were like, "Well, um, cuz I mentioned, you know, if you go downtown Charleston, there's tons of duplexes. Like this missing middle housing is all over the place." But it seems that the push back is, um, this perception that they are uglier or like you don't want to live near one. And I'm like, well, there's tons of great examples of downtown Charleston duplexes. And so they were like, okay, make a list. And I start my list and I'm like, well, there's not really the distinction between duplex triplex, quadlex, and town home isn't really a logical one whenever you're trying to organize what's downtown because they're all of the above and they change over time. Um, so I compiled a long list. This is a quick snapshot trying to give the largest breath of history. So the first was built in 1743, five and seven trad. Um, and essentially this is just built the way that it was built in Europe. Um, masonry building right up to the street. uh no porches, no breezeways. Um essentially you're just building next to the house because space is a consideration and a big one. Um 1750 83 and 85 church. This is cabbage row. Um but essentially you start to see like things are kind of airing out because the climate here is much different than uh European climate. So you have uh this

central breezeway. It's essentially two houses right now next to each other connected. Um, but over the course of history, it had commercial activity. It had multiple tenementss. Um, and in fact, uh, this is from a book that I referenced at the end. Um, or at least the research came from that. But they're all called tenementss. They're not called duplexes, triplexes, etc. because again, that distinction doesn't really make sense. Um, so this is from the early 1800s. Uh, Tin Street. Um, this is kind of like imagine two uh Charleston singles without the porches smashed together and then the entries on on either side. Um, it's kind of a cross between that and like a four square house. Um, which is pretty interesting. Um, 1841 um 22 and 24 uh State Street. Uh this is another example of essentially uh joining buildings separated by a breezeway in between. But I chose this too because if you look on the left and the right, the buildings are just buted up to it. It's not all part of some kind of cohesive understanding, but it does use similar proportions, which is why it works. Um 1845 46 and 52 Anson. Um, so the pink building was not part of this um, development, if you will, but there are more tenementss or row houses on the right side that have um, a setback actually, but a um, fence in front of them. Um, but I show this because it's another example of just building right up to the building that was previously there, which we can do from current building code. Um, as long as you have the right fire separations in place, which is why my opinion that zoning code dictating that is antiquated. Um, but this building also, it used to have a grocery store on the first floor. Um, now it's all residential. So, it's an

example. I think that a lot of times we get caught up in oh architecture should represent what's in the building. I disagree with that. Um it's that form follows function concept but that's not like the whole understanding of that quote. So um and then that turned into building as machine. Um this is an example that the building can just be there and then it can be uh adjusted for other uses. Um, and of course this works because this is an area like that wouldn't be used for industrial purposes. Um, so there is a bit more distinction with that. Uh, 1850 um, on Buffane Street. So, um, as I breeze through these, essentially that now we've gotten into the Charleston single form. Um, this is essentially a unit on each floor. Um, and you can see in the far left of the image the stair that goes up. So you have one entry but it's a modified Charleston single. Um this was mid mid 1800s but you can see um it's discreet but there is a center dividing line and these are essentially two duplexes or two town two units two separate units um but um but a singular facade um and now you're into another Charleston single but it's literally um the same thing duplicated right up against each other. And in fact, I believe there used to be three other houses um that has been have been lost to history um over time. Then this is one of the more interesting ideas. Um essentially it's uh Charleston single, but there's a unit on the ground floor, unit on the upper floor, and it's kind of a mirrored concept. Um this one is uh two entries on one floor, but Charleston single and another one of the Charleston single mirrored. Um and then what went wrong? So architecture is likely to blame in addition to car dependent infrastructure. I feel really bad having

these images up because it's nothing to these are examples here in Charleston. Um but essentially uh I think that the concept of duplex like of missing middle housing being less attractive is an architectural issue, not necessarily an issue with the housing concept as a whole. which um brought us to creating some kind of concept um to organize how like maybe there should be some architectural or massing guidelines in order to help this be more publicly palatable. Um and so these are parties and architecture school how to do them. I think that they're cool. Um it's an organizing principle essentially. You want to like distill uh down to the core what you're really looking for. And so each of these elevations are um based on the examples that I found. And then there's a little bit more to it because I have a whole pamphlet that I won't get into. But one of the things I thought that was interesting is you can actually see in this where they're all pushed together. They all kind of work um from a proportion standpoint. So, um there is a potential for that, I think, uh in order to make it more palatable, um for missing mill housing, but I don't like to get too deep into it because, um architectural guidelines can be kind of stifling and have other ramifications that you may not have been able to think through. Um the other thing that I want to point out is city layout's really important. So, um there's I know that we talk about like different street layouts um being uh unique and certainly there are instances like that like the Ogal Thorp plan of Savannah or the Houseman plan in Paris. Um but even those essentially there's only two types of street layouts. You have a grided layout

and you have a dendritic layout. Dendritic being like a tree. So you have the trunk, you have the large branches, and it's smaller and smaller as you get out, which is essentially how um our current traffic engineers design roads. They have arterial roads, they have local roads, etc. Um which work fine outside of the urban growth boundary or urban setting. Um but as you get more dense, you want more gritted streets. Um and so that's kind of where this concept of nodes comes from. um which I'll get to later. Um dendritic reduces connectivity and increases car dependency. Grided increases connectivity and decreases car dependency. Um and while I didn't I actually haven't read any of his books. Um Jane Jan Gell um is an architect/city planner. Um he says that essentially city blocks should be 400 ft. Um downtown Charleston is an example of city blocks at 600 ft. um whatever that size is. I think like Portland's 800 feet. Um but at the end of the day, it's about the ability to go to make a cross street so that walking, pedestrian walking is more accessible. Um and then of course there are opportunities which is kind of shown uh in the bottom left and bottom right of the potential for uh bringing this grid back into place. um that essentially like if you look in West Ashley uh at the current road makeup um you can see how it used to be rural because like there's a lot of Y uh shaped intersections which are still in rural South Carolina today. Um but essentially as we become more and more dense, we need to have ways to connect those um streets into a more gritted pattern. Um and the most important reason uh for this presentation or at least this

endeavor of missing middle housing is we are in a huge um housing crisis. Uh so essentially my biggest concern I think that we would all be concerned with this is that um as housing so essentially the concept is that housing supply is artificially capped by current zoning. Um that's obviously a mismatch with uh supply and demand. Um as it remains capped and house housing as it remains capped and people keep moving here uh which is a good thing. Um housing costs will increase and at some point we're going to run into an issue where the only people that can afford a house are those that can afford multiple houses. Uh so this concept of missing mill housing for me at least is this idea that we need uh to promote self-determination and diversity of ownership um so that we don't wind up in a situation where essentially people are dependent or larger groups of people are dependent on smaller and smaller groups of people in order to do anything in their day-to-day lives. Um because that can obviously cause big problems with social cohesion. Um the point of this and these are very rough numbers but based on uh current um numbers uh what would be considered affordable at 80 to 120% AMI is essentially a 250,000 to $370,000 house. Uh the median house price unfortunately in Charleston County appears to be $611,000. Um, and the the far right is kind of a stretch um because it's hard to quantify, but what that's saying is the um income of people who can of a household of four that can afford multiple houses at that $611,000 median house price, they would be at

essentially 300% AMI. Um, so the concept being that either the more uh people at that price point that move here, um, they could potentially buy more houses. I think that's unlikely because it would inflate prices. Um, but at the very least, you can see that uh we're very far out of balance from what a affordable house would be determined to be. Um, so my parents went to St. Augustine this past weekend and I was looking up map and uh I found a great example of bad density and a great example of good density. So um on the right is um is St. Augustine. It's just north of St. Augustine. Um I'm curious if this looks familiar to anyone. Um but it's essentially Lake Corbuzziest tower in the park, but we also see this around here. Um so out towards Bees Ferry, um with apartment buildings or apartment developments that come up, they look exactly like this. And in fact, this is literally just an apartment development like you would see out towards Bees Ferry Road. Um, and so bad density I would define as there are pros and cons to density. Um, bad density is getting all the cons without any of the pros. You should be able to have more walkability. You should be able to have more affordability. Um, but a development like this, you can tell that it's extremely car dependent. You're never going to have um multiple owners owners on this property because it's a massive property and they're they're either condoed out or they're apartments, which I guess you could say you can own a condo, but you own the air inside the the building um or inside your unit. Um you have disconnected streets, so no grid. Um in fact, it looks like there's only two entries um to this development. Um there's not really any pedestrian uh infrastructure. Um and essentially so

this concept of self uh like of self ownership diversity of ownership what it is is it helps for people to feel ownership. Part of the problems with puitigo um is that essentially uh one you are um you are uh essentially segregating poverty putting it all in one space. Uh and the other side of that too is um the people that are there don't feel any ownership of the building. So they can tend to um respect it less or appreciate it less. Um now one of the things cuz that was originally section 8. Um but in the '9s this concept of hope six housing came up where essentially it's one-third fully subsidized, one/3 partially subsidized, one/3 market rate. Um, and essentially that's just mixing different socioeconomic classes which has which has good success which is another part of what bad density promotes is essentially this is all one socioeconomic class whether it is um you know subsidized or not um it's not very helpful for a community um to kind of prosper and this is just St. Augustine itself. So, um, very similar to downtown Charleston, mixture of uses, gritted streets. Um, as density increases, lot sizes decrease. Uh, there's a diversity of ownership. Um, and honestly, I I don't want to be too preachy. Um, but this is how every civilization has developed in the entirety of human history, more or less, except for the last 100 years. Um there are examples of dendritic cities kind of in the Middle East. Um it depends more on social factors. Uh but that's still very rare.

Um typically they're gritted. Um so really what I'm trying to get back to is the last hundred years we've had the ability to enforce all these zoning regulations. We've had the technology to build massive buildings on large acreage and we've had the ability uh to transport ourselves over long distances of land. Uh but it it has led to all these other issues um that have happened in our city planning. Um so this is like kind of leading and to transition. Um this is Ashley Forest. I don't want to dwell on it, but essentially the concept was um that so it's open um open storm water drainage so ditches. Uh but the developer JC Long had the concept that as density increased uh in the neighborhood that that those ditches would be filled in with storm water under underground storm water retention um on street parking and sidewalks. Um and then a back alleyway in like at the mid block there. um there's a sewer usement five feet into everyone's property um and so alleyways could be um built. So we have this concept as well that change shouldn't happen in established communities and that's not an historical way to look at it. Um and then this is so this is just a local example of that. So implementation um and this is pretty much getting close to the end. Um but talking with Joel and Andrea uh we came up with a couple ideas and I wouldn't um but this is kind of like open floor for discussion I guess. Um so one of the things was removing the terms duplex, triplex, quadlex and town home. Uh and instead it would just be um like ADU

potentially. Um, this is based off of like downtown Charleston's examples where uh, as you saw the the buildings or whether duplex, triplex, whatever doesn't really matter. It's just the number of units and how they're attached. Um, remove the concept of attachment and detachment of residential uses. Um, this can concept can artificially push land owners into zoning levels much higher than what um, is appropriate in order to get mixed uses with like we saw in the John's Island project. Um maximum lot sizes decrease as density increases. Um that could be a potential but um essentially it promotes diversity of land ownership and disincentivizes uh large massing. Um because of course like one of the nice things about walking downtown Charleston is the facade changes every 20 25 ft. Um there's visual interest in that. Um large buildings you just it's it feels way longer to walk the same distance. and then eliminate um setbacks from zoning. So the initial intent like I mentioned was to reduce fire spread was an equated antiquated um due to standardized building codes. Um and I don't necessarily mean that with land use buffers. Um ZLDR has a different concept for that and uh that would be like a the 40 or 60 foot land buffer between residential and industrial. So there are still reasons for certain use separations but not quite to the um to the distance that it is now. And then um this is kind of like looking forward where should these areas be um obviously within the urban growth boundary. Uh but this is kind of another example of drawing from history in order to find out where we should go. Um historically we develop cities at the intersection of high ground and high commercial activity. And that's as deep as it has to go. So, um this is just West Ashley.

Uh we could do the whole county um within the urban growth boundary. Uh maybe for the comprehensive plan rewrites, you know, and uh and these are just um identified nodes. Um and then this is city of Charleston has that map that you can essentially what would Charleston look like if it ocean was 10 foot taller. So, here you go. Um, and then recommended reading. I don't know how this is going to be dispersed. So, but if anyone's ever interested, I figured I would at least like obviously these people have way more to say about all this than I do and they say it much better. So, uh, and with that, that's what I had.

I had a question about the setbacks. So, you said you don't think setbacks serve any purpose? No. Um, in fact, I really want someone to bring up an argument for them. I've never had a good one. Um, well, I just know when we were building the way back, we were building the courthouse downtown. So, we wanted it, you know, like street, but we the upper floors were we were told that it would be less imposing if the upper floors were like, you know, going back away from the street. So, it wasn't like it was like hovering over you. So is

yeah um in fact if you ever look at a Greek building's columns um they kind of curve as they go up um the concept of insis and that's actually the purpose for it. Um now when I say setbacks I'm talking about like from a land planning perspective. Okay. Um

I do think that there is value in stepping back as you go up. Um and in fact uh one of the books on that list was um a pattern language by Christopher Alexander and he talks about the need for um connection between the upper floors and the street. So he actually dictates like a building shouldn't be more than four or five stories. Okay. Um which is what you see um that works best downtown Charleston. And I'm I am kind of of that similar opinion. Okay. Got a question for you.

Yeah. and thank you for this great great presentation. So from a uh general public standpoint, what do you think would be the the most difficult uh measure to sell what you're saying? You know, because theoretically someone that's living in a, you know, 12,500 square foot, you know, piece of property, they're going to say, "Hey, you know what? I don't want two or three or four other houses directly next to me because that's why I moved here, right?

So, how do you get how do you get the public on board with not feeling like, you know, the property value may go down or I might as well be living in New York. So, that is the million-dollar question. Talked to a lot of people about it. My first inclination is that it's traffic because I think that we see that a lot here. Um, and in fact, I had mentioned to Joel and Andrea, I was like maybe because like zoning still does h serve a purpose. Um, but it's like what's our next fire issue or our next uh like uh sanitation issue and it might be the car. Um, and I because I think that a lot of people that push back on certain projects do so because of traffic. Um, so that would be the first one. I think though, and and I've heard this from a couple people I've talked to, uh it could just be that people are averse to change. Um you can't really convince someone otherwise other than like, you know, life is change. Um,

do you think the possibility could be, you know, as opposed to concentrating on the residential zonings, you know, starting it out concentrating on, let's say, a limited business zoning and being able to increase the residential density in those areas because theoretically those limited business ownings, they already have that sense of business and sidewalks and, you know, that type of urban urbanism, you know, around it as opposed to, you know, your conventional residential neighborhood that we live in. So, that might be an easier sale, you know, with the public and also allow for easier density, you know, as opposed to, you know, two units you can put four.

Well, I will say that the first thing, um, and I think it was actually kind of timely with the ZLDR amendment, uh, discussion that we had earlier. Um, when it comes to infrastructure, part of the things that I I try to explain, I don't know if I explained it very well in this, um, but what we have today is essentially the more sprawl you have, the more expensive your infrastructure and service costs are. So, you have all that distance of road and storm water and sewer and water supply and electricity and fire and police. Um and when so basically like you get to an impass you have two options either you increase density or only the wealthy can live here. Um and so there might be room for this. So like going back to the ZLDR uh discussion that we had today um and back to my idea on nodes is we could have like an overlay concept at these nodes that essentially do what you're saying. Um, I think a lot of that would have to be discussion with the city um or cities within the urban growth boundary because they'd have to be on board. They typically have more capacity for a change like that. Um, I am looking for like just smaller level changes just to see if we can even get the ball rolling on uh even the concept of like removing the concept of attachment and detachment of residential property. Um, it's the only use that has that requirement that I'm aware of in the ZLDR. So, you can attach like a barber shop in a grocery store, but you can't attach to residential buildings for some reason uh that I can't think of other than like exclusionary zoning practices.

The city of North Charleston a couple years ago, and please correct me if I'm wrong here, but don't worry. Yeah, under their under their limited business zoning, uh it used to be where you could have u I think it was one commercial like on a residential aspect, one commercial down below and two residentials above neighborhood. Yeah, neighborhood

neighborhood commercial. Um as of a couple of years ago, it might have been three years now, but that's now changed to being able to have one commercial below and four uh residential above, you know. So that's that's very attractive, you know, to an investor or someone that's got a piece of property, you know, with that type of a zoning because you're like, "Okay, great." You know, I'm pretty much doubled my density with the same footprint. I've just got to satisfy parking, but the parking can probably be satisfied in those areas because you can do some, you know, allocation for all street. But, uh, yeah, so I think it could definitely happen in the county as well.

Well, and that would be the other part is parking. um because the more that we encumber these properties with parking requirements, the harder it is to actually achieve what you're trying to do with the additional density. So, it's like a they're fighting each other. Yeah. Um great point because on that parking aspect, it could be, you know, if you are within a certain distance of public transport, you know, then maybe those that

public restrictions could be could be lessened. Do we right do we have that now? We have that if you're going to follow the affordable or workforce housing guidelines, we do allow it and you're within a certain radius of a public transportation um stop. We do allow a lower um parking requirement. Yes, sir. I'd like to get rid of parking in certain areas at the notes. Um because obviously, like I said, they fight each other. Warwick. So it it seems to me Can you go back to the West Ashley the 61 and seven? Oh yeah. So

you know one of the biggest challenges to me is how do you get more towards a gritted system? Um I think it was the shopping center. Oh. Oh. So you're 61 Samber. So, you know, and I think this is what makes it the tough cell is as you go to try to increase density. So, this road system to go east or west, north or south, this is it. Yep. And it makes transit ineffective. Terrible. Yeah.

Uh because you you have to go so far out of the way, switch buses to go in the opposite direction. Nothing connects. So as you try to increase density anywhere off of this, ultimately you still have to get back to these same overburdened arteries. It would be like downtown Charleston and the peninsula if uh only Calhoun and only Meeting Street were your only east west and everything else had to feed into there in order to move about it. Sort of like Mount Pleasant. Yeah, it so. Hey, that was a lob. It's a fact.

That's, you know, that's any I mean, it's any suburb. They they all continue to dump onto these main arteries and the resistance seems to be, you know, how do you increase the connectivity

where you can move in multiple directions that aren't so dependent on these arteries? Otherwise, it's a tough cell because, you know, you live in your neighborhood, there's open land, somebody wants to put in more housing units, everyone already has their notions of how long and how difficult it takes to move around the area. So, if you propose where there's even one home site and and putting in a triplex, you know, I think most people just feel like they've had enough.

Yeah. Um, I don't know what the answer is. I I know things like the Maybank overlay, you know, we've got the um, you know, I think the the dedication, you know, as you develop, you can increase density by dedicating a rightway, but even that at best is a 200-year road plan. I mean, for it to all eventually so come together,

our hands are definitely tied in the county level um with a lot of factors like this intersection would require a lot of uh buyin from the large property owners um because I think that you'd have to grid those streets um but probably more difficult would be SCOT um and essenti so

to my whole concept of that like I think we all know SC DOT is the uh owner of the fourth most length of road in the entire country of every other state DOT. We're not that big. Um I think that the history uh of how that came to be is essentially municipalities uh seeded their roads to SCD to the state um so they could sprawl and and the state's very uh favorable to municipalities and their ability to incorporate um and their ability to sprawl without really having to pay for the cost of that sprawl at least in terms of roads. Um, and so I think that that would have to be restructured in order to even fix something like this. Um, but at the very least we could as the county codify this is our intent for a node. Um, even if it was cuz I mean my opinion on city planning is we're planning for the next 100 200 years. Um, it's definitely a long game. Uh, and it's one that I won't see the end of. um it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try it and and honestly this is the highest ground in West Ashley. Um and it's obviously a massively important commercial node. Um unfortunately it's just been mishandled for so long that it's going to be difficult to fix it. So like these two roads would have to get less wide and we'd have to have more um like essentially a gritted street network to connect them. talked before. I've I've always been surprised uh at the lack of development of town houses in Charleston and particularly in the city. And as I said in Sydney, from where I hail, you have many town houses that sell for millions of dollars. In fact, in Paddington, some of those

suburbs, you have row houses. You probably have 10 houses each selling for a couple of million dollars. It seems to me that there's been a sort of a feeling that when you have these duplexes, triplexes or whatever, there's an association of inferiority. Not personally, but just in building uh you can build townouses that are impressive and I've shown you photographs, but I don't see it happening. People pay in the peninsula, maybe this is not middle housing, but they're paying million dollars for apartments, but you can get something. You can't you can't buy a townhouse. Nobody building them. So I guess the question that I ask is it because people are conscious of thinking that something is inferior living in an apartment that if they had a townhouse and if somebody was or if the the government was maintaining or demanding a certain standard, an architectural standard or an appearance standard, they might be far more appealing. therefore attract more interest and you know maybe this can be applied to middle housing.

I'm sure there's classism to it. I mean Joel's mentioned plenty on the aesthetic quality of them. Um and I wasn't around for I think would if we did try to bring missing middle housing would this be like the third time or fourth time? Um and so I don't know what the conversations were around that if it was aesthetics more so or traffic. I think uh yeah, aesthetics blending in with the established neighborhoods was kind of the issue and that's why they were, you know, now they're special exception um approvals in our R4 district, which is the vast majority of what our um urban suburban are zoned. What What are the special exception for town home in R4?

Well, you have to you have to go to the board of zoning appeals um to get the special exception approval whether you're doing market rate housing or affordable and workforce housing. Um and those have not been very successful. the community typically comes out against those. So from there then would it be community commercial that would be the next tier where you can as a as a buy right to town homes.

So I was just looking at our zoning ordinance. So we um back in 2021 when we overhauled it and we overhauled our workforce and affordable dwelling unit section. So whether you're doing just regular town houses or affordable and workforce um in our general office, residential office, neighborhood commercial, their use is subject to conditions that has to do with just the design of them. How many can be in a block kind of thing. Um but they are limited at four units the acre. And then as you move into our um community commercial and industrial, they're allowed at 16 units to the acre. Um and then multif family is also allowed in community commercial and industrial. So sort of like you can do you know just strict residential or you could do a mixture of uses in those districts. It's just the R4 you know is the vast majority of what the unincorporated county is zon and that is where those alternative housing types are required to go through special exception.

One thing to mention too one of the reasons why we don't have as much missing middle is the financing element of it. It's really easy to finance a single family home. You flip it to someone, you sell it, and then the bank note. And the apartments have their own performers that work out. And there's just not a lot of financial products out there in that missing middle area. They're more risky. They're less of them. They're harder to bundle. So the Wall Street will buy them, you know, and so that's part of the reason as well. We don't have that ecosystem in the financial market support that I think it's

also that I think the challenge is the regime fee. um regime fee is it scares a lot of people off even though if you took what you pay for your house it's not that much difference when you pay a regime fee but people look at that regime fee and go oh that's that's a lot of money I got to pay and it I think that that has driven a lot of people away from at least from my end of it on the sales side of it from multif family they prefer to be able to just maintain their own home and pay their insurance even though it's not that much difference but that is a problem getting people to agree agree on the necessary maintenance and that kind of stuff too. I mean, look at Doide. That's a prime example of where it wasn't done right.

Well, like you said, I believe that that ends up getting incorporated. Um, because all like if you were to add more taxes to it, then that would drop home prices, too. Um, and a lot of what I like to see is like, uh, the ability to get rid of setbacks so you can have, let's say, town homes on separate properties and then you don't have to worry about a regime fee. Um, obviously there's some cooperation because of the party wall. Um, but it wouldn't be like a condoed out portion of building.

All right. Okay. Should we move on? Do we solve that? Do we move on? show three scenarios with the suburban show. There it is. Right. So expansion duplication, right? But now we're expanding, but we've already sort of expanded into that suburban model. So how do we retrofit 70 years of design?

So there is a book for that.

So uh Ellen Dunham Jones, she was actually a professor of mine at Georgia Tech. She wrote a book called Retrofitting Suburbia. Um and it's a so really you start off with like a lot of smaller um ideas. So like uh focusing like on bike lanes for instance because they're less expensive than car lanes. Um of course there's an attempt to connect uh some kind of gritted pattern after the fact. Um but the book is more so I would say it's been a while since I read it. Um really it was her class but uh it was more so like um here is a property that used to be a grocery store with a massive parking lot. uh let me develop this portion of that parking lot. So it was more of like tactical urbanism if you've ever heard that term where it's a smaller scale kind of approach. Um so and then that's where like that fuse grid concept comes in. Um one of the things that uh we were taught in school and you can see it uh in um you can see it in a ton of uh cities throughout the world. Um nodes are so basically you have nodes uh as a concept which is one of the hardest things to ever move. So like a city typically stays there or it just dies. Um then you have streets. So like the original streets in London when it was a Roman town are still there. Um so those are also hard to change. And then you get down obviously to buildings. Uh those are the easiest thing to change in a city. And so what our current street layout is in the suburban area would remain the way that it is, but we would have to find ways of connecting um through them. So like New York City is a good example. Broadway was actually an Indian like a cattle path I think it was. Um and that street's still there. Uh so they

basically just overlaid that grid um over top of that. So it' be kind of like a similar concept um but it would be more peace meal. It would be like property by property like if a city found a good connection point um and had the opportunity to purchase that property in order to make that connection point. I don't think that it would be an o all all done at one time. Um, and then of course I think that you need to like focus on these nodes and they can grow over time like out once they hit some kind of agreed upon density maximum which like I said with the pattern language would be like four to five stories. Um, there are certain ways that like humans interact with space like even the way that you walk down the street you're not walking in a straight path you're following some point of visual interest or like in a plaza people tend to congregate at the periphery not like right in the middle. So like there's a certain amount of like how humans

naturally use their built environment um that is more or less comfortable. Um but to kind of round back to it I think that it's it would be more of an incremental process uh that we're kind of more focusing on what the framework of that would be. Um, it's almost like in my mind it's almost like we have the urban growth boundary, but let's identify nodes of more intense development or density inside of the urban growth boundary. Um, I think that's kind of the natural progression.

Some of the studies are going on right now. So I think soon we will model regionally whether apply them more broadly up 17 up 61 or whatever. I'm sorry. Yeah. Can you Yeah, sure. Um

talking low country rapid transit. There's a number of studies. We're in phase three transit oriented development study right now with a bunch of consultants and stuff and they're looking at how do we create this sort of nodal system around those station areas and how do we look at zoning? the carrying capacity of those areas around those stations and then what type of zoning do we need to have in place so that we can get and maximize the the impact of that so that we are having transit supported development so that we become successful when we do actually put on improvements on road

but I do want to impress and I brought it back to this slide um there's a certain amount that we should leave unknown for the market to find for itself or people to find for itself. Um so like transit oriented development can have the negative consequence of creating essentially massively expensive nodes and um what is essentially property speculation. So that's what I want to kind of avoid with this um

whatever this is actually as we talk about it. Um but but like that was why um Lake Orbusier's concepts failed was because he thought that he knew all of this and how to essentially organize people. Um but that's not how people interact with space whether he likes it or not or any of us like it or not. Um I think that as humans we tend to like to organize and categorize like more and more and more because we feel like it makes us know it. Um, but I think that there's a certain amount, especially to a body like this when it comes to city planning, to leave things open-ended so that what ends up getting built, you know, that's what works best for the people that live there more or less.

Okay, we have one more presentation. Well, just real quick, if you don't mind, we wanted to get some direction from the planning commission. Is this something you want us to pursue further? Do we want to have a subcommittee of the commission or do you want us to work with Commissioner Morris? Oh, I'm sorry. Yep. We just wanted to get some direction from the commission. You know, do you want us to pursue this further? Do you want to create a subcommittee of of the planning commission? Do you want us to work directly with Commissioner Morris to bring something back to you all? How would you like us to proceed if at all? Something to add to the ZLDR? Go subcommittee. Yeah. Yeah. Do we want to u maybe think about it and then we can have it on the agenda for next um next time on how to proceed?

Yep. Okay. Okay. With this agenda,

um, one concern I have is that, you know, there's not a lot to do in the unincorporated county. There's really just not that much land there. And so I would urge staff I guess in this commission to reach out to your partners at different jurisdictions and different municipalities engage with the council of governments and how we can find uh a a broader framework that may become a regional framework not only to get some understanding of what the need is because it's tremendous. that's insurmountable essentially at this point, but also so that we can establish a set of guidelines that developers, whether they're for-profit developers, nonprofit developers, affordable housing developers, they understand what the rules are and they can develop their packages to suit multiple jurisdictions so it's not more cumbersome for them, right? You kind of streamline the process and get rid of barriers to bringing housing to the marketplace so we're not in this crunch. So I think that those conversations are starting but I think I would I would encourage my colleagues here if you have colleagues in other places doing the same thing uh to have those conversations as well.

Well put all right we still have a presentation on subdivisions. So sorry it was it was on the agenda. We have to do a workshop.

So, I I have printed copies if y'all can't see this. Um, but they're over there.

No. have to magnify that by about 10 before I can do that. So, yeah, just to give you a little bit of background of why we're bringing this to y'all, I've I've asked Joel to if I could start bringing major subdivisions back to planning commission just as like a conceptual review to give um the public u a formal process for public notice and to give them a um opportunity to hear about projects before they go through the review process. and um and just kind of know what what's happening in their community. Um so with subdivision, a major subdivision is five lots or more and that also would require a rideway u meeting secondary county road standards. So that's a 50 foot wide rideway, 22 foot wide travelway meeting secondary county road standards. So just to give a little background, um you all see this every time we do a presentation. It's uh South Carolina state law 629340 which essentially says planning commission has the responsibility for regulation of subdivision for development and land appropriate revisions thereof and to oversee the administration and regulation that may be adopted as provided in this chapter. So you all are the governing body of plats and subdivisions. That's why every time we have an appeal, you all see that. Um, in 2010, staff uh presented to the planning commission and ultimately approved by the planning commission and county council to take subdivision review process and put it at staff level. So since 2010, staff has reviewed it. As long as it meets the ordinance, we approve it and record it. Um in 2018 that is when the historic preservation

ordinance was started. 2019 um it was revised in I think 2024 to require preliminary plats and minor subdivisions to come back to planning commission. So that's our process that we do where we take a minor subdivision, we take it to HPC, they basically give a report. Is it consistent or inconsistent with the comprehensive plan? We bring that to you all and you all approve or deny it based on the ZLDR and um comp plan. So you're already currently seeing HPC district properties. There's a moratorum on major subdivisions. So that's why you haven't really been seeing major subdivisions in historic districts. We do have some that were submitted prior to the moratorum that are close to being preliminary plat approval that we would bring to you all. Um so essentially what I'm asking uh the board is to consider is that allow me to bring major subdivisions to you all for a conceptual review process so that I could have a formal public notice process and um a body so that people can come and hear about the project prior to application. And then I had just like a quick um where's my PowerPoint? um quick like example of what I would bring to you all

while we're waiting. So is are you saying that um that you want to bring subdivisions, major subdivisions to us that already meet the requirements so that it on on your face on what you would review it would go through and would be a problem? Yes.

So why would we want to come here if it already meets all the requirements? And I understand you want to bring to the public, but the public input really doesn't make any difference if it already meets the zoning requirements. Well, so what I'm running into is for example, we have um a 180 lot subdivision on John's Island and they have a secondary connectivity road and it has gone through the preliminary plat process. They have met all the requirements. Um but the neighbors have said, well, we didn't know about this. Like how were we not notified about it? And my response is is that subdivisions done at staff level and if it meets uh the ordinance requirements, it it gets approved. But we're just looking for a a process so that um for the public notice part of it so that they they know what's coming. And the secondary road that actually needed an encroachment permit encroachment permit from SCOT which the developer received. So we we have no control over that road, but you know, it it would be kind of like a educational component to the community of what is coming on track.

I see it as just a way to let the public know. So you know, you know what's going before you see the bulldozers show up. I I kind of see it as a way of adding more time to a process that's already lengthy as it is. And if we're already meeting the requirements of what we should meet with public notice, why do we need to do something additional that's at the end of the day going to add time to getting entitlements and then essentially going to add pricing increase to the end product? I don't see it as adding any pricing.

Of course it will. Now they just have to come here and say see we used to look at these well we used to look at these they would come in and we were just rubber stamping them. All right. So then they decided, well, let's just make that administrative. But this just gives the I see it as just giving the public, it's like an educational thing for the public or, you know, just a courtesy call for the public to say, "Yeah, you're going to be putting in 180. We're going to be putting in 180 houses over on here and we're going to show you what we're going to do." There's a notification process though, correct? No. Well, no, there is no not. So, how how was the public not because it's by right? Is it is it

these are for by right projects. So if it meets all the zoning requirements, there is no So then why are we doing it? Yeah. Why why why are we adding more bureaucracy to a situation where we don't need to? It's not more bureaucracy. It's just like like I said, I just see it as a notification process for the people in the neighborhood so they don't say like wake up the next day and say and so they know it's coming in. They can get acclimated to it. But yeah, like I said, we used to see these all the time. that would come in and we would say like, "Okay, well, there's a new there's a new subdivision going in." Thank you. So, this is just chair. Yes.

So, but here's the problem. We're going to notice and have a workshop here and there's nothing we can do about it. So, no matter how mad people get, there is nothing that we can do about it if it meets all the requirements. Why didn't the county just mail out notices? If that's if that's what y'all want to accomplish is giving notice, why don't y'all just notice it? Or do y'all have to bring it before us to be able to approve the cost of noticing it? We don't have to bring it in front of you, but we thought it was a good venue from state law, you know, allows the the planning commission to hear subdivision. Um, but if what you're suggesting is we just notice it and let people know it's happening and if they have comments, they can send them in or not. Is that Yeah.

Yeah. and and the developer may be, you know, might might learn something from it that he might want to incorporate into the development too, just for better community relations.

I mean, you there's currently a process for plan developments. So, the public is notified like what happened today, that proposed plan development. There's a process for minor and subdivision, but minor and major in historic districts, but there's still a component that's left out. And I would just like to make it cohesive and equitable across all types of subdivisions so that if you are a major subdivision, this is the process. So pardon, pardon me once again. So at at the same time we're understanding that we as planning commission will not be able to satisfy the 30 40 50 or 100 people that are in here complaining about the fact that they don't want it to happen because of AB C or D and at the end of the day they're going to walk away feeling like they just completely wasted their time because we it doesn't matter what they say the project met all the guidelines that are necess necessary by staff. So, it's either approved or not approved. They just wasted their time essentially or or we're we're a sounding board for them to vent their frustration.

Yep. But it would be an opportunity for staff to say, "Okay, the access to this development is going to be off of SEO road or Charleston County Road." They'll need to receive an encroachment permit from those jurisdictions that um you know, jurisdictional wetlands. it the developer could say if they are or are not proposing to infill jurisdictional devel wetlands that would go to the Army Corps of Engineers. So just just so that it's kind of understood as to to what we're required to meet and what other jurisdictions have to bring to the table in order for it to be a an approved project.

Madam Chair, can I make a remark? I mean to your point, we advise council. We don't we don't decide anything. So, you know, this would be to my mind, as Cindy has said, part of a um an opportunity for the public to speak because they can come before us and we can recommend to council. We can. It's our No, no, no, no. I'm saying with all of the other things that we do. I mean, we recommend that is all we do. We don't make final law decisions with respect to many of the things that come before us.

I for the record I do want to clarify that there is a recommendation capacity of the planning commission. However, subdivisions are one of the things that planning commission has final approval on. I I knew that was one of them. But my point is that we advise on everything else. So you're saying that the people are going to come here and complain and they're still going to have to come back come back and talk to council about it. Well, no. They not for subdivisions. Forget subdivisions. I'm talking about everything else. So, but in this case, so with subdivisions and as it stands right now, it's just through staff. Staff has the right to approve or disapprove based on the merits. Yeah.

If they come here to planning commission and we hear them, as I'm understanding, we really don't have an opinion that's valid. I do agree with what Cindy said though. It's a similar process to my mind as doing the um historic preservation. You get input from your community that that might influence a developer to add something, take something away that would make people happier with the decisions that are made. It feels like a way to really just bog down the process that much more. I don't think it's our job to I would I would just say that this would be a conceptual drawing. Like

you don't have to put a whole lot of money in it. Um I mean it's a conceptual drawing. So like staff would show the aerial, the future land use, current zoning map, FEMA, give the zoning of the property, and then give a basic what the developer puts in their letter of intent, which they have to provide to us for uh a pre-application meeting for all um major subdivisions. You're required to have a preapp meeting with staff. And this would be this is what they put in their letter of intent, what they're proposing, the PD, total acreage, number of units, and then a conceptual plan just so that the community sees this is what it's zoned for. This is what they're proposing, but this is all prior to actual application.

At the end of the day, all of these extra costs are going to get passed down to the end consumer. the engineer is going to have to get paid more money to show up here and present, you know, the timing, you know, everything. It's it's all relative. The carry cost with the bank, no one's going to eat that money. That money is going to get passed down to the end consumer. And if we don't need to pass it down, then we shouldn't in my opinion. Is is this being post like a subdivision uh application posted online for the website county website?

So what we do for subdivision applications is every month the the reports that you all receive as far as the recorded um plat and subdivision applications. Those are posted on our um our website. Yes, there's the notes. Well, but but people don't really know to know to look at that. They would have to go through each line and pull the application and see the location and then the TMS number and do a foyer

for the documents. So, could the notice that we would give to have people show up here to the workshop be tailored to provide notice that these documents are available substant here online at this website? We're going to not we're going to give them notice one way or the other, right? Well, if if I were to bring it to you all, it it would be in the packet with my presentation that I would give give to the board. That's what they would receive with the notice that they could go to our website and see the packet. So there would be a mail notice or it's just going to be slipped in,

right? Well, I mean that that would be up up to y'all. Um I think sometimes it's a 300 foot radius of the the parcel gets direct mailings and posted in the posting courier and yeah, I assume that was part of it. Otherwise, if you know, if you live near a piece of undeveloped property, if you don't receive that mailed notice, then when it gets inserted into a, you know, a monthly planning commission packet unless residents happen to be signed up and and make it a point to look at that, they're not going to it's not going to provide that much notice, I don't think.

Right. And and we're not talking about a ton. I think um when I ran the numbers last year, I think we had 330 something applications and maybe 20 25 were major subdivisions and that's five lots or more. So, you know, it it could be a lot of five lot subdivisions. I I I just feel like a lot of this could be accomplished by sending out a notice to them if if what we're doing is we want to give the opportunity to the community to have an idea of what is coming down the road. But yet we but yet if it's already on paper something that's going to be approved then I feel like that could cause more issue them coming in and hearing presentation and a developer going great thanks for your comments and negative feedback it's going to get approved anyway why would I spend a dollar to change it if if there's notices then they can submit through whatever portal or email um these things to take into consideration which can then just be forwarded along to the developer for their file. And if they want to make those changes, I think that they will do it then. Um, I just don't really know how much of a difference it makes to have them come in and do the dog and pony show and, you know, have to travel from I mean, with traffic, people would travel from all over. And if they realize that what they're saying doesn't actually make a difference, then I would be more frustrated if I came in, took time off from work, sat in traffic going home, just to know that the developer goes, "Oh, great. Well, yeah, that's going to cost me more money to go change this plan based on your recommendation." You know,

I will say to that if like let's say we just send out a notice to everybody at 300 foot radius and we don't have a a public forum for them to come and hear it. What is happening is I field all those calls individually at different times of every day and then I have to explain to them the same thing 20 times whereas it could be presented in in in a public process and then they get upset with me and then the next step is for them to CC Joel and their council member on it and then I have to set up a phone call with them to talk about the development and what's going to happen. And so I'm just trying to like streamline it and make it fair um for everybody involved. And unfortunately fortunately you all have that per state law. So there's nobody else I could take it to.

If they're pro provided notice and I I guess some example of the plan that's come the subdivision that's coming before them with that notice. Um, I don't really know what conversation there is to have with them other than if you want more details, submit a foyer request. I can't, you know, what what do they want to talk about? I mean, I hear you. I would not want to field all those calls either, but I'm saying at some point, you know, there's really not much else to tell them other than No, but I think there's an interest in what's going on because she has to field all those phone calls. So there is an interest in knowing and we could provide that information for them.

Well, I I agree. I think they come in here, they're expecting change. I don't know that. It depends on what the notice says, doesn't it?

It it would it would just be This has no property corners. It has no like line dimensions. It has no lot sizes. Well, other than the sidebar, but it would just be a concept. This is what we're proposing. And that would be an opportunity for staff to say this is the zoning. This is what is allowed. Um this is what would be required for it to be approved as far as letters of coordinations, encroachment permits, all of all of that. So it so it's it's documented like we've reviewed it. This is what will be required and if they meet all of those requirements, then it will be approved at staff level.

Yeah. I I think the hangup is having a a workshop that differs from what we saw today in that the applicants are required to take that information or I guess they don't have to but when they submit their PD it's going to be scrutinized and we'll be able to determine as a body if you know with what we've heard if if we're satisfied to make a recommendation one way or the other. I I'm afraid with this it's a workshop that there there's there's no action. Um yeah, you know, we're going to put it in front of them. We're gonna

field the questions. Um most are not I mean, let's face it, it's a subdivision. Nobody's going to be happy with it. Um you know, we've all hear the the groans with infrastructure and strain. So, we're going to hear all that in the form of a workshop and there's going to be no followup for them to change it and come back to us with something different. It's just going to be a kind of an unanswered process. I wouldn't put it that way. I would put it as it's a uh it's a streamlined process for u a public notice of future development within their area.

Right. Would the developer be would it be mandatory for the developer to show up? That that's up to you all. How I mean if as a developer you if you're meeting the guidelines and are we going to put it forth without a developer showing up? Yeah. So a developer doesn't need to show up. The staff would present it. Right. I I I could I could just present it as staff. It's it's whatever you would prefer if y'all allow me to bring them. Um, I mean, I wouldn't say the developer would have to be required unless they wanted to answer questions of the public.

Can Can I just get you answer clarity? So, we would not be even reviewing even a preliminary plat or a final plat. And so, we actually wouldn't be taking the action. That's still going to happen administratively. Is that how I understand that? Or will we be taking a vote? No, you won't be taking a vote. Right. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, that's good to know. Um I guess you just get to take the abuse. You don't get to take it.

Um um if we are to do this and I I agnostic right now, but um if we were to do it rather than sending out a lot of mailers notification, which takes a lot of staff time and money, right? That takes time to do. I know it takes your time to take the phone call. We're not required to necessarily notify in that way, right, for our subdivision. So, can we just put a sign out and that'll grab the attention of those people who are always concerned about the signs and that that is enough? Have you ever tried to read those signs? No, but I think that if someone were interested enough in what's going on there, they may stop and figure out. Well, that's what you have to do. Believe me, because I am interested and I know you would stop driving down the road

and you would be the one to call her, right? And so RA, but if you send it out to 350 people, well, but then they find out, oh, I didn't stop and read that sign and this is going on and then they get mad and then they call her. But you'll get on but then you get on your Facebook page and people would talk about it and they'll be it'll go from there. I I think the the big picture question in my mind here is if if you had five neighboring, you know, owners to this piece of property here, and if we actually told them that you can come show up, you can sit in traffic for 35 minutes to an hour. Come show up. We're going to educate you on this project and let you voice your opinion, but at the end of the day,

it doesn't really matter. Or or I could have a presentation that's in the planning commission packet. They get the notification and they can watch it online through YouTube and then if they have any questions, they could follow up afterwards. You get the comments for with the development. Well, this is the same thing we do. How how do your phone calls typically end? like do they feel satisfied with the question or with your answers or are they just gonna be angry Joel and their commit their council right right I it's varied right um I mean I

um planning and zoning is a it's a it's a a lot of educational factors because it's so diverse right so it's kind of hard to explain that to somebody that's not very familiar with it um we do our best obviously But yeah, I mean people it the majority of what I'm understanding and and it's just happened multiple time with multiple council members that I've had to field so many phone calls when usually it's when the clearing and grubbing starts.

They're like, "Wait, what's happening?" And then we get the calls and then we get the, "Well, wait a minute. I have these grand trees on the property line and you know they're encroaching into my into my backyard and why have they cleared to this secondary road in our neighborhood? Our neighborhood has been here for 70 years and we didn't even know this was happening. And so I'm just looking for a formal process to to let people know before they start seeing trees cleared.

One one way we could do it Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Uh yeah, I was just wondering if because I mean I I would feel the same way as Logan just mentioned if I was a member of the public and I thought I got my chance to speak and I think like something can be done about it and I go and then I find out that it was like all for nothing. Would it be better or is he even allowed to essentially like staff give the presentation of it since really the intent is to be informative and then note public comment? That's what I was asking. Yeah.

And that's kind of so it sounds like everyone's in agreement that there should be some sort of public notice. It's just how that what that form is. And so we do have the engage portal that we use to um advertise our cases. Um, and then you guys see the public comments, those public comments when you go online and you're looking at them, we have the ability to do that for subdivision case or anything we want to. So, you know, if if you didn't want to have the workshop aspect of it, we could certainly when when the applications come in, do put this sort of presentation online with the application information and an ability for people to submit their comments just to staff and it never makes it past there. and we could give that information to the developer then um just so there is public notice and the the developer could have the benefit of that information and they don't have to come here and like you said maybe be frustrated because they don't feel like they're getting the response they want and they sat in traffic and and that sort of thing. So that is just one other option. it it I just I have a personal uneasy feeling about it and I'm speaking from the other side of the the table here,

you know, so if I mean the process today already takes two years to do, you know, it's 24 months of carrying costs and dealing with the banks and everything else. So from the minute you know a developer is told that hey well you now need to also do this the prices are going to continue to increase on the end consumer. I don't see this is all stuff you have to do anyway. Well not not necess I mean we don't we don't know. I mean right now it's all conceptual. No but you have to do all applications

right. But it all depends it depends on timing. If there's a notification process that that starts, depending on when this notification is sent out, the developer may be required to get this information in sooner rather than later. You know, it may be a process of, okay, cool. I also need to make sure that I've got all of my letters, you know, from the the school district, fire department, everyone else, and now I'm waiting on that process, too. There it's a trickle effect. It's not just one to two when we're there, you know, because everything is dependent upon something else. Otherwise, the application isn't complete,

you know. So, if we're going to put in conceptual stuff to the public, I take it that we're going to want to put stuff in that's as complete as possible. So, it will add time and that time will get pushed down to the end consumer. And if we don't need to do it, I don't think we should do it. My my only other thought is if if we send any kind of notice whether it's mailed, it's online, there should be a disclaimer that says this is approved by right. Like yeah, you voice your opinion and it's going to get approved either way. So I think people should just know that going into it. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

I have a request. Can we change the signs when you are driving 60 miles? Listen, I've been doing that for 20 years and nobody's done it. I've been doing it for 20 years. I even said get reusable signs. Get bigger ones, you know, fill it in and with laundry marker and then paint over and do it for the next one. Nobody pays any attention to me. I can't stop without risking your life. I'm just doing 60 miles hour. You got a semi behind you to see what that sign is. And then you don't know, you can go back and look, you know, I know how to use GIS, but not everybody does. And it so it's very difficult to figure out even what piece of property that little yellow

sign. Well, yeah, but you still got going 60 miles hour, hold my phone out. Can't hold your phone and drive. Yeah, right. That's true. Yeah, we can't do that. I think I think that is a good thing. however we end up doing and I just think now this is a good thing because we we have been surprised multiple times from things like what's going on there how did I miss this is that window or I'm driving down the road and go did I approve that no it was by right

well if we could come up with a way because I understand you know what you're saying about not wanting to lengthen the time of the approval time. You know, the way the subdivision process works is you submit your application once it's complete. Then we review it. We have 15 working days to review it, return comments. Maybe after that first review, once they resubmit, that's what goes online. And within that 15-day period that we have, that's when that public comment is and it closes. So, you're working through it at the same time as that that um notice goes out.

I've got another question for you. um in that sentiment and and and I hear exactly what you're saying, but one concern that kind of comes to my mind is whether or not and this is hopefully completely unfounded. You know, staff would would be would feel a sense of pressure from hearing the commentary from the public of how they do not want it. irregardless of the fact that you know the developer is meeting all of the guidelines that are necessary to have this thing stamped and move forward. My concern is that human nature, us as humans, listening to someone vent or cry to us on the phone may put us in a situation whereby we do add time because as opposed to just saying one and one equals two, we wind up with one and one being one and a half and then we try to make that two up somewhere else and it might add time. It may

let us go back to the developer. I'm sorry. I have no idea what you're talking about. I just I'm not following. No. So, Gary Gary's saying like I get a major subdivision and the guy next door is not super happy about it and a buffer is not required, but I'm like,

"Hey, Gary, this guy's calling me. Do you think you could just add that buffer and reduce those lot lines just a little bit to make this guy happy?" I mean, that's not me. Um I I'm pretty cut and dry. You either meet the ordinance or you don't. But I'm not always going to be in this position. So I see what Gary's saying. Um but that's not currently how we how we do it in subdivision. So and I would like to say it doesn't take 24 months for subdivision. That is for the entire development process. Right Gary? Yeah. So it's not just subdivision. It's actual the permitting and all that stuff too.

Well okay. So that there is a a probable or possible risk of something like that occurring because of human nature, right? I mean, you what you wouldn't do it, but someone else could feel, you know, a way and decide to make five extra phone calls or or or lean into a developer in a way of, hey, you know, this would be good because, you know, the public, you know, would would appreciate it when really it's not necessary. So then it forces the same developer back to the table to start wondering, okay, do I have to do this? I don't think it forces them at all because and you would just say no.

But that's that's just not everyone. It just depends on how clear and cut it is. I mean, I think if it's clear and cut, we leave it where it is. Well, it it is other than the public knowing about it until they see trees going down. So, well, but the public doesn't I mean, it's by right. I mean, you look at the zoning maps and if it meets the zoning maps, then it's by right. Just like

I guess what I'm struggling with at staff is we have a process for plan developments for public notice. We have a process for minor and um major subdivisions in historic districts. We don't have a public process for everything that I do. And I would just like a uniform process for every plat. But but historic preservation is really just because they can give their input whether it meets the consistency of the of the neighborhood or the housing around it. That's all it's for. That's all we can even look at. But other than that, either it is or it isn't for uh historic preservation. Yeah,

perhaps it's just maybe if it is public here, it's just a report. It's not a presentation in any meaningful way. We had four major subdivisions, 180 units off of River, right? 100 and something units off of 17 and that's it. That's just a report so we understand that there's a 100 acre track with 100 units coming down the pipe somewhere down the road and hits the agenda. The public's notified. You can tell council you made the notification, but we don't go to this big presentation which doesn't have all this additional cost and time associated with started and done and approved. just notifying the commission that these things have happened in in a public.

Isn't that in the director's report already? But it's not presented like openly to the public. So perhaps that's just like one more step like you get four minutes and say over the past month these subdivisions come in and were approved and these are the ones. That's like a very That doesn't How does that help the public? Well, it gets on the agenda, so it goes on engaged. John Bogar will get it. Yeah. John John's getting a nail. Yeah.

And so, I mean, that's, you know, at least it'll be on the agenda. It'll be seen. It'll be, you know, just title only. And we don't require additional notification. We don't require additional uh presentation. We just have to report what's happening so that the public and we're aware and council's aware and you can't say you didn't know if you didn't pay attention that's not on us. We could notify you that you're out there. If you had questions you can reach out to staff.

Um I would add something to that too that our interested parties list um have roughly 2,000 people on them. So that's the division of the different areas. Um, and then we also have a more general list that's for all ZLDR and comp plan updates of any kind. Then we have folks that are specific to that list, but then every area in general has its own interested parties list, too. And those would all go out via email and that's about 2,000 people all together. Yeah. So, we could we could put it on the agenda, like you said, as an agenda item and then we could send the agenda out to our interested parties because that's just an email notification. Um, and yeah, see how that goes. If that's that sounds that sounds

Thank you, Adam. And what would I be bringing to y'all in that scenario?

Whatever this project called, you know, came I bet she's getting the calls over that. coming in at the Would it be um would it be preferable to do a an application was received instead of after it's finally approved? Yeah. Preliminary I mean this

Yeah, Tamara I think for everyone you should clarify when you are planning or contemplating bringing this because as we all know the subdivision process has several phases. There's the uh the land owner's idea. there's like, hey, here's my intent. Here's my initial application. Here's staff comments. Here's preliminary PL approval. Here's final PL approval. And then so, you know, when we're tossing around terms saying, well, hey, and then if it's approved, why are we notifying people? So, I think you should clarify like, hey, nothing has truly been approved yet. Um, from my understanding. So, I would I would probably feel best bringing the actual applications. Yeah. Yeah. Preliminary plan applications.

Yeah. preliminary applications. That's what we would list. Yeah.

Yeah. And then we could send the agenda to our interested parties. I'd be with I'd be in favor of Adam's proposal. I it I think the crux of it goes back to the heartburn or whether you call it a a public hearing workshop notice, you know, to invite the public in and not be able to take any action is it doesn't do anybody if you presented it to them the right way. I mean, if they come in thinking they're going to make comments and it's going to make a difference, that's one thing. But this if you I think if you set it up as an educational thing for this is what's coming to your neighborhood, that's different. But I I get that, you know, the developer doesn't want to have to go through that. No, I think most of I think most of the time the public's going to be upset

with it because that's the tendency is not to like new development and we're not going to have a any sort of avenue to address whatever concerns we hear. That's not going to help your phone calls. I mean, I've been doing it for 10 years. It's okay. I'm just trying to make it like fair across the board to say I know you didn't know about it, but if you were in a historic district, you would have already if it was a PD you would have. But yeah.

Yeah. And so so commission members along those lines, you know, the real goal here in is to for staff to be as best as possible then to tell everyone that hey, you know, things are developing around you. Now, obviously the ZLDR says you can use your property however it says you can use it, but right now there's no true and fair way for certain subdivisions for you to know about. Like you're not going to know until the very end, which was why um you know, council looked at doing notifications and subdivisions for historic preservation districts because they were getting constant, you know, comments that hey, we in these settlement communities and now historic districts had no idea this was going on. So council said, "Well, hey, let's

figure out a way to give them more of a public notice and and public, you know, opportunity to hear about it." So that's why it was implemented into the historic preservation ordinance. And so staff is now saying, "Well, hey, other people have noticed, well, hey, that is going on in this area that goes on for planned developments, but what about me where I just have a subdivision next to me? I'm in neither one of those areas. How do I know about it?" So that's really staff's whole goal with this exercise. So So, so this the notice that we're now talking about would be put out prior to staff receiving all of the pertinent information for the project. She said the preliminary plan applic

the complete once the application is complete. So when it has all the things that it needs then we I imagine we would put it on the the agenda under the subdivision report but not before because it isn't a complete application until that point. They may never complete it. Yeah. Okay. It's not a public hearing before necessarily. Right. Right. No, it's not a public hearing because you don't get one. Mhm. So would you all just like want kind of like an additional report in your packet or do you want me to speak to it? Additional report. Yeah, just put it in the packet and on the agenda. I like the idea of putting it on the agenda so somebody as a report, you know,

cuz I remember when we used to get those. I mean, the minor subdivisions that we used to like you get them, you see like the little, you know, the grids and then it's like like, okay, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. Then we could list the address and the case number for each one um underneath of it. So there's no discussion around it. It's just the report and we read it. Unless you wanted to bring it up. Okay.

Would you like for us to start with the next meeting agenda having those on there? Can you do that? I think so. Tam, we have the ability to But this is a workshop, so we can't vote on that, right? Well, you can I mean, you can tell us if you want us to put it on the the agenda for next time or or we can vote on it next time and have it for the January meeting if you want. we can look at because I think that the hardest thing to do would be that first group because after that it's just every month what did we get in addition to that first group kind of thing. So yeah, we we'll put it on the agenda for discussion and vote next time if that works for y'all. Yeah, anybody else? Yeah. Okay. Any old business? Any new business?

Yes. You're welcome, Gary. Glad that worked out. I know it's going to happen if we if they had a if we had a notice and hey you hear they're going to do a subdivision here when you get the planning commission excited about frustrating it would be very frustrating that is well I mean it's all frustrating frustrating conclude the workshop why do they come here right because traffic Well, I said I have to call the meeting. No, just sell everything.